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.

Koppy and paste

One of the many things I love about rummaging for records at boot sales and charity shops is the randomness of it all; what you find depends entirely on what someone else used to have in their record collection.  This is made up of purchases both thought-out and impulsive over the years, as well as records received as gifts or freebies during the owner's lifetime, so the range of taste and quality is wide, particularly bearing in mind that a lot of this old vinyl will have belonged to someone's late parents (hence the endless Jim Reeves albums).

Yesterday I was lucky enough to come home with several LPs, one in particular bought out of pure curiosity:

Beatles Hits - artist uncredited

Side 2 label

A single disc in a plain white paper sleeve, called simply "Beatles Hits" with no credited artist, so obviously a covers album.  But what is it like?  I had to know, so spending a pound to find out seemed fair enough.  It's on the Philips label, cat. no. 88074 DL and published in 1965.  I did a brief online search, and all mentions of the record stated that it has a plain paper sleeve and no proper cover, which made me think that perhaps it was part of a box set.  Several results suggested that it might be by a Merseybeat band called Ian & the Zodiacs who were popular in Germany during the 1960s and sometimes recorded Beatles covers under the name The Koppycats.  I had a listen to a few snippets of Koppycats material and it certainly sounds like they could be the same combo as on the mystery disc.

No releases under either band name listed on web resources such as Discogs match this record, but further digging revealed an old eBay listing that seems to shed a bit of light. The listing offered a 3-disc set called "Philips Family Music Album", with Disc 1 being the Beatles Hits record, Disc 2 a collection of songs from musicals such as The King & I and Oklahoma titled "Highlights from the Shows" and Disc 3 consisting of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty.

It certainly seems like the kind of thing that manufacturers of record players would have given away with their products fifty years ago as a promotional item* - something for mum & dad plus some slightly dodgy-sounding pop covers for the kids - so although all the information I have is unconfirmed, it does seem most likely that Ian and his Zodiacs a.k.a. The Koppycats knocked out a dozen Fabs tunes for their label, who also happened to make electrical equipment - very handy!

I seem to remember that at the back of the crate of records were a couple of old box sets, but as the rest of the contents were mainly Charley Pride and Mrs. Mills LPs I didn't get that far.  Next time I'm at that particular boot sale (hopefully in a fortnight) perhaps I'll seek out the seller and see if I can find the rest of the Philips Family Music Album so that they can be reunited.

It's not a brilliant set of covers, by the way, but not bad either.  Since there's little about it online, I've digitised it for posterity.

Tracklist:

Side 1.
1. I Want To Hold Your Hand - 0.00
2. Can't Buy Me Love - 2.25
3. I Should Have Know Better - 4.34
4. Love Me Do - 6.46
5. All My Loving - 9.12
6. She Loves You - 11.15

Side 2.
1. From Me To You - 13.25
2. Please Please Me - 15.17
3. I Feel Fine - 17.15
4. No Reply - 19.40
5. Baby's In Black - 21.47
6. Eight Days A Week - 23.55

(*thanks JQW of The Afterword!)

Listen To The Rain

Last weekend's car booting was rained off, but luckily the records I'd bought the week before were still in my bag, uncleaned and unheard.  So, out came the vinyl cleaner and down went the needle and the rain was forgotten.  First out of the bag, costing £1 was You Broke My Heart In 17 Places by comedienne/actor/writer Tracey Ullman.

Tracey Ullman - You Broke My Heart In 17 Places (1983)

The first of her two albums on Stiff Records, it's a collection of covers by a variety of artists such as Doris Day, label-mate Kirsty MacColl and Blondie, in a faintly comic retro-bubblegum style.  It's a hugely enjoyable record, even though Ullman herself who of course went on to have an enormously successful TV career in the US, is said to be "dismissive" of her phase as a pop star.

Top track: MacColl's They Don't Know which features Kirsty on backing vocals.  It reached no.2 in the UK singles chart and no.8 in the US, while the album made no.14 over here. Look out for Macca in the vid.




Next up, also £1 was Diana Ross and 'Diana'.

Diana Ross - Diana (1980)

Her most successful solo LP of all, selling ten million-plus, this 1980 release was written and produced by the chaps from Chic; Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, who with the 'Chic Strings' also played on the album.

Diana allowed friend and DJ Frankie Crocker to hear a preview of the record, after which she suddenly got the jitters about releasing the work, claiming that Chic were about to "ruin her career".  This was in the wake of the 'Disco Sucks' movement, and Diana may also have had concerns that she was being used as a vessel for just another Chic album, in the manner of Sister Sledge.  Nile and Bernard were of course devastated by this claim; they'd written every song especially for Diana and believed that their classy style of disco was just the thing to give her career a much-needed boost, but Motown demanded the tapes back and the album was remixed by engineer Russ Terrana and some of the vocals were re-recorded.

The horrified Chic boys had little choice but to allow the new Motown mix to be released, and in his autobiography Le Freak, Nile says that he didn't agree with original engineer Bob Clearmountain's reassurance that "Guys, they can't mess this record up.  The songs are so good it doesn't matter what they do to them".

I agree with Bob.  The Motown mixes are different to the Chic ones, but don't really suffer much.  They're more punchy in places and some of the longer instrumental passages are shortened, but although I slightly prefer the Chic originals, the version of the album released in 1980 is still remarkable.  Both are available together as a Deluxe Edition, so you can make your own comparisons here: Diana Ross – Diana (Deluxe Edition)

        

                                              Outer and inner sleeve.

Top track: I'm Coming Out - either version!


Finally, once again costing £1, and bringing dazzling sunshine to a drizzly day was He's A Friend Of Mine by the wonderful Edwin Hawkins Singers.

The Edwin Hawkins Singers - He's A Friend Of Mine (1969)

When co-founder of a California youth gospel choir Edwin Hawkins and his 50-strong ensemble privately recorded an album in order to raise funds (1968's Let Us Go into the House of the Lord) he wasn't expecting radio play of track Oh Happy Day to result in a smash-hit single.  A record contract with Buddah Records led to many albums in subsequent years, both before and after the departure of star soloist Dorothy Combs.  It's impossible to pick a single Top Track from this album of eight joyful, uplifting songs, but this is the most appropriate given yesterday's weather:

Keep right up to date with Car Boot Vinyl Diaries on Twitter @VinylCarBooty and listen to me playing a selection of my finds at http://www.mixcloud.com/CarBootVinylDiaries/

Episode 7 of the Cloudcast online!

The newest episode of the Car Boot Vinyl Diaries cloudcast has been uploaded to Mixcloud and features vinyl treasures from Bob Dylan, The Elgins, Tramline, Wings and loads more including a great long song for the Boot of Loot.

Car Boot Vinyl Diaries Episode 7 by Car Boot Vinyl Diaries on Mixcloud

Hope you enjoy it!

Winner of 3rd Super Summer Giveaway!

As I predicted, this was was the most popular Giveaway of all.  Last night a name was drawn from the hat and the winner of a boot-sale copy of Stevie Wonder's fantastic Innervisions album is Paul O'Farrell.

I'll be in touch via Twitter Paul, so you can claim your prize!

Car Boot Sale & Charity Shop Perennials

As vinyl fans we've all seen them.  Aside from the endless popular classical, light opera, stage musicals and Jim flippin' Reeves, there are many rock and pop LPs that crop up in charity shops and at car boot sales time and time again.  These are the big sellers that have fallen out of fashion over the years with little hope of reappraisal, and languish abandoned, seemingly nailed to the inside of the record box.  Let's have a look at some.

Dr. Hook - A Little Bit More (1976) & Sometimes You Win (1979)

Dr. Hook scored six UK top ten hits during their career, including two each from this pair of bestselling albums.  Both LPs made it comfortably into the top 20, meaning that once their brand of soft-rock disco and nauseating balladry fell out of favour, countless copies eventually made it into jumble sales and charity shops throughout the land, since when I have resisted all impulses to purchase one, even though When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman is of course awesome.

These guys got their hooks into the record-buying public over here.

Melanie - Candles In The Rain (1970)

When singer-songwriter Melanie Safka stood in for The Incredible String Band at Woodstock when, allegedly, they refused to go on in the rain, she couldn't have dreamed that she'd go down so well that this, her third album [which includes Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) inspired by the experience] would race to no. 17 in her home country the following year.  It got to no. 5 here in the UK, which is probably why I seem to see at least one copy every time I go to a car boot sale.  My partner used to have it and I can confirm it's a fine record indeed, one of the most memorable tracks being her cover of Ruby Tuesday.  Great voice, ace production and musicianship - get it if you see it.

Candles In The Rain - also featuring the Edwin
Hawkins Singers.

Barbra Streisand - Guilty (1980)

Twelve million.  That's how many copies of this were sold, apparently.  Barry Gibb co-produced this Grammy-nominated behemoth for Babs, and he and his brother Robin wrote the bulk of it with some help from Maurice and producer Albhy Galuten.  The single Woman In Love topped the charts the world over and no doubt drove album sales, but the title track is my favourite song of all on this beautifully produced, multi-platinum-selling album.  Definitely not a guilty pleasure!

Baz is hoping Babs' foundation doesn't rub off
against his outfit.  She's thinking the same thing.

Rod Stewart - Atlantic Crossing (1975)

Rod's solo albums are easy to find at boot sales and chazzas, at least round our way. They usually turn up in large groups, as if someone has just replaced their vinyl collection with CDs or just really gone off him all of a sudden.  These groups always harbour Atlantic Crossing and it's worth spending a pound or two on if you spot it.

The album is split into sides dubbed 'slow' and 'fast', Side 1 consisting of Faces-like rollicking bar-room tunes full of swagger and soul.  Side 2 is equally as good with its heartfelt ballads including a nice cover of This Old Heart of Mine.  Also, Sailing is right at the end, so you can lift the needle before it comes on without having to put it back down again, which is a result.  Certainly an album to rescue from the bins.

I can't decide whether this cover art is really great
or really bad.

Paul Young - No Parlez (1983)

This is the daddy of UK charity shop vinyl, the ultimate perennial that seems to stick to the shelves like something unpleasant sticking to a blanket.  Paul Young, backed here by the Fabulous Wealthy Tarts, released this debut album of pop-soul in 1983 and it stayed at the top of the charts for five weeks, eventually selling near to a million copies and going triple platinum.

Many a school disco slow-dance was had to its no.1 single, a cover of Marvin Gaye's Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home) in 1983 and the both this single and the album represent the peak of his career.  I always feel a pang of guilt whenever I see it in a charity shop, as in a moment of clumsiness I managed to scratch a copy belonging to my eldest sister, although she never seemed to notice.  Like the rest of the country I imagine that by then she'd moved on from this excellent but now abandoned album onto popsters new (probably bloody Duran Duran).

My, Paul, what a shiny suit you're wearing!

Whitney Houston - Whitney Houston (1985)

This was Ms. Houston's debut album, released two years before the equally originally-titled 'Whitney' from 1987 and has sold 25 million copies worldwide, making it the best selling solo debut of all time.  Here in the UK it got to no. 2, explaining its status as a car boot sale perennial.  Aside from the excellent singles, however, it's padded out with inferior, rather formulaic material, and even the wonderful Teddy Pendergrass fails to lift final track Hold Me out of the doldrums.

Whitney - saving all her love for Bobby Brown.

Leo Sayer - Endless Flight (1976)

No.  Just no.

Leo receives a prostate exam from God.

Electric Light Orchestra - Discovery (1979)

Who doesn't like ELO?  Jeff & Co.'s music is some of the most feelgood pop ever recorded, and along with 1977's double Out Of The Blue is ubiquitous at boot sales.  It spawned five successful singles and remained at no. 1 in the album chart for five weeks, knocking ABBA's Voulez Vous off the top spot.  Recently I saw three copies of it at just one boot sale, but that's nothing compared to the next record on the list.

"I predict unemployment in the immediate future
of the string section..."

The Carpenters - The Singles 1969-1973 (1973)

Heaven knows I've listened to 2000's CD collection Carpenters Gold enough times, but although I've seen dozens of copies of this 12-track singles compilation from 1973 over the years I've never thought about buying it.  It graced many a living room in the 70s, having sold 7 million in the US alone and spending 17 non-consecutive weeks at the top of the charts over here.

A quick read online reveals that it includes some different mixes and a few re-recorded vocals, but more interestingly "newly recorded bridges and transition material so that each side of the album would play through with no breaks". No-one loves a good segue more than me (non-stopness rules!), so I'll definitely be picking up the next decent copy I spy at future boot sales.

A dull cover hiding sparkling contents.

ABBA - pretty much every album

All of ABBA's studio albums and the seven compilations up to Love Stories in 1998 were released on vinyl.  They sold by the truckload and usually sellers can't give them away at a boot sale.  During the mid-90s ABBA craze (no doubt partly down to Muriel's Wedding) you couldn't go to a party without hearing ABBA Gold and I'm sure I wasn't alone in suffering ABBA-fatigue for many years afterwards.  This is why it was only earlier this year that I succumbed to a minty copy of The Singles: The First Ten Years (1982) for a quid, which I'm now able to thoroughly enjoy, along with its lovely glossy gatefold jacket and colourful inner sleeves.

Benny and Björn punching well above their weight.

Grease: The Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture (1978) & Saturday Night Fever OST (1977)

These two records ruled 1978, selling millions worldwide (no doubt allowing John Travolta to purchase a nice new jumbo jet or two), so a handful of each are never far away at a boot sale or chazza.  I've never had the urge to own either, but given the choice I'd go for Saturday Night Fever for the groovesome K-Jee by MFSB.

Cha-CHING!!

Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970)

Paul and Art's final studio album of beautifully crafted pop, gospel and folk-rock reached number one the world over, hung around the charts for years and is currently no. 51 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.  Of course I have it, and so do you.  You probably also have the even-more-bestselling Greatest Hits which came out two years after they'd split and which is an equally common sight at charity shops up and down the country.

Put your thumb over Paul's face - go on.

So what are the future second-hand perennials?  The supply of old vinyl is of course finite and at car boot sales is now being outnumbered by a tidal wave of unwanted CDs ultimately destined for landfill, the ones I see the most being those by Blue, Robbie Williams, S Club 7, Steps and the like.  Beyond that?  Well, you can't sell old mp3s, and streaming is the fastest-growing format right now - according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, revenue from streaming services went past the £660 million mark in 2013, a rise of 51% on the previous year.  (How this translates into artist income is another matter of course.)

As far as vinyl LPs are concerned we can probably be safe in the knowledge that in 30 years' time, like post-apocalyptic cockroaches, once-cherished copies of Elton John's Greatest Hits and Lionel's Dancing on the Ceiling will still be for sale at boot fairs and charity shops everywhere for our grandchildren to discover.  And then probably call "Vinyls".



Do please feel free to add your chazza/boot-sale perennials in the comments.

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