The Best of John Travolta: Let Her In

Remember when the K-Tel mark guaranteed all the hits, all the time? The label’s vaunted licensing capabilities have apparently lost a step. Too bad, as Let Her In suffers from the absence of the Grease hit, “You’re the One That I Want.” Still, the best of these dozen tracks from the Barbarino-era Travolta’s 1976-77 albums are modest, sweet representations of the era’s spick-and-span AM pop, and hold their own quite well beside the effusions of Paul “My Dad” Peterson or Don Johnson. (Or post-“Show Me the Way” Frampton, for that matter. How, though, did Big John and his producers miss the obvious revival of “Barbara Ann”?) The title cut, Travolta’s biggest nonmovie single, is particularly nice, and “I Don’t Know What I Like About You Baby” and “All Strung Out on You” are early messages from the inarticulate-but-sensitive end of the boys’ locker room. But anyone who doubts that this one-time Broadway-musical journeyman got the studio time thanks to his TV fame needs to hear his renditions of “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again” and “It Had to Be You,” which define shaky intonation. And the disco-bandwagon-leaping version of the Rascals’ “Girl Like You” is a hash—ironic, given what he was soon to do for the dance floor. Thank God he became a movie star; we never had to deal with a Travolta New Wave LP.—Rickey Wright