Various – Classic Rock 1965 (CD, Comp) (Near Mint (NM or M-))

Media Condition: Near Mint (NM or M-)

Sleeve Condition: Near Mint (NM or M-)

TWL-Box #246-M

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Notes:

Volume 1 of a 30 volume set.

Track durations obtained from software.

Issued with an 8 page booklet & no barcode
No mastering code or Specialty Records Corporation logo

Proprietary equipment and engineering, using AEG professional audio tape recorders

Produced in cooperation with Warner Special Products

Printed on back cover inlay:
Manufactured for Time-Life Music by Warner Special Products, a Warner Communications Company
℗ 1987 Warner Special Products

Booklet:
Time Life Music:
The Author:
Joe Sasfy is a regular contributor to “The Washington Post”, and his articles have also appeared in “Musician, Country Music and Creem”. He is chief consultant for both the Classic Rock and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Era series.

Time-Life Music wishes to thank William L. Schurk of the Music Library and Sound Recordings Archives, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, for providing valuable reference material.

Time-Life Music is a division of Time-Life Books Inc. © 1987 Time-Life Books Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
Time-Life is a trademark of Time Incorporated U.S.A.

Cover art by Steve Chorney © 1987 Time-Life Books Inc.

Manufactured for Time-Life Music by Warner Special Products,
a Warner Communications Company
℗ 1987 Warner Special Products.

Complete liner notes:

After a year of hits by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five and other British bands, Americans finally strapped on their electric guitars and answered. Beatlemania and the spectacle of all those screaming girls inspired rock ‘n’ roll fantasies in young musicians everywhere, even among those serious-minded folkies who had previously snubbed rock as “teeny-bopper” music. Roger McGuinn’s terse account of why he formed the Byrds spoke for a thousand new American groups: “I saw the Beatles…. That was enough; it turned me on.”

In 1964 after a stint with the Chad Mitchell Trio, McGuinn bought a Rickenbacker 12-string electric guitar like the one he saw George Harrison play in the film A Hard Day’s Night. He attracted a like-minded bunch of renegade folkies in Los Angeles, including former members of Les Baxter’s Balladeers (David Crosby) and the New Christy Minstrels (Gene Clark), a bluegrass mandolinist (Chris Hillman) and a conga player (Michael Clarke). After one failed single as the Beefeaters, manager Jim Dickson brought the group a tape of an unreleased Bob Dylan song, the rambling, impressionistic Mr. Tambourine Man.

With McGuinn’s ringing 12-string and the Byrds’ soaring harmonies, Mr. Tambourine Man codified a new style called folk-rock, which was unlike anything yet heard on either side of the Atlantic. Folk-rock was just one manifestation of an incredible renaissance in rock, as the committed lyricism and intellectualism of folk culture began to cohabit with the raw power of electric guitars. Mr. Tambourine Man also helped prompt Dylan’s transformation from folk minstrel to rock poet in the summer of ’65. Dylan earned boos from traditionalists at the annual Newport Folk Festival when he “plugged in.”

By the time Dylan released his first all-electric album, Highway 61 Revisited, in October, his brilliant expansion of rock’s language and sound was influencing artists in both America and England. The Turtles (It Ain’t Me Babe) and Cher (All I Really Want to Do) scored hits by rocking up Dylan songs. Cher met Salvatore (Sonny) Bono in 1963 when they were both working for Phil Spector. Their breakthrough came with I Got You Babe, a wall-of-sound-meets-folk-rock duet written and produced by Sonny. Throughout the ’60s this outlandishly garbed duo served as L.A.’s hippest married couple, reeling off hits together and individually.

While the Byrds are generally regarded as the folk-rock pioneers, San Francisco’s Beau Brummels preceded them with a haunting synthesis or folk and Beatlesque pop called Laugh Laugh. The group’s name – taken from the famous 19th-century British fop – and look capitalized on the rage for English bands (the Sir Douglas Quintet from San Antonio cast a similar illusion in 1965). Like Laugh Laugh, the plaintive Just a Llttle was produced by Sylvester Stewart, who organized his own ground-breaking act, Sly and the Family Stone, a year later.

Folk-rock could be a somewhat portentous affair (e.g., Barry McGuire’s apocalyptic Eve of Destruction), but the perfect antidote existed in the good timey folk ‘n’ roll of the Lovin’ Spoonful. Both singer-songwriter John Sebastian and guitarist Zal Yanovsky had spent time in a Greenwich Village jug band named the Mugwumps (with future Mama Cass Elliot and Papa Denny Doherty) before forming the Spoonful. The group’s sunny-day blend of guitar pop, jug-band blues, folk and country came to fruition in Do You Believe in Magic?, Sebastian’s glowing tribute to the powers of rock ‘n’ roll.

For all the comparatively sophisticated folk-rock artists blending American and British influences, there were hundreds of more primitive American bands drawing on R & B and the angry pulse of such groups as the Rolling Stones and the Animals. These local “garage” bands specialized in crude, three-chord rock ‘n’ roll (Louie Louie was the standard) centered on the cheesy sound of Vox or Farfisa organs. Typical were the Castaways, a quintet formed at the University of Minnesota to play fraternities. They managed one national hit, Liar, Liar, before fading into obscurity.

A more enduring frat-house favorite was Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, a Texas group that often appeared in Arab attire. Sam himself (Domingo Samudio in real life) preferred a turban and tuxedo. Named after Sam’s cat and counted off with a bilingual “uno, dos, one, two, tres, quatro,” Wooly Bully told a mostly indecipherable tale about Mattie and Hattie. The chugging rhythms and pumping organ were sufficient, however, to render it a party anthem.

Another party classic, Hang On Sloopy, originally charted as My Girl Sloopy, a 1964 R & B hit for the Vibrations. The Strangeloves recorded the song in 1965 but delayed issuing it because of the popularity of their then-current hit, I Want Candy. With the Dave Clark Five about to release a version, the Strangeloves let Rick and the Raiders (who had opened for them at a concert in Dayton, Ohio) overdub their vocals on the recording. Almost overnight, Rick and the Raiders went from a small-town teen band to national stars as the McCoys. Lead guitarist Rick Zehringer changed his name to Derringer, and has remained one of rock’s best hired guns.

Few British bands achieved the lasting impact of the Yardbirds, who showcased in succession three of rock’s greatest guitar heroes: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. The early Yardbirds with Clapton followed the Rolling Stones as the house band at London’s Marquee Club, where they astonished fans with their frenzied blues rave-ups. Blues purist Clapton left in disgust after recording what became the group’s first hit, For Your Love, a pop song dominated by harpsichord and bongos. Beck filled the lead guitar slot, making his presence felt immediately with searing, sitar-like guitar lines in Heart Full of Soul, the second top-10 song for the Yardbirds.

The progressive-rock explosion headed by the Beatles and Dylan was also accompanied by a surge in soul music. At Motown, the song-writing and production team of Holland-Dozier-Holland (H-D-H) helped the Supremes secure their fifth consecutive No. 1 hit with Back in My Arms Again. The Supremes lost the top spot on the chart when another H-D-H collaboration, I Can’t Help Myself by the Four Tops, replaced it. For the next few years, the driving productions of H-D-H would find their perfect foil in the urgent vocals of Levi Stubbs, the quartet’s lead singer.

In contrast to the percussion-heavy H-D-H efforts for Motown, Smokey Robinson favored an altogether subtler sound for his own Miracles, as well as for Motown’s top stage act, the versatile and superbly choreographed Temptations. Robinson wrote and produced two sublimely romantic ballads in 1965, The Tracks of My Tears and My Girl. After featuring the smooth falsetto of Eddie Kendricks on earlier Temptations hits, Robinson decided that a song as sweet as My Girl would benefit from David Ruffin’s rougher vocal style. It took Ruffin only the opening line – “I got sunshine on a cloudy day” – to convince the world.

A more down-home soul sound was brewing in Memphis at Stax Records, which proudly hung up a “Soulsville U.S.A.” sign (a takeoff on Motown’s “Hitsville U.S.A.” slogan). The growing success of this grittier approach encouraged Motown to sign some “more Southern” acts like Junior Walker and the All Stars, who scored with the scorching, sax-dominated Shotgun. When Atlantic Records sent Wilson Pickett to Stax for recording sessions backed by Booker T. and the MG’s, he came up with In the Midnight Hour, a Memphis classic perfectly synchronized to the popular dance the jerk.

The rise of soul music spawned a host of “blue-eyed” soul practitioners, most notably the Young Rascals, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, and the Righteous Brothers. Attracted to the contrast between Bobby Hatfield’s passionate tenor and Bill Medley’s relaxed baritone, Phil Spector signed the Righteous Brothers to his Philles label and hired Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil to write a song especially for them. Spector cooked up perhaps his most dramatically orchestrated production to set off the Brothers’ feverish call and response in You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’, which stands as one of the decade’s monumental pop creations.

In August of 1965, the Beatles and Elvis Presley met for the first and only time, spending four hours together at Presley’s rented Bel Air villa. After some initial awkwardness, the Beatles jammed with Elvis, then discussed the pressures of mass stardom with him. John boldly asked Presley why he no longer recorded rock ‘n’ roll. The Beatles had just released Help, while the King was mired in yet another inane film, Paradise Hawaiian Style. In response, Elvis cited his heavy film schedule, but, he added, he just might do another rock record “for kicks.”

Still, it was obvious Presley had abdicated his throne, and a new rock royalty headed by the Beatles was emerging. Queen Elizabeth acknowledged the fact when she presented the group with M.B.E. awards, making each Beatle a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

– Joe Sasfy

1. The Byrds – Mr. Tambourine Man 2:22
2. The Yardbirds – For Your Love 2:31
3. Wilson Pickett – In The Midnight Hour 2:28
4. The Miracles – The Tracks Of My Tears 2:56
5. The Beau Brummels – Just A Little 2:26
6. The Righteous Brothers – You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ 3:43
7. The Temptations – My Girl 2:44
8. Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs – Wooly Bully 2:21
9. Billy Joe Royal – Down In The Boondocks 2:36
10. The Beach Boys – Help Me, Rhonda 2:47
11. Barbara Lewis – Baby, I’m Yours 2:32
12. The Lovin’ Spoonful – Do You Believe In Magic? 2:06
13. Four Tops – I Can’t Help Myself 2:43
14. The Kinks – Tired Of Waiting For You 2:34
15. The McCoys – Hang On Sloopy 3:04
16. The Yardbirds – Heart Full Of Soul 2:30
17. Junior Walker & The All Stars – Shotgun 3:04
18. Sonny & Cher – I Got You Babe 3:12
19. The Castaways – Liar, Liar 1:53
20. The Supremes – Back In My Arms Again 2:54
21. Gary Lewis & The Playboys – This Diamond Ring 2:10
22. The Toys – A Lover’s Concerto 2:35

 

 

Matrix / Runout 10 OPCD 2556-2 SRC=07 M1 S7
Matrix / Runout 10 OPCD 2556-2 SRC=08 M5S7

Record Company Warner Communications
Record Company Time Inc.
Copyright (c) Time-Life Books Inc.
Phonographic Copyright (p) Warner Special Products
Manufactured For Time Life Music
Manufactured By Warner Special Products
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Engineered At Fry Systems
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