Pat Boone Gets a Box Set, Finally

Everybody knows Elvis Presley was the biggest-selling record artist during rock’s early years, registering a phenomenal 19 Top 10 singles from 1955 to 1959 alone.

However, the odds are you’ll have trouble identifying his chief commercial rock rival back then.

The nominees:

* Chuck Berry, rock’s first great writer-performer and a member of the first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction class.

* Buddy Holly, another major writer-performer who was also a member of the first Hall of Fame induction class.

* Pat Boone, whose early success consisted chiefly of homogenized versions of R&B-rock; hits by such other future Hall of Fame artists as Fats Domino and Little Richard.

The answer: Boone, who had 16 national Top 10 records during the same period--as opposed to just five for Berry and only three for Holly.

So why have there been CD box sets devoted to Berry, Holly and numerous other ‘50s rockers, and not even one truly comprehensive retrospective CD of Boone’s music, until MCA Records’ new “Pat Boone’s Greatest Hits”?

Though many of the same teen rock fans who bought Elvis, Berry and Holly records also collected Boone records, Boone lacked rock authenticity and over time became a symbol of the “white colonialism” of the music business--the remaking by white artists of R&B; hits to get wider airplay in the mid-’50s, when black R&B; artists were largely ignored by mainstream pop stations.

As this collection shows, however, Boone was a creditable singer once he got into the pop phase of his career, when he made some well-crafted pop hits. He’s certainly not Hall of Fame material, but the MCA package is long overdue.

The collection’s contents range from the early rock-slanted hits, including “Ain’t That a Shame” and “Don’t Forbid Me,” through the movie-related hits, including Johnny Mercer’s “Bernardine” and Paul Francis Webster-Sammy Fain’s “April Love.”

Boone, the father of singer Debby Boone, was born in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1934, but moved with his family to Nashville the following year. He grew up singing in church and just about everywhere else anyone would listen. After winning talent contests on national TV shows, Boone was signed at age 20 to a record contract by Randy Wood, owner of Tennessee-based Dot Records.

His first single, a remake of the Charms’ “Two Hearts,” reached No. 16 on the national pop charts in 1955, but his second, a remake of Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame,” went all the way to No. 1 on the pop charts--and, interestingly, to No. 14 on the R&B; charts later the same year. Boone’s biggest hit was “Love Letters in the Sand,” which spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the pop charts in 1957.