Happy Hour

The weather last Sunday morning was ace, and so was the car boot sale that I attended with my eldest sister Vicki.  While she was on the lookout for plants, I was as usual on the lookout for some bargain vinyl and came home with seven LPs, ranging in price from 20p to a pound.

The first was an Isley Brothers compilation from their brief time at Motown:

Tamla Motown Presents: The Isley Brothers (1967)

Although I'd checked the condition of the record before buying, unfortunately I failed to check the label, as inside the cover was actually an album by Roger Whittaker!  I haven't dared to play it yet, but as I recall he was well-known for his whistling....  I'm hoping the seller will be at Monday's boot sale so I can check if they have the Roger Whittaker sleeve with the Isley Brothers record inside! But at 20p it doesn't really matter.

Next, for £1 was Rosanne Cash's King's Record Shop:

Rosanne Cash - King's Record Shop (1987)
Rosanne never actually visited the shop for this picture;
her photo was superimposed.  The shop was in Louisville
 Kentucky and owned by the brother of
country artist Pee Wee King.

This was Rosanne's sixth studio album.  I'd never heard anything of hers until recently when someone introduced me to her latest album The River & The Thread which I'm really enjoying, so when I saw this I had to get it.  I'm so glad I did, as it's a great country-pop collection of originals and covers.  It was produced by her husband at the time Rodney Crowell and the band features Benmont Tench and Steve Winwood among many other musicians and singers.

Rear cover

The album produced four number one singles in the US Country chart, including a cover of her father's Tennessee Flat Top Box.    My top track is her version of Eliza Gilkyson's Rosie Strike Back, which opens Side 1:

For 50p was an Everly Brothers collection:

The Very Best of the Everly Brothers (1965)

The brothers moved from Cadence to Warner Brothers in 1960 and this release on Warners consists of six re-recorded versions of 50s Cadence hits in sparkling stereo, plus six early Warners singles.  It was produced by Wesley Rose and songwriter Bouleaux Bryant who wrote five of these hits.  The re-records were done in Nashville with several of the original musicians, and for me are the versions I know best because they are the ones I grew up with, as my parents had this album (and probably still do).

The re-records are: All I Have To Do Is Dream, Devoted To You, Bird Dog, Wake Up Little Susie, (Til) I Kissed You and Bye Bye Love.

For another 50p I bought The Housemartins' 1986 debut album London 0 Hull 4:

The Housemartins - London 0 Hull 4 (1986)

I would have been about 12 when this came out, and big sis Vicki had it on cassette.  I remember borrowing it a lot and singing and dancing for an imaginary crowd to the whole thing, using my bed as a stage and probably a hairbrush for a mic.  I really used to love the Housemartins and when their second and final album The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death was released, I bought it on LP with some Christmas record tokens.  It was the first album I bought with my own funds that wasn't a Now compilation!

I've since bought London 0 Hull 4 on CD, but I just had to get this vinyl copy.  It was a bit grubby but cleaned up very well indeed.

I'll put the rest of Sunday's finds up in a later post.  In the meantime don't forget to check out the Car Boot Vinyl Diaries Cloudcast at http://www.mixcloud.com/CarBootVinylDiaries/ where you can listen to me playing a selection of my finds from over the years with minimal inane chatter!