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God bless the 45 rpm record!
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There are 17 messages in this issue.
Topics in this Digest Number 387:
1. POE "Look At Me Girl"
From: "Jeff Lemlich"
2. Intentionally deleted
By: Spectropop Administration
3. 10 for a buck twenty-nine
From: Chuck
4. Re: Five for 88 cents
From: "Dave Swanson"
5. Re: Five for 88 cents
From: Billy G. Spradlin
6. Re: Montage/Jefferson
From: James Botticelli
7. Re: Five for 88 cents
From: Dan Hughes
8. Re: Motown covers in reverse
From: Billy G. Spradlin
9. Pixies Three
From: Doc Rock
10. More notes....
From: "Paul Payton"
11. Del Shannon and Cover Versions
From: "David Feldman"
12. Gaye's Grapevine
From: Thomas Taber
13. Re: Keith Colley - Enarmorado/Shame, Shame
From: "Jeffrey Glenn"
14. The Contest
From: "Javed Jafri"
15. Re: "All Strung Out" by Nino Tempo & April Stevens
From: "Spectropop Administration"
16. Bubblegum
From: "Don Charles"
17. Re: big star
From: "Dave Swanson"
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 16:17:16 -0500
From: "Jeff Lemlich"
Subject: POE "Look At Me Girl"
Jason wrote:
Jeff, is there any way you could put POE's version of
"Look at Me Girl" at musica? I've been collecting
Columbia 45's for awhile and I've never been able to
obtain that one. Thanks!
I tried... I'll try again later.
Jeff Lemlich
P.S. Do you know the Playboys of Edinburgh's "Dream
World" on Columbia? It's a virtual "Look At Me Girl"
clone.
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Message: 2
Subject: Intentionally Deleted
From: "Spectropop Administration"
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 08:31:47 -0800 (PST)
From: Chuck
Subject: 10 for a buck twenty-nine
> From: Thomas Taber
> Subject: 10 for a buck twenty-nine
>
> Innocent that I was, I sold my 45 along with my white
> label Swan "She Loves You" (what do you mean they
> weren't all white labels? I bought mine no later than
> Saturday 1/11/64, with pic. sleeve, after being amazed
> that "S.L.Y." wasn't the flip of "I Want to Hold Your
> Hand") to a Beatles "dealer" (what's that?) around
> 1975.
In the 1970s, at a remainder bin, my friend and I scooped
up a bunch of She Loves You with "Don't Drop Out" printed
on it. If I remember correctly these were white Swans.
My first She Loves You with the picture sleeve was black.
The cut out bins at Ben Franklin supported my 45
addiction as a kid. I remember getting tons of great 45s
for 39 cents. One fond memory was finding She's Not the
Little Girl I Once Knew by the Beach Boys and hearing it
for the first time when I got home.
Easy listening in the Big Easy
Chuck
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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 00:09:33 -0500
From: "Dave Swanson"
Subject: Re: Five for 88 cents
I remember those grab bags of 3 or 5 45's for .99 or
whatever. I remember getting those at Giant Tiger and
Uncle Bills department stores here in Cleveland. The
only ones I remember off hand were several Buddah label
gems (190, Ohio Express, etc). You still never know
what's out there though, just today i was at Half Price
Books and just for the hell of it looked through the 45's,
which are usually either 10 cents and beat to hell or
"collector priced". Well, much to my surprise there was a
stack on top that were all 25 cents, all mint and great
stuff! A bunch of Ronettes singles, Marvin Gaye, and
more. I was stunned. I quietly grabbed them all and
headed to the counter. God bless the 45 rpm record!
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Message: 5
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 05:33:31 -0000
From: Billy G. Spradlin
Subject: Re: Five for 88 cents
--- In spectropop, Lou Bova wrote:
> From: Dan Hughes
>
> > When I was in high school, some of the local department
> > stores (Grant's, Kresge) had bargain tables in their
> > record departments, where you could buy a
> > plastic-wrapped set of five 45 rpm records for 88 cents.
> > The series was labelled "Hits You Missed."
> >
> > The two outside records (the ones you could see through
> > the clear plastic) were generally minor hits, and the
> > three others hidden inside were total unknowns.
> >
> > What were some of your great finds in those Hits You
> > Missed packages??
I barely remember buying these 5-packs back in the late
60's at the Thrifty Drug in Goleta, Calif. (where I spent
my childhood from 1963- 74, then moved to Oklahoma that
summer and been landlocked ever since!) I remember
Thrifty having what seemed hundreds of cut-out albums for
sale, some as little as 50 cents each (someone e-mail me
a time machine so I can go back and dig through them!).
I still have a few of the 5 pack singles I bought, some
have become longtime (and very worn out) favorites such
as:
The Cascades - She Was Never Mine (To Lose)/My Best Girl
on CRC Charter, a great 45 that should have been a hit,
The Packers - Pink Chiffon on Hanna-Barbera (a cool
instrumental) Bobby Lee Trammel - Its all your
Fault/Arkansas Twist on Alley records
I used to beg and BEG my mom and dad to buy me a few
records, so my childhood record collection was a strange
mix of these offbeat 45's, a LOT of childrens records (a
lot of Disney and the Chipmunks!!) and a few Top 40 45's.
I think the first record I heard on the radio and wanted
to go buy was the Turtles "Happy Together" in 1967,
pretty cool tastes for a 7 year old kid!
Billy
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Message: 6
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 16:30:55 EST
From: James Botticelli
Subject: Re: Montage/Jefferson
In a message dated 2/14/02, robertjconway writes:
>"Jefferson," is the same Jefferson that you are thinking
>about who had a mild hit with "Baby Take Me in Your Arms."
A year later to be covered by Les Baxter on his
collaboration LP with 101 Strings...they do a fine job
on it too
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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 17:05:24 -0600
From: Dan Hughes
Subject: Re: Five for 88 cents
Billy mentions some of his finds in the bargain packages:
> The Packers - Pink Chiffon on Hanna-Barbera (a cool
> instrumental)
Good grief, that's one of the ones I got too! Mine was
white label--how about yours? Refresh my memory--what
was the flip side?
---Dan
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Message: 8
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 06:00:55 -0000
From: Billy G. Spradlin
Subject: Re: Motown covers in reverse
I agree - many 60's Motown LP's have a lot of not-so
great filler cover cuts, sounds like they
arranged/recorded the covers quickly and spend more time
on the singles. They did a better job on re-covering
thier own (The Supremes Sing Holand-Dozer-Holland)
material.
But I really love many cover versions by The 4 Seasons on
their early albums. (Especally the "Dawn" album -
Frankie's falsetto on "You Send Me" after the guitar
break is spine-tingling!) Unlike most groups they really
played around with the arrangements of the originals,
sometimes drastically (changing keys/tempos) to showcase
the Seasons vocal talent.
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Message: 9
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 23:59:20 -0500
From: Doc Rock
Subject: Pixies Three
>>Anyone have any info on why Party Party Party was NOT
>>released as a single?
>>That song is great, I can`t believe it would be
>>relegated to a lp filler track.
Mercury lost interest as sales flagged. The Pixies moved
to Cameo, but their 45 "Make Me Your Baby" was cancelled
when Barbara Lewis' version hit the charts. I bought the
LP in 63 in a cut out bin. I felt every track was 45
material, no fillers at all!
Doc
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Message: 10
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 01:24:12 -0500
From: "Paul Payton"
Subject: More notes....
Jeffrey Glenn: thanks for the Dick & DeeDee and Keith
Colley info. BTW, is Keith Colley still alive/ recording?
or what? Do you or anyone else know?
And I haven't forgotten about compiling a list of cool
Laurie 45's from the late 60's (it'll actually be some 30
45's from 1965-71).
I just got the Montage CD - well worth it for the second
track (12-tone ballad, name escapes me) and their version
of Desiree, plus other fun stuff I'm just getting into.
John Lester: re the Motown UK covers, thanks but I'll
pass. As Jan & Dean noted, "The original's still the
greatest" - both for the Motown and the UK folks doing
their own stuff. And it was only recently I heard "Go Now"
by Bessie Banks; to these ears, it made the Moodies seem
like a frat house band. Ah, but when the Moodies
"patented" their version of lush rock, IMO none could
touch it.
Re: "Ray Stevens' top-40-hit-with-longest-song-title-ever
Jeremiah Peabody's Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving
Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills (with
picture sleeve!)":
Wow - his first hit (after some stiffs on Prep, a Capitol
subsid). I remember hearing it on the radio and thinking,
"What WAS that?" I also own it with the very flimsy
picture sleeve, standard Mercury issue at the time. And
it's still a way cool record!
One I'd love to hear again if anyone here has it: Gary
Paxton's You Been Torturin' Me.
Another great fun tune - the follow up to their version
of Alley Oop, if I'm not mistaken; I liked it much more
(preferred Dante's AO), but the record-buying public
didn't agree. :-)
Charles Hill: "Asia Minor" definitely was Greig, but I
didn't know Kokomo was Jimmy Wisner, who I met briefly
when he was producing Tommy James
comeback-that-didn't-quite album a couple of years ago;
some nice tracks on it, though! I forget the CD's name,
but it is on Aura if anyone's interested. (And Richard
Havers, thanks for the extensive background.)
Tom Taber: for a fun Bobby Vee experience, there was a CD
of his early rock/rockabilly stuff, "Bobby Vee & The
Shadows: The Early Rockin' Years," Era 5028-2 (via CEMA),
issued 1995, cut in '59-'62. Not every cut is a
masterpiece, but it's well worth having; very credible
and energized, although my fave is a ballad, his first
(mid-chart) hit, "Laurie."
Keith Beach: "BMiBaby...pronounced 'Be my baby'"? Have
they been reading Spectropop?!
I'm now only two days behind, but I can't stay awake any
longer.......
Country Paul
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Message: 11
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 01:01:11 -0500
From: "David Feldman"
Subject: Del Shannon and Cover Versions
Country Paul wrote:
> Agreed going both ways - in general, with exceptions, of
> course. (Del Shannon's "From Me To You" is to these ears
> remarkably credible, for example, and swamped the Beatles
> on the Murray the K Record Review Board in the summer of
> 1963.
It has always surprised me that certain singers, with
highly idiosyncratic or distinctive vocal sounds, can be
such effective cover artists. Del Shannon certainly fits
in that category for me.
There aren't too many pop masterpieces that have a cover
version as great as the original, but there are a few.
The most obvious one, perhaps is "I Heard It Through the
Grapevine." Marvin Gaye's version seemed like a miracle
at the time, a total reinterpretation of a masterpiece.
Before that, perhaps only Aretha Franklin's version of
"You Send Me" registered as strongly as a cover of one of
my favorite records. The third is a little more obscure,
but just as sure in my mind: Del Shannon's radical
reinterpretation of my favorite Zombies song, "Tell Her
No."
Del Shannon's career was amazing. Always distinctive,
always personal, always intense, and almost always
worthwhile, even when the records sunk into obscurity.
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Message: 12
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 15:31:32 -0800 (PST)
From: Thomas Taber
Subject: Gaye's Grapevine
I'm no Motown expert, but wasn't Marvin's version done
first, then voted down in one of those meetings they
used to pick single releases?
Tom Taber
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Message: 13
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 17:01:45 -0800
From: "Jeffrey Glenn"
Subject: Re: Keith Colley - Enarmorado/Shame, Shame
> More as I clear the backlog - the Keith Colley additions
> look fascinating. (And yes, I too like Colley's version
> better than the Magic Lanterns, but on my DJ copy of the
> record it was marked as the flip side.
>
> Country Paul
Yes, my copy too has "Enarmorado" as the "Suggested Side."
I wonder if The Magic Lanterns heard "Shame, Shame" on
the B-side, liked it and decided to cover it or if
there's a demo floating around where they heard it. I'll
play the Colley "Shame, Shame" to musica in a few days,
because...
> I'm posting the version of Enamorado that I've got to
> the SP Sounds page. Could somebody let me know if this
> is the original or the '68 Usher re-make? I'm dying to
> find out...
I just put up the 1968 Columbia version of "Enamorado".
The one Jason put up earlier is the original 1963 Unical
version (#3006) which went to #66 in Billboard. Here's
the info on the Columbia version:
"Enamorado" (K. Colley) - Keith Colley, Columbia 4-44410:
1968, Produced by Gary Usher, Arranged by Keith Colley
> Jeff, is there any way you could put POE's version of
> "Look at Me Girl" at musica? I've been collecting
> Columbia 45's for awhile and I've never been able to
> obtain that one. Thanks!
You know, I don't have that one though I'll keep an eye
out for it.
I also put up "Loving You Makes Everything Alright" by
The Marshmellow Highway; this is the B-side of "I Don't
Wanna Live This Way" which I had up before and was
cowritten by Kenny Young:
"Loving You Makes Everything Alright" (Young-English) -
The Marshmellow Highway, Kapp K-904: 1968, Produced by
Claus Ogerman & Scott English, Arranged and Conducted by
Claus Ogerman)
Enjoy!
Jeff
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Message: 14
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 20:49:05 -0500
From: "Javed Jafri"
Subject: The Contest
Well I have a winner on my trivia contest from last week.
Below are the questions and answers. Congratulations to
Bob Beason who wins two CD's. Bob I'm notoriously slow
in mailing things but I always do get them out. Hope to
do this again sometime.
Which groups who have charted on the Hot 100 were named
after the following
:
1. A Bowling alley in New Jersey
2. A villain in Barbarella
3. The flip side of a Ventures single
4, A furniture store in Hull, England
5. A Vulcan queen in Star Trek
6. A telephone exchange in Olympia, Wash.
7. A 18th century agriculturist
8. A horror Film starring Dirk Bogarde
Answers :
1. The Four Seasons
2. Duran Duran
3. The Mc Coys
4. Everything But The Girl
5. T'Pau
6. The Fleetwoods
7. Jethro Tull
8. The Mindbenders
Submitted by Bob Beason
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Message: 15
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 13:22:40 +0900
From: "Jack Fitzpatrick"
Subject: Re: "All Strung Out" by Nino Tempo & April Stevens
Bill Green wrote regarding "All Strung Out" by Nino
Tempo & April Stevens:
> Nino Tempo spent some time working with Phil Spector. No
> doubt that explains why "All Strung Out" has the PS
> sound. In fact, I'd bet it was recorded at Gold Star
> studios with many of the same musicians who appear on
> Phil Spector songs. At any rate, I find "All Strung Out"
> to be a great piece of music.
Hi! I am Jack Fitzpatrick co-author of a Phil Spector
book in early 1990's. Yes, "All Strung out" is one of the
ultimate Spector/production records of the mid-60's and
in fact, the story goes that the very same "wrecking crew"
musicians used by Nino Tempo on this session were asked
too stay and continue on with Phil's Ike and Tina "I'll
never need more than this" sessions on the same day. The
song is a glorious wedding of Spector sound and love
psychedlia/language and the follow-up "The Habit of
Loving you, baby" and a Spector/Pet sounds influenced
follow-up solo Nino single on the Tower label "Boy's Town"
are among the very best of the Spector-influenced records
of the 60's. The dream-like atmosphere achieved on these
above mentioned discs are pure pop-heaven and should be
in everyone's collection who is serious about the
Spector/Wall of Sound and Brian Wilson mentality. Pure
rock and roll perfection all. Jack Fitzpatrick
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Message: 16
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 19:00:21 +0000
From: "Don Charles"
Subject: Bubblegum
The following message is an email exchange between
myself and Kim Cooper, editor of a popular
anthology-style book called Bubblegum Music Is The Naked
Truth, which was issued last year by Feral House
Publishing. The book discusses the "bubblegum rock"
phenomenon of the late 1960s and important contributors
to the genre such as Ron Dante, Curt Boettcher, Jeff
Barry, Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz. In the interest of
full disclosure, I'm obliged to reveal that I was a
contributor to this book.
-------
So how's about you and David Smay get started on a
COMPANION CD for the book, hmm?
Don Charles
It'd be nice, but after pitching it to a number of
reissue labels, all of whom said it was more licensing
trouble than they wanted to deal with, I don't think
it's going to happen soon.
Kim
-------
This is incredible, given the enduring popularity of
songs like "Sugar, Sugar," "I Think I Love You," "Yummy,
Yummy, Yummy," etc. There simply HAS to be a reissue
label somewhere in the world willing to put together a
Bubblegum Music Is The Naked Truth compilation CD!!!
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Message: 17
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 23:57:07 -0500
From: "Dave Swanson"
Subject: Re: big star
Big Star are total genius! I have been a fan since I
first heard Radio City in the late 70's. The first 2
LP's are two of the best albums in the history of rock
and roll. Seriously! "Big Star 3rd" is a masterpiece of
it's own and in a with a totally different feel from the
first two, which are total "power pop" classics. The 3rd
is sort of like of pop Velvet Underground album. I can't
recommend these records enough. The Chris Bell "I Am The
Cosmos" release is also stellar and worth seeking out.
The band reformed (with members of The Posies filling
in-Chris Bell couldn't make it, being dead and all that)
and they have played several shows over the past 10 years
or so. The show I saw in Chicago was a dream come true.
They have hung it together off and on and are actually
recording an album of new material to be released
sometime this year. Who knows? Sure sometimes the
critic faves end up sounding over rated and you wonder
what the big deal was all about, but Big St! ar don't
have to live up to the legend...they are already there.
-----Original Message from: Stewart Mason
> Big Star was Alex Chilton (ex-Box Tops singer), Chris
> Bell, Jody Stephens and Andy Hummell, a Memphis group
> of the early '70s who were unashamed fans of British
> Invasion-style pop. Their first two albums, #1 RECORD
> and RADIO CITY, are considered power pop classics,
> because they mix '60s-style hooks with this unusual
> sort of strained, nervous sound (Bell, who left after
> the first album, and Chilton were not the most stable
> characters) that became terribly influential. Their
> third album (recorded in '75, finally released as
> THIRD in '78 and now available under its working title,
> SISTER LOVERS, on a fairly complete Ryko CD) is a
> wildly praised -- some say overpraised, and they may
> have a point -- album that's one of those records
> where you can tell that the band is disintegrating as
> you listen to it.
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End
