Various – AM Gold 1969 (CD, Comp) (Near Mint (NM or M-))

Media Condition: Near Mint (NM or M-)

Sleeve Condition: Near Mint (NM or M-)

BOX 350-R-ANU

THIS NM DISC HAILS FROM AN IMMENSE CD COLLECTION 27,000 DEEP – IT HAS BEEN OPENED AND IS WITHOUT SHRINK WRAP – ALL THE DOCUMENTATION IS COMPLETE WITH NO CREASING, RIPS OR TEARS – BEAUTIFUL COPY! NOW ENJOY!

Notes:

Time-Life released this disc as [r8860176] (SUD-07) in the [l774983] series in 1991, and as [r4161658] (AM1-01) in the [l328190] series in 1994.

℗ 1991 Warner Special Products
© 1991, 1994 Time Life Inc.

Track durations obtained from software.

Publishing:
Track 1- MRC Music Corp. Inc/MCR Music, Inc. BMI
Track 2, 11- Blue Seas Music, Inc./Jac Music Co., Inc./Twentieth Century Fox Music Corp. ASCAP
Track 3- EMI Music ASCAP
Track 4- Unart Catalog BMI
Track 5- Bisconton GmbH CEMA/January Music Corp. BMI
Track 6- Unichappell Music Inc./Six Continents BMI
Track 7- Stone Agate Music BMI/Jobete Music Company ASCAP
Track 8- Low-Sal Music Co. BMI
Track 9- Coconut Grove Music/Third Story Music Inc. BMI
Track 10, 12- CBS Unart Catalog Inc. BMI
Track 13- Unichappell Music Inc. BMI
Track 14- Tuna Fish Music Inc. BMI
Track 15- Jobete Music Company ASCAP
Track 16- Tobac Music/Dandelion Music Co. BMI
Track 17- Dolfi Music ASCAP
Track 18- Emily Music Corp./Paul J. Vance Publ. Co. ASCAP
Track 19- Jonathan Three Music Co./Charles Koppelman Music/Martin Bandlier Music BMI
Track 20- ABZ Music Corp. BMI
Track 21- Tickson Music Co. BMI
Track 22- Irving Music, Inc. BMI

Complete liner notes:

In October 1967, Joseph Papp chose a new musical called Hair to launch his New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater, a choice that bore fruit on the pop charts in 1969. The musical didn’t have much in the way of a story line, instead just dropping in and out of the intertwined lives of several hippies. But people were fascinated with hippies. They were new and exotic then, with their carefree attitude toward drugs and sex and especially with their unprecedented long hair.

The eight-week run at the Public sold out every show. An original-cast album was recorded as the production moved to the trendy Cheetah nightclub. Then Michael Butler (soon to be a producer of the Woodstock festival) took it to the Biltmore Theater on Broadway, where it opened on April 29, 1968, with a revised book and music. Along the way, the title gained the line “an American tribal love-rock musical.”

With Hair, the hippie image ceased to be a social threat and went mainstream. In September the show opened in London, and it was soon playing in the rest of Europe, as well as in Japan, Mexico and Australia.

The book and lyrics to Hair were written by a pair of actors, Gerome Ragni and James Rado. The music, an encyclopedic look at the controversial rock music coming out of San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, was by South African-trained Galt MacDermot, the son of a Canadian diplomat. His 1961 jazz work African Woltz had won two Grammys, and MacDermot won another with Hair-the Broadway-cast album shot to the top of the pop charts, supplanting the very music it celebrated. For radio-oriented performers, Hair offered a safe and softened version of hippie music, and in 1969 at least four acts made use of this material.

Easy to Be Hard was the third hit for Three Dog Night, a Hollywood harmony group whose artistic credibility hinged mainly on the talents of its respected lead singer, Danny Hutton. Formed in 1968 as a seven-piece group doing soul-inflected pop, 3DN remained popular well into the ’70s.

The Cowsills, a Rhode Island family group that had been on the charts regularly since 1967, enjoyed their last Top 40 hit with Hair itself. Retired U.S. Navy chief petty officer Bud Cowsill had put his wife together with his four youngest sons to form the group, which specialized in fluffy “poptoons.” But Cowsill ran the group on a more or less military model, which led to acrimony and a short career for all.

A newcomer, Oliver, scored with Hair’s Good Morning Starshine. As William Swofford (Oliver was his middle name), the North Carolinian had sung with a couple of country-rock units before hooking up with New York producer Bob Crewe. Oliver charted twice more in 1969 and then returned to anonymity.

The 5th Dimension, who went to No. 1 early in the year with a Hair medley of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, repeated the feat in the fall with a remake of Laura Nyro’s Wedding Bell Blues. Nyro, one of the team’s favorite writers, had enjoyed modest success with her song during the 1967 Summer of Love. The 5th Dimension revived it mainly as a joke: Group members Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis were engaged, and their producer, Bones Howe, thought it would be a hoot to hear her sing the opening line, “Bill, I love you so,” as her first lead solo.

The jazzy, 11-piece Brooklyn Bridge, meanwhile, got Worst That Could Happen from the 5th Dimension. The tune (written by Jimmy Webb, another of the 5D’s favorites) appeared on one of their early albums, which Brooklyn Bridge leader Johnny Maestro checked out while screening material for his group’s debut.

The best Hair-like song that wasn’t from Hair belonged to the Youngbloods and folkie Dino Valenti. Valenti was living in a Los Angeles castle with fading Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick when he penned (under the name Chester Powers) Get Together to demonstrate what a pop song should sound like. Hamilton Camp cut it for one of his folk-rock albums, and Camp’s recording was discovered by the Youngbloods, refugees from the New York coffeehouse circuit who had recently moved to San Francisco and gone electric. Their version flopped in 1967 but took off two years later, after the National Council of Christians and Jews used it in its radio spots. By then, Valenti had gone to jail on pot charges and signed away his ownership, thus missing out on the windfall.

The Flying Machine’s Smile a Little Smile for Me also has a tangled history. The group, fronted by James Taylor and Danny Kortchmar, had cut some demos for New York producers. The demos failed to lead anywhere, and Taylor moved to London to pursue a solo career. Meanwhile, English producers Tony Macaulay and Geoff Stephens had gotten rights to the group’s name and used session men to cut a hit album that included this single. Taylor, who already had a cult following, was not a participant, though many people bought the album thinking otherwise.

Canada’s Guess Who had been off the American charts since the fluke 1965 hit Shakin’ All Over. But adman Jack Richardson caught the band doing a promo LP for Coca Cola and was so impressed that he mortgaged his house to finance all-out rock ‘n’ roll sessions in New York. The resulting album included These Eyes.

Several of the year’s hits were written for the movies. B.J. Thomas needed five takes and lots of lubricating medicine for his throat (because of laryngitis) to cut Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head for the sound track to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. A few weeks later, he recorded this radio version, with cowriter-producer Burt Bacharach adding the scat hook. (Rumor has it Raindrops was first offered to Bob Dylan.) Harry Nilsson failed in his attempt to write a song for Midnight Cowboy, so his Aerial Ballet album version of folkie Fred Neil’s Everybody’s Talkin’ was used instead. Mercy’s Love (Can Make You Happy) was slated for Fireball Jungle starring Lon Chaney Jr., but the flick never reached theaters.

Among other recordings. Traces was the third and final top-10 hit for Classics IV, the Jacksonville, Florida, group that evolved into the Atlanta Rhythm Section. Jay and the Americans revived the Drifters’ This Magic Moment (1960); Smith, a hard-rock group fronted by singer Gayle McCormick, revived the 1962 Shirelles hit Baby It’s You, though none of the group had ever heard the original. Their manager-producer, early-’60s rocker Del Shannon, picked the song for them before he and the musicians went separate ways.

You Showed Me had been recorded unsuccessfully by the pre-Tambourine Man Byrds years before the Turtles picked it up. The Cuff Links were really one person, the many voices of demo singer Ron Dante backed by studio players; his recording of Tracy was in direct competition with the Archies’ Sugar, Sugar, which also used the multitracked Dante with sidemen. Tommy James had the title Crimson and Clover long before he got around to writing the song; they were his two favorite words, he said, and he repeated them to himself often until a pattern emerged.

Perhaps the biggest news around Motown in 1969 was Diana Ross’s departure from the Supremes. Late in 1968, the female trio sang I’m Gonna Make You Love Me with the Temptations on The Ed Sullivan Show, and the single sold 900,000 in just two weeks.

For the Supremes’ final record with Ross, producer Johnny Bristol dug out an old tune he had written and recorded in 1961 as half of Johnny and Jackie, Someday We’ll Be Together. The original came out on Tri-Phi shortly after Bristol left the service, but was quickly forgotten when Motown absorbed the label. Because Ross didn’t learn the lyrics before the session, Johnny sang background vocals to cue her. Group members Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong don’t even appear on the final Diana Ross and the Supremes hit.

-John Morthland

1. The Supremes, The Temptations – I’m Gonna Make You Love Me 3:09
2. B.J. Thomas – Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head 2:59
3. The Cowsills – Hair 3:31
4. Jackie DeShannon – Put A Little Love In Your Heart 2:32
5. The Flying Machine – Smile A Little Smile For Me 2:59
6. The Guess Who – These Eyes 3:42
7. The Supremes – Someday We’ll Be Together 3:29
8. The Classics IV – Traces 2:47
9. Harry Nilsson – Everybody’s Talkin’ 2:44
10. Three Dog Night – Easy To Be Hard 3:13
11. Dionne Warwick – This Girl’s In Love With You 4:10
12. Oliver (6) – Good Morning Starshine 3:39
13. Jay & The Americans – This Magic Moment 2:59
14. The Fifth Dimension – Wedding Bell Blues 2:44
15. Junior Walker & The All Stars – What Does It Take (To Win Your Love) 2:27
16. Mercy (4) – Love (Can Make You Happy) 3:15
17. Smith (3) – Baby It’s You 3:12
18. The Cuff Links – Tracy 2:08
19. The Brooklyn Bridge – Worst That Could Happen 3:03
20. Tommy James & The Shondells – Crimson And Clover 3:25
21. The Turtles – You Showed Me 3:09
22. The Youngbloods – Get Together 4:38

 

 

Matrix / Runout 10 OPCD 2606-2 05
Rights Society BMI
Rights Society ASCAP
Rights Society CEMA

Remastered At Hit And Run Studios
Phonographic Copyright (p) Warner Special Products
Copyright (c) Time Life Inc.
Published By MRC Music, Inc.
Published By MCR Music, Inc.
Published By Blue Seas Music, Inc.
Published By JAC Music Co., Inc.
Published By Twentieth Century Fox Music Corp.
Published By EMI Music
Published By Unart Music Corp.
Published By Bisconton GmbH
Published By January Music Corp.
Published By Unichappell Music, Inc.
Published By Six Continents Music
Published By Stone Agate Music
Published By Jobete Music Co.
Published By Low-Sal Music Company
Published By Coconut Grove Music
Published By Third Story Music, Inc.
Published By CBS Unart Catalog, Inc.
Published By Tuna Fish Music, Inc.
Published By Tobac Music
Published By Dandelion Music Co.
Published By Dolfi Music
Published By Emily Music Corp.
Published By Paul J. Vance Publishing Co.
Published By Jonathan Three Music Co.
Published By Charles Koppelman Music
Published By Martin Bandier Music
Published By ABZ Music Corp.
Published By Tickson Music Co.
Published By Irving Music, Inc.
Manufactured For Time Life Music
Manufactured By Warner Special Products

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