title: Martino's otherwise impossible 1952-1956 78-era singles recordings sampling 28 of 49 sides

text:
This CD album reissue covers Al Martino's 1952-1956 Capitol UK period, providing 28 tracks of his 49 BBS and Capitol sides sourced from UK discs.  Playing side is bluish; this is a CD-R copy.  The booklet has excellent liner notes and discography/recording date information, though there are a few record release number errors (CL 13855 is not an Al Martino UK Capitol release; should be CL 13835).  All tracks are mono, a "needle drop" mastering, but otherwise an excellent comp of material just completely impossible, save for Martino's few U.S. singles hits from 1952-53.  Four and a half stars.

Martino's early tracks here are generally bombastic, full-barrel orchestra pop opera, the orchestras roaring away with large banks of strings aiming from the back seats and rafters, a "Big Sound" orchestra backing a la Hugo Winterhalter framing Eddie Fisher's romantic bubblegum pop of the era.  The consistent use of harps in the mixes of many of the songs also stood out, though white pop songs often had the same instrumental lineup from the late '40s into the early '50s.  Martino's phrasing seems to suggest a bit of Dean Martin's vocal style, but I think Martino's chief stylistic comparatives for these recordings are Eddie Fisher and Vic Damone.

Source discography info here:

Al Martino UK Capitol 78/45 singles:

CL Series
13769 Take My Heart/I Never Cared
13779 Here In My Heart/I Cried Myself to Sleep (May 24, 1952)
13835 Now/Say You’ll Wait For Me (Sept. 1952)
13879 Rachel/One Lonely Night (February, 1953)
13899 I’ve Never Seen/In All This World
13936 Come Back to Sorrento/Here Are My Arms
13953 This Night I’ll Remember/When You’re Mine
13973 Be Mine/Acque Amare
13987 Matador/Before
14003 All I Want Is A Chance/You Can Go On Forever Breaking My Heart
14085 Way Paesano/Melancholy Serenade (April, 1954)
14128 Wanted/There’ll Be No Teardrops Tonight (May, 1954)
14148 Give Me Something to Go with the Wine/On And On (In Love with You)
14163 The Story of Tina/Destiny (Sept. 1954)
14192 I Still Believe/When
14202 No One But You/Not As A Stranger
14224 Don’t Go to Strangers/Say It Again
14284 Love Is Eternal/Snowy Snowy Mountains
14343 Man from Laramie/To Please My Lady (Sept. 1955)
14379 Close to Me/Small Talk
14550 Journey’s End/Sound Advice
14614 The Girl I Left In Rome/Some Cloud Above
14680 I’m Sorry/A Love to Call My Own (December, 1956)

Total 23 two-sided UK releases, 46 sides total.  Dates listed are approximate by month based on the earliest of either the US or UK hit side.  US releases totaled 18 78/45 singles; three U.S. sides were not released on corresponding UK singles:  “There’s Music Just For You” (F2431), “Sweetheart of Mine” (F2649), and “I’m A Funny Guy” (F3605).

Most of the songs on this pre-rock ‘n roll pop compilation are new-to-me; they don’t register with the other period artists I have experience with (Fisher, Como, Damone, Day, Clooney, Guy Mitchell, etc…).  For the most part they seem to be often unique to Martino’s catalog.  Apparently Martino never bopped to rock 'n roll on any of his Capitol sides.  However, I’ve found/heard other versions by the following artists (U.S. releases):

“Here In My Heart” –competing version by Tony Bennett on Columbia 4-39745.  Both Martino’s and Bennett’s versions debuted on Billboard, 5/24/52.  Vic Damone also covered the song on Mercury 5858 about two months later.  Al Martino's UK topper started its run in the UK with a new chart, November 14, 1952, through January 9, 1953.  It was succeeded by the great Jo Stafford's "You Belong to Me" on 1/16/53.  A nifty book:  [[ASIN:0823075729 British Hit Singles: Every Single Hit Since 1952]]

“Take My Heart” –Vic Damone on Mercury 5877.

“Rachel” –Artie Wayne on Mercury 70090; Wayne had the dominant hit version.

“Melancholy Serenade” –vocalist version of the TV show Jackie Gleason’s HONEYMOONERS’ theme.

"Come Back to Sorrento" -- Dean Martin on Capitol F2140.

“Wanted” – Perry Como’s U.S. hit; “There’ll Be No Teardrops Tonight” – Tony Bennett’s U.S. pop hit (a Mitch Miller era pop cover)


title: Mickey Katz spoofs SING ALONG WITH MITCH AND THE GANG in Yiddish!

text:
SING ALONG WITH MICKELE, Capitol ST 1744 stereo vinyl Lp.  A Mickey Katz bizarro masterpiece spoofing those endlessly cloned SING ALONG WITH MITCH AND THE GANG albums from the early '60s.  This vinyl Lp dates mid-1962.

The Lp has 10 tracks, which is a bit light vs. the then-standard 12 songs (6 per side) Capitol pop series albums, but each of the tracks has spoken intros by "Mickele" describing where they've come from, often show tunes or vaudeville Jewish productions.  The album cover mentions the songbook coming with the set, but my copy showed up without that keepsake; however, the back cover has all ten songs' lyrics displayed, mostly phonetically transcribed (Yiddish, mostly, beyond my Irish-American Western desert rat experience), with a statement in the liner notes mentioning that Mickey Katz transcribed them so that period typical Americans (me) could kinda sing along to the recording.  A few of the songs have English lyrics, one of which is Al Jolson's "The Anniversary Song."  Mostly likely this 1962 Lp had a cover-filling lyric "book" with tear sheets inside the album cover, like later pressings of those (18, count 'em!) SING ALONG WITH MITCH albums.

Sound on the Lp is a decent brassy swing band backing, basic rhythm on the left, horns on the left, a solo fiddle appearing in either speaker depending on the song, and a small male (left) female (mostly right) vocal chorus very deftly putting in a melancholy "smiley" performance.  Mickey Katz comes in at the start of each of the songs with his intros as a kind of emissary, setting the background story and mood of each piece.

Darlene & Jonathan Edwards fired the first strike against Miller's SING ALONG albums' juggernaut in March, 1962, ([[ASIN:B002HFRC8Y "sing along with"jonathan and darlene edwards.1962 LP record.]]) on RCA, and this album blew another hole in Miller's sinking ship three months later.

SING ALONG WITH MICKELE was produced by Tom Morgan at Capitol.  Members of Katz's chorus members are mentioned in the back cover liner notes.


title: Fifth Time's the Charm on this 1981 five-time retread of a 1964 instrumental Lp, with two original tracks chopped off

text:
Glen Campbell, WAY BACK WHEN, on Koala Records.

This junk Lp dates from 1981 release, and it's actually the last of something like four or five repackages of a January, 1964, Lp, THE IN GROUP THE SWINGING 12 STRING GUITAR, on In 1002.  In order, this Lp has been previously pressed on the following junk reissue/repackages:

Glen Campbell, COUNTRY SHINDIG, Surrey SS 1007.  A 1965 budget bin $2.49 list junk record that Billboard reviewed by mistake thinking it was a new release Lp.
Glen Campbell, THE 12 STRING GUITAR OF GLEN CAMPBELL, Pickwick PC 3052 mono/SPC 3052 stereo.  Roughly November, 1966 press, another budget bin repackage at $1.99/$2.49 list (half price cutout bin product).  This title is the easiest of the reissues to locate, and has the best pressing and cover art quality of all the retreads.
Glen Campbell, PLAYS 12 STRING GUITAR, on Buckboard and Springboard Records.  Yet another pressing, this time sold through a drug store chain, Thrifty Drugs, and sued by Glen Campbell in late 1974 trying to get it off the shelf.

And this 1981 budget bin retread masquerading as something new and special.


title: A Not Fully Cooked and Behind the Times Country Corn Album.  It's a miss, except for the out-of-date Beatles' novelty song

text:
Don Bowman, FUNNY WAY TO MAKE AN ALBUM, RCA/Victor LPM 3495 mono/LSP 3495 stereo.  Lp dates about January, 1966.

Track list:
side one--
Dear Harlan Howard/The Other Ringo/I Get the Feeling We're Through/Dear Sister/That's Show Biz/Little Diesel Drivin' Devil
side two--
Things Are Looking Up/More than Me/Kansas City Star/Freddy Four Toes/Boll Weevil Air Lines/Freda on the Freeway

Well, how shall I say this?  If Don Bowman were playing baseball at bat, he had one decent at bat ("...Ringo"), maybe two close call fouls ("More Than Me" and "Boll Weevil Air Lines"), and fanned out on his other nine tries.

"The Other Ringo" -- this is a minor gem.  This song is a reference or mashup dig at the Beatles, referencing or spoofing "She Loves You" (early '64 Beatlemania, so it's 18 months out-of-date when released; the mostly female chorus breaks into "Yeah Yeah Yeah"s throughout the song), Ringo Starr fandom and country digs at Beatle haircuts, and parodying Lorne Greene's "Ringo" hit for the tune.

"More Than Me" -- his wife has left him and her hairspray cans have blown up and splattered his place with all her makeup.  Lipstick containers as bullets pocking the walls and his refrigerator.

"Boll Weevil Air LInes" -- the references/parody is built around Bobby Bare's "Detroit City" as a talky recitation about flying on a seat-of-the-pants outback country hick airline.

"Freddy Four Toes" -- a song about "The Foot Grabber" lawn mower.  (Deadpan here:) ha.  ha.  ha.
"Things Are Looking Up" -- a not done, not well done, actually pretty lousy reworking of Ferlin Husky's "The Drunken Driver" (Capitol) '50s song done so much better/worse years before.
"Freda on the Freeway" -- lost on a freeway cloverleaf.  (Deadpan here:) ha.  ha.  ha.
Roger Miller's "Kansas City Star" is given a straight cover reading.

Bowman is clearly borrowing --and toning down for sedate semi-suburban mid-'60s audiences here-- Ferlin Husky's great hillbilly clown alter ego, Simon Crum.  Bowman apes Crum's cartoonish clown accent, stretching out one-syllable words like "that" as "tha...yat," "they-yay," and "there" as "there-yer," but he does it in a voice that suggests Wink Martindale having burnt out his pipes cigarette chain-smoking four packs of Camels a day.  Backing instruments on this are an electric guitar, I think Hank Cochran's or Chet Atkin's, his producer on this, dobro, restrained drum kit (brushes), an ANNOYING deliberately badly played (comic) piano, and a soft-voiced male-female chorus (less pizzazz than the Anita Kerr Singers; very restrained).  Liner notes on back by Jethro Burns, of Homer & Jethro fame/infamy.

This album is a "talky" recitation reading done in a more musical manner than Telly Savalas, Lorne Greene, Everett McKinley Dirksen, Red Sovine, and/or Wink Martindale, done over the sedate Nashville sound.  Think a more suburban, very campy but dull version of Simon Crum laid over backing for Jim Reeves easy listening "country" pops.  The album charted a bit.  He had hits.  Hearing this, I wonder why???


title: Mercury U.S. Lp from early '65 with a MONSTER hit single that went around the world; four rechanneled tracks on the stereo Lp

text:
One U.S. Lp release, February, 1965:

JULIE ROGERS, Mercury MG 20981 (mono)/SR 60981 (stereo)

Songs on this Lp:
side one--
The Wedding (rechanneled)
The Love of a Boy (rechanneled)
Young and Foolish
Friendly Persuasion
A House Is Not a Home
Love Letters
side two--
Like a Child (rechanneled)
Without Your Love (rechanneled)
In The Blue of the Evening
How Soon
I'll Be Around
Hawaiian Wedding Song

You know the Lp cuts (filler) as songs/hits identified with Pat Boone ("Friendly Persuasion"), Elvis Presley ("Love Letters"), and Andy Williams ("Hawaiian Wedding Song"). The first two tracks on each side of the vinyl Lp are rechanneled--mono track balanced over to the left, right channel has some faint bleed-off echo added. Obviously, U.S. Mercury took about half of the UK album tracks (THE SOUND OF JULIE, Mercury UK 20048) and cut in her two UK 45 singles' tracks (see below: MF 809 and MF 820 UK singles' four sides) on this U.S. Lp. The balance of the album is otherwise is decently balanced with-orchestra very middle-of-the-road stereo. Julie Rogers is in FINE voice on these songs, a voice that strongly suggests the kind of pipes, power, and beauty that makes me think of early '60s' Eydie Gorme', but without all the Columbia pop deep echo.

Mercury 45 singles:

72332 The Wedding/Without Your Love (Oct. 1964)
72380 Like A Child/The Love of A Boy
72426 Hawaiian Wedding Song/Turn Around Look at Me (May, 1965)
72535 Another Year, Another Love, Another Heartache/Don't Waste Your Young Years On Him
72646 While the Angelus Was Ringing/Climb Ev'ry Mountain (Dec. 1966)

Note: the first U.S. version of her world-wide hit was by Anita Bryant on Columbia 4-42148 45 single, "The Wedding"/"Seven Kinds of Lonesome" (September, 1961--it barely charted on Cash Box's LOOKING FORWARD bottom 100-150 "almost a hit" chart for six weeks); Tony Martin did a cover on Randy Woods's Dot Records, December, 1961, Dot 45-16313, "The Bride"/"Horizons of Joy" (thanks to Amazon reviewer Bill Busse for the tip!). Keely Smith also put out the song on her Reprise 0313 45 single, "The Wedding"/"Turn Around Look At Me" in late '64.

In 1969-72, Julie Rogers recorded for Jeffrey Kruger's UK Ember Records, and here in the U.S., Mega Records (C&W label known for Sammi Smith's huge "Help Me Make It Through the Night" hit) licensed some of Ember's UK recordings and issued a 10-song abridged version Lp on a similar UK title.

(45RPM single)--
Mega 0075 Where Do You Go/Almost Close to You (May, 1972)

(Lp--U.S.)--
JULIE ROGERS...WITH FEELING, Mega M31-1013

The Mega Lp was the U.S. version of UK Lp, Ember NR 5050, JULIE ROGERS ONCE MORE WITH FEELING, which featured 14 tracks (7 per Lp side) versus the U.S. version on Mega Records with only 10 tracks. Two of the songs, "Once More With Feeling," and "Where Do You Go," were published through Glen Campbell's publishing companies from GC's TRY A LITTLE KINDNESS Capitol SW 389 Lp, and both Rogers' Lps, the UK Ember and US Mega, have liner notes credited written by Glen Campbell. Glen Campbell's 1968-70 UK records were released on Ember, and Jeffrey Kruger's organization booked his UK tours into the 1980s.

Julie Rogers UK Mercury:

45s--
MF 809 It's Magic/Without Your Love
MF 820 The Wedding/The Love of A Boy (entered the UK charts 8/13/64, two months before U.S. Mercury; the U.S. version was released within a week of a competing U.S. cover version by Keely Smith on Reprise 0313, "The Wedding"/"Turn Around Look At Me", about the second week of October, '64)
MF 838 Like A Child/Our Day Will Come
MF 849 Hawaiian Wedding Song/Turn Around Look At Me (UK entry 3/25/65)
MF 868 Day By Day/I'm Walking Behind You
MF 895 Another Year, Another Look, Another Heartache/Don't Waste Your Young Years On Him
MF 901 In My Room/Three Unspoken Words
MF 917 I Love Him/Lullaby For Lovers
MF 950 While the Angelus Was Playing/Climb Ev'ry Mountain
MF 980 These Gentle Hands/When Two Worlds Collide
MF 993 Go On Home/Bless You
MF 1015 You Never Told Me/Let Me Belong To You

Lps--
THE SOUND OF JULIE, Mercury 20048 (This Lp was chopped up and US singles tracks added for the US Mercury 20981/60981 Lp release in early '65)
CONTRASTS, Mercury 20086
SONGS OF INSPIRATION, Mercury 20100


title: Art Deco Depression Era Hollywood Maurice Chevalier

text:
THANK HEAVEN FOR MAURICE CHEVALIER, RCA/Victor LPM 2076 mono.  Vinyl Lp dates January, 1960 (copyright date on back says 1960).  If there's a fake, excruciating "Electronically Reprocessed for Stereo" LSP 2076e version of this, that version would date January, 1962....

This Lp is a comp of some VERY old and not-so-old MC Depression-era Victor singles, so it's a great Art Deco nostalgia repackage of Hollywood early '30s white pop and jazz (er, the Paul Whiteman, Isham Jones, and Ted Lewis pre-Swing white jazz kinda stuff), from the direct-to-disc electrical recording era.  If you watch any early '30s musicals with white pop Hollywood "jazz" songs, you'll get the styles here, and most of this album's songs were listed as hits in my Joel Whitburn book, [[ASIN:0898200830 Pop Memories 1890-1954: The History of American Popular Music]].

Track list:
side one--
Louise (1947 re-recording)
My Ideal (8/15/30)
Hello, Beautiful (2/22/31; the most jazz-oriented track on the Lp)
I Was Lucky (2/11/35)
Mimi (6/29/32)
On Top of A Rainbow Sweepin' the Clouds Away (3/22/30)
side two--
There Ought to Be a Moonlight Saving Time (5/26/31)
Rhythm of the Rain (2/11/35; NOT the Cascade's early '60s hit)
You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me (4/04/30)
My Love Parade (1/22/30)
Valentine (1947 re-recording; running time is 5:55 on this, most of which is a LONG spoken talky intro)
Walkin' My Baby Back Home (2/22/31; yes, the Johnny Ray song from the Mitch Miller early '50s)

Chevalier sings/talks the lyrics.  Recommended if you like the sunny "sunshine" pop of Al Jolson.  Dates listed are the session recording dates, per the liner notes.  The 1947 sound is high-fi "brighter" than the disc electrical '30s songs, but the sound on all these recordings is as bright as the disc recording at the time allowed, and in no way "scratchy" like shellac needle-drop disc "remaster" sounding on import legal boots' CDs you might pick up.  The transfers are clean sounding and decently bright.


title: The Western Frog King from Northshore Tahoe "Sings".  Ribbitt!

text:
Lorne Greene, YOUNG AT HEART, RCA/Victor LPM 2661 mono/LSP 2661 "Living Stereo".  Er, yeah....  This vinyl Lp dates January-February, 1963.

A howler, funny, BAD, so BAD it's GOOD lousy, rotten, just deliciously awful vocal whitebread pop.  "As Time Goes By" is a track on NPR Jim Nayder's THE ANNOYING MUSIC SHOW CD (one of them; I have several), and if you're a fan of bullfrog croaking and talky romantic music by crooners like Leonard Nimoy, Greg Morris, Telly Savalas, Jack Webb, and Jack Palance, this is a gem right up your alley.

Yeah, "Living Stereo."  With his powdered granite coarse-grit sandpaper vocal chords, make ya wonder why regular stereo wasn't good enough.  Lorne Greene's style on this emulates the laid back early '60s cool Perry Como RCA albums of the period, with Greene here softly crooning a husky Western Como imitation of Maurice Chevalier, half "singing" and half talking his lyrics.  He "acts" these middle-of-the-road supper club lounge songs and on a few of the tracks tries to swing with the jazzy brass arrangements:  muted horns, strings, harps, lounge piano, male/female split beautiful music choral group, plucked strings, xylophone, and a very discreetly played electric rhythm jazz guitar.  When Greene actually tries to hold a note from what there is of his diaphragm, he warbles the note and vocally owes much to Mr. Ed, but in a lower gravelly register.

What makes this album the BEST and most ANNOYING of his catalog is that it's the only non-Western or "country" big city (Los Angeles) set in his repertoire--he goes '60s stucco house and bar club suburban on these pop songs, and puts his stamp on every one of them.

Track list on Lp:
side one--
I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore
September Song
Young At Heart
You Make Me Feel So Young
Hello, Young Lovers
Somethin's Gotta Give
side two--
I'm Getting Sentimental Over You
Just In Time
Young and Foolish
Speak Low
As Time Goes By
The Second Time Around

Arranged and Conducted by TV cartoons' music guy Hank Levine.  The back cover liner notes state Lorne Greene really prepared and practiced to record these sessions.  Song selections, as you can tell by the list, run the gamut from late '50s Eddie "Bubblegum" Fisher to Frank Sinatra.

Oh, yes, the release number on this Lp was RCA/Victor LSP 2661 (my copy is "Living Stereo" with "RCA VICTOR" in silver letters, dog on top label).  The literal next album released by RCA was Pernell Roberts's folk album, COME ALL YE FAIR AND TENDER LADIES, RCA/Victor LPM/LSP 2662 [[ASIN:B004CANYHA Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies]].  Pernell can actually sing!  The liner notes on that Lp state that his inspiration is Odetta, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Bob Gibson, Woody Guthrie, among others.


title: Pandora's Box invades Leave It To Beaver

text:
PAT BOONE, Dot Records DLP 3012. Lp dates April-May, 1956.

This slapped together album dueled directly with Elvis Presley's first slapped together album, RCA/Victor LPM 1254, within a few weeks.

Contents (reshuffled to illustrate the 78/45 sources of the tracks):

Two Hearts/Tra La La (Dot 15334)
Ain't That A Shame/Tennessee Saturday Night (Dot 15377)
At My Front Door/No Other Arms (Dot 15422)
I'll Be Home/Tutti Frutti (Dot 15443)
Gee Whittakers/Take the Time (Dot 15435)
Rich In Love -- original Lp filler cut, songwriting credit is to Lewis-Wendling-Meyer, white pop songwriters dating back to the Roaring '20s.
Now I Know -- original Lp filler cut, songwriting credit is to (Billy) Vaughn-(Beasley) Smith. A publishing mechanical's payoff to Dot's house band, Billy Vaughn.

This Lp was released at the time when Boone's abysmal cover of Little Richard's gloriously vacuous romp, "Long Tall Sally," was stiffing relative to Little Richards's manic nutcase original. In effect, Randy Woods repackaged Boone's (immediate) singles' catalog, plus two filler tracks to round out a 12 song Lp, as a cash-in. At the time, the album business sold Lps as odd keepsakes by your favorite artists, or dreamy orchestra mass violins' mood instrumental albums; Boone's album had to be a cash-in, a made-on-the-cheap clone of hits, early in the 12" Lp era, to get stocked at your white mom & pop radio repair shop's record counter in the back.

And what a cash-in! Yes, Boone's inept, bellows from the chest like Crosby trying to make passable big band blues r&b looting and pillaging far better r&b hits, treating New Orleans' blues (among others) as publishing demos. Dot Records hoisted the pirate flag and did quickies for the white pop market, beginning with the Fontane Sisters's cover of (Otis Williams &) The Charms' "Hearts of Stone," after, I think, Mitch Miller (eeevil Mitch Miller!) tentatively showed Dot Records and faux seat-of-the-pants indie Coral Records the way, producing Frank Sinatra's "The Castle Rock," "Bim Bam Baby," resurrecting a raunchy blues song from 1923, "My Baby Rocks Me (with a Steady Roll)," for Rosemary Clooney, and having Johnny Ray copy the Drifters' B-side, "Such A Night." By mid-'56 the vanilla might've been on the radio and getting hits high up on the juke charts, but Little Richard and Fats Domino buried the competition in sales. I side with Boone, that he opened the Pandora's Box with these uncomfortable tunes, doing what he was told at the microphone.

Boone's next two albums, HOWDY (DLP 3030) and PAT (DLP 3050) also rocked with bop covers, but those albums were full of Lp-only rock 'n' roll album filler, not hits. Boone's albums thereafter, from HYMNS (DLP 3068) and SINGS IRVING BERLIN (DLP 3077), put his Lps in a more comfortable sedate adult market while his singles might dip into older r&b catalog, but he ceased to try to Bing around the dance floor shouting milk-for-booze blues from deep in his chest.

Original pressings of this album were pressed on a maroon colored label with silver printing; the album did far more business in later 1957 on a black colored label. Although released in early-mid '56, it only briefly appeared on the album charts when his Dot 15602 45 single, "Remember You're Mine," was up in the chips.


title: Pat Boone very softly croons the Platters, Lettermen, Andy Williams, Henry Mancini, and Bobby Vinton

text:
Pat Boone, NEAR YOU, Dot DLP 3606 mono/DLP 25606 stereo.  Vinyl Lp dates early 1965.

Track list
side one--:
Near You
Twilight Time
It Isn't Fair
Canadian Sunset
When I Fall In Love
Love, Who Needs It?
side two--
Love Letters
My Prayer
Blue Velvet
Shangri-La
You'll Never Know
More

After the Dot DLP 3500/25500 series, Pat Boone's albums get more and more difficult to find in stereo versions, which means his cheaper monos (stereo copies cost a buck more at retail at the time) predominate and his albums sold fewer and fewer copies after 1964, with a slight uptick in late 1966 when he got some lowball singles' hits beginning with his Vietnam War kitsch Top-50 hit, "Wish You Were Here, Buddy."

Lp is produced by Randy Wood; arranger is Pete King.  Sound on this Lp is a continuation of a big, lush string orchestra, and Boone softly croons his sedate easy listening song choices with the instrumental emphasis on a bank of lush, soaring strings, flutes, harps, restrained swing brass, and some Mancini-like continental harmonica work.  In the '50s Boone generally copied Bing Crosby on his slow ballad albums, but by the early '60s his style softened towards a soft crooning style more suggesting the romantic vocal caress of 1928-1934 Russ Columbo, with backing in the range of Henry Mancini pop.

Three and a half stars.  Buy the stereo copy, if you can get it.


title: Pat sings Glenn Miller, Tony Bennett, Eddy Arnold, and Other Top Middle-of-The-Road Acts of the Day

text:
Pat Boone SINGS WINNERS OF THE READER'S DIGEST POLL, Dot DLP 3667 mono/DLP 25667 stereo.  This vinyl Lp dates about October, 1965.

This Lp is probably the nadir of Boone's album sales; it's especially difficult to locate a copy, and worse (rarer) in stereo.  Boone attempted to change his commercial style in early 1963, softening his choices and themes with more sedate middle-of-the-road easy listening albums, beginning with his February, 1963 Lp, DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES AND OTHER GREAT MOVIE THEMES, Dot DLP 3504/25504, and this Lp marks the end of that trail in his career.

Track list:
side one--
You'll Never Walk Alone
Misty
Moonlight Serenade
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Tonight
Night and Day
side two--
Tea for Two
All The Things You Are
I Left My Heart in San Francisco
We Gaze on Tomorrow
As Time Goes By
Ol' Man River

Produced by Randy Wood.  Arranged by Pete King; the orchestra is big and lush, emphasizing a large string section, harps, flutes, woodwinds, muted piano, muted horns.  Biggest surprise on the Lp is his jazzy Big Band uptempo version of "Ol' Man River," the best track on the Lp.  At the time of this release, the Billboard Top 150 Lp chart acts were the Beatles' HELP, Sonny & Cher, soundtracks THE SOUND OF MUSIC, MY FAIR LADY, and MARY POPPINS, Ramsey Lewis THE IN CROWD, and Barbra Streisand's MY NAME IS BARBRA (per the 10/30/65 chart), so Boone's sedate album here is right in the bullseye ring for commercial album styles at the time.

"We Gaze On Tomorrow" shows songwriting credit to "Boone/King"; however, the tune/music is the "Greensleeves" old chestnut with new lyrics.

Three and a half stars.  Stereo copies on this can be almost impossible.


title: Pat Boone croons the pre-World War II Songbook as Maltshop Rock 'n Roll

text:
Pat Boone, MEMORIES, Dot Records DLP 3748 mono/DLP 25748 stereo.  Vinyl Lp dates about September, 1966.

Track list:
side one--
Memories
Are You Lonesome Tonight
I Love You So Much It Hurts
Does Your Heart Beat for Me
Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland
Till Then
side two--
It Seems Like Yesterday
Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day
Silver Moon
Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall
The Waltz You Saved For Me
Drifiting and Dreaming

Well, if you're a Bing Crosby fan, then you know "Where The Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day," being a signature Bing Crosby (or rival crooner Russ Columbo) hit from 1932-1933.  The theme of this album is 20-40 year old oldies, dating from 1910-1948, the oldest being "Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland" (1910), and the newest a 1948 country song, "I Love You So Much It Hurts Me".  Associated artists on these songs are the Mills Brothers, Crosby/Columbo, Paul Whiteman Orchestra, Jimmy Wakely, Wayne King Orchestra, Ella Fitzgerald/Ink Spots, etc....

Sound on the Lp, however, is a continuation of Boone's restrained 1957+ "Love Letters in the Sand" rock 'n roll groove with a medium beat, strings, flutes, a Santo & Johnny guitar sound, and Billy Vaughn's signature alto saxes' instrumental breaks (think Abba's "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do...."), although the banner on the top of the album credits "Arranged and Conducted by Ernie Freeman."  Boone croons three slow ballads, while the other nine tracks on the Lp are in his sedate rocker rhythm late '50s style.

The album is consistent throughout with no jarring stylistic changes from being assembled from various sessions and producers' styles.  None of the tracks were used as 45 singles' tracks.


title: Deliciously Miserable Chirping

text:
The 10" Lp (and 2 pocket EP 45 RPM record set) date about April, 1954.  Beweeve it or else, this album charted on Billboard's Classical album charts (such as they were at the time) on 5/15/54 and at position #15 on 5/29/54.  This set dates when there may have been a four pocket 78 album set, but I've never seen nor heard any mention of it on a 78 RPM format.

The album first appeared (to my knowledge) on a 10" Lp, A FLORENCE! FOSTER!! JENKINS!!! RECITAL!!!! on RCA/Victor LM 7000, and, believe it or not, as a "45 Extended Play" album, a 2-EP pocket set of 45 RPM records, as RCA/Victor ERBT-7000--yes, RCA put classical albums on 45s, if you can believe it. Both of those sets date from 1954; at one point I held the 10" Lp in my greedy paws, but couldn't talk the owner out of that album; I netted the 2-pocket EP version. If there was a 78 RPM book album of this set, I haven't yet heard of it. The oddball 45 album set has liner notes on the inner cover which were edited off my Lp reissue set; when the Lp version was spread out into a 12" Lp in the '62 version, RCA edited off "Serenata Mexicana" by McMoon on side one (I believe restored to the CD) and devoted side two to "FAUST" IN ENGLISH (GOUNOD), as by Jenny Williams and Thomas Burns. The two missing paragraphs mention that FFJ's Carnegie Hall performance grossed $6,000, at tickets priced $2.50 each, sold out weeks in advance.

Put out on the RCA Red Seal classical series.  This album was reissued and slightly abridged as THE GLORY OF THE HUMAN VOICE??? on 12" Lp in 1962.


title: An album for suburban '50s adults after hours

text:
SONGS BY DOROTHY COLLINS, Coral Records CRL 57106 mono.  Lp dates January, 1957.

Track list:
side one--
Sometimes I'm Happy
Out of this World
You Took Advantage of Me
Here I Am In Love Again
I See Your Face Before Me
The Sky Fell Down
side two--
When Your Lover Has Gone
But Not For Me
Come Rain or Come Shine
Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry
It Never Entered My Mind
The Lady's In Love with You

Barney Kessel trio backs Dorothy on this, with Kessel on lead smokey bar jazz guitar, a bass, and drums/percussion guy using brushes, occasionally switching to what sounds like a vibraphone.  Sound is small combo vocal jazz, and while Dorothy's Coral singles' releases were aimed maltshop white rock 'n roll (she played second banana, hit wise, to Teresa Brewer's airhead fluffy pop singles throughout her tenure with the label), Collins really puts in her white chick vocal jazz chops on this album.  What was disconcerting, though, while listening to the Lp and reading the liner notes, was a feeling I'd heard a lot of what's on this Lp by someone else.  So I had to look it up and check my other like jazz/pop albums:  this Lp sounds very much inspired by Julie London's [[ASIN:B000FHBNDQ Julie Is Her Name]] Liberty LRP 3006/LST 7027 album from December, 1955, about a year previously.  You might recall, if you're a lounge jazz kinda fan of the great boozy mistress-next-bar diva Julie London, that London got a surprise hit with "Cry Me A River," then Liberty got a shot of her for the album cover shot and put out a GREAT small combo album to exploit that song.  On this Collins's Lp, you get much the same intimate feeling that suggests Coral went after the same market.

If derivative, this album works, although Collins on this set comes across as one's sultry mom after hours putting the kid(s) to bed with the lights turned down low, while Julie London's [[ASIN:B000FHBNDQ Julie Is Her Name]] runs more as the expensive mistress you probably never could afford in the seedier noir parts of '50s Los Angeles when Jack Webb kept the city's underworld at bay.

Three tracks from this album were sampled in Dorothy Collins's UK comp, [[ASIN:B0030MNR8W Get Happy - Star Of Television's 'Your Hit Parade' [ORIGINAL RECORDINGS REMASTERED] 2CD SET]], which mostly covers her singles' output:  "When Your Lover Has Gone," "Out Of This World," and "I See Your Face Before Me," tracks #7, 19, and 25, respectively, on that 2CD set.


title: Incredibly Strange Welkosian 1976 drug muzak!

text:
Bob Ralston, FEELINGS, Ranwood Records R-8158 (Teleklew Productions, Inc.).  Back Lp cover liner notes put the date at 1976.

Track list:
side one--
Feelings
Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree
Deep Purple
Love Will Keep Us Together
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
The Entertainer
side two--
Rhinestone Cowboy
The Way We Were
The Hustle
Send in the Clowns
Mandy
Bach:  Joy

In a nutshell, goofball, kitschy, wunnerful, wunnerful bizarro keyboard instrumentals of songs best (?) remembered by Johnny Carver, er, Tony Orlando & Dawn; Elton John; the Captain & Tennille; Babs Streisand; Judy Collins (or Frank Sinatra?); Barry Manilow; Glen Campbell, and all of it following that DETESTABLE radioactive casino lounge nauseating standard, "Feelings."

Bob Ralston plays, per the back cover liner notes, fourteen instruments.  He's backed by "Four of Bob's colleagues from the Welk Show...," guitarist Neil Levang, bassist Richard Maloof, arranger Bob Smale, and drummer(s) Doug Smart and Earl Palmer.

Bob goes to town alternating from pianos to organs to orchestra bells to bell tree to celesta to maracas....  If you're a fan of Moog, electric organ, and strange instrumental albums, this Lp is a blast!  It's the combination of skating rink organ easy listening style with synthesizer work, the Welk penchant for "sweet" big band kitsch, and the album accommodating the rock and disco polyester-era music of the mid-'70s that makes this Lp so druggy music addictive, the audio equivalent of opium-based nirvana.

Rack it right next to your space-age Moog, Dick Hyman, Moog Cookbook, Perrey & Kingsley, and Hugo Montenegro experimental electronic sounds.


title: If you fondly remember miniskirts, Black Panthers, the SDS, and the filthy, filthy '60s

text:
Less gleefully apocalyptic than Jack Van Impe's MARKED FOR DEATH Lp, but largely most of the same content and shock warnings.  Running time on the Lp is a little over 60 minutes.  No music, all preaching.

It shares in common with Van Impe's MARKED FOR DEATH [[ASIN:B00SQ1Q0X6 Marked For Death: Can America Survive? [LP record]]] horror scenario:  homosexuals, abortion, promiscuous young women, miniskirts, SDS students, Black Panthers, White Panthers, shock references to communist mushroom clouds, anti-patriotic protest songs, arch warnings about acid rock, rock music references (not much of that, and not specific, excepting for one brief filthy, filthy mention of the Beatles on side two),...  The sermon is built up around references to (the later payoff: Patsy Cline, when he weaves it all together) a young woman singer who found Jesus, but fell from grace.  He mentions her performing shows while sitting in a wheelchair with a cast, and towards the end he returns to tie up the story, Patsy Cline dying, and works in his connection to her via his first cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis.  The Patsy Cline going to h*** story in her fallen state conflates her disfiguring car accident in the early '60s and her 1957 brief trip up the charts with "Walkin' After Midnight," when she was recording 4-Star publishing dross on a contract restricting her to 2nd-3rd rate songs controlled by her recording contract (her 1961 hits on Decca came after that contract lapsed).

Based on the common references between this sermon and Jack Van Impe's similar diatribes on his album, methinks there was some kind of handy sermon clearing house bibliography source for phrases and pop culture references--they share much the same style and formula, excepting for the personal theatrical flourishes (Swaggart:  more tearfully presented; Van Impe, more Soviet SS-9 radioactive doom).  Swaggart employs the added "uh!" extra Pentacostal syllable endings on his word use with considerable frequency, while Van Impe liked Spiro Agnew-esque word alliteration more -- "nattering nabobs of negativity" and all that jazz.

Funny thing about listening to this album was the feeling that the more things change, the more they stay the same; the politics evident in the meat of these presentations hasn't changed in more than forty years.


title: A Billy Strange generic rock guitar album in disguise, with a picture of Lloyd Thaxton on the cover slick

text:
LLOYD THAXTON PRESENTS ... Decca DL 4594 mono.  Stereo copy would be DL 74594.  Lp dates November, 1964.

Contents:
Side one--
Chug-A-Lug/My Boy Lollipop/Slow Slauson/C'Mon and Swim/Because He Loves to Dance the Watusi/House of the Rising Sun Ska
Side two--
The Tennessee Ska/A Hard Day's Night/Doin' the Shuk/Doo Wah Diddy Diddy/La Ska La Bamba/Luci-Watusi

This is a Billy Strange (guitar guy, session musician more or less same sound/expertise as Glen Campbell, Los Angeles pop/rock early '60s) who had loads of releases doing much the same music on the GNP-Crescendo label in the mid-'60s.  Billy Strange's guitar is the most prominent lead voice on these (mostly) instrumentals, occasionally supplanted by a tenor saxophonist, and five tracks feature a female vocal group, The Flowers, who are a generic white girl group doing mostly backing vocal work behind the lead guitar.

Sound is akin to generic soundalike budget bin albums doing cover versions of period hits, but here presented in more professionally polished if forgettable performances.  This album is a kind of background instrumental teenage dance album with Lloyd Thaxton's name and cover photo with all white teenagers in dance poses on the front cover slick.

From the song titles, you get the cover songs borrowed from Roger Miller, Beatles, Richie Valens, Manfred Mann, etc..., with about a half and half ratio of recognizeable others' hits and filler not hard-rock instrumentals with made up titles.


title: The high voice of an angel, Walter Raim's guitar work, string bass, and a very pretty, simple album

text:
Orriel Smith, A VOICE IN THE WIND, Columbia CL 2124 (mono)/CS 8924 (stereo).  This vinyl Lp dates January-February, 1964.  A stereo copy with a red/black "special markets" label and release number CSP 8924 is an early '70s budget reissue.

Track list:
side one--
The Deceived Girl/Down by the Glenside/When I Was Single/Over tthe Hills/Been on This Train/White Curtains
side two--
Black is the Color/Chilly Winds/Take My Mother Home/Geordie/The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face/Red Rosy Bush

Running time on the album is about 36:20.

Credits show:  "Arranged and Conducted by Walter Raim" and "Produced by Bobby Scott and Bill Randle."  Playback on this mono vinyl Lp (two-eye Columbia label with black printing at the bottom) is vocal, acoustic guitar (apparently Walter Raim), and an acoustic slap bass.  There's a lot of Joan Baez influence on this album, though Orriel sings in a higher register, and Walter Raim's guitar has some very decent acoustic work and fills.  The album was issued just as white "folk" commercial music had peaked and was fading, just before the Beatles were about to explode.  Commercial folk music at the time was split into 1) frat white boy college & nightclub comic pop, the Kingston Trio, Brothers Four, The Three D's, the abysmally lousy Limelighters, etc..., 2) sweet, sugary, vapid, extra smiley choral with sweetie-pie airhead blonde accent groups veering towards children's music WASP-y Manifest Destiny-esque Western themes like the New Christy Minstrels and cotton candy Serendipity Singers, 3) NY Greenwich Village gritty urban folk mining European vulgar (as in common, not bad taste, but WASP John Birch paranoid anti-commie critics were having conniption fits...) acts like Dylan, Baez, Phil Ochs, Peter Paul & Mary, Woody Guthrie, Judy Collins, Pete Seeger, The Clancey Brothers, ...and this Orriel Smith pretty album, when she was 18 years old.  Folk, the campfire vapid hootenanny forgettable bubblegum stuff, was just about played out and waiting for Dylan's ANOTHER SIDE album to start driving the final nails into acts like THE NEW CHRISTY MINSTRELS SING AND PLAY COWBOYS AND INDIANS fluff (really, check out the cover of that NCM album--Indian women in buckskins were blondes with dark roots, wore pantyhose???).

Like Bob Dylan's first few Columbia albums recorded on the cheap (Dylan, mouth harp, his own pungent rural-crude sounding guitar work), Orriel's Lp here is such a sparse little piece of pretty folky art that the mono might be preferable to the stereo copy, which would sound somewhat empty.


title: A great indie/private press country rock album from 1973 by a Canadian Lamanite band in Nashville

text:
Billy Thunderkloud & the Chieftones, ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT, Superior Records SR 103. Vinyl Lp.

Back cover lists Buddy Lee Management, Attractions Inc., while the label producer credit states "Produced by Duane Allen."  The record label shows a 1973 date, flat silver-grey label with black printing, while the album cover states 1974.  This appears/sounds to be a professional recording, but a private press indie, with "Indi/Kloud Productions, LTD" in the top right of the front cover.  I've seen Billy Thunderkloud's albums around, usually filed with '70s rock acts, and found some nice ones to satisfy my vinyl junkie curiosity while flipping through BYU's LAMANITE GENERATION [[ASIN:B00YTWM7H4 Lamanite Generation]], BYU's YOUNG AMBASSADORS pop covers' private press Lps, Arliene Nofchissey's Lps with Stan Bronson and a Chief Dan George [[ASIN:B00BJDODKK Proud Earth- Chief Dan George - LP (1975)]] on a Provo, Utah label, and the usual assortment of Mario Lanza casino lounge RCA albums by Utah/Las Vegas crooner Rouvann.  It surprised to see Nashville credits on Billy Thunderkloud's work.  My copy sports an autograph to "Judd" in pen, too!  This was a working band, and GOOD, too!

Track list:
side one--
Crazy Horse
Battle Hymn of the Republic
All Through the Night
Put A Little Love In Your Heart
Thinking About You
side two--
Somewhere in the Wee Small Hours
Open Up Your Heart
Little Arrows
Testament
Running Bear

Sound is stereo, Vocals, drums, bass centered.  Alternating on either speaker are electric and acoustic guitar(s), flute, piano left, horns and a gospel piano sound on "Testament," and an uncredited but very obvious female backing vocal group on all tracks.  Style on the Lp runs from early '70s Elvis country, with more than a hint of Conway Twitty, Charlie Rich, and a rockier Waylon Jennings vocal feeling.  Songs:  "Battle Hymn of the Republic" is a definite nod to Elvis.  "Little Arrows" was a Leapy Lee hit on Decca, and "Running Bear" dates back to 1960, but I think the version here follows Sonny James's country hit on Capitol.  Of the three Lps I have on Billy Thunkerkloud, this is the most rock-y sounding; the two 20th Century Lps are solidly country, though the best of them the first, OFF THE RESERVATION.

45s that I know of:

20th Century-Fox--
2116  When Love Is Right/You Touched My Life
2164  Kick the Can/I'm Having A Party
2181  What Time of Day/When Love Is Right  (May, 1975)
2239  Pledging My Love/I Will Love You Until I Die (October, 1975)

Polydor Records--
14321  Indian Nation/I'm Going Right to Where I Do Wrong (May, 1976)
14338  Try A Little Tenderness/Natural Feelin'
14362  It's Alright/The Wanderer (November, 1976)
14383  Let Me Be Your Man/100 Years From Now
14412  Oklahoma Wind/ (flip???)
14449  Let Me Love You/My Lady (January, 1978)


title: Apples or Onions:  A great Utah Lamanite album from Provo by Arliene Nofchissey, with narrations by Chief Dan George

text:
PROUD EARTH, Arliene Nofchissey (Williams) and Rich Brosseau, Salt City Records SC-60 Lp stereo.  Narrations by Chief Dan George.  Lp dates a 1975 copyright, though release date is probably early-mid-1976 based on the Grammy nomination for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording (John Hartford's Lp, MARK TWANG, won the award).  Salt City Records was Stan Bronson's label out of Provo, Utah, and his publishing, Blanding Publishing Company.

Songs (songwriter credits)
side one--
Chief's Lament (Arliene Nofchissey Williams)
Rhymes and Reasons (John Denver)
Kindred Spirit (Allen and Leonie Hunt)
Here Is Heaven, Here Is Home (Allen and Leonie Hunt)
Moentimmi (Arliene Nofchissey Williams)
side two--
Proud Earth (Arliene Nofchissey Williams)
Canyons (Stan Bronson)
Spring [from "Season Suite"]  (John Denver, Mike Taylor, Dick Kniss)
The Eagle and the Hawk (John Denver and Mike Taylor)
Mountain Air (Allen and Leonie Hunt)

The Lp cover is a single pocket gatefold, with lyrics and credits printed inside.  Chief Dan George narrates several introductions and segues in and at the end of the songs, but the vocals for the most part are Arliene Nofchissey, with Rich Brosseau listed on five of the selections.  Credits on the album include "Indian singing and effect, John Rainer, Carnes Burson," the Carnes Burson of the BYU group, THE LAMANITE GENERATION, in the early-mid-70s.  The "Indian Children Singers..." list four of Arliene's children or relatives, Carol Mason, and Dollie and Cimball Dosela.  Most of the music recording lists recorded at Fred Carter, Jr. Recording Studios in Nashville, with "Narratives and special effects recorded..."  in Provo, Utah.

It's a beautiful album; Arliene has a gorgeous voice, and the material generally superb.  I took a star off (4/5) due to the marketing exaggeration on this Lp suggesting it was centered on Chief Dan George, who acts as narrator (speaking voice, heavily echoed, no singing) on maybe half the album tracks, albeit briefly.

Arliene Nofchissey first appears on record on Stan Bronson's Mormon cowboy (mono; topical cowboy [Marty Robbins-like] Western songs based on southern Utah around Blanding) Lp from 1966, DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN, on Bronson & Cooper BCL 1001, and then with the Lamanite Generation guitar guy, Carnes Burson, on a 1968-70 Lp, GO MY SON, on Blue Eagle Records BE-6840 (Brigham Young University, Utah).

Several of the songs on this album were composed by mountain folkies Allen and Leonie Hunt, who later put out a vinyl Lp in 1978, SKIES I HAVEN'T FLOWN, on Salt City SC-80 Lp, [[ASIN:B003NX1Q0O Skies I Haven't Flown]].  For discography info on the Salt City record label, there was also a private press Lp, DARWIN JONES, on SCI-50, Produced by Stan Bronson, from 1974, and JOHN SHERIDAN FROM THE HEART [[ASIN:B00I1KD1JI from the heart LP]], SC-70.


title: Apples or Onions:  A 1978 Provo, Utah private press soft mountain folk album on Stan Bronson's Salt City record label

text:
THE NEXT OF KIN for Mikaela, Wendy, Darren and ...Nikki, SKIES I HAVEN'T FLOWN, Salt City Records SC-80 Lp.  Lp dates 1978, based out of Provo, Utah, via Stan Bronson's label and his Blanding Publishing Co.

Track list:
side one--
Morningrise/A Woman's Now/Faces and Places/Captive Son/Joe's Song
side two--
Cradle of My Home/I'd Have Known/If I Had No/End of a Summer Day/Skies I Haven't Flown

The Next of Kin are Allen and Leonie Hunt, from Mountlake Terrace, Washington.

The sound of this vinyl Lp is very soft John Denver-y relaxed folk, instrumentally by Allen Hunt on vocals and 12/6 string guitars; Leonie Hunt on vocals and tenor banjo; Stan Bronson on 6 string guitar; Doug Bright on 6 string guitar, banjo, boss fiddle, mandolin, and violin; and Sharon Reed Jones on flute.  All the songs are originals, showing Stan Bronson's Blanding Publishing Co. copyright.  Vocally both are a little rough, but it adds to the charm of a local private press album originally sold through LDS/Mormon bookstores and after live performances.

Stan Bronson is a private press Utah fixture from the late '60s and into the late '70s, first appearing on record in 1966 on a mono Lp, DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN, on Bronson & Cooper BCL 1001, a Mormon cowboy ballads Lp, as well as his 1969-70 Lp, DADDY BIG BOOTS AND THE SONG JOOK WON GIRLS, B&C 1002 stereo Lp, and several LDS seminary music albums (for youth) like A BETTER WAY, with Arliene Nofchissey.  Four songs written by Allen and Leonie Hunt appear on a previous Salt City album, PROUD EARTH, SC-60, by Chief Dan George, Arliene Nofchissey, and Rick Brosseau

Lyrics to all the songs on this SKIES I HAVEN'T FLOWN are listed on the back cover of the Lp

For further discography information about Salt City Records:  DARWIN JONES, Salt City SCI-50, dates 1974, also produced by Stan Bronson, also JOHN SHERIDAN FROM THE HEART [[ASIN:B00I1KD1JI from the heart LP]], SC-70.


title: Several years before Weird Al polka'd '80s pop, Myron Floren made accordion pop cool

text:
Myron Floren, DISCO POLKA, GRT-8026.  Back cover states 1977.  This Lp was a followup to Myron Floren, THE NASHVILLE SESSIONS, GRT-8019, also dating from 1977.  (Meaning Myron Floren took on country music first, then disco.  That took guts!)  Lp dates late 1977/early 1978 release.

Track list:
side one--
Clarinet Disco-Polka
(Medley) How High the Moon-The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise
The Double Eagle Disco-Polka
(Medley) Love is Blue-Lover's Concerto
side two--
Beer Barrel Polka
(Medley) I Want A Girl (Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad)-Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie
Paloma Blanca
The Cotton-Eyed Joe Disco-Polka
Laughing Polka Disco-Style

Produced by Gary S. Paxton, excepting "Beer Barrel Polka" produced by Don Tweedy

Back cover states you could also get this "Also available on GRT Music Tapes."  (8-tracks, anyone???)  Back cover also shows recorded in Nashville, TN, which makes this a kinda country music-polka disco ("whew, er, pew?") album.  Nearest approximation I've ever encountered to that genre mashup was Gordon Terry's DISCO COUNTRY album on Plantation Records, also dating 1977 (Lp on that one is colored wax).

Sound on the Lp:  Floren's accordion is the featured instrument (natch'), horns, saxes, synth strings, the usual mish-mash of heavily accented drums and percussive instruments (lots of those hand-held shakers full of scritchy-scritchy sound, like gravel in your car's hubcaps, too) including bongos of various sizes, and a really creamy vanilla all female chorus mooning and crooning lots and lots of "LA-LA-LA-LA-LA" to the music, and almost all the tracks feature a disco percussion/horn breakdown series of solos bridging the songs' choruses, always with the ubiquitous drum and high hat cymbals click-click-clicking to the beat.  The album cover has no specific information on the sidemen used for this project, though.  Well, stylistically, this vinyl Lp sounds like it borrows from Latino disco-flavored dance music, beer hall polkas, and more than a lot of those '70s vanilla Ray Conniff Singers' albums; the Lp favors the LOVE BOAT disco flavor, not the Donna Summer tear-off-your-clothes dance feel.  At times I couldn't make up my mind if the tracks favored either Mariachi Music or Nordic alpine Octoberfest music with Utah's Horst Fidel (or Arthur Brogli's polka backing on his Utah Swiss yodelling albums).


title: Private press adult contempory album from 1979 Dallas, Texas

text:
Sally Townes, JUST THE WAY YOU ARE, KRC Records SLP 27901.

Track list:
side one--
The Way We Were
Just the Way You Are
Even Though*
Misty
I Can See Clearly Now
side two--
Bright Eyes*
Real to You*
Slow Burning Candle*
Slime On/Shine On*

* Townes's original compositions.

This is a private press album, four cover songs and five self-penned/published original songs.  She performs solo, accompanying herself on side one with a Fender Rhodes keyboard; side two features her, her keyboard work, and three members of a studio (?) band, Danny Grogan on Bass, Mike Collier on percussion/drums, Adam Palma on electric guitar.  Vocally, she sounds much like Olivia Newton-John --breathy,whispery, a "head" voice, narrow vocal range--, but with a bit of a black sweet soul/r&b style of the pre-disco era, a bit like Minnie Riperton.

The Lp lists KRC Records located in Dallas, Texas.  Liner notes state bio information:  "...At the age of five she began playing the piano.  During the folk music era she switched to guitar, but went back to the keyboard in 1969 when she started playing professionally full time. ...moved back to Texas to study music at North Texas State University...1977...."  Based on the release number as a date code, I think this Lp dates 1979.  The liner notes show that side one was recorded at Autumn Sound; side two at Highgrove House, in Dallas, Texas.  Phil York gets a "Special Thanks."

Sound is solo vocals with programmed Fender Rhodes keyboard and synth percussion on side one, small band combo on the second side.  The album style is more or less adult contemporary for the later 1970s, based on cover songs (Streisand, Billy Joel, Mathis, Johnny Nash) and the originals are in the same groove.


title: A Denver "sweet" jazz dance orchestra from the San Marco Dining Room, a private press album from 1974-ish

text:
Art Gow & The Brown Palace Orchestra, Century Records 42494.  Lp dates about 1974 or so.  Century Records was a private press/vanity press label run by the Keysor family, out of Saugus, California, from about 1956-1975.  The label is best/most known for specializing in field recordings of high school and college (marching) bands, choirs, lots of Utah school concerts, and oodles of LDS-themed albums, notably two Jessie Evans Smith albums in 1956 and 1959 (SACRED SONGS and ON TEMPLE SQUARE, respectively, reissued on Covenant Records in Salt Lake City, circa November, 1970), comprising the songs of A.W. "Mickey" Hart.  Jessie Evans Smith was the wife of Joseph Fielding Smith, who became the LDS prophet in early '70 after the death of David O. McKay.

Track list:
side one--
San Marco Serenade
That Old Black Magic
It's Impossible
It's Nice to See You at the Brown
Alley Cat
Tie A Yellow Ribbon
Autumn Leaves
side two--
In the Mood
Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
Sugar Blues
Medley:  An Evening At The Brown/Sophisticated Lady
Chicken Feathers

Personnel on this are Art Gow, Ralph Ludi, Joe Marcus, Betty Perry (chick singer with the band), Eddie Kuehler, Jim Hickerson, Phil Nelson, Jim Romaine, Ozzie Carlson, Tass Harris, Jack Fredericksen.

Overall sound on the album is AA-ball, dance orchestra music with a light swing, style ranges from big band "sweet" sound of maybe Lawrence Welk to lighter Glenn Miller songs.  Perusing the liner notes, references to the various members drop name bands like Clyde Lucas, Ferdie Grofe' Orchestra, KLZ and Milton Shrednik's KOA staff orchestra (Denver radio, I presume), Russ Morgan, Charlie Barnett, Woody Herman, Claude Thornhill, Sam Donohue, Artie Shaw, and Gene Krupa.  Several of the sidemen have jobs as public school teachers, a private music teacher, staff at Denver University, and Joe Marcus owns/owned his own music store.

Latest song on the album is their version of "Tie A Yellow Ribbon ('round the Old Oak Tree)," which dates this record after that February, 1973 hit by Tony Orlando & Dawn (pop) or Johnny Carver (c&w).  Most modern sounding track, a bit of AA-league funky groove soul, is "Chicken Feathers," the final cut on the Lp.


title: Apples or Onions:  A great BYU Utah private press album from 1974 by the Lamanite Generation.

text:
HOO, BOY!  This a great album!  It comes out of BYU, circa 1974.  Sound is a kind of pop/rock band sound with Carnes Burson's electric guitar work and songs written by Arliene Nofchissey ("Go My Son" and "I Walk In Beauty" on this Lp; she's not on this album, vocally), Carnes Burson, and Janie Thompson, and a AA-ball semi-pro reading of "You Gave My A Mountain," by Marty Robbins (or Frankie Laine's easy listening cover version, if you prefer).  Fun song is "Big Mouth Frog."  The Lamanite Generation was founded via Janie Thompson of the BYU theater and music departments, who was recruited from SoCal by W. Cleon Skousen (THE NAKED COMMNUIST and all that paranoid Cold War John Birch Society literature) at the BYU Religion Department.  Janie Thompson also created/updated the Brigham Young University Singers as The Young Ambassadors/BYU Sounds of Freedom as an alternative pop music group to counter 1969+ eeevil rock music by the Beatles, 'Stones, and '60s psychedelia generally.  The Young Ambassadors/BYU Sounds of Freedom were patterned about the Los Angeles pop group, The Young Americans, and Up With People.  (See also The Grand Land Singers, which were founded as a copy of The Young Ambassadors in Southern California; there's a lot of Up With People songs popping up in both acts' repertoires.)  Back cover liner notes, "...The program also includes Polynesian and Mexican students, and the word 'Lamanite' is used to describe all three cultures."

side one--
Hello To You/Everybody's Reachin' Out For Someone/You Gave Me A Mountain/Cancion Mexpecia - La Malaguena/The Big Mouth Frog/Singing Along Together
side two--
The Mountains Cry Out/Navajo Baby/Friendship Fire/Ancient Days - Go My Son/I Walk In Beauty/The Lord's Prayer

If you're into groovy Twilight Zone strange-OH! Outsider Music, this is a great album.  Also this one from '76: [[ASIN:B000PH8ILG Lamanite Generation]]

Carnes Burson and Arliene Nofchissey did a GREAT moody American Indian album out of BYU, GO MY SON [[ASIN:B00NBO9FW6 Go My Son - Arliene Nofchissey & Carnes Burson]], about 1968-ish.  Arliene Nofchissey first appears on record in a 1966 album out of southern Utah, a Mormon-Cowboy themed album by Stan Bronson, DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN Bronson & Cooper BCL-1001.


title: A 20-song set of cover songs by Golden Throat Kathie Lee Gifford, a vocal talent between Anita Bryant and early Amy Grant

text:
Kathie Lee Gifford, SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY, Heartland Records HL-2011 (Warner Special Products mail order album). Lp/CD/Cassette dates March, 1993.  Price list was $12.98 for two cassettes, $12.98 for 2-Lp set (in a single pocket album cover), and $16.98 for the CD, plus $2.50 postage charge.  This album is literally twice the value of the Warner 48084 CD, SENTIMENTAL, which was sold (and charted a bit in Billboard on both the Top Pop Albums 200-position chart, and the Heatseekers new artist album chart) via regular retail distribution, at $15.98 CD list.

Kathie Lee (Epstein/Johnson/Gifford) sings pre-sold standards from the '40s and '50s pop era. Tracks on this 20-song set feature a rhythm section consisting of piano, muted guitar(s), drum kit, and subdued background backing vocals, overlaid with strings. This set is produced by Nashville's Jim Ed Norman, most known for his credits on late '70s/early '80s Anne Murray and Crystal Gayle albums.

All twenty songs on the set play at much the same rhythm and have the same feel; Kathie Lee croons each song sweetly, and the material fits her vocal range.

Track list:
side one--
Sentimental Journey/Smile/Hey There/The Very Thought of You/If I Give My Heart to You
side two--
Don't Get Around Much Anymore/Over the Rainbow/There, I've Said It Again/That's All/It's All in the Game
side three--
When I Fall in Love/I Don't Know Why (I Just Do)/My Romance/True Love/The Rose
side four--
It Had to Be You/(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons/You Belong to Me/That Sunday, That Summer/Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)

If you're a fan of TV star Kathie Lee and her professional beginnings in the '70s as a Christian Contemporary artist (CCM) when Evie Tornquist was the biggest act of the pre-Amy Grant genre, you'll appreciate this album set of songs harking back to Vaughn Monroe, Rosemary Clooney, Kitty Kallen, Jo Stafford, and Doris Day. An edited version of this album was sold as Warner Bros. 45084 CD and Cassette, featuring only half this album's 20 songs. In one form or other, this set sold approximately 120,000 copies.


title: Milksop

text:
I thought when I found this buried with some '50s GREAT Webb Pierce Lps in the Decca DL 8800 series albums (not long after, Decca ran out of pop Lp numbers --DL 9000s were soundtracks-- and restarted the Lp releases at DL 4000s), I had a rock 'n roll album, IF it came outta Nashville with all the guitar pickers working there.  No, this is New York's worse-than-anemic co-opt of the Every Brothers in orchestra pop, one of those East Coast Big Apple-centric "wow, this rock 'n roll bop kiddie stuff is SO BAD let's show everyone how BAD it is!" cash-in productions.  (A prime example of a deliberately BAD in-your-face album spoofing rock 'n roll conventions from Decca at the time is Jerry Fielding's SWINGIN' IN HI FI - ROCK 'N ROLL MATRICULATES, Decca DL 8371.  The cover art and liner notes on that album say it all.)

THE KALIN TWINS, Decca DL 8812 (Lp dates November, 1958, mono only), features liner notes which state this is more or less a period singles' comp. Insipid New York "Golly, Gee, Father, Mother, I like milk, let's all go to the maltshop for a sock hop, hang out with the gang..." AWFUL, JUST AWFUL milk-vanilla "rock 'n roll." Sheesh! Back cover of the Lp has several thumbnail plugs:  Bill Haley, DL 8775; Buddy Holly, DL 8707; Bobby Helms, DL 8638; Billy Ward and the Dominoes, DL 8621; ROCK PRETTY BABY, DL 8429; SUMMER LOVE, DL 8714; The Four Aces, DL 8567; Bill Haley, DL 8692, DL 8345, DL 8569; Warren Covington and the Commanders' TEENAGE HOP, DL 8577; Jack Pleis and Owen Bradley's BANDSTAND HOP, DL 8724.

Playback sound is the Jack Pleis orchestra, has a backing vocal WHITE chorus (the female vocals are especially putrid), sax solo(s), just horrible white pop.  The sound style plays like a Welkosian knockoff of Billy Vaughn's ork backing on all those Pat Boone post-'57 recordings, but Billy Vaughn could "cook" an r&b sound and put some blues' spirit on Dot's releases.

Track list (referenced to the 45 singles' tracks):
side one--
When (30642)
Cool (30868)
School Bell Dream
Walkin' to School (30552)
The Spider and the Fly
Three O'Clock Thrill (30642)
side two--
Forget Me Not (30745)
Dream of Me (30745)
You Mean the World to Me (31220)
Tag-A-Long
Clickety-Clack
Jumpin' Jack (30552)  -- best track on the Lp, a formula rocker

If you read the Lp liner notes, you'll catch that four tracks feature songwriting credits to the Kalins, which makes them self-composed mechanical royalties' filler--make up your own song(s), get a cut/credit against the recording costs.  The songs are "Walkin' to School," "The Spider and the Fly," "Tag-A-Long," and "Clickety Clack" showing songwriting credit "Herbie & Hal Kalin."  The filler "School Bell Dream" songwriting credit shows "Billy Dawn Smith-William Miller."

45 singles' discography for your bland baby food music liquid diet edification:
Decca
30552  Jumpin' Jack/Walkin' to School  (January, 1958)
30642  When/Three O'Clock Thrill
30745  Forget Me Not/Dream of Me
30807  It's Only the Beginning/Oh!  My Goodness
30868  When I Look in the Mirror/Cool
30911  Sweet Sugar Lips/Moody
30977  Why Don't You Believe Me/The Meaning of the Blues
31064  Chicken Thief/Loneliness
31111  Blue, Blue Town/True to You
31169  Zing!  Went the Strings of My Heart/No Money Can Buy
31220  Momma-Poppa/You Mean the World to Me
31286  Bubbles/One More Time
31410  Trouble/Picture of You (August, 1962)

Record collector price guides put this up in the $100 collectible range, which is an "OUCH!" when you get around to playing it.  As a "thing" (collectible), three stars, but musically, one and-a-half stars.


title: The Amazing Criswell Predicts!!!

text:
I was binging on '50s silly sci fi movies, having watched a MysteryScience3000 offering on a local TV affiliate (same channel that serially airs old LowRents Welk gawdawful TV shows), and watched ED WOOD [[ASIN:B0000VD04M Ed Wood (Special Edition)]] and PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (subtitle:  GRAVE ROBBERS FROM OUTER SPACE) [[ASIN:6305760403 Plan 9 From Outer Space]] again after this album came in, and I caught onto the same vibe in both this MARKED FOR DEATH Lp and Criswell's narration about Solaranite "doomsday bomb" that will explode sunlight and the Universe....  Jack Van Impe also picks up on Criswell's alliteration presentation style on this Lp.

About the playback on this Lp:  Total running time is 39:25; Side one cuts off abruptly about 20:48 and side two runs the balance.  This album is a live "talky" album from a sermon delivered at Landmark Baptist Temple, at Baptist Bible College, and apparently also broadcast (as with other recordings) on a radio show, Landmark Hour.  This album was pressed by "Artists Records" and bears what seems like an enigmatic release number, #700113, from Cincinnati, Ohio.  The label, printing, and release number looked familiar, and I had an "Ah...HA!" moment when I compared it to my copy of Frank Garlock's 1971 2 Lp recording, THE BIG BEAT, A ROCK BLAST, which is Artists Records 710526 [[ASIN:B008M1AR3Y The Big Beat - A Rock Blast]].  Since Garlock's album lists a reference date in the back cover of the liner notes for May 26, 1971--er 5/26/71, I feel solid in my opinion/observation that the release number on his album, 700113, is a date code for (year): 70 (date) 0113, roughly January, 1970.  Garlock's album had a pressing run of about 3000 copies, some of which Garlock states were defective pressings; I assume a like few thousand run on this album.  MARKED FOR DEATH's liner notes also mention a previous Lp, THE COMING WAR WITH RUSSIA [[ASIN:B001GXEZII The Coming War With Russia]], which has a release number 691103, which puts a date of (year): 69 (date) 1103, roughly November, 1969.

I dubbed the Lp to a CD so I could play with stop-and-go the interesting sections (er, mention of a film or movie on side two, as it turned out).  Side two has an abrupt fade or segue into a prayer which, like Garlock's album, sounds like it was recorded in higher quality than the sermon(s) source(s) and tacked on at the end of the presentation.

Side one:  Jack Van Impe makes cultural "doomsday" predictions about the early 1970s, covering 1972-1977, about the revolution, the end of the Christian U.S. and Russian/Chinese vs. the U.S. nuclear war(s) to come immediately after.  I was interested in the anti-rock & roll aspects of the recording, but that is ancillary to the military doom & gloom theme of the sermon/album here.  The highlights:

1972:  150 guerilla groups overthrow the U.S. government, and that M-16s (er, machine guns) are being mailed (as in the Post Office) into the U.S. for that purpose from Vietnam.  The revolution starts in Michigan and Oregon.
1973:  National Community Health Act, pushed through by the World Health Organization, puts all who preach the cross in mental institutions
1974:  (public) Sex on on the streets in every major city from coast to coast.  Following this theme, at about the end of the 20 minute playing time on side one, "rotten filthy dirty lewd lascivious junk called rock & roll" and "it isn't just the lyrics, it's the BEAT!" kicks in to support all the public sexing, as well as mention of 400 teenage girls in Detroit having illegitimate babies and "fertility rites of the jungle...."  (Dan & Steve Peters used the same scare tactics about car rock radio impregnating girls in the '80s; in the 1920s jazz age, illicit activities were called "rumble seat wrestling." [[ASIN:B000MQ8NOM Peters Brothers Hit Rock's Bottom:  Exposing to the Light the Real World Behind the False Image of Rock]])

Side two:
More of the same, mention of the rock group MC5 and White Panthers, Jerry Rubin's book or pamphlet, DO IT [[ASIN:067120601X DO IT!: Scenarios of the Revolution]] on pages 18, 162, and 253.  Van Impe riffs again, "open sex on every street corner by 1974".

Van Impe mentions a film/movie, YOUTH COMMUNICATION, shown to Nixon/Agnew and oodles of politicians about the subject, and it might be worth checking out if available on tape or DVD (unlikely).

Van Impe continues with stating, "sex, sex, sex, sex morning till night...."  And homosexuality....

1975 doomsday:  Russian SS-9 nuclear missiles with 25 megaton warheads, 420 of them, for offensive attack.  (Van Impe anticipates Elizabeth Clare Prophet's 1990 Montana shelter scare here. [[ASIN:B006UJD4ZS The Sounds of American Doomsday Cults, Vol. 14: The Church Universal and Triumphant, Inc. feat. Elizabeth Clare Prophet]])  95% of U.S. air defense system is gone in 24 hours.
1976:  Communist flag atop Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
1977:  "Mayo Teet Sun" goes from living in a cave to having enough missiles and hydrogen bombs.

I think I would have personally enjoyed 1974 immensely, but 1975 and later, not so much.


title: The 23 year old TV fluffy bunny sings on this un-labeled budget bin repackage of a 1964 Colpix album

text:
JOHN DAVIDSON CLOSE UP, Accord SN 7202 junk Lp reissue

Uh, this is one of those so bad it's good easy listening contemporary turkey albums.  The thing looked horrible (c. September, 1982), not-right song selection, but probably a vanity/private press album of a lounge lizard pop sold after the artist's ("artist" qualified) gig in a casino bar's gift shop.  The tuxedo drawing also hinted at dated middle-of-the-road out-of-touch sheer awfulness contained in the vinyl grooves.

Nope, but almost there; it's an oldie that is packaged to look like a new-ie title, with two tracks lopped off.

Song selection:
side one--
Hey, Good Lookin'
More
Once in a Lifetime
Love Me Forever
Blame It On My Youth
side two--
I'll Take Romance
I Wish You Love
Then I'll Be Tired of You ("tired" is misspelled "tried" on the back cover song listings)
Run To Him
I Want to Be With You

I figured either this was a new Bad music contemporary album by a fading star, but a couple songs jumped out at me that suggested it was dated ...for 1982:  "Run To Him," a Bobby Vee (November, 1961) song, "I Wish You Love" on one of my 1959-ish Keely Smith Capitol albums, and that lounge lizard "More" song.  Ditto:  reissue.

This Lp is a 10 track abbreviated (missing "Two Sleepy People" and "Snowbound") repackage of John Davidson's THE WARM SOUND OF JOHN DAVIDSON Lp on Colpix CP-485 Lp vinyl album, from October, 1964 [[ASIN:B004MKBCME John Davidson: The Young Warm Sound Of John Davidson [VINYL LP] [STEREO]]].  And the back cover liner notes make no mention you're buying another churning of old CBS Pictures/TV spinoff Colpix "for-youth" pop back catalog from 18 years past.  While the music contained is excruciating, the sound reproduction, pressing quality, is GORGEOUS for a budget bin reissue.

I'd give a budget bin masquerading as a "new" album preying on unsuspecting fans like this a one-star normally, but I'm taken by how HORRIFICALLY AWFUL the over-cooked music, the sheer rottenness of overly bright and unsubtle the arrangements, performances, and Davidson's studied caterwauling are on this turkey.


title: "Music of Idiots, Noted Composer Snorts" (by Frank Purcell, 8/5/56, quoted from Meredith Willson, "The Beard did it.")

text:
MARCH ALONG WITH MITCH, Columbia CL 1475 mono/CS 8266 stereo.  Vinyl Lp dates August, 1960.

Track list:
side one--
The Bandit/The Whistler and His Dog/Loch Lomond March/Little Shepherd's March/I'm Going Back to Dixie/Dixie
side two--
Fre're Jacques March/Do-Re-Mi/Alouette March/Comin' Through the Rye/The Kerry Dancer March/Yankee Doodle/The Girl That I Left Behind

I picked this up (mono Lp) out of morbid curiosity, seeing "MARCH" and "WITH MITCH" (Miller) on the banner, with the thought going through my pinhead that the Lp was a strange looking "Sing Along" series and that I'd never seen it before, and likely deliciously atrocious (yep).  I thought it odd that the album was a single-pocket jacket, no foldout lyric sheets; meh, I thought it was a later runoff of the SING ALONG... series without all the elaborate gatefold packaging of the early '60s' series.  Er, No...no vocals.

Turntable:  I waited and waited and waited playing it through the first side waiting to hear the testosterone voices start groaning/roaring ("groaring?") those narcotic mind-numbing lyrics of a Mitch Miller Sing-Along album, about 5 minutes into the playback, and caught on this was an instrumental-only album.  Ah...So.  Reading from the liner notes:  "Scoring for the arrangements consists of eight trumpets, eight trombones, six French horns and tub, along with drums and piccolos."  But wait, you also get...that long, deep tile bathroom toilet bowl "halo" echo which REALLY stands out when the millions and millions of snare drums are rattling, rattling, machine-gunning the beat splashed in all that echo.  GAAADS!  However, you DON'T get Eddy Manson's obiquitous uncredited harmonica (from all those SING-ALONG albums), nor the male chorus groaring away.  You get what sounds like tweety birds chirping along in march time, with brass and someone knocking on wooden blocks (a xylophone!).

Mitch took kiddie songs, for the most part, some kid-friendly folk songs, and a couple of old Americana chestnuts and "marched" them for the entirety of the Lp.  I also hear a xylophone in the mix, and those contraptions are mighty hard to roll along behind all the brass and drums in a marching band.

The album includes two tracks from a slightly prior 45 single hit, Columbia 4-41499, "Do-Re-Mi"/"Alouette March," which rumbled around the lower chart numbers from November 21, 1959 (Cash Box at #94), to early February, 1960.  On Cash Box, it charted up as high as #48 (1/23/60), competing with Anita Bryant's pop vocal version on Carlton 523 45 single.  ("Do-Re-Mi" was lifted from the Original Cast THE SOUND OF MUSIC, also issued on Columbia.)

Relative to all those SING ALONG ALBUMS out at the time (latest being SENTIMENTAL SING ALONG WITH MITCH, Columbia CL 1457/CS 8251), this album stiffed.

About the header--
Meredith Willson:  the composer of THE MUSIC MAN ("76 trombones in the big parade....")


title: One Froggy Evening in Utah

text:
THE MUSICAL MANNER OF MAC REYNOLDS...NTPS 334.  Lp dates, I think, about mid-1971.  Effectively, this is Mac Reynolds' first album--The Singing Farmer from Idaho.  "A Clifford J. Barborka, Jr. NTP Production" -- edit:  Clifford J. Barborka was Melva Niles's husband.

Track list:
side one--
The Loveliest Night of the Year
More
My Own America
Hawaiian Wedding Song
Because
Somewhere My Love
Sunrise, Sunset (with Melva Niles)
side two--
Wonderful One
I Walk In God's Garden
These Hands
Beyond the Sunset
That Wonderful Mother of Mine
How Great Thou Art

Melva Niles only appears on the last track duet on side one; she was apparently the bigger name in Utah at the time, an operatic singer of some (?) success.  Back cover liner notes name drop a few people, being Eugene Jelesnik [[ASIN:1573452696 An Improbable Journey: The Life and Times of Eugene Jelesnik]], Tracy Jorgensen (the sound mixer), and Robert Peterson [[ASIN:B00BUC56R4 Robert Peterson "Feelings of Forever" Lp]].

Edit:  Melva Niles and her recording label in Utah--
I picked up two Melva Niles vinyl Lps with Robert Peterson, an ASCAP/Broadway pop album on Clifford Barborka/Melva Barborka's Utah record label, National Theatre Productions NTPS-333, MELVA NILES/ROBERT PETERSON, BRING US TOGETHER ONCE AGAIN (1969 Lp), with local Utah TV personality Eugene Jelesnik conducting at the 1965-1970+ Valley Music Hall, located at what is now the Bountiful Regional Center, and a 1967 LDS sacred music album, and THINGS LOVELY on B.T. Records BTS 405.

Sound on the Lp features Mac's semi-trained operatic (?) from-the-diaphram Irish vocal, with backing by a semi-competent uncredited lounge band:  violin(s), trumpet(s), clarinet/saxophone/reed player (trades off either a clarinet or an alto sax on various tracks), drum kit held back, bass--I'm reminded of some of Horst Fidel's music backing.  Mac's vocals suggest a far less spirited Michigan J. Frog as appearing in the Warner Bros. cartoon, ONE FROGGY EVENING, generally singing in a style suggesting Joe Feeney from the Lawrence Welk Show in a lower vocal register.  The song selection runs to merry-go-round waltz pops, '60s middle-of-the-road cover songs, and veers into some religious songs ("I Walk In God's Garden" by A. W. "Mickey" Hart, best known performed by the Mormon prophet, seer, and revelator Joseph Fielding Smith's wife, Jessie Evans Smith, from her October, 1956 private press Century Records' Lp, SACRED SONGS).  Best outright WEIRD track from the Nixonian silent majority era is the opening talky narration, side one, track three, "My Own America," which starts out as a patriotic recitation, flag-waving, mentioning the armed forces, then segues into the nutty Bircher territory about "...freedom our forefathers sought...," jabs against picket lines, criminal rights, ad nauseam, a toss of the hat to Victor Lundberg's "An Open Letter to My Teenage Son" stinker.  Side two, track four also breaks the song for a talky narrative reading.

Eugene Jelesnik produced another Mac Reynolds' Lp, MAC REYNOLDS SINGS AGAIN, Mac Records stereo MR-LP-1001A/B, a little after, with a much brighter cover photo (purple background, with Mac's family walking towards the camera at the Provo LDS Temple), which features more songs in the same pop style:

Side one--
Born Free/Galway Bay/Let There Be Peace On Earth/Till/Moonlight and Roses/Love Story Theme (Where Do I Begin)/Roses of Picardy
side two--
Danny Boy/Bring Us Together Once Gain/I Know That My Redeemer Lives/Twilight On The Trail/My Buddy/That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine/In the Garden


title: Italian band singing in heavily accented English for a Greek cruise ship line, recorded in Puerto Rico!!!

text:
FRANCO AND HIS VAGABONDI

This is an album in a kind of oddball class, Cruiseship rock cover bands. Lp dates probably about 1975-ish, due to the two most recent songs, "Feelings" (wretched song!) and "My Eyes Adored You." Record label is Franco 1001, denoting a private press (self-financed keepsake) album for fans of the lounge performances. References in the leader's introduction state that the group has been working for five years.

Track list:
side one--
Opening (band introduction)
I've Got You Under My Skin
Love is a Lonely Song
Lacrime Americane (Italian)
My Eyes Adored You
(Jesus Christ) Superstar
side two--
Feelings
Malafemmena (Italian)
El Bimbo (monotonous disco instrumental that keeps repeating the same musical phrase with vocal "Bimbo, Bimbo!" interjected)
I'll Never Fall In Love Again
El Bingo (Spanish)
Reach Out, I'll Be There

This is an Italian cover band, singing in thick-accent English (problems with the post-vocalic "R" sound and "TH"), for a Greek cruise line, Chandris Lines, album recorded in Puerto Rico.

Sound: lead vocal bellows in a kind of suave attempt to sound like '70s Tom Jones, with a bit of Italian-accented Sinatra thrown in--he REALLY thinks he's nailing "Reach Out, I'll Be There" which closes the album, but he sounds like Tom Jones hollering through the trees like Tarzan! Side one, track five seems to feature another male vocal from the band, also. Side one, track three has an ethereal sounding female vocal for too brief a period. Instruments feature muddy backing recording: drum kit, bass, electric guitar, and a really cheesy (CHEAP) sounding electric keyboard or early Moog making fake strings and ocean or wind sounds weaving in and out of the opening/closing of the songs. There's also dubbed in fake "live" applause on several tracks. Although most of the songs are in thick Italian-accented English, several songs are in Italian and "El Bingo" is in Spanish (I pick up that the song is about "I go to Bingo" and "I like Money" from what college Spanish I can remember).

A true 3rd rate semi-pro Outsider album. It's the deliciously excruciating keyboard early synth sounds that make the listening experience!


title: Paul Whiteman's acoustic dance era, 1920-1926, and ...His Concert Orchestra classical-pops sides on side two

text:
PAUL WHITEMAN VOLUME 1, RCA Victor LPV 555.  The Lp dates from about March, 1968; the album is pressed on a purple "grape juice" RCA Victor label.

Track list:
side one--
*Whispering (rec. 8/23/20) --Victor 18690
*Japanese Sandman (rec. 8/19/20) -- Victor 18690
*Anytime, Anyday, Anywhere (rec. 8/23/20) -- Victor 18694
*My Man (rec. 4/4/21) -- Victor 18758
Song of India (rec. 8/26/26) --electrical recut of acoustic Victor 18777
*Hot Lips (He's Got Hot Lips When He Plays Jazz) (rec. 6/23/22) --Victor 18920
Three O'Clock in the Morning (rec. 8/25/26) -- electrical recut of acoustic Victor 18940
*I'll Build A Stairway to Paradise (rec. 9/1/22) --Victor 18949
side two--
Rhapsody in Blue (rec. 4/21/27) --Victor 35822, electrical recut of acoustic Victor 55225.  This track is compiled from both sides of Victor 35822
When Day is Done (rec. 6/8/27)
*What'll I Do (rec. 3/18/24) --Victor 19299
Love Nest (From MARY) (rec. 2/10/28) -- Victor 24105 ???--this release number dates maybe late 1933
Medley from ANYTHING GOES (rec. 10/26/34)

Note:  * denotes an acoustic recording, pre-1925 technology; the other tracks on the Lp are electrical recordings.

This album runs a theme that splits the side one as Whiteman's pre-Columbia "jazz" sides from mostly the 1920-1924/5 acoustic era, while side two concentrates on Whiteman's semi-classical ...Concert Orchestra recordings.

This Lp covers mostly Whiteman's earlier styles, which were staid dance arrangements with a little jazz influence (not a lot of standout solo works; mostly the jazz accents have the reed or brass sections play together instead of letting one of the sidemen stand and BLOW), but you can clearly hear the jazz evolution cooking in the background and gradually becoming more prominent, especially in his later '20s period on the Volume II set [[ASIN:B0050AQEFA Paul Whiteman, Vol II]] (LPV 570).  For the most part, violins doubled with the trumpet section on the melody with most of these cuts.  The 1927 electrical cut of "Rhapsody in Blue" compares favorably with a Arthur Fiedler & the Boston Pops version I have on CD, though the running time on this Whiteman version is 8:48 (two sides of a 12" 78 RPM release), while Fiedler's version runs to about 17 minutes.  78 RPM sides were limited to a playing time of 3:25 or so on a 10" pop release, while a 12" classical release could support about 4:30 per side or so.

I've gleaned what record release numbers I can based on Joel Whitburn's POP MEMORIES 1890-1954 book [[ASIN:0898200830 Pop Memories 1890-1954: The History of American Popular Music]], and and old edition of L. R. Dock's 78 RPM price guide [[ASIN:0896890546 American Premium Record Guide: 1915-1965: 78's, 45's and LP's]], but the numbers are best guesstimates based on the recording dates - record dates in the release series.  It looks like two of the tracks on side one are later '20s electrical recuts, which was not an unheard-of business practice at the time (er, Dot Records in the '60s rediscovered massively recutting artists' other labels' hits for several years on Lp).

Sound is excellent, sourced from RCA Victor's A&R library masters.


title: Pat Boone rock 'n rolls on covers one last time

text:
Pat Boone, BOSS BEAT, Dot Records DLP 3594 mono/DLP 25594 stereo.  Lp dates from September, 1964.

Boone's last shot at the youth market rides the coattails on Johnny Rivers's "Memphis" Imperial 66032 hit and the Beatles' late '63 monster invasion here.  David Gates runs the band (Glen Campbell is doing guitar work somewhere on this Lp), but Boone just phones in his vocals, uncomfortably.

Track list:
side one--
Memphis
I Want to Hold Your Hand
Raindrops
Loco-motion
Kansas City
Hey, Baby
side two--
Walk Right In
Sweet Little Sixteen
Mashed Potato Time
Searchin'
Way Down Yonder in New Orleans
Our Day Will Come

Boone covers two Chuck Berry tunes, Beatles, Dee Clark, Little Eva, Wilbert Harrison, Bruce Channel, the Roof Top Singers, Dee  Dee Sharp, Coasters, Freddie Cannon, and Ruby & the Romantics

The album, actually, all Dot Lps in the DLP 3500/25500s into the DLP 3600/25600s series, included inside the Lp cover a 100 album color foldout catalog of Dot Records' discography:  [[ASIN:B007B3MG4C Dot Records : 100+ Best Selling Albums : Picture Catalog]]

This is the first album from 1960 (MOONGLOW, DLP 3270/25270) through 1964 (AIN'T THAT A SHAME, DLP 3573/25573) that doesn't show "manufactured by Agoom Agooc Record Company," which was Pat Boone's "independent" record label distributed through Randy Woods' Dot Records, which suggest Boone folded up his label and cut his losses after his sales slid into decline in '59.  Several other Dot artists listed Agoom Agooc credits on 45 singles, The Phantom on Dot 16056, Adrienne Evans on Dot 16178, Sid King on Dot 16293, the Gringos on Dot 16321, the Crosby Brothers on Dot 16300 and 16370, and Fabian (Forte) on Dot 16413, to no commercial success.  Boone's 45s showing his Agoom Agooc record label credits run from Dot 16048, "(Welcome) New Lovers"/"Words," through Dot 16598, "I Understand (Just How You Feel)"/"Rosemarie" going into March, 1964.  Boone's Dot 16658, "Beach Girl"/"Little Honda" reverted to Dot Records' imprint.

I think of this album as a style mirror image of his Agoom Agooc last real throw of the commercial dice, THE TOUCH OF YOUR LIPS with Frank Sinatra's moody arranger, Gordon Jenkins, Dot DLP 3546 mono/DLP 25546 stereo.  THE TOUCH OF YOUR LIPS sounds like Boone went all-in making the album; he really cared about that album.

Boone's Dot Lps after this BOSS BEAT DLP 25594 cash-in (stereo numbers listed):

NEAR YOU, DLP 25606 (January, 1965)
THE GOLDEN ERA OF COUNTRY HITS, DLP 25626
MY 10TH ANNIVERSARY WITH DOT RECORDS, DLP 25650
SINGS WINNER OF THE READER'S DIGEST POLL, DLP 25667
GREAT HITS OF 1965, DLP 25685 (March, 1966, and he cuts "As Tears Go By" by the Rolling Stones!  Rest of the Lp is the usual dross)
MEMORIES, DLP 25748
WISH YOU WERE HERE, BUDDY, DLP 25764 (October, 1966; by this time Boone's hits came on the Top 40 Easy Listening Charts)
CHRISTMAS IS A COMIN', DLP 25770 (November, 1966)
HOW GREAT THOU ART, DLP 25798
I WAS KAISER BILL'S BATMAN, DLP 25805 (September, 1967; cover notes that Boone whistles on the title cut)
GOLDEN HITS 15 HITS OF PAT BOONE, DLP 25814 (75% stereo recuts, not hits)
LOOK AHEAD, DLP 25876 (September, 1968, with Anita Kerr)


title: Mostly retreads from the 1959 recuts' sessions

text:
Pat Boone, Dot DLP 3814 mono/DLP 25814 stereo.  Lp dates August, 1967.

Track list:
side one--
Love Letters in the Sand (DLP 25071)
Friendly Persuasion (DLP 25071)
Moody River (DLP 25384 MOODY RIVER Lp)
I Almost Lost My Mind (DLP 25071)
Why Baby Why (DLP 25071)
Anastasia (DLP 25071)
Don't Forbid Me (DLP 25071)
April Love (DLP 25071)
side two--
Speedy Gonzales (DLP 25455)
It's Too Soon to Know (DLP 25261*)
Wonderful Time Up There (DLP 25261*)
With the Wind and Rain In Your Hair (DLP 25455)
Sugar Moon (DLP 25261*)
'Twixt Twelve and Twenty (DLP 25455)
There's A Goldmine In The Sky (DLP 25071)

Dot Records put out three single repackage Lps in 1957-1962, from which this album is re-sourced:

PAT'S GREAT HITS, DLP 3071 (mono)
PAT'S GREAT HITS, DLP 25071 October, 1959 (re-recorded in true stereo two years later, but not the original hit versions)
PAT BOONE SINGS, DLP 3158 March, 1959 (mono only until late 1959, in re-recorded stereo DLP 25158)
PAT'S GREAT HITS, VOLUME 2, DLP 3261 mono/DLP 25261* (re-recorded in true stereo a year later than DLP 3158, but not the original hit versions.  This time the album was given a completely new release number.)
PAT BOONE GOLDEN HITS FEATURING SPEEDY GONZALES, DLP 3455 mono/DLP 25455 stereo

All tracks on this 1967 album are true stereo.


title: A throw of the dice jumping on Rolf Harris's UK hit nets snake eyes

text:
Pat Boone, TIE ME KANGAROO DOWN SPORT, Dot (Agoom Agooc) Records DLP 3534/25534.  Lp dates about July, 1963.

Track list:
side one--
Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport (16494)/I Feel Like Crying (16494)/Deep Are the Roots/More Than Only Friends/Two Little Kisses/I Need Someone
side two--
A Whole Lotta Water/My Queen in Calico/Angel Talk/Going to New York/Just Out of Reach/Memory Mountain

Dot rolled out 45 single Dot 16494, "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport"/"I Feel Like Crying" which stiffed, circa May, 1963.  I checked the obvious Rolf Harris connection, noting that he had the UK hit, "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport" on Columbia DB 4483 45 single, debuted 7/21/1960.  The single was licensed to 20th Century Fox records, on 20th Century 207 at the time (August, 1960), and did no business.  Rolf Harris's "Sun Arise" on Columbia DB 4888, was a #3 UK hit, beginning 10/25/62, which got a U.S. release on Epic 9567 (a subsidiary label of U.S. Columbia Records), getting on the U.S. 45 singles' charts beginning 3/09/63, and Epic put out a Rolf Harris U.S. album a bit later (two cover variants).  Apparently Boone did a cover of Harris's (three year old) 1960 UK single and got trounced when U.S. Epic reissued the original version on Epic 9596; both singles were issued at the same time.  Dot's Lp (here) has short liner notes which state that Boone's song is a "hit."

Playback:  all tracks on the Lp are stereo.  The first two songs on side one of the Lp are lifted from Boone's Dot 16494 stiff.  The album plays as a collection of hastily thrown-together tracks, a hodge-podge of pop styles.  "More Than Only Friends" is a Philadelphia schlock song via Marcucci-DeAngelis (Cameo, Parkway, Chancellor, all that stuff).  Best rock 'n roll tracks (!) are a raunchy "Two Little Kisses" (GREAT tenor sax solo!) and Jimmy Reed's "Going to New York."  "Memory Mountain" also works.  Worst are a Paul Anka song, "Angel Talk," and an excruciating "Just Out of Reach...of my two empty arms...."  The transition from the Jimmy Reed blues to the sugary "Just Out of Reach" is jarring.

Uh, Boone doing an American accent reading of Rolf Harris's Aussie song JUST DOES NOT WORK!!!


title: A motley album collection of standards and Pat Boone's #1 chart album

text:
Pat Boone, STAR DUST, Dot Records DLP 3118 mono/DLP 25118 stereo.  Lp dates July, 1958 (mono).  Stereo versions began about January, 1959.

Track list:
Side one--
Star Dust/Blueberry Hill/Ebb Tide/Little White Lies/To Each His Own/Cold, Cold Heart/Deep Purple
Side two--
Autumn Leaves/St. Louis Blues/Solitude/Anniversary Song/Heartaches/I'll Walk Alone/September Song

Dot Records is best remembered in the mid-'50s as a whitebread tongue-in-cheek covers' pirate label (quicky white cover knockoffs of r&b hits, inspired, methinks, by Mitch Miller doing the same thing with c&w songs about three years before for Columbia) getting rock 'n' roll airplay hits with white artists, The Hilltoppers, Fontane Sisters, Pat Boone, Jim Lowe, Gale Storm, Nick Todd, Wink Martindale, Debbie Reynolds, etc..., in a binge of sanitized boring-to-laughable white maltshop bop tunes that lasted for about a year and a half, then churning teen-oriented white pop and vanilla middle-of-the-road albums by Billy Vaughn's orchestra albums in the '60s.  Pat Boone broke big on r&b covers with decent big band sax-oriented backing him for 1955 into mid-'56, then his hits came from original songs with a more restrained big beat, softening into a middle-of-the-road direction for his younger fans.  His first three albums were rock 'n' roll, but beginning in late '57 his Dot albums aimed about half-and-half towards his fans parents' tastes and Boone's crooning sounds inspired by Bing Crosby's pops.  (Among his albums, GAAADS!  If you want a late example of Boone wrecking an r&b rocker with a rancid lyric re-write maltshop version, pick up the THIS & THAT DLP 3285/25285 album and spin, "Spo-Dee-O-Dee," a ghastly cover of Stick McGhee's "Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee."  Boone's Lp track even puts his name ON THE SONGWRITING CREDIT!!!)

After the three Boone rocker Lps, Dot put out HYMNS WE LOVE, Dot DLP 3068 and SINGS IRVING BERLIN, DLP 3077, in October, 1957.  The ...IRVING BERLIN Lp, a far cry from bopping around covering "Rock Around the Clock" and "Chattanooga Shoe Shine Boy," aimed at adult album buyers--and is a great album; it fits Boone's sensibilities and his vocal abilities.  Oddly (vinyl junkie observation), the ...IRVING BERLIN Lp is an EXTREMELY common Pat Boone album, but it failed to chart among his other albums; even the niche market HYMNS WE LOVE, DLP 3068, got a month on the short album charts for Billboard.  Boone's next album, this STAR DUST, Lp, gave him a #1 Lp for three weeks on Cash Box in September, 1958, charting for about half a year on both Billboard and Cash Box.

Playback on the Lp (stereo copy, DLP 25118):
True stereo cuts on all twelve tracks, excepting side one, "Little White Lies," which is rechanneled.  "Little White Lies" rechanneled fake "stereo" on this album sounds identical to Capitol's duophonic reverb some 30 months later.  Side one has several true stereo tracks with Boone's vocal panned over about 10-11 o'clock left; however, the feel of the stereo version(s) is a live soundstage recording, probably 2-3 track, with the orchestra spread around Boone's vocal.  The album generally features Boone's vocal performed in a restrained crooning style, much like Patti Page, excepting one big beat rocker track, "St. Louis Blues," with Boone throwing his deep voice into the performance.  His "Blueberry Hill" is treated as a restrained crooning ballad, as is the rest of the album.  Unlike the HYMNS... and ...IRVING BERLIN albums, STAR DUST sounds like a collection of assembled tracks from at least two different sessions, and the rechanneled "Little White Lies" track tossed in for filler.

A word about Boone's stereo:  his first three albums were mono only, DLP 3012/3030/3050.  HYMNS WE LOVE, DLP 3068, ...SING IRVING BERLIN, DLP 3077, and STAR DUST, DLP 3118, were originally released in Mono.  Dot re-released stereo copies of these albums --all were true stereo, not rechanneled-- in January, 1959.  I tested all three of my stereo DLP 25068, 25077, and 25118 Lps, and all are clear stereo, excepting for the aforementioned rechanneled "Little White Lies."  I was particularly interested in the mono vs. stereo ...IRVING BERLIN Lp as a candidate for either being rechanneled fake stereo or re-recorded.  The ...IRVING BERLIN mono and stereo copies' share the same running time on the labels, the mixes otherwise sound identical on playback, and a look at the Lp playing surfaces have the same song cutting depth spacing visually.  Dot may have completely re-recorded HYMNS WE LOVE and ...IRVING BERLIN for the stereo reissues, but if the label ran Boone back into the studio to recut the entire albums, they copied the original mono recordings and lacquer cutting for the disc masters extremely closely.

Stereo covers:  Stereo albums more or less began issuing about Christmas, 1958.  Dot's first several stereo Lps used the mono front cover slicks and used new back cover dedicated stereo-only back cover slicks (over folded cardboard).  The stereo Lp front covers had an orange "Dot Ultra High Fidelity STEREOPHONIC" sticker slapped on one of the corners through DLP 3121/25121, YES, INDEED.  Stereo covers from DLP 25180, TENDERLY, had new front cover slicks with a STEREO banner on the top, which could be cut off for the mono slick.

Boone's Dot Lps, beginning with MOONGLOW, DLP 3270/25270, through AIN'T THAT A SHAME, DLP 3573/25573, show Boone's record company/management company imprint, "Mfg. by Agoom Agooc Record Corp." in the back cover fine print on the back of his Dot albums.  BOSS BEAT, DLP 3594/25594, and his later albums no longer show the "...Agoom Agooc" management/record company fine print.  Other Agoom Agooc artists getting Dot Records releases were The Phantom (16056), Adrienne Evans (16178), Sid King (16293), Gringos (16321), Crosby Brothers (16300, 16370), and Fabian (Forte; the Elvis impersonator who couldn't sing) (Dot 16413).


title: PAT'S GREAT HITS VOLUME 2 is a re-recorded reissue/repackage of his PAT BOONE SINGS 1959 Lp

text:
A re-recorded clone/reissue of PAT BOONE SINGS, Dot Records DLP 3158 mono/DLP 25158 stereo. DLP 3261 mono/DLP 25261 stereo Lp dates February, 1960.

Track list:
side one--
A Wonderful time Up There/If Dreams Come True/For My Good Fortune/Cherie, I Love You/When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano/Sugar Moon
side two--
It's Too Soon to Know/April Love/Gee, But It's Lonely/That's How Much I Love You/The Mardi Gras March/I'll Remember Tonight

PAT BOONE SINGS, Dot DLP 3158 was released about February, 1959, and features the 45 hit singles' original tracks. Almost exactly a year later Dot Records put out PAT'S GREAT HITS VOLUME 2 as DLP 3261 mono/DLP 25261 stereo, with exactly the same back cover slick (except changing out the new release number) and track selection with a new front cover slick, BUT...

DLP 3158 repackaged the original hit singles on those titles. DLP 25261 stereo Lp tracks are re-recorded. The tell between the two albums, based on my mono DLP 3158 and stereo DLP 25261, is the instrumental break on Boone's rock 'n' roll cover of the Eddy Arnold hit, "That's How Much I Love You." The stereo DLP 25261 guitar break is far less enthusiastic than the mono DLP 3158 version.

PAT'S GREAT HITS VOLUME 2, DLP 25261 stereo album is entirely in true stereo.  Think of this album as a "new" (different) album than mono Lp PAT BOONE SINGS, which has the original hit versions.  I did an A-B comparison on my mono DLP 3158 mono Lp and DLP 25261 stereo Lp and found the new versions very nearly duplicated the feel of the earlier album, for the most part.  It seems obvious, though, that since this album is a fake newly-recreated-for-stereo hits' retread concept, picking up the mono version is pointless unless you're a hardcore completist vinyl junkie.  Buy the STEREO version for stereo, and the mono DLP 3158 PAT BOONE SINGS for the hits.

DLP 3158 was also released with a stereo counterpart, DLP 25158; however, a reissue UK 2-CD, PAT BOONE SINGLES, has the original DLP 3158 mono version of "That's How Much I Love You" in rechanneled "stereo" (back-and-forth balance knob twisting ping-pong "stereo") on CD-1, track 24. The stereo DLP 25158 PAT BOONE SINGS is true stereo, but not the original DLP 3158 mono versions.