Car Boot Christmas Countdown 2016 - Day 6

Welcome to Day 6 of this year's Car Boot Christmas Countdown.  After yesterday's parp-fest it's time to look at a couple of different seasonal albums, starting with Merry Christmas Baby, bought in June 2015 for £2.

Various Artists - Merry Christmas Baby (1985)

Stanley Lewis worked as a record distributor and jukebox operator, until in 1963, encouraged by none other than Leonard Chess, he founded Jewel Records in Shreveport, Lousiana, recording gospel, blues and jazz.  Six artists in all are featured on this 1985 compilation.

Jazz pianist Ronnie Kole was born in Chicago and found success in New Orleans, eventually opening the now famous club Kole's Korner.  Here with his Trio he provides two great instrumentals in Winter Wonderland and Silent Night, Holy Night.  Louisiana-born singer and pianist Bobby Powell moved from playing gospel in the 1950s, through blues in the '60s to soul and R&B in the '70s.  Here he's represented by two versions of the same piece, a Deep Soul vocal ballad called The Bells, and the instrumental version called Bing Bong that graced the b-side of the 1971 single release.

Rear sleeve with tracklist

The star of the show is Charles Brown, a blues singer and pianist from Texas City whose hit Merry Christmas Baby lends its title to the album.  This R&B Christmas standard was first recorded in 1947 by Johnny Moore's The Blazes, and featured a young Charles Brown on piano.  Perhaps the best known version today is that by Bruce Springsteen, as heard on the 2014 Car Boot Christmas cloudcast.  Brown's million-selling Please Come Home For Christmas is here too, as well as his sublime Christmas In Heaven.

Merry Christmas Baby has been reissued on CD in various guises since 1985 with later re-recordings and additional tracks, although I gather that they don't add much to the original US-only LP, which is all killer and no filler.


Costing £1 in October of 2015 was Noël by Joan Baez.

Joan Baez - Noël (1966)

Arranged by Peter Schickele a.k.a. PDQ Bach, here Joan delivers a dozen songs, her crystal clear soprano taking centre stage.  Rather than her usual folky style the orchestration is classical with a medieval feel in parts, thanks to instruments like harpsichord, recorder, lute, baroque organ and a "consort of viols".  With delicate enunciation she sings Ave Maria in German and an absolutely gorgeous Cantique de Noël in French, as well as the English translation of Catalan traditional Carol of the Birds.  Other seldom-heard traditionals include Down In Yon Forest and Mary's Wandering.  A handful of instrumentals are slotted in; three as short intervals, and Angels We Have Heard On High as a standalone piece.

The material suits her bell-like voice well, and though the album feels a little staid in places it's still very enjoyable, especially when compared to some other artists' more syrupy Christmas output.  It's quite a common sight at car boot sales and charity shops, and certainly worth picking up next time you see it.  You may also be able to find the 2001 CD remaster, issued in 2001 with 6 extra tracks.

You can hear picks from both of these albums and lots more on Car Boot Christmas 2016; listen to the cloudcast on the player below or click the link to go to the Mixcloud page.  Shares, comments and likes will be most welcome.  Be sure to come back tomorrow, Wednesday the 21st of December, where I'll be looking a couple of very special charity shop finds!



https://www.mixcloud.com/CarBootVinylDiaries/car-boot-christmas-2016/

Hit Me With Music

Welcome to the first proper Car Boot Vinyl Diaries post of 2015!  I hope you enjoyed the four-part Little Box Of Horrors series (although 'enjoyed' might be overstating it given the subject matter), but it's now time to get back to the car boot sale and charity shop finds, which have been coming thick and fast in recent weeks.  I've picked out a few of the records that I've been listening to over the last few days, starting with this from Carlene Carter, bought at a boot sale last autumn for £1:

Carlene Carter (1978)

This was her debut album and was recorded in London, with members of British pub-rockers The Rumour both playing and producing.  A song each was also written by The Rumour's frontman Graham Parker (Between You & Me) and Carlene's brother in law Rodney Crowell (Never Together But Close Sometimes).  Also making a couple of appearances is ex Brinsley Schwarz member Nick Lowe, to whom Carter became married the following year.

It's solid collection of polished country-rock, accompanied by the strong, clear and expressive vocals she shared with her mother June.  Despite the stellar contributors my two favourite songs are final tracks Slow Dance and the lovely Who Needs Words, both written by Carlene herself.  The album is dedicated to Maybelle Carter, her grandmother and original member of the Carter Family folk group, who sadly died later that year.

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Car boot season is not yet in full swing and pickings have been slim, so I've made a few visits to local charity shops lately.  The St. Elizabeth Hospice shop in my hometown prices all its LPs at 50p, whereas its sister shop four miles up the road in the tourist-attracting seaside town of Aldeburgh has a rather different policy of pricing the dreck at £1, and anything else at the highest sale price found on eBay that week, regardless of condition.  This leads to some rather optimistic price tags on your normal charity shop fayre.

Last month I spied a rather dirty, well-played looking copy of Bob Marley & The Wailers' Live! album.  It had a noticeable scratch on Side 2, but I reasoned it'd be playable, plus the falling-to-bits sleeve could be easily mended with some double sided tape.  When I turned to read the rear cover I was rather surprised to see that the price tag read £15!  A bit much for something that can usually be found in better condition and for less than half the price on Discogs. I put it back in the box and left with a couple of other, more reasonably priced records. When I popped in again a couple of weeks later the offending label had been removed and the LP had magically found its way into the pound box.  So I grabbed it, obviously.

Bob Marley & The Wilers - Live! (1975)

After a good clean and some TLC it came up pretty well, except for a few crackles from the scratch.  The album was recorded in the summer at London's Lyceum Theatre, and is an exquisite snapshot of a band at their sizzling peak.  Bob, the band and the wonderful backing singers The I-Threes give a reggae-as-rock live makeover to seven songs, the likes of which I'd not heard before, except for No Woman No Cry, as the version here has become the definitive one (as heard on the compilation Legend).  Well known hits such as Get Up, Stand Up and Lively Up Yourself are performed with passion and given a new energy while retaining a joyous laid-back groove.

To me, it's an album to rival the likes of Sam Cooke at the Harlem Square Club or Donny Hathaway Live, and the Marley fatigue I induced in myself during my late teens was washed away by the thumping bass and the sound of the ecstatic crowd.  My top tracks are.... well, it's too hard to choose just two, so I'll pick the whole of Side 1; Trenchtown Rock, Burnin & Lootin', Them Belly Full and Lively Up Yourself.

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Another week, the same shop had a copy of Van Morrison's Saint Dominic's Preview. The record was in better condition but the sleeve was tatty, and certainly not worth the £10 tag.  I asked the lady behind the counter if she'd take £3 and she immediately agreed, showing that it's often worth pointing out damage and questioning some of these OTT asking prices (I do realise that charities want to get the best prices for their donations, but overpricing scratched records is more likely to keep crate-diggers away).

Van Morrison - Saint Dominic's Preview (1972)

SDP was Van's 6th album, coming after 1971's Tupelo Honey which I have yet to hear (sadly Spotify is largely a Van-free zone).  I'd only previously heard Astral Weeks and Moondance - both car boot vinyl finds - and on first listen of SDP was surprised by its variety of styles.

R&B opener Jackie Wilson Said was immediately familiar, no doubt mainly because when I was eight my Dad bought Dexy's Too-Rye-Ay which contains a cover version.  Less excitable but equally soulful are the celebratory, nostalgic Redwood Tree and the Ray Charles-y piano blues of I Will Be There, while the title track is infused with gospel-inspired piano.

There are just seven songs on the album as it contains two 10 minute-plus meditative pieces that wouldn't be out of place on Astral Weeks; the atmospheric Almost Independence Day and my favourite, Listen To The Lion.  During the latter Van improvises much of the vocal, incorporating grunts, moans and the occasional growl, which although I'm sure is meant to evoke the lion inside him, gives me visions of the great man trying to cough up a tricky furball, during which I can rarely keep a straight face.

The album as a whole is a rich and beautifully performed and produced record, and one of my favourite finds of the last 12 months.

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More lightweight, but still very enjoyable is this recent 25p find from a local church's charity shop:

Various Artists - Deep Heat 90 (1990)

Compilation telemarketing label Telstar Records began their Deep Heat series in 1989. Deep Heat 90 gathers together chart-bothering hip-hop and dance tracks from the past year that had appeared on Volumes 5-8, and as you might imagine, Kraftwerk samples and Run DMC's ubiquitous 'Ah-Yeah!' abound.  As you can see from the tracklist, there's only one number one record, in the shape of Beats International's mega-hit Dub Be Good To Me: http://www.discogs.com/Various-Deep-Heat-90/master/53187 

This copy is a bit scuffed on Side 3 and skips a few times, so I use an old stylus reserved for such cases.  I'm currently operating a 3-stylus system, labelled X, Y and Z (since I found some alphabet stickers in a drawer!) with X for brand new records, Y for car boot/chazza ones and Z for dodgy/potentially dodgy discs.  It works for me!

There's lots to enjoy here, but my top tracks are Snap's Ooops Up (note the triple-o), Queen Latifah & De La Soul's Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children and this from En Vogue (principally for the James Brown guitar sample, I must admit):

Least favourite are the rubbish Sixth Sense-Latino Rave - a megamix originally used to promote Deep Heat Volume 6 - and of course Candy bloody Flip, whose version of Strawberry Fields Forever's only redeeming feature is the echoey Funky Drummer sample.

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Towards the end of last year I saw a copy of Bob Dylan's Saved at a car boot sale in a box of LPs marked £1 each, so I picked it up to take a closer look.  Although a relative Dylan neophyte, the release date of 1980 was enough to give me second thoughts and I put it back.  It was still there the following week and by now the combination of colder weather and the end of booting season meant that vinyl was thin on the ground.  I took pity on it, paid my quid and took it home, with fairly low expectations.  I'm glad I did.

Bob Dylan - Saved (1980)

This was Bob's twentieth studio album and the second in his overtly religious trilogy which began with Slow Train Coming in 1979 and ended with 1981's Shot Of Love.  He'd undergone a conversion to Christianity in late '79, initially sparked by an audience member throwing a silver crucifix onto the stage at a gig.

'Saved' is an album of gospel-rock and modern spirituals, recorded at Muscle Shoals early in the year with his current touring band.  Side 1 is by far the best, with the rousing title track and Solid Rock plus the very moving What Can I Do For You? particular highlights.  Side 2 is a bit of a let down, especially the plodding Saving Grace.  The most off-putting aspect is Dylan's rather patronising, often self-righteous tone.  Oh, and the cover.  Overall though, it's not half as bad as I'd been led to believe, and certainly worth a quid!

If you're a Dylan fan - or even if you're not - you might like to pop over to my new blog where I've just begun working my way through the enormous Complete Album Box Set, a 47-disc set stretching from his debut up to 2012's Tempest.  I'm up to 1965 at the moment!  You can find it here: http://bobsbigbox.blogspot.co.uk/

You'll be able to hear tracks from all of these albums, plus much more on the next Car Boot Vinyl Diaries cloudcast, coming soon.  Catch up with previous episodes here: https://www.mixcloud.com/carbootvinyldiaries/

That's it for now, thanks for stopping by.

Win "An Americana Christmas" on CD!

Car Boot Vinyl Diaries is feeling in a festive mood, and is excited to present a very special Yuletide competition.  I'm giving away a copy of brand new album "An Americana Christmas", which features songs from artists new and old, including Bob Dylan, Valerie June, The Band and The Common Linnets.

Various Artists - An Americana Christmas (2014)

More info on the album here: http://theboot.com/johnny-cash-emmylou-harris-dwight-yoakam-americana-christmas/

All you need to do is enter your name (real or internet!), email address and the message "Merry Christmas" in the contact form at the top right of the page, click "send" and you'll be entered into the Grand Draw which will take place at 8pm (GMT) on Monday 8th December.

The competition is open to readers from all countries and the prize will be despatched double-quick so that the winner can enjoy the excellent tunes in the run-up to Christmas.

Tracklisting

1. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing (Luther Dickinson)

2. Everything Is Cool (John Prine)

3. Pretty Paper (Robert Ellis)

4. The First Noel (Emmylou Harris)

5. The Gifts They Gave (Johnny Cash)

6. Just Me And These Ponies (For Christmas This Year) (Corb Lund)

7. Run Run Rudolph (Dwight Yoakam)

8. Must Be Santa (Bob Dylan)

9. Winter Wonderland (Valerie June)

10. Everybody Deserves A Merry Christmas (Ronnie Fauss)

11. Season Of My Memory (Max Gomez)

12. Les Trois Cloches (Ben Keith w/ Neil & Pegi Young)

13. At Christmas Time (The Common Linnets)

14. FaLaLaLaLove Ya (Nikki Lane)

15. Here It Is Christmas Time (Old 97 s)

16. Christmas Must Be Tonight (The Band)

Also, tomorrow (Weds 3rd December) will see the launch of the Car Boot Christmas 2014 Cloudcast, especially made for you, presented by me and jam-packed with almost 1½ hours of festive tunes from vinyl found at car boot sales and charity shops.

Merry Christmas all, and good luck!

Golden Years part 4

I've picked up quite a few compilations over the past few weeks.  Some of them are multi-artist albums, which I'll cover in a future post, but I'll run through the single-artist ones here.

Firstly, in a 3-for-£1, singles collections from the King & Queen of country; Kenny and Dolly:

Both Sides of Dolly Parton (1978) & The Kenny Rogers Singles Album (1978)

Both released in the UK in 1978, this pair of compilations by past Glasto tea-timers really hit the spot with their melodic country-pop taking in tales of cheatin', beatin' and hard times.

For £1 was this greatest hits from the wonderful Gladys Knight & the Pips:

Gladys Knight & the Pips - Super Hits (1974)

The 15-strong album compiles hits such as I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Friendship Train and their beautiful cover of Kris Kristofferson's Help Me Make It Through the Night; the second most successful version of this much-recorded song after that by country singer Sammi Smith.

Next up, for £3, not strictly belonging in the single-artist category but essentially the work of one man, Phil Spector's Echoes of the 60s:

Phil Spector - Echoes of the 60s (1977)

Apart from his Christmas album and the odd track here and there, my record collection was severely lacking some Phil, so I was delighted to find this album of wall-to-wall Wall of Sound brilliance a few weeks ago.  It's got everything you'd expect to find; Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, The Ronettes, Darlene Love and loads of Crystals.  It opens with the magnificent River Deep, Mountain High from Ike & Tina Turner; an exhilarating start with a quality that doesn't dip before the end of side 2.

From the same boot sale, costing £1.50, was another collection of the highest quality; this time from good old Motown:

Jimmy Ruffin - Greatest Hits (1974)

Big brother to David, Jimmy broke through in 1966 with the first song on this compilation; What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.  This was to remain his biggest hit although there are no clunkers among the 18 songs included.  David appears on final track Stand By Me:




Arizona-born Linda Ronstadt was one of the most popular and best-selling female artists of the 1970s, selling over 100 million records during her career.   After leaving the trio The Stone Poneys in 1968 to go solo, she has recorded in a variety of styles and is probably best-known for her interpretations of songs by other artists.  I picked up her 1976 Greatest Hits for £1:

Linda Ronstadt - Greatest Hits (1976)

It includes Different Drum from her days in the Stone Poneys, a cover of the Everly Brothers' When Will I Be Loved, and my favourite; her version of Neil Young's Love Is A Rose.

Another £1 find was this John Lennon compilation:

The John Lennon Collection (1982)

This was the first of Lennon's work to be released after his death in 1980, reaching no.1 here in the UK, making it the 10th best-selling LP of 1982.  Like Jimmy's album above, it too contains a cover of Stand By Me, taken from 1975's Rock 'n' Roll album.  This is the only cover, the rest being a good overview of his solo output beginning with the UK no. 2 single Give Peace A Chance up to 1980's Double Fantasy album, from which it pulls in six of the 17 tracks here.

Last but not least, again for £1, was Indiana Wants Me from R. Dean Taylor:

R. Dean Taylor - Indiana Wants Me (1973)

According to the sleevenotes, Canadian singer, songwriter and producer Richard Dean Taylor was the first white artist to have a hit on Tamla Motown.  In the UK this was Gotta See Jane, a tale of a man speeding back to the love he left, jumping red lights all the way, with pursuing police siren effects, which reached no. 17 in 1968.  The title track is similarly themed, as the protagonist, a man wanted for the murder of his girlfriend's lover, is hunted down by the Indiana police force, again with suitable sound effects.  This one reached the top spot both here and in the US in 1970.  My favourite song on the album is the Northern Soul tune There's A Ghost In My House, originally released to indifference in '67.  After becoming popular on the NS scene it was re-released in '74 and squeezed into the UK singles chart at no. 41.


Picked up any good compilations lately, crate-diggers?  Let us know in the comments below, or tweet me your pics @VinylCarBooty.

It's what's in the grooves that counts

Many soul albums, particularly those of the 1960s, contained a couple of great singles padded out with filler tracks.  Also, the explosion of soul during this time meant that due to the sheer number of records being made, many artists only released one or two songs before disappearing from view.  This means that often, soul music is best consumed via the compilation.  I've picked up some of the more popular ones at boot sales over the last few weeks.

Everyone with a working pair of ears loves a bit of Motown, and I got volumes Three and Six of the Chartbusters series for a pound each:

Motown Chartbusters Vol. 3 (1969)

Motown Chartbusters Vol. 6 (1971)

As well as being stuffed with super choons, Volume 3 includes some bewildering sleevenotes from DJ Alan "Fluff" Freeman, while the rear cover of Volume 6 pictures an amusing look ahead at the Motown Revue in 2008:

Also for a pound was this Motown double:

Motown Dance Party (1988)

The cover art simply screams "1988!", and from that and the description "Specially sequenced for continuous dancing" you'd be forgiven for thinking that the album is some monstrous Jive Bunny-esque cut-up mix that butchers the songs in order to run them all together.  Thankfully this is not the case at all; the tracks are just edited a bit more closely together, with each one fading in proper Motown fashion before the next kicks in - perfect for a dance party in fact!

Next up, again for £1 is a Ronco Teleproducts album called Black Explosion:

Black Explosion (1974)

As well as selling kitchen gadgets like the Veg-O-Matic, Ronco put out budget compilation albums which it advertised on TV, much like its competitor K-Tel.  This particular record is a great all-round collection of popular soul licensed from Stax, Atlantic and Philly Groove among others.

Also from Ronco, also bearing the legend "As seen on TV" and this time bought for 50p is the soundtrack to the 1977 movie Black Joy:

Black Joy (1977)

Black Joy was a British culture-clash comedy about a Guyanan living in 1970s Brixton starring Norman Beaton, the late star of 80's sitcom Desmond's.  I've never seen it, but the soundtrack is terrific, featuring 22 tracks of 60s and 70s soul, reggae and R&B.

I've already included songs from some of these comps in the Car Boot Vinyl Diaries cloudcasts, which you can find here: http://www.mixcloud.com/CarBootVinylDiaries/ so dip right in - there are six episodes to date that include all kinds of music gleaned from car boot sales and charity shops over the years, featuring rock, pop, soul, disco, folk, blues and more.

• If you're a soul fan, you may also want to enter the current Super Summer Giveaway to be in with a chance of winning Stevie Wonder's brilliant Innervisions on LP.  It's open until 9pm on Sunday August the 3rd 2014: http://carbootvinyldiaries.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/super-summer-giveaway-final-part.html 

• Keep up with my car boot finds on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VinylCarBooty

Nice Enough To Eat!

Today is a Bank Holiday and I'm going nowhere, so instead let me tell you about some of the records I picked up at a boot sale on the previous Bank Holiday weekend.  On the Sunday (May 5th) I took advantage of a seller's 3-for-a fiver offer on LPs.  First was this:

The World of David Bowie (1973)

This is a 1973 reissue of an album originally released in 1970, with an updated cover photo.  A fascinating collection of songs from his 1967 debut on Deram plus other previously unreleased tracks, this cynically re-packaged set of folk and music-hall style material was presumably intended to attract Ziggy fans expecting something quite different.

It's interesting of course, and very enjoyable in places, but essential to only the most hardcore of Bowie-philes.  Many of the songs here feature on the 1985 double album David Bowie - The Collection (which I have on cassette!).

Next up, the 1969 self-titled debut from Santana:

Santana (1969)

Released the same month as Woodstock where they played on the 15th of August, this is an album of powerful, Latin-infused guitar rock, enveloping the listener in a heady fug of Hammond organ, unbelievable percussion and THAT guitar from Carlos.  Its incredible cover image of a line-drawn lion incorporates how many faces?!

Last and certainly not least I chose Nice Enough To Eat, also from 1969:

Various Artists - Nice Enough To Eat (1969)

 An Island Records label sampler of folk rock, prog and hard rock from artists including Jethro Tull, Fairport Convention, Free and Spooky Tooth, NETE originally cost under 15 shillings which was half the price of a regular album at the time.

Tracklist:

Side 1.

1.  Cajun Woman - Fairport Convention

2.  At The Crossroads - Mott The Hoople

3.  Better By You, Better Than Me - Spooky Tooth

4.  We Used To Know - Jethro Tull

5.  Woman - Free

6.  I Keep Singing That Same Old Song - Heavy Jelly

Side 2.

1.  Sing Me A Song That I Know - Blodwyn Pig

2.  (Roamin' Thro' The Gloamin' With) Forty Thousand Headmen - Traffic

3.  Time Has Told Me - Nick Drake

4.  21st Century Schizoid Man - King Crimson

5.  Gungamai - Quintessence

6.  Strangely Strange But Oddly Normal - Dr. Strangely Strange

An important album to many, it served as an ear-opening introduction to the current Island roster and this kind of music in general.  It certainly worked its charms on me - at the Bank Holiday Monday car boot sale the following day I was driven to buy The Best of Spooky Tooth on CD (£4) which includes this HEAVY cover of I Am The Walrus:

Nice!

Golden Years part 3

It's been a while since my last proper post and there's no excuse really other than laziness, but I'll try to explain it anyway: during the last few months of 2012 I amassed a lot of music.  I got lots of CDs and records for my birthday and for Christmas, plus I had a bit of birthday money which got spent on music too.  Of course I continued to go to boot sales at the weekends, and found plenty of irresistible bargains at those.  With the usual end-of-year best albums lists floating around all over the place my Spotify listening increased also, meaning that I rather overwhelmed myself with music for the latter part of the year. Ongoing chronic pain made for a pretty grumpy Christmas too, so what with one thing and another this blog got a little neglected, something I aim to put right over the coming weeks.  To this end, this post is about some of the best-of comps I picked up towards the end of the year.

First is The Golden Hour of The Lovin' Spoonful's Greatest Hits, £2 from a charity shop:

The Golden Hour of The Lovin' Spoonful's
Greatest Hits (1974)

Folk-pop group The Lovin' Spoonful described their songs as "good-time music" and they had their greatest streak of success in 1965-6, with nine US top 20 singles and three top 40 albums.  Their best-known hits are probably Daydream, Do You Believe In Magic and of course Summer In The City; their biggest single which reached no.1 in the US and no.8 in the UK.  A change of producer and other personnel in 1967-8 led to their eventual split in '69 but they left behind a large, if often overlooked legacy, 24 examples of which are in this collection.

Next up is The World of Amen Corner, an eBay bargain at £1.99:

The World of Amen Corner (1969)

Welsh rockin' popsters Amen Corner began life playing blues/jazz inflected music but experienced their greatest success when they adopted a more commercial sound.  Their first smash hit came in 1968 when Bend Me Shape Me reached no.3 in the UK, and their biggest single was 1969's If Paradise Is (Half as Nice) which scored the top spot for two weeks.  They disbanded later the same year.

Continuing with the 60's theme, next is Hollies' Greatest which cost £2 at a boot sale:

Hollies Greatest (1968)

Manchester group The Hollies released a staggering 67 singles between 1967 and 2005, 28 of which entered the UK top 40. This collection of fourteen songs contains those that included founder member Graham Nash and was released after he left the band in 1968. It was their most successful album, topping the UK chart for six weeks.  After quitting The Hollies Nash formed supergroup CSN with Steven Stills and former Byrd David Crosby, which leads us to my next hits compilation:

The Byrds' Greatest Hits (1967)

This is a collection of songs from The Byrd's heyday in terms of charting singles, with eight top 50 US hits (the highest positions coming from Eight Miles High, Mr.Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn!) and three album tracks, all taken from their first four LPs.  Unsurprisingly it was their biggest selling album of all, although it didn't chart in the UK.  It's been re-issued several times over the years - this original UK mono release was bought at a boot sale.  I already own all of the tracks on various albums but at just £2 I couldn't bear to leave it there!

Last of all is Canned Heat Cook Book (The Best of Canned Heat) bought for £2 at a boot sale:

Canned Heat Cook Book (The Best of Canned Heat)
(1970)

Like The Byrds, Canned Heat formed in California in the mid-sixties.  However, their sound is that of the South; a bluesey, swampy, Southern-fried kind of rock.  Their two biggest hits, Going Up The Country and On The Road Again were both covers/re-workings of blues numbers.  These both appear here along with eight other songs from their first four LPs, often referred to as their "classic period" as the line-up has gone through dozens of mind boggling changes over the years since then.  A version of Canned Heat still tours to this day.

Golden Years part 2

We all love a good music compilation.  Well I do, anyway; they can act as a gateway into an artist, genre or even time span.  Recent CD purchases have included best-ofs by The Fall, Ella Fitzgerald, The Small Faces and Nina Simone - all artists with a lengthy back catalogue where a compilation can give the listener a fair overview of their career.  Others include collections of doo-wop, 60's garage/psych and Chicago house, which can provide a toe-dip into a vast ocean of music.

Recent car boot sales have thrown up a few good comps.  I was very pleased to find Island Life by Grace Jones for just 50p last Sunday:

Grace Jones - Island Life (1985)

Inner gatefold

This is a great compilation of songs from her debut album Portfolio (1977) through to 1985's Slave To The Rhythm.  I love Grace and my favourite tracks here are those dubby ones from her collaborations with Sly & Robbie, e.g. Walking In The Rain and of course the smash hit Pull Up To The Bumper.  If Island Life also included Warm Leatherette it would be perfect.

Glen Campbell's Greatest Hits cost £1 a couple of weeks ago:

Glen Campbell's Greatest Hits (1971)

This covers a dozen hits from 1967's By The Time I Get To Phoenix up until 1971's Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream), taking in the evergreen Galveston and Wichita Lineman.

A Shirelles greatest hits from Pye's Golden Hour series cost £1:

The Shirelles - Greatest Hits (1973)

This comprehensive collection from the original girl group packs 26 hits into a "Golden Hour" of listening pleasure, including songs written by Goffin & King, Del Shannon, Burt Bacharach and Phil Spector.  Hits include Mama Said, Baby It's You, Tears On My Pillow, I Met Him On A Sunday and one of the most perfect pop songs of all time Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.

I rarely buy cassettes these days but couldn't resist this sixties comp. at just 50p:

Sixtie Mix Two (1988)

Like part one of this series which I got on vinyl in a charity shop earlier this year, it's a continuous mix of top ten 60s hits, boasting 60 tracks from The Applejacks, Animals and Amen Corner to, er, Zager & Evans.  With a cassette player in the car, we listened to it all the way home last Sunday.  This kind of thing was very popular in the eighties, providing a non-stop mix for parties, except of course for turning over/changing the record or tape!

Here are the Shirelles...

 

Rok Da House

Sunday was fine and sunny, and I came away from a local boot sale with six LPs.  The first two took me back to my early teens; some late 80s commercial house:

Various - Best of House Megamix (1987)

Various - Best of House Vol. 4 (1988)

These are from a compilation series released by Serious Records and I got them for £1 each.  Volume 4 features eight 12" mixes of tracks including Bomb The Bass, Raze and The Beat Masters Featuring The Cookie Crew.

The Megamix is two sides mixed by The Bovver Boys and Double Trouble.  I'm not ashamed to say that when I got these on the turntable on Sunday afternoon, some uncoordinated yet energetic dancing took place in the privacy of my living room.

See Side A part 1 here:  http://youtu.be/rYoX2Awbskk

and Side A part 2 here:  http://youtu.be/XAwTKkk9Q8k

Side B Part 1 here:  http://youtu.be/3Jl3YteYAKA

and Side B Part 2 here:  http://youtu.be/27ad7K05ovs

Reggae Reggae Reggae!

This cost me 50p from a charity shop earlier in the week:

Various - Reggae Reggae Reggae (1987)

It's an 80's-released compilation of mainly late-60's popular reggae and ska, including tracks from The Maytals, The Upsetters, Desmond Dekker, The Ethiopians and Andy Capp.  It's ideal summer soundtrack music; what a pity the current weather doesn't match!

Spotify link: Desmond Dekker – 0.0.7 (Shanty Town)

I just hope Sunday morning stays dry or I'll have nothing to post about if the car boot sale is rained off - fingers crossed!