Here's to You

Album Review

Like many veterans of the early-'60s folk revival, Camp eventually moved into arrangements with a rhythm section and full-band accompaniment. Here's to You is peculiar, though, in that it's not so much folk-rock as folk-pop, with over-rich orchestrated arrangements that come close to Los Angeles sunshine pop. Top L.A. session dudes Van Dyke Parks (on keyboards), Hal Blaine, Earl Palmer, and Jerry Scheff all played on the LP, with Felix Pappalardi — a veteran of folk-rock session playing and production himself with Fred Neil, Ian & Sylvia, and the Youngbloods — producing. But though Camp's singing is moving, with a slightly pinched, pained, and earnest quality, the tunes are ordinary folk-rock-pop, made to sound fruitier by the buoyant, sometimes inordinately happy-go-lucky settings. "Lot Can Happen in a Day" and "Lisa" even go into a bossa nova groove, while period reverb and Bud Shank's eerie, swirling flute give "Lonely Place" a whiff of strained psychedelia and "Leavin' Anyhow" goes into jaunty vaudevillian early folk-rock singer/songwriting with lamentable results. Sometimes it sounds like a combination of late-'60s Beau Brummels (who were good) with the misbegotten attempts by Glenn Yarbrough to record orchestrated folk-pop in the same era (which were bad). The minor hit single "Here's to You" is by far the best-known song on the album, and one of the better ones, though not great by any means.