title: SM 11407 $3.98 budget bin 1975 repackage of HEY LITTLE ONE and A NEW PLACE IN THE SUN 1968 Lps

text: "Arkansas" is the backside filler of 45 single Capitol 2494, "Where's The Playground, Susie" 1969 hit. The rest of the album is 1967-68 period album filler. For whatever inexplicable reason, Capitol took a photo from the REUNION THE SONGS OF JIMMY WEBB Lp photo shoot and put it on a budget bin reissue Lp series "new" release just before the RHINESTONE COWBOY, Capitol SW 11430 Lp release. Considering that GC's monster song at the time, "Rhinestone Cowboy" (Capitol 4095 45 single record) was roaring up the charts and that Capitol utterly dropped the ball and waited almost three months to put out the album with that title track, the label might've given the marketing wizards a green light to put out SOMETHING! ANYTHING! out to exploit that hole in his album releases at the time.


title: Sleep-inducing music for those long-haul 18-wheeler graveyard shift freeway trips

text:
There are bad records, Bad records, BAD records, and this, which is the pinnacle of toxic commercial BAD festering sludge.

This is a GREAT lousy record. It's soooooo great because it's the most insulting use of long worn-out name dropping I've ever seen in my decades' long search for lousy music: the ultimate reduction of smiley chirpy happy "folk" music for whitefolks New Christy Minstrels, the nadir of the loooonnnngggg slide down the rusty razor blade of taste for grabbing the last drop of sales slag from what used to be at least embarrassing poppy vacuous kitschy fun fake vanilla working class music. It's that kind of lousy.

The album has 15 songs on this Capitol Special Markets (er, the cheapie Capitol junk albums' series, usually used for record junk racks in tire shops like Firestone and Goodyear), SL 8076.  TVP Records (Springboard International), authored this junk product of the '70s, generally shelved in drug stores; Thrifty Drug chain comes immediately to mind--this album is an ORIGINAL project pressed on a Capitol Records contract cheapie series for an even worse knockoff repackage/reissue label than Pickwick.

Music:
dominant sound is flutes and trumpets (played softly to imitate flutes?), a mostly worldless chorus crooning "oo-oo-OO-oo-oo, ahh-ahh-AHH-ahh" emphasizing the narcotically pleasant whitebread female vocals, a mid-'70s keyboard/synth fake strings (this was done on-the-cheap), piano, harps, clarinet or oboes, strumming guitars--chords, not notes, over and over and over--, maybe harpsicords. Yeah, the New Christy Minstrels (see the back cover b&w photo, which suggests generic kids aping the New Seekers or the Mike Curb Congregation), that Kennedy era folkies sound on this disc....

Very few of the songs/themes have actual lyrics; most of the selections have that wordless put-you-to-sleep chorus mooning and ooh-ing and ahh-ing up and down, mouthing/crooning the song title at the end of each chorus. Actually, most of the songs are just a repeating mantra of a beautiful muzak chorus repeated and repeated and repeated until the end. Three songs, er, "songs" break up the insomnia cure crooning: "The Young and Restless" as LOVE BOAT disco-lite, "Ryan's Hope" with a mid-tempo sound and annoying alto sax crooning, and "Rich Man Poor Man" boom-thump metronome semi-dance beat.

If you want the lowest taste with a professional polish, you gotta buy this album. Recommended!!! Note: The best way to enjoy ("enjoy"?) this album is the 8-track version for that mechanical whispery rumble sound while the tape plays four times once. Even the packaging suggests a '70s generic truckstop bootleg knockoff tape.


title: The quest for lowest common denominator finally reaches bottom:  a 12" black vinyl sleeping pill

text:
There are bad records, Bad records, BAD records, and this, which is the pinnacle of toxic commercial BAD festering sludge.

This is a GREAT lousy record.  It's soooooo great because it's the most insulting use of long worn-out name dropping I've ever seen in my decades' long search for lousy music:  the ultimate reduction of smiley chirpy happy "folk" music for whitefolks New Christy Minstrels, the nadir of the loooonnnngggg slide down the rusty razor blade of taste for grabbing the last drop of sales slag from what used to be at least embarrassing poppy vacuous kitschy fun fake vanilla working class music.  It's that kind of lousy.

The Lp has 15 tracks (8 on side one, 7 on side two), meaning the songs are compressed for that extra lousy vinyl sound on this Capitol Special Markets (er, the cheapie Capitol junk albums' series, usually used for record junk racks in tire shops like Firestone and Goodyear), SL 8076.  Back cover shows credit to TVP Records (Springboard International), which was the lowest junk reissue label of the '70s, I believe shelved in drug stores; Thrifty Drug chain comes immediately to mind--this album is an ORIGINAL project pressed on a Capitol Records contract cheapie series for an even worse knockoff repackage/reissue label than Pickwick.

Music:
dominant sound is flutes and trumpets (played softly to imitate flutes?), a mostly worldless chorus crooning "oo-oo-OO-oo-oo, ahh-ahh-AHH-ahh" emphasizing the narcotically pleasant whitebread female vocals, a mid-'70s keyboard/synth fake strings (this was done on-the-cheap), piano, harps, clarinet or oboes, strumming guitars--chords, not notes, over and over and over--, maybe harpsicords.  Yeah, the New Christy Minstrels (see the back cover b&w photo, which suggests generic kids aping the New Seekers or the Mike Curb Congregation), that Kennedy era folkies sound on this disc....

Very few of the songs/themes have actual lyrics; most of the selections have that wordless put-you-to-sleep chorus mooning and ooh-ing and ahh-ing up and down, mouthing/crooning the song title at the end of each chorus.  Actually, most of the songs are just a repeating mantra of a beautiful muzak chorus repeated and repeated and repeated until the end.  Three songs, er, "songs" break up the insomnia cure crooning:  "The Young and Restless" as LOVE BOAT disco-lite, "Ryan's Hope" with a mid-tempo sound and annoying alto sax crooning, and "Rich Man Poor Man" boom-thump metronome semi-dance beat.

Lp cover is maybe 60-80 weight cardstock, more a flimsy sleeve than an album cover, semi-slick on the printed outside.

If you want the lowest taste with a professional polish, you gotta buy this album.  Recommended!!!  Note:  The best way to enjoy ("enjoy"?) this album is the 8-track version with that whispery rumbly sound.  Even the packaging on the 8-track suggests a '70s generic truckstop bootleg tape.


title: 1972 Five Lp set, 52 Lp filler and incidental hits from Capitol albums

text:
Effectively, this box set is a reissue/repackage of previously issued Capitol Glen Campbell album cuts.

It's a nice box set, five Lps in the set, total 52 tracks.  Most recent track, "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," is an Lp cut from the June, 1971 THE LAST TIME I SAW HER Capitol SW 733 album.  All the material in this box is taken from Capitol 1963-71 Lp releases, what hits are here are the obvious cuts from those albums, and no special not-Lp recordings are included (boo!).

If you haven't accumulated the TOO LATE TO WORRY TOO BLUE TO CRY through THE LAST TIME I SAW HER Capitol Lps, this is a nice comprehensive vinyl intro package of that material.  Nice thing about the set is that it includes a few cuts from a rare/usually expensive vinyl Lp, THE BIG BAD ROCK GUITAR OF GLEN CAMPBELL (T/ST 2392) late 1965 album.

I think that EVERY copy of this box was gold-stamped "Limited Preview Edition" (front of box, between "GLEN CAMPBELL'S" and "GOLDEN FAVORITES") which suggests that the box was a "limited" faux promo, and included with the "Limited Preview Edition" sets was a paper survey form to fill out and send back to the Longines Symphonette Society (er, mail order record club).  Apparently this was a faux premium for "special" members, and I think everyone in the club was a "special" member of the mail order club.

Release numbers assigned to the individual Lps in the set were SYS 5403/5404/5405/5406/5407.  Sent with this box was a Longines SYS 5408 "bonus" album, GENTLE ON MY MIND, with more of the same album filler tracks.  Note/beware that used record dealers will possibly split out the "bonus" album separately from this box edition.


title: Sears' vinyl Lp version of Pickwick SPC 3134, A SATISFIED MIND

text:
Same album, but with the Sears imprint, release number SPS 465.  Lp label is white color with a pinkish edge ring.  Front cover has a new cover slick showing GC in 1966 and more bushy hair, in a blue suit jacket; however, the back cover slick is identical to the Pickwick 3134 album, excepting for the Sears release number.  This was a budget bin $2 album when a full-price stereo album at the time (maybe 1970-73) from Capitol Records was $4.98 - $5.98.

About the contents:
This is a chopped down repackage of BIG BLUEGRASS SPECIAL, Capitol T/ST 1810, from November, 1962, with several original tracks from that Lp deleted on this $1.98 list budget bin list album, and a stereo version of "A Satisfied Mind," from Capitol 5638 45 single, as the title track.

I think of "A Satisfied Mind" as the great Jean Shepard's 1958 honky tonk hit; GC's version was in the folk-rock vein, more or less stylistically the same sound as his Capitol "Universal Soldier," "Private John Q.," "A Satisfied Mind," "Gentle On My Mind," and "Freeborn Man."


title: Obscure (well, almost) Glen Campbell 1963 instrumental Lp

text:
Vinyl Lp, World Pacific WP/ST 1812  August, 1963

Glen Campbell was having a falling out with his manager, Jerry Neil Capehart, in mid-1963, apparently about his (un)success at Capitol Records, having come from shutdown Crest Records with a stubbornly low-middling hit on Crest 1087 45, "Turn Around, Look At Me," which spent almost three months from October, 1961 - January, 1962, on the trade charts (peak #62 Billboard Hot-100, #15 briefly on the easy listening chart, #49 Cash Box, and, of all things, #9 in little tiny Canada, as well as getting a release on UK Top Rank) as a kind of Bobby Vee pompadoured teen idol.  Capitol aimed Campbell as a kind of teen middle-of-the-road singer, in the shadow of Bobby Darin, with no particular direction crooning over-produced Jimmie Haskell country weeper pop songs, a faux bluegrass "folk" artist/group (the Green River Boys), and sweet teen songs ("Prima Donna," ugh...).  One stiff after another....

Campbell shifted from singer to guitar slinger, ran the studio combos for several Capitol artists' failed singles (early Lou Rawls, late Gene Vincent, Johnny Rivers, etc...), and put out a smorgasbord of folkswinging and one-shot studio hot rod album projects, of which this album was the most successful.

12 STRING GUITAR! actually charted:  Glen Campbell's first chart album.  Billboard had only very recently expanded a maybe 40-position album chart to 150 positions, and this album briefly trolled the bottom reaches for a month in late '63.

The success of this album had World Pacific Records putting out several albums into at least mid-1966 based more or less on the same theme; only some of them feature Glen Campbell prominently or buried in the mix (noted):

World Pacific Records:
(pre-June, 1966 copies featured a blue label stereo; black label mono.  Silver printing.  Post-June, 1966 copies were pressed with a label pattern similar to Liberty and Dolton Records':  black label, oval logo and a blue strip left of the spindle hole.  First use of the Liberty-World Pacific label was the RAGA ROCK WPS2-1846 album.)

WP 1810 as by the De-Fenders, PLAY THE BIG ONES  (a garage hot rod album.  Crude garage rock instrumentals.  GC-yes.) -- never seen the stereo.  Black label mono, black vinyl.
WP/ST 1812 as by the Folkswingers, 12 STRING GUITAR!  GC-yes
--most common version is the stereo red vinyl copy.  Mono copies had a black label with silver printing, pressed on black vinyl.  A rare (three copies known to me?) were stereo, greenish-blue vinyl.
WP/ST 1814 as by the Folkswingers, 12 STRING GUITAR! VOL. 2  GC-yes
--blue label stereo red vinyl; black label mono black vinyl.
WP/ST 1816 as by Tut Taylor, 12 STRING DOBRO  GC on some of the tracks
--blue label stereo red vinyl; black label mono black vinyl
WP/ST 1819 as by Bud Shank & the Folkswingers, FOLK 'N' FLUTE  no GC
WP/ST 1822 as by Joe Pass & the Folkswingers, GREAT MOTION PICTURE THEMES  no GC
WP/ST 1833 as by the Bandits, THE ELECTRIC TWELVE  GC-yes
WP/WPS2-1835 as by MR. 12 STRING GUITAR  GC-yes
WP/WPS2-1846 as by the Folkswingers (Harihar Rao on Sitar), RAGA ROCK  no GC
WP/WPS2-1898 as by Various Artists, BLUEGRASS SPECIAL
--WPS2-1898 is a repackage of old tracks from various albums/artists, listed 1812-1846.

Dating the releases:
1810 -- April, 1963
1812 -- August, 1963
1814 -- December, 1963
1819 -- March, 1964
1822 -- April, 1964
1835 -- September, 1965
1846 -- May, 1966

Note:  Some red wax copies of 1812-1816 have a red/black "splatter" pattern due to black vinyl mixing with the red during pressing.


title: Third time reissue/repackage is the charm--Pickwick PC/SPC 3052 from September, 1966

text:
The original version of this was a January, 1964 Lp, THE SWINGING 12 STRING WITH HARPSICORD, as by the In Group, full list regular release. Musician lineup on the album was "...GLEN CAMPBELL wailing on the Twelve String Guitar...LEON RUSSELL playing the percussive Harpsicord...TOMMY TEDESCO, six string guitar...JIMMY BOND, Bass...and EARL PALMER, Drums." -- per the original Lp liner notes. The original Lp had 12 tracks. The second incarnation was COUNTRY SHINDIG on Surrey SS 1007, with 10 tracks, which merited a Billboard magazine review writeup in 1965, I think September (hmmm... to take advantage of "Universal Soldier" running up the singles chart and Capitol putting out BIG BAD ROCK GUITAR?), under the erroneous assumption it was a full-list album, not a budget junk Lp. Then it was repackaged again (10 tracks) as GLEN CAMPBELL PLAYS 12 STRING GUITAR, on Pickwick PC/SPC 3052, in 1966-7, another budget Lp. Then it showed up again on the abominable Buckboard, then still abominable Springboard, the worst junk labels on the market circa 1980, and as WAY BACK WHEN as by Leon Russell/Glen Campbell on Koala in 1981. (Search out any Lp on Buckboard/Springboard; let your first be Bing Crosby's HEY JUDE, a cutdown piece of schlock repackaging his 1969 Amos Lp.)

Mono copy of this title, PC 3052, is a (I hate to use the word) "rare" record, though of little value.  Stereo is far more common version.

Dating Pickwick PC/SPC 3000 series Lps:

3/6/65:  3001-3012
5/29/65:  3022-3024
10/02/65:  3028-3040
8/27/66:  3048-3054
9/28/68:  3116-3133
1/31/71:  3252 (JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR "excerpts" $1.89 album)
7/31/71:  3273-3279
10/30/71:  3288-3290
7/29/72:  3307-3326
8/11/73:  3344-3353
8/3/74:  3381-3398

Prior to mid-'68, Pickwick Lps were $1.98 mono list, $2.49 stereo.  In mid-'68, stereos were reduced to $1.98 list.


title: An essential Glen Campbell obscure 45 singles repackage on a junk label

text:
This album, SPC 3274, dates from early-mid 1971 or so, is a gem of early Glen Campbell Capitol 45 singles' stiffs that pre-date his GENTLE ON MY MIND period. Songs:

Only the Lonely -- from 45 Capitol 5773 matrix 56567 recorded 9/12/66
Same Old Places -- from 45 Capitol 5037 matrix 50076
Woman's World -- from 45 Capitol 5360 matrix 50092
Heartaches Can Be Fun -- from 45 Capitol 5279 matrix 52773
Let Me Tell You 'Bout Mary -- from 45 Capitol 5172 matrix 50074
Through the Eyes of a Child -- from 45 Capitol 5172 matrix 51163
That's All Right -- from 45 Capitol 5441 matrix 50078 alternate take
Prima Donna -- from 45 Capitol 4925 matrix 38275 recorded 9/11/62
Can't You See I'm Tryin' -- from 45 Capitol 5638 matrix 55467

To put these in perspective, Capitol 5441's 45 A-side was the Brian Wilson/Beach Boys production, "Guess I'm Dumb," Capitol 5504 45 record was GC's "Universal Soldier" pop hit in '65, and his first C&W hit with Al DeLory producing was "Burning Bridges" on 45 single Capitol 5773. "Gentle On My Mind" was later on Capitol 5939 45 single, which dates July, 1967. The songs on this Lp, too, are the stereo versions, while the 45s were issued in mono. If it counts for anything with these el cheapo junk bin parent bait (If you were a kid in the '60s, nagged your parents to bring home that new Beach Boys Capitol Records album, your cheap sneaky parents might go to the Woolworth's el cheapo bin instead and buy that wretched THE SURFSIDERS PLAY THE BEACH BOYS SONGBOOK junker on Design Records, instead of the real thing. Parent bait. So BAD it sounded like your parents bought guitars and recorded it in their garage, all in one botched take. That BAD.), the "original" issue of this Pickwick album was pressed on a silver color label (round paper thing at the center of the vinyl Lp record), while it was re-pressed/reissued on a black colored "P" logo label in the later 1970s. Still a junk record.

Songs: "Let Me Tell You 'Bout Mary," songwriter Bobby Bare, also recorded his version on 500 MILES AWAY FROM HOME, RCA/Victor LPM/LSP 2835 (January, 1964 Lp). "Can't You See I'm Tryin'" (GC Capitol 5638, produced by Steve Douglas) shows songwriting credit to Jerry Fuller-Glen Campbell, and was an Lp track on the Knickerbockers' LIES Challenge 622 Lp, produced by Jerry Fuller ('natch), and recorded by the Forte Four on Decca 31979 45 single, produced by Gary Usher (again: 'natch), with Glen Campbell likely on session guitar on that record, also.

Pickwick was a junk/budget bin label, but occasionally releases on such things featured obscure recordings not on those artists' regular full-list major label releases. One I could recommend, of somewhat oblique Glen Campbell interest, is LOU RAWLS, COME ON IN MISTER BLUES, Pickwick SPC 3156, which is a comp of Lou Rawls pre-Lp Capitol 1962-ish 45 recordings, and in stereo, Merle Travis's "Nine Pound Hammer" with Glen Campbell in the session lineup.

Dating PC/SPC Pickwick Lps:

3/6/65:  3001-3012
5/29/65:  3022-3024
10/02/65:  3028-3040
8/27/66:  3048-3054
9/28/68:  3116-3133
1/31/71:  3252 (JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR "excerpts" $1.89 album)
7/31/71:  3273-3279
10/30/71:  3288-3290
7/29/72:  3307-3326
8/11/73:  3344-3353
8/3/74:  3381-3398

Prior to mid-'68, Pickwick Lps were $1.98 mono list, $2.49 stereo.  In mid-'68, stereos were reduced to $1.98 list.


title: Lynn Bryson's LDS 1970 rock opera from Provo, Utah

text:
LAB 102, AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM VOL 1 SUNG BY THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL LAMANITE CHILDREN'S CHORUS

Lynn Bryson, famous lecturer, singer, entertainer at LDS youth conferences, where he scared Mormon kids about demonic backmasking conspiracies, Led Zeppelin's eeevil "Stairway to Heaven." the Eagles' "Hotel California," John Lennon taking over the world with the Spear of Destiny, etc....

This album is a howler, and a very elaborate Lp package, gatefold cover, just a gorgeous vinyl Lp set, pressed on very heavy vinyl (over 200 gram, I'd say), dates about 1970-71.  The girl pictured is one of the Lamanites, per LDS theology, and a Navajo young girl, "Lorraine" (per Bryson's WINNING THE TESTIMONY WAR 1982 vanity press book [[ASIN:B00071568S Winning the Testimony War]]).  This album and volume 2 are soundtrack or soundtrack-like albums recorded with a movie that Bryson presented on Lamanite (Indian) reservations in southern Utah and Arizona supporting the BYU Indian placement program (again, per Bryson's WINNING THE TESTIMONY WAR 1982 book).  The entire project, c. 1970, movie and two vinyl Lps, were recorded for a total cost of $12,000 at the time.

Lp label is gold color, black printing; dead wax area shows "V40059" which is the imprint for Century Records.  Lp label is the same gold pattern used for mid-'60s BYU Lps on Continental Records.  Inner photos feature Arlene Nofchissey.  Bryson is pictured bottom, center, of the inner foldout as "Chief Two Feathers," with the kids.  Total running time on the album (both sides) clocks in at 20:04, or roughly 10 minutes a side.

About Lynn Bryson:

Lynn Bryson on 45 RPM singles:

"Big Mean Drag Machine"/"Pretty Things," Hook 12863.
--A copy went for $31 on Ebay in 2011. The 45 has an orange label with black printing, no listing for record company address, no other (to my knowledge) records issued on that label. It was listed at KMEN San Bernardino, CA, 1290AM radio station local charts as "honorable mention" during 1/10/64, 1/17/64, 1/24/64, and 1/31/64. The record appears to be a garage rock record, not an MGM (or any affiliated label) release. Per Lynn Bryson's book, page 76, he was a DJ for KMEN at the time. This 45 does not show up in any of my Jerry Osborne 45RPm singles' price guides (POPULAR & ROCK PRICE GUIDE 3rd edition, ROCK/ROCK & ROLL PRICE GUIDE,4th edition, published by Osborne-Hamilton)--meaning it was extremely obscure as an indie "spec" release or vanity press.

"BYU Boy Missionary"/"The Flip Side," LAB 13966 [[ASIN:B003UTBVE2 The BYU Boy Missionary Part II - Ballad for a Pioneer Legend]]
Listed at position #17, up from #31, at KYME 740, Boise, ID, on 7/16/66, local radio station survey chart.

An Lp discography, of sorts, for Lynn Bryson's Provo based vinyl record label, circa 1970, LAB PRODUCTIONS:

LAB 100, THE SONS OF MOSIAH (2 Lp set; $5.95 list)
LAB 101, THE MISSIONARY ALBUM (his 1966 45 recording of "The Missionary Song" is one of the tracks on the Lp; $3.95 list)
LAB 102, AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM VOL 1 SUNG BY THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL LAMANITE CHILDREN'S CHORUS (gatefold cover with booklet attached at the inner spine; $5.95 list)
LAB 103, AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM VOL 2 .... ($5.95 list)

Lynn Bryson was also affiliated/recorded/songwriter for several releases for Hanna-Barbera Records, on the HBR label, beginning April, 1965:

45s:
Roger and Lynn, "Summer Kind of Song"/"Baby Move In" HBR 444 (Lynn Bryson was the "Lynn" of Roger and Lynn on this uncharted 45 single release, dating July, 1965, listed as a new release in Billboard on 8/14/65. Both songs show Lynn Bryson's co-songwriting credit.

Lynn Bryson's co-songwriting credits appear also on the following HBR 45 singles:
The Creations IV, "Dance In The Sand" HBR 440 (May, 1965)
Danny Hutton, "Monster Shindig" HBR 447 (July, 1965)
Danny Hutton, "Monster Shindig Part 2" HBR 453 (November, 1965)

On Lp, Lynn A. Bryson is credited on co-songwriting credits on the HBR albums:
THE FLINTSTONES GOLDI ROCKS AND THE THREE BEAROSAURUSES, HBR HLP 2021
SNAGGLEPUSS TELLS THE STORY OF THE WIZARD OF OZ, HBR HLP 2026
WILMA FLINTSTONE TELLS THE STORY OF BAMBI , HBR HLP 2027
THE RELUCTANT DRAGON STARRING TOUCHE' TURTLE AND DUM DUM, HBR HLP 2029
THE FLINTSTONES HANSEL & GRETEL, HBR HLP 2038

Bryson was a featured speaker at LDS Youth Conferences, and sold many, many tapes of his talks with titles such as "The Occult and Rock n Roll, Winning the Testimony War". Final page of the book lists tapes: ...VOLUME 5, LYNN BRYSON FIRESIDE & SONGS ABOUT YOUR FRIENDS, ...VOLUME 6, MISSIONARY SONGS, ...VOLUME 7, SONS OF MOSIAH, RECORDED LIVE IN WASHINGTON D.C., ...VOLUME 8, GO BIG BLUE, ...THE LIVE CONCERT, and his tapes series on THE BOOK OF MORMON, THE D&C & PGP, THE NEW TESTAMENT, and ordering information with Band-Aid Productions in Orem.


title: July, 1965 obscure uncharted 45 single by a Provo, Utah LDS legend

text:
The "Lynn" of "Roger and Lynn" is Lynn A. Bryson, an LDS speaker of great kitsch renown at LDS youth conferences in the 1980s.  His youth conference appearances lectured LDS youth on the eeevils of rock 'n' roll, demonic backmasking conspiracies, John Lennon attempting to rule the U.S. with a legendary witchcraft empowered Spear of Destiny with Yoko Ono, and, well, similar stuff cooking and boiling in the early '80s about eeevil rock records, kids casting spells and calling up demons while playing Dungeons & Dragons, and Ouija boards....

But here's Lynn Allen Bryson's not complete discography, as much as I've been able to unearth:

Lynn Bryson on 45 RPM singles:

"Big Mean Drag Machine"/"Pretty Things," Hook 12863.
--A copy went for $31 on Ebay in 2011. The 45 has an orange label with black printing, no listing for record company address, no other (to my knowledge) records issued on that label. It was listed at KMEN San Bernardino, CA, 1290AM radio station local charts as "honorable mention" during 1/10/64, 1/17/64, 1/24/64, and 1/31/64. The record appears to be a garage rock record, not an MGM (or any affiliated label) release. Per Lynn Bryson's book, page 76, he was a DJ for KMEN at the time. This 45 does not show up in any of my Jerry Osborne 45RPm singles' price guides (POPULAR & ROCK PRICE GUIDE 3rd edition, ROCK/ROCK & ROLL PRICE GUIDE,4th edition, published by Osborne-Hamilton)--meaning it was extremely obscure as an indie "spec" release or vanity press.

"BYU Boy Missionary"/"The Flip Side," LAB 13966
Listed at position #17, up from #31, at KYME 740, Boise, ID, on 7/16/66, local radio station survey chart.

An Lp discography, of sorts, for Lynn Bryson's Provo based vinyl record label, circa 1970, LAB PRODUCTIONS:

LAB 100, THE SONS OF MOSIAH (2 Lp set; $5.95 list)
LAB 101, THE MISSIONARY ALBUM (his 1966 45 recording of "The Missionary Song" is one of the tracks on the Lp; $3.95 list)
LAB 102, AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM VOL 1 SUNG BY THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL LAMANITE CHILDREN'S CHORUS (gatefold cover with booklet attached at the inner spine; $5.95 list)
LAB 103, AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM VOL 2 .... ($5.95 list)

Lynn Bryson was also affiliated/recorded/songwriter for several releases for Hanna-Barbera Records, on the HBR label, beginning April, 1965:

45s:
Roger and Lynn, "Summer Kind of Song"/"Baby Move In" HBR 444 (Lynn Bryson was the "Lynn" of Roger and Lynn on this uncharted 45 single release, dating July, 1965, listed as a new release in Billboard on 8/14/65. Both songs show Lynn Bryson's co-songwriting credit.

Lynn Bryson's co-songwriting credits appear also on the following HBR 45 singles:
The Creations IV, "Dance In The Sand" HBR 440  (May, 1965)
Danny Hutton, "Monster Shindig" HBR 447  (July, 1965; the other side, "Roses and Rainbows" was a Billboard hit)
Danny Hutton, "Monster Shindig Part 2" HBR 453  (November, 1965; the other side, "Big Bright Eyes" was an almost-hit)

On Lp, Lynn Bryson is credited on co-songwriting credits on the HBR albums:
THE FLINTSTONES GOLDI ROCKS AND THE THREE BEAROSAURUSES, HBR HLP 2021
MAGILLA GORILLA TELLS OGEE THE STORY OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND, HBR HLP 2024
SNAGGLEPUSS TELLS THE STORY OF THE WIZARD OF OZ, HBR HLP 2026
WILMA FLINTSTONE TELLS THE STORY OF BAMBI , HBR HLP 2027
THE RELUCTANT DRAGON STARRING TOUCHE' TURTLE AND DUM DUM, HBR HLP 2029
THE FLINTSTONES HANSEL & GRETEL, HBR HLP 2038


title: Apples or Onions:  Janeen Jacobs Brady, YOUNG MORMONS SING vinyl Lp, volume 2

text:
YOUNG MORMONS SING BY JANEEN JACOBS BRADY, Composer of SONGS FOR A MORMON CHILD  (Brite Records; no release number on cover nor record label.  Lp dates 1978)

The vinyl album was available on Lp, cassette, and song booklet.

Track listing:
Side one--
Be A Friend/The Words You Speak/Daddy, Aren't You Glad (I'm a Mormon)/The "What If" Song/Maybe You Laughed/Little Steps to Heaven/Show A Little Love
Side two--
Opposites/Going to Sunday School/Mother Dear, I love You/A Little Seed/Someday I Will Be A Man/Eight Years Old/A Small Recorder/You can Be Anything

Running time on the Lp is approximately 13 minutes per side, total about 26 minutes for the album.  There seems to be a mastering flaw (from tape to disc cutting?) on side two, "A Little Seed."  The left channel drops out and distorts in places on that song.  I've checked three copies (it's a common Lp at Utah thrift shops), all experience the same distortion.

Credits:
Executive Producers:  Ted and Janeen Brady
Produced and Arranged:  by Ron Simpson for Brite Enterprises
Arranging Assistance:  by Clive Romney
Engineered & Mixed:  by Jim Anglesey
Engineering Assistance:  by Dave Hansford
Musicians:  Dennis Nichols, keyboards; Clive Romney, guitar, bass; Bob Macart, drums; Craig Turley & Alan Weight, trumpets; Bryan Hofheins, Trombone; Daron Bradford, sax, flute, oboe; Ron Simpson, ARP strings, bells
Recorded at Sound Column Productions, Salt Lake City, Utah

Vocals/Vocal Group:  Michelle Nicolo, Kenneth Jackson, Patrick Brady, Katie Miner, Todd Russell, Kirsten Brady, Wendy Brady, Sue Anne Turley.  (Michelle Nicolo is referenced as being age 11 years in the back cover b&w photo; apparently the other children are likewise in the same age group.)

Todd Russell, Wendy Brady, and Dennis Nichols were previously listed in the credits for the 1976 Lp, SONGS FOR A MORMON CHILD.  The producer (pictured in the back cover b&w photos), Ron Simpson, is currently (2013) the label head for Tantara Records, the BYU Music Dept.'s recording label.  Clive Romney's arranging credits also appear on a 2008 Tantara Records CD release, THE NEW AMERICAN SONGBOOK by the Young Ambassadors.

Best tracks on this kitsch Lp are "The `What If' Song" (a proselytizing/mission theme to other neighborhood children) and "A Small Recorder" (which purports that a tape deck is "...spinning `round and `round inside my brain...I wish I could erase....")

Per the advertising listing at the bottom of the albums' back cover liner notes, here's a short discography of other Janeen Jacobs Brady related albums:

THE THREE D'S SING SONGS FOR LDS CHILDREN (Covenant Recordings)
LIFT UP YOUR VOICE AND SING (Covenant Recordings)
SHINE ON, THE ARTICLES OF FAITH (Covenant Recordings)
--available on Lp, cassette, and printed song booklets.
WATCH ME SING (12 sparkling activity songs)  (Brite Records, 1977)
--available on Lp, cassette, and printed song booklets.

Five solid caramel-dipped onions for this kids' kitsch album.  This Lp/cassette has not been reissued on CD.


title: Apples or Onions: Janeen Jacobs Brady, SONGS FOR A MORMON CHILD vinyl Lp, volume 1

text:
SONGS FOR A MORMON CHILD, Covenant Recordings, Inc.  CR60Z (1976 vinyl Lp)

From the liner notes:
ABOUT THE ALBUM
"'Songs For a Mormon Child' started as individual songs, each written to teach or reinforce the principles of the Gospel to children.
This Collection of songs was published under the same title in 1975 and has met with instant success.
The message conveyed by each of Sister Brady's songs is timely in its purpose and application to the Mormon child.  Her throw-out-the-chest marching song `I'm a Mormon'; to the `Got a Dime in My Pocket', tithing song; to the catchy `Never Tell a Lie'; these 16 bright, happy songs will be with your child day in and day out.
What a fun, entertaining way for children to listen and learn the Gospel."

Credits:
Executive Producers:  Ted and Janeen Brady
Producer:  Ron Simpson
Engineer:  Jim Anglesey
Arranger:  Ron Simpson
Musicians:  Dennis Nichols, Keyboards; Bob Campbell, Drums; Ron Simpson, Bass; Jerol Clark, Oboe; Brent Faulkner, All Other Woodwinds; Ed Pratt, Guitar
Children's Voices:  Jeff Bennett, Marie-Adel Black, Doug Brady, Wendy Brady, Todd Russell, Gretchen Soffe
Adult Voices:  Patti Maxfield, Mel Teeples, Rebecca Terry
Recorded at Sound Column Studio (Ron Simpson's Sound Column Productions)
--Note:  Rebecca Terry MAY be the Rebecca Terry Heal of THE SALIVA SISTERS fame!!!

Running time on each side of the Lp is about 13 minutes per, making approximately 26 minutes for the album, totaling 16 songs.

One might think of this album as a Volume One of a three album set; YOUNG MORMONS SING (1978) and I'M A MORMON (1980) on Brite Records.

The producer of this project,YOUNG MORMONS SING, and I'M A MORMON, Ron Simpson, now (2013) heads the BYU Music Dept.'s record label, Tantara Records, in Provo, Utah.

Best tracks are "I Want to Be A Mother," sung by Marie-Adel Black, which was featured on Jim Nayder's ANNOYING MUSIC SHOW Mother's Day Special program for National Public Radio, and "The Outside Of You," which is a list song about your beautiful body parts (your teeth, your nose, ...).

Per the advertising listing at the bottom of the albums' back cover liner notes, here's a short discography of other Janeen Jacobs Brady related albums:

THE THREE D'S SING SONGS FOR LDS CHILDREN (Covenant Recordings)
LIFT UP YOUR VOICE AND SING (Covenant Recordings)
SHINE ON, THE ARTICLES OF FAITH (Covenant Recordings)
--available on Lp, cassette, and printed song booklets.
WATCH ME SING (12 sparkling activity songs)  (Brite Records, 1977)
--available on Lp, cassette, and printed song booklets.

Five solid caramel-dipped onions for this kiddie kitsch album.  This Lp/cassette has not been reissued on CD.

attachment_type: IMAGE


title: If you thought Mel Torme's RIGHT NOW was strange....

text:
Oh, my.

I was flipping through the usual vinyl junk--beat up Osmonds AROUND THE WORLD, Streisand '70s pop, Bob Goulet sings show tunes, THE SOUND OF MUZAK soundtrack,  Elvis on Pickwick, endless Andy Williams and Eddy Arnold titles...and saw this chick staring back at me.

You know that feeling when you look at something, your brain goes on overload, then completely blank, and your jaw drops.  "HUH?"

The title intrigued me:  The "MODS" (er, Mods--some kinda British guitar band that I'd never heard of???) SALUTE HERB ALPERT (British rock group and "Tijuana Taxi"???).  Er, nope!

Modernaires.  I knew that name (thinking the Manhattan Transfer).  Yeah, Modernaires.  Cool vocal jazz group...Glenn Miller era.  1945?  Oh, that makes more sense.  A big band era "sweet" jazz vocal group sings (?) the Tijuana Brass.  Well, Tijuana Brass.  Sings.  Something's wrong with THAT idea.  Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass.  Sings.  This I gotta hear.

Mono Lp, CL 2490, red label, white printing.  Stereo number on this would be Columbia CS 9290, which I can date to May, 1966.  Uncharted.  Tried to look up the Modernaires and Columbia in the '60s.  This seems to be a one-off album; stylistically, it suggests a precursor to Mel Torme's psycho LSD trip (the jazz guys in Columbia Records A&R dept. that green-lighted that mistake, that is) album a little later, RIGHT NOW, CS 9335.  I checked the producer credit on this "Mods" Lp:  Irving Townsend:  Columbia jazz guy.  Oh, boy, this could be a hipster whack-job album.  Yes, IT IS!!!

The Modernaires here are Tommy Traynor, John Wade, Hal Dickinson & wife Paula Kelly, and Autie Goodman.  Per my Whitburn books, the Modernaires should be Hal Dickinson & wife Paula Kelly, Chuck Goldstein, Bill Conway, and Ralph Brewster, though Whitburn notes the personnel changed over time, since 1945-53 when they had hits.

Band credits:  Frank Capp (drums), Bud Shank (baritone sax), Tommy Tedesco (guitar), Terry Trotter (piano), Bill Perkins (tenor sax), Tony Teran (trumpet).  Autie Goodman does alto sax on "Alley Cat" and "My Buddy."  I hear a calliope --yes, a calliope-- on "Alley Cat."  No idea who that is.

The band is top-of-the-line jazz small combo tight (drummer is a bit too busy mixing it up), and so is the really, really SMILEY over-the-top Modernaires' vocals.  Wow.  And I think the songs, the lyrics, were written on the fly to force-fit the comically brassy Tijuana Brass happy kitschy sound.  Wow.

And there's a Beatles song:  "All My Lovin'".  Yes, that kind of jaw-dropping "Wow."

I think this thing only survived the initial pressing run, and in 1966 that meant mono Lp copies for AM radio.  Mint stereo on this title might be seriously tough to find.

And that chick on the front cover.  Dangerous, dangerous eyes.  Wow.


title: Glen Campbell-related album and a fine example of Nixonian rock alternative music

text:
December, 1971 vinyl Lp, uncharted.  THE MIKE CURB CONGREGATION SING THEIR HITS FROM THE GLEN CAMPBELL SHOW, MGM SE 4804

Mike Curb Congregation came in in early 1970 and breathed new life into FOR-YOUTH fake rock albums (Nixonian rock alternative music), which had started being pushed by the whitebread record companies about mid-1965, when the New Christy Minstrels morphed from Randy Sparks's folk-lite entertainment music into male/female chorus albums chirping Dylan/Beatles' tunes toned down for middle-of-the-road tastes.  The style came out of Milton Anderson's Los Angeles goodtime teen-oriented pop group, the Young Americans, formed in 1962, and put on record by Mercury Records being a spinoff Johnny Mathis-introduces album in mid-'65 (The YA appeared on TV multiple times during the mid-'60s, were featured in a movie in 1967-68, and had three albums between 1965-69 on ABC Records), ushering in groups like Capitol's New Classic Singers, the Doodletown Pipers, the DeAngelis Singers, even Up With People....  While the King Family and Four King Cousins were featured on ABC TV, CBS put the Mike Curb Congregation on Glen Campbell's TV show in the early '70s, hence this album.

The album title suggests this is a greatest hits compilation, which is misleading.  Only three tracks were on Mike Curb Congregation's singles, and excepting "Burning Bridges" (peaked at #34 for two weeks in late February/early March, 1971), the balance of the tracks on the Lp are not hits...for the Mike Curb Congregation.

Lp track list:
Side one--
Forty Days and Forty Nights [MGM 14336]/He's Got the Whole World In His Hands/The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down/Sound of Music (medley -- Do Re Mi/Sound of Music/Climb Ev'ry Mountain)/Long Haired Lover from Liverpool [MGM 14140]/It Was A Good Time (Rosy's Theme)
Side two--
Daddy Was An Old Time Preacher Man/Teach Your Children/Burning Bridges [MGM 14151]/The Candy Man/High Hopes

Note that I've referenced the songs to any specific 45 singles tracks.

The album dates about December, 1971, and came off four medium-low hit albums that got on the bottom rungs of the trade charts, though considering prior similar releases (Doodletown Pipers, Young Americans, etc...) far out-performed the genre's other releases.  Apparently Mike Curb's group success pumped up similar groups --the Doodletown Pipers got a brief new taste of success that didn't take on one more 45 single on Bell Records c. 1971-- and presaged the Osmonds' far greater success for MGM into the middle-'70s.

When Mike Curb left MGM in late '73, his Mike Curb Congregation migrated an album and two singles ("It's A Small, Small World" single came out on MGM 14494 just before Curb left the label) over to Disney's Buena Vista record label, and then merited an Lp on Warner Brothers' label when Curb's Debby Boone-produced YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE song and album broke big.

FYI

Mike Curb Congregation 45 singles:
(Does not include credits on contributing singles by Al Martino, Sammy Davis Jr., Steve & Eydie Gorme', the Osmonds, Hank Williams Jr., etc....)

Co-Burt 101  Come Together-Hey Jude (medley)/Suspicious Minds-Midnight Special (May, 1970)
MGM 14140  Long Haired Lover From Liverpool/Sweet Gingerbread Man  (May, 1970)
MGM 14151  Burning Bridges/We'll Sing In The Sunshine (October, 1970)
MGM 14243  Sweet Gingerbread Man/I Was Born In Love With You
MGM 14265  Sweet Gingerbread Man/Fly Me A Place for the Summer  (July, 1971)
MGM 14336  Softly Whispering I Love You/Forty Days and Forty Nights
MGM/Verve  10666  Right Or Wrong/Monday Man  (September, 1971)
MGM 14366  Take Up The Hammer of Hope/I Saw The Light
MGM 14391  See You In September/The Very Same Next Year  (June, 1972)
MGM 14442  This Land Is Your Land/I Understand
MGM 14494  It's A Small, Small World/Shinin' On Me  (August, 1973)
Buena Vista 494  Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah/Winnie The Pooh (late 1973)
Buena Vista 499  Mickey Mouse March/Mickey Mouse Alma Mater  (early-mid 1974)
--Note:  Buena Vista was a Disney record label, known in the `60s for Annette Funicello and Hayley Mills's rock `n `roll pop hits.
Janus J 245  God Bless America/Let Love Live Again (December, 1974)
Capitol 4054  You Were On My Mind/P'or Folk  (August, 1975)
Warner 8463  Dance On, Maria/Cotton Fields  (November, 1977)


title: Apples or Onions:  BYU's music legacy rocks and rolls!

text:
Musically, the Young Ambassadors are/were a regional group much like the Young Americans group founded in Los Angeles in 1962 by Milton Anderson, and beginning in mid-'65 the Young Americans inspired many like pop groups, such as the Doodletown Pipers (Epic Records), the New Classic Singers (Capitol Records),  UP WITH PEOPLE (Moral Re-Armament, via Pace Records, which got the attention of 1966 BYU to put create the BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY SINGERS for one Lp, SOUNDS OF FREEDOM on MGM Records, covering four UP WITH PEOPLE-SING OUT! songs on that May, 1968 album), evolved the New Christy Minstrels into a pop/rock vanilla cover group (CHIM CHIM CHER-EE Lp and later titles), the Ray Bloch Singers (Ambassador Records, a gorgeously awful junk budget bin series in 1969), the Mike Curb Congregation, the New Seekers, the Now Generation in Nashville,  the Young Generation in the UK, and the short-lived Paul Caldwell and the Caldwells (one album, EXCITEMENT '77, on a private press label).  The music style, (quoting a Billboard reference about the then unsigned Caldwells from September, 1970) "...who have chosen to sing the cause of the middle-of-the-road way of American life, and they sing the kind of music that would be welcome to all ages...", played out about 1974-75, when the Osmond Brothers and Partridge Family faded off as bubblegum acts.

This album (dark purple cover with a rainbow or "northern lights" cover art) dates into 1981 or so, and is the fifth offering of this group.  The YAmb albums are more vanilla than the above-mentioned for-youth mainstream vocal groups, but the soundalike nature of the recordings is unmistakeable, if bland (see also Lps by BYU's SOUNDS OF FREEDOM/BYU SOUNDS group).  Here's a rough discography of the Young Ambassadors on private press vinyl Lp:

(I've approximately dated the Lps by the latest cover hit on the album by the original artists)

YOUNG AMBASSADORS, Century 40369 -- cover art has a series of multi-color pinwheels; back cover has bluish printing suggesting using a mimeograph machine.  The cover is very flexible cardstock paper with a matt finish.  Back cover has b&w photos of "To Europe `71" and "To Expo `70".  Latest song on the Lp dates about mid-1971.  Notable songs on the Lp are "Saturday," "Let Me Be The One," and "You've Got a Friend".  Century Records was a private press/vanity press service specializing in recording/pressing high school and college student concerts.
YOUNG AMBASSADORS (no recording company listed) - Printing is black (as in inky black black) and white.  Has the Carpenters' Medley:  "Love Is Surrender"/"It's Going to Take Some Time"/"Top of the World"/"Hurting Each Other"/"Goodbye to Love".  Other notable songs are Bread's "If," the Association's "Cherish."  Latest song on the Lp dates October, 1973.  The cover art drawing is courtesy of cartoonist Calvin Grondahl, from Ogden, Utah's newspapers.
THINK YOUNG  - Cover has a medium blue border; dates 1976.  This album uses much the same cover art (artist signature on the painting is "Eddington") as the third (I think the third) LAMANITE GENERATION album.  About this time the YAmb moved away from being a for-youth covers group to a more theater oriented youth group, with some for-youth titles on the discs.
Track list on the Lp:
side one--
Think Young/You Gotta Try/Celebrate/MacArthur Park/Call On Me/Corner of the Sky
side two--
Who Loves You/Precious Moments/Good Morning Heartache/Pick Up the Pieces/Laughter in the Rain/You're Gonna Need Me/America There's So Much to Say/Love At Home
Note:  if for nothing else, get this Lp for the 5:35 version of Jimmy Webb's (recall actor Richard Harris's hit on Dunhill in early '68) "MacArthur Park" -- WOW!!!  WHAT A TRAINWRECK!  The drummer has timing issues and the female vocal lead howls like Norma Zimmer (Lawrence Welk's Champagne Lady) trying to get a handle on the song.
A BRAND NEW DAY
track list:
Wiz Medley/Circles/Grandma's Feather Bed/Butterscotch Castle/Just The Way You Are (side one)
Rocky/Sir Duke/Freedom/Lady America/He Ain't Heavy (side two)
Latest song on A BRAND NEW DAY is a cover of Billy Joel's "Just The Way You Are," which dates from about November, 1977.  Cool cover on the Lp; the members are dressed in shiny polyester clothes, orange, yellow, and deep red, that looks something like 1960s STAR TREK uniforms.
HOME AGAIN - cover has a cover photo of a fall Utah mountain scene.  Randy Boothe's name appears in the credits (1978+).  Latest songs on the Lp are "Get Down Town" (Walter Murphy's "Fish Legs" from late '77) and "I Can't Smile Without You/United We Stand"  (Barry Manilow's song made a medley with an obvious cover of the Mike Curb Congregation's song on the 1972 SOFTLY WHISPERING I LOVE YOU Lp).
YOUNG AMBASSADORS (the deep purple cover with a dark rainbow in the center) - latest songs on the album are "New York City Rhythm" (Manilow again), and "You Decorated My Life" (Kenny Rogers), which dates July, 1980.
YOUNG AMBASSADORS (lighter, medium purple cover) - latest song is an abbreviated Alabama C&W hit, "Mountain Music," which dates March, 1982.

These are all private press albums with no record company listed and no release number, excepting the 1972 (?) Century Records 40369 album.  (Record collector jargon:  "Private Press" - self-financed and distributed, normally sold after appearances, out of the band's car trunks in the parking lot, or via mail order, not distributed via the usual retail stock outlets.  A near cousin to "Vanity Press" records.)

SOUNDS OF FREEDOM - BYU SOUNDS group:

The first BYU Sounds of Freedom group was on a March, 1968, MGM (E/SE-4546) Lp as by the BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY SINGERS, SONGS OF FREEDOM album, which essentially copied the 1965 UP WITH PEOPLE SING OUT! album by Moral Re-armament. The BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY SINGERS were renamed SOUNDS OF FREEDOM on the next album:

Century 39544 (private press contract album from Century Records, Saugus, California) -- album has a cover of Glen Campbell's late 1969 hit, "Try A Little Kindness." BYU also created another group, the YOUNG AMBASSADORS, and their first album was Century 40369 a little later.

SF-1 (about early 1972, most recent song is a cover of "Teach The World To Sing/Everything I Beautiful" from late 1971 by the New Seekers) -- at this time BYU made its own pressings.

Private press Lp, blue color artwork essentially the same as the 1976 LAMANITE GENERATION 3rd album and the Young Ambassadors' THINK YOUNG Lp.

FAMILY PORTRAIT (brownish wood grain cover with gold printing). The Lp dates into 1977, features a few covers of Barry Manilow songs ("I Write The Songs" and "Weekend in New England."). The SOUNDS OF FREEDOM name was dropped and modified to BYU SOUNDS for this Lp.

BYU apparently merged both the SOUNDS OF FREEDOM/BYU SOUNDS and THE YOUNG AMBASSADORS thereafter.

Five enthusiastic caramel-dipped onions!


title: A delightfully embarrassing fake disco album from the '70s

text:
PETER NERO:
DISCO, DANCE AND LOVE THEMES OF THE 70’S  Arista AL 4034

March, 1975 vinyl Lp

Songs:
Side One—
Jazzman/Feel Like Makin’ Love/Superstition/Love’s Theme/Theme From “Emmanuelle”
Side Two—
Soul Ballet/Nothing From Nothing/Brother Louie/Don’t Worry About A Thing/Theme From “The Young & Restless”

The album is a great oddball fake disco kitsch classic.  The back cover credits show recording date at “…Media Sound, New York, N.Y. 11/74-1/75”.  Nero had been signed to Bell Records after leaving Columbia about a year before, but had no releases on the Bell label, though he’d recorded twelve tracks of his ongoing THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK project for Bell when Clive Davis reshuffled the bubblegum Bell Records into Arista in November, 1974 (for Nero, Columbia had just put out a headstone GREATEST HITS comp Lp that month, which capped Nero’s Columbia Records catalog past).  Considering the timing and content of this album, it suggests a slapped together exploitation money-grabber album shaped by Clive Davis’s 1970s middle-of-the-road Columbia (Jerry Vale, Jim Nabors, Liza Minnelli, etc…) formula:  cover the obvious.

The album drags.  Frankly, the instrumental backing band drags along behind Nero’s keyboard virtuoso work.  He’s a hot jazzy player and outclasses the backing rhythm section.  Think driving a Shelby muscle car on a pencil point straight highway and getting stuck at 45 MPH on a 300 mile stretch.  The album didn’t sell.  “Theme from ‘Emmanuelle’” is the weakest track on side one, but it was the single.  The second side of the Lp just crawls along in second gear.  Back cover shows a credit that Nero was especially involved with the recording of the closing track on the album:  “’Young And Restless’ arranged and conducted by Peter Nero.”

Two Arista 45s spun off this album:

0112  Emmanuelle/Soul Ballet
0125  Superstition/Theme from “The Young & Restless”

“Emmanuelle” got to what sounds like a respectable hit off the album, peak #37 on the Top 40 Easy Listening (or whatever it was called at the time) Billboard singles chart, beginning April 5, 1975, and running six weeks.  However, the easy listening charts only held 40 positions, meaning that the “hit” dragged the cellar between its debut and May, 10, 1975.  Arista 0125 45 single kicked out immediately after and stiffed.

The musical quality on this Arista release rivals the mid-‘70s catalog of Lawrence Welk’s Ranwood Records albums.  A great BAD not-disco disco album.


title: A live album from his 1971 Midwestern Tour!

text:
THE BIG BEAT A ROCK BLAST, 2 Lp set (single pocket Lp cover, with liner notes).  Lp set dates a bit after May, 1971.  Original pressing run was 3000 copies.

Running time on the four Lp sides total 89:27, approximately 90 minutes, less the run-in and run-out time on the lead grooves and dead wax.  It's a private press 2-Lp set on Artists' Records 710526.  Back cover shows a b&w shot of Frank Garlock holding his THE BIG BEAT book/pamphlet, address showing:  Musical Ministries, 15 Sennett Drive, Greenville, S.C. 29614.  There is also promotional listings showing availability of THE BIG BEAT - A ROCK BLAST book from Bob Jones University Press [[ASIN:0890841535 Big Beat: A Rock Blast]], and "also a booklet, `Jesus Christ Superstar, Blessing or Blasphemy,' is available." - no prices listed.

Liner notes state that the album was recorded at the Wick Road Baptist Church in Taylor, Michigan, with a purported 1200 people in attendance.  "His popular message has been given as often as six times a week to high school assemblies, youth rallies, summer camps, colleges, music clubs, civic clubs, and other groups."  This record set seems to be an adjunct to his 1971 THE BIG BEAT book/pamphlet and a souvenir sold after his appearances while touring.  (My copy of his book has a $1.25 price sticker; considering Lps of the period, this recorded set would probably have sold for about $10 at the time--best guess.)

Album contents:
About 15 minutes into side one, he references and exaggerates the Dorothy Retallack rock-music-kills-houseplants undergraduate biology class project [[ASIN:0875161707 The Sound of Music and Plants,]] at Colorado Women's College/Temple Buell College, muffing a NY Times 2/21/71 article, "Music to Grow Plants By" to "Music to Kill (sic) Plants By," and "at Denver University" for the correct references.

Greasy spoon restaurant mood music (indigestion), department store music (makes you buy a dress), good restaurant music (aids digestion), sound percolates coffee and soft-boils eggs, hypnotizes, "mental" musicians make "mental" music listeners,  Garlock briefly spins Bob Dylan's "Tombstone Blues" from his HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED Lp (August, 1965 Lp cut) deconstructing the lyrics, and hippies.  He references consumer slicks:  READER'S DIGEST (Feb and June, 1970), NEWSWEEK (1/04/70), SEVENTEEN (17) Magazine (March, 1971), TIME (3/01/71), LOOK (no date), HI FIDELITY (Gene Lees, Feb., 1970), TIME (2/22/71), VOGUE (July, 1970), LIFE (6/28/68), TIME (again; no date listed), and Ann Landers.  There's no academic references except the Retallack undergraduate experiments.

What I found very fascinating, in a rock-music-is-the-devil's-music theme kinda way, a rosetta stone reference suggesting where Frank Garlock got his inspiration to pursue his motivational speaker tour career, comes about 15:50 into side two, where he makes a clear reference to David A. Noebel [[ASIN:B001MJ8M3U Rhythm, Riots, and Revolution: An Analysis of the Communist Use of Music, the Communist Master Music Plan]]:  "nerve-jamming," "heathen rituals in rock `n' roll," and an unattributed reference to a returned African missionary story of heathen music that sounds just like rock `n' roll.  Adding references to Joan Baez (end of side one), folk music, and a distaste for Bob Dylan, there's a very Noebel vibe on much of side two.

Sides three and four (37:50) open with a short example of good music, a classical piece (unattributed), and... Garlock lectures about "variety is the key," "tension," "repetition builds tension," "building towards a climax point...in the music," "almost comes to a dead stop," "grand climax of the piece."  (uh, did anyone get the metaphor???)  Garlock claims he took a week and analyzed 1000 songs from 1970--I checked my Billboard 1970 Hot-100 charts [[ASIN:0898200768 Billboard Hot 100 Charts: The Seventies]], and count 718 singles for the year, or 729 if counting the new entries on 1/02/71 chart ($700 at 95-cents+ period retail for 45 singles?  A new car was about $3000 at the time).  Garlock references a rock formula; he plays a Beatle tune, but it's not THE Beatle tune (not their recording):  "Twist & Shout."  The version of "Twist & Shout" on this set is an off-sounding instrumental featuring a piano as the lead voice; it is not the Hollyridge Strings, not from the Percy Faith Beatles' Columbia Lp, nor Booker T & the MGs' version.  He then plays what he calls a folk protest song, which is actually by Les & Larry Elgart & the Unforgivens, "The Early Bird Catches the Bomb," from Columbia uncharted 45 single [[ASIN:B003UJMR9A The Early Bird Catches The Bomb/Brand New World]], 4-43471 (Les Elgart & His Orchestra made big band mood or dance records, like Lester Lanin, Percy Faith, Ray Anthony, etc...).  Garlock references the Monkees' "Goin' Down," hypnotism, that rock's rhythm is always backwards (the backbeat argument), and plays "Keep A-Walkin'" (Bobby Darin, from Atlantic 6244, December, 1962, a throwaway B-side).  On side four, he plays an odd-sounding (amateurish or budget recording knockoff recording?) of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR's opening intro to illustrate loud rock music, and that loud music helps teenagers to forget their shoplifting guilt.  (update:  I found the sections of JC SUPERSTAR recordings Garlock played:  from the 1970 Decca DXSA-7602 original cast 2 Lp album, track 1, "Overture," and track 2, "Heaven On Their Minds."  Garlock sampled snippets of these recordings, roughly at the 1:40 mark on the originals, for maybe 30-45 seconds each, with very "muddy" sound; I think he made a tape copy of music samples and played it during the recording of his lecture.)

Further references are ROCK BEYOND WOODSTOCK, THE COMPLETE ROCK MUSIC BOOK by Michael Ross, THE AGE OF ROCK by Jonathan Eisen.  Eisen's book shows up with some frequency in anti-pop juvenile literature since 1970.  The end of side four is an altar call, of sorts, for teenagers, that was recorded after the live appearance, which clocks at about 1:30.

Edit:  about the record company that pressed this set--
Jack Van Impe had two Lps that preceded this:  MARKED FOR DEATH, Artist Records 700113 [[ASIN:B000FXV2Z4 Marked For Death Can america Survive?]], and THE COMING WAR WITH RUSSIA, Artist Records 691103 [[ASIN:B001GXEZII The Coming War With Russia]], which I date as January, 1970, and November, 1969, respectively.  Frank Garlock may have been influenced to press this album following Jack Van Impe's use of the service.


title: 1970 cover songs bubblegum album

text:
RCA/Victor album (vinyl Lp) LSP 4443

Track list (all cover tunes):
Morning Girl  (Tupper Saussy)
Circle Game  (Joni Mitchell)
Make It With You  (David Gates -- Bread)
Up On The Roof  (the Drifters)
Your Song  (Elton John)
The Last Thing On My Mind  (Tom Paxton songwriting credit; I'm familiar with Peter, Paul & Mary's version, and Charlie Pride's)
Something  (George Harrison - the Beatles)
The Fool On The Hill  (Lennon-McCartney - the Beatles)
The Other Side of Life  (David Gates -- Bread)

RCA released two 45 singles, dating October, 1970, and February, 1971, respectively, which did no business (uncharted):

RCA/Victor 74-0389  "Circle Game"/"The Last Thing On My Mind"  (with picture sleeve)
RCA/Victor 74-0427  "Morning Girl"/"The Other Side of Life"  (no pic sleeve)

As you can see, the four songs from the two 45 singles were lifted from the Lp.  "Circle Game" was track one, side one, from the Lp.

Arrange & Conducting credit to Larry Muhobarac (think Elvis soundtracks); producer credit to Tom Catalano (think Neil Diamond's late Columbia crooner period in the `70s).  And Dean Torrence, of Jan & Dean, shows a credit on the inner liner.  The Lp cover is a single-pocket gatefold; inner photos were furnished by Rick Ely, which suggests that this album was as close to a vanity press album (someone put up the money, RCA printed the album, one...and... done) as I've ever come across by RCA/Victor.

If you like BAD music, this is a middling-funny keeper.  "Up On the Roof" is slowed way, way down.  "Something" is worse than Telly Savalas's version.  "The Fool On The Hill" ranks there with Little Rogers & the Goosebumps' "Fudd On The Hill."  A good, but not great, Golden Throat album aimed at pre-teen/young teen girls.

Well, Rick can't sing.  He can't sing like Richard Chamberlain trying to sing the John Denver songbook from 1969-70.  He can't sing like Amy Grant can't sing--turn up the gain on the microphone:  a thin head voice, and he pipes the notes, cuts them off, and can't sustain them.  But the production is beautifully overwhelming his voice:  a little painting in a very, very beautiful ornate and expensive frame.  Like Richard Chamberlain, Fabian, Rex Smith, Shawn Cassidy, he does look nice on the cover.


title: Four of Six stars from the TV show "sing"

text:
The four supporting actors from the show featured on this album are (in descending order of singing ability) Larry Hovis, Robert Clary, Ivan Dixon, and Richard Dawson.

The album was packaged out in August, 1966, on the budget division of Liberty Records.  The show debuted in September, 1965.  No full-price version of his project came out, which suggests this album project was dumped into the budget line to make back some of the money spent recording it.  If you listen to it, you'll know why.

Track list:
side one--
Hogan's Heroes March*/Shoo Shoo Baby**/Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree***/Praise The Lord and Pass the Ammunition**/This Is The Army Mister Jones*
Side two--
Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square*****/Lili Marlene****/The Last Time I Saw Paris***/Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year****/This Is Worth Fighting For*****

Above tracks, dominant vocals:
*  - all
** - Ivan Dixon
*** - Robert Clary
**** - Larry Hovis
***** - Richard Dawson

Larry Hovis has a workmanlike, decent voice.  He had several 45s for Capitol and one easy listening/pop Capitol Lp in 1959.  Vocally, he's the best of the lot.  Robert Clary comes over as a cabaret actor who can also sing passably; he "acts" his way through songs and can carry a tune.  Ivan Dixon comes from the vocal tradition of Telly Savalas, David Hasselhoff, Rosie Greer, Leonard Nimoy, or Lorne Greene--croaks reasonably close to the notes, and he has no range to speak of.  Richard Dawson, though, well, he's special.  His two selections are "talky," in the groove of Victor Lundberg, Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, Red Sovine, or Greg Morris, though in a higher vocal/speaking range--Dawson's Shatneresque dramatic, if restrained, readings suggest the timbre and speaking style of Nigel Tufnel from THIS IS SPINAL TAP, or the Geico gekko in the insurance TV advertising.

Side one of the Lp has a bright and brassy feel; side two runs to a slower, contemplative, a feeling of pathos and longing, an accordion dominates the instruments squeezing the blues.


title: An actor got vocal training, and he does photograph nicely

text:
MGM SE 4287, RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN, March, 1965

Track list:
Side one--
Joy In The Morning (13340)/I Can Dream, Can't I/Dear Heart/Georgia on My Mind (13205)/A Fellow Needs a Girl/Stella By Starlight (13205)
Side two--
Try to Remember/April Love (13340)/Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte/You Always Hurt the One You Love (13285)/Rome Will Never Leave You (13285)

Best track on the Lp is "Joy In The Morning," which sounds similar to Ed Ames RCA sides; it appears that MGM 13340 (uncharted stiff) 45 single was put out to push the album, coincidentally sequenced on the Lp as side one, track one.  The rest of the Lp is downhill from that track...badly.  Simply put, on this album, Richard Chamberlain's face on the cover shot was the selling feature:  he's out of his depth on all the other cuts, ranging from laughably dreadful to passable, at best.

The Lp features four Pat Boone-inspired rhythm "rockers" :  "I Can Dream, Can't I," "Georgia On My Mind," "April Love," and "You Always Hurt the One You Love."  Tracks #4-5-6, especially #6, "Stella By Starlight," are simply awful.  On side two, the final two tracks' sound quality are definitely subpar (coincidentally they're the two tracks on his immediately previous MGM single, MGM 13285, meaning they were slapped on to the album as an exploitation quicky)--"You Always Hurt the One You Love" is rechanneled, and "Rome Will Never Leave You" sounds distant, as if the microphone pickup had a towel draped over it.  RC's recording of the Al Martino (or Patti Page) song, "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte" is at best not embarrassing.

Richard Chamberlain MGM 45 singles:

MGM
13075  Theme From Dr. Kildare (Three Stars Will Shine Tonight)/A Kiss to Build A Dream On  (May, 1962)
13097  Love Me Tender/All I Do Is Dream of You
13121  All I Have To Do Is Dream/Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo  (Feb. 1963)
13148  I Will Love You/True Love
13170  Blue Guitar/They Long to Be Close To You  (Sept. 1963)
13205  Georgia On My Mind/Stella By Starlight
13285  Rome Will Never Leave You/You Always Hurt the One You Love  (Nov. 1964)
13340  Joy In The Morning/April Love  (April, 1965)

Note:  All eight MGM 45 singles were issued with picture sleeves.


title: Very, very early true stereo vinyl Lp

text:
Billboard magazine reviewed the Lp, listed the mono number (LPM 1647), June 30, 1958.  By the Elvis Presley albums of the period, the release number suggests closer to maybe March, 1958, release.

This is a [very!] early (LSP 1647) stereo Lp on RCA/Victor; stereo albums didn't really start coming out until Christmas, 1958.  By the sound, the spaciousness, the broad soundstage captured, just gorgeous, gorgeous sound.  This album is an example of what period stereo ought to be:  no gimmicks, clean separation, no hard-over instrument sound panning at 9-o'clock and 3-o'clock, no instruments bouncing back-and-forth between separated speakers shouting "SPACE-AGE BACHELOR PAD LISTEN-TO-MY-NEW-LES-BAXTER-BONGOS-AND-JUNGLE-DRUMS EXOTICA STEREO ALBUM!!!", just the capture of all the instruments and vocals spread evenly as if the listener were hearing the performance in a great concert hall.  Meaning that the RCA sound engineers REALLY, REALLY cared about getting the best sound reproduction, no cutesy effects.  Meaning RCA/Eddie Fisher/Hugo Winterhalter blew some SERIOUS budget money, the accountants involved greenlighted the checkbook on this project, for the available multi-track reel deck and got a top-of-the-line studio to capture the recording for stereo.

Unlike Eddie's usual kiddie bubblegum singles' releases (he even admits his hits were "bubblegum" in his BEEN THERE, DONE THAT book on p. 291), this album is a great example of NY theater/Tin Pan Alley/Broadway pop, er, with no jazz feel.  Eddie's in GREAT voice, and Hugo Winterhalter beautifully frames him.  Eddie's not Sinatra, this is not my absolute favorite Sinatra Lp (A SWINGIN' AFFAIR), but for the kind of vocalist Eddie is and could have been, everything comes together.  Eddie Fisher never got this close again to perfection.  RCA cut him loose right after this album.

A couple RCA/Victor 45s spun off the project, which is unusual for the time--recording companies hadn't yet come around to hit single - title track Lp a few weeks later - next hit single (in the mid-'60s, a second hit to continue the radio push on the Lp) - title track on next album...formula.  Odd....

47-7352 Take Me/The Best Thing For You
47-7363 I Am In Love/Time On My Hands (November, 1958)
--Note: "The Best Thing for You," "I Am In Love," and "Time On My Hands" are Lp tracks from Eddie Fisher's AS LONG AS THERE'S MUSIC Lp, RCA/Victor LPM 1647 (mono Lp)/LSP 1647 (stereo Lp)

Five stars for sound; 3 1/2 stars for the pop artist


title: Stunning.  Really, it's stunning.  You'll never forget it once you've heard this album.

text:
Wink Martindale's vocal artistry is unsurpassed in the record industry; his recording career took off in 1959 after appearing in a rock 'n' roll -theme b&w movie, LET'S ROCK (Julius LaRosa, an exploito rock movie like DON'T KNOCK THE ROCK and ROCK, ROCK, ROCK), performing a big beat rocker classic, "All Love Broke Loose," on Dot 15728, from March, 1958.  Possessed by a gorgeous voice and unbelievable range, timbre, and emotion, he had a long recording career at Randy Woods' Dot Records, putting out twenty-one 45RPM singles and five albums.  Like Bobby Darin's growth from teen records to adult-flavored pop, Wink's next release was aimed at the broader pop market.  His reading of "Deck of Cards" on Dot 15968 45 single (his second release on the label) ran up to #4 on the Cash Box Pop Singles chart;  Dot rushed out this album, DECK OF CARDS, Dot DLP 3245 (mono)/DLP 25245 (stereo; roughly February/March, 1960.) to exploit his single's success.

Song selection:
side one--
Deck of Cards/Melody of Love/Steal Away/Just a Closer Walk with Thee/The Shifting Whispering Sands
side two--
Peace in the Valley/Trees/Beyond the Sunset/Little Boy Blue/Moon River

Note:  "Moon River" on side two is NOT the Andy Williams' version.

As with other late '50s/early '60s popular albums, the mono versions far outsold the stereo copies (mono list price $3.98; stereo copies were premium priced at $4.98 list; additionally, it took record buyers some years to upgrade their hi-fi sets to play stereo records).  My copy is the mono version and I've yet to score the more elusive stereo copy.  Dot's vinyl Lps were among the best quality on vinyl Lp, and Dot made great sounding true stereo early recordings instead of resorting to rechanneling mono catalog in the early '60s.

Wink's all-around musical talents include that as a songwriter, placing one of two sides on Al Martino's April, 1963, Capitol 5183 single, "A Year Ago Tonight," which was also an Lp cut on Martino's Capitol T/ST 2107 Lp from early 1964, I LOVE YOU MORE AND MORE EVERYDAY/TEARS & ROSES.

Should you wish to check out Wink's recording history on Lp, here's a list of his Lps--

DECK OF CARDS, Dot DLP 3245/DLP 25245  (early 1960)
BIBLE STORY, Dot DLP 3293/25293
BIG BAD JOHN,  Dot DLP 3403/25403
MY TRUE LOVE,  Dot DLP 3571/25571
GIDDYUP GO,  Dot DLP 3696/25696  (July, 1966)
--Note: any Hamilton Lps were Dot's half-price budget bin repackages of older catalog, until Dot leased out the masters to the dreadful Pickwick Records at the end of the '60s.


title: Incredibly Strange Poetry and Music

text:
First, I wish to thank Mr. Fab at MusicForManiacs for the tip on this.

Uh, oh, my.  At first this was dance, A/C, sweet soul (just gorgeous black chick vocals!), professional, pop, and slick forgettably pleasant; the production sound reminded me of late '80s dance funky Madonna.  And this started to grow on me, more and more and more and more....  Yes!  As the album played and the piece kept coming back to the several stylistic segues:

"Force yourself to smile and you'll soon stop frowning.
Force yourself to laugh and you'll soon find something to laugh about.
Wax enthusiastic and you'll very soon feel so.
A being causes his own feelings.
The greatest joy there is in life is creating.
Splurge on it!"

A mantra repeated several times, reinforcing each play.  The lyrics of each performance and the tone: thoughts of Jerry Samuels [[ASIN:B0000033RJ Second Coming]]!

This album plays like a BIG BUDGET production song-poem.  The production is several orders of magnitude better and more polished than anything Rodd Keith recorded [[ASIN:B000003YUQ I Died Today]], but the force-fit lyrics-to-music vibe is there in full bloom.  Think "Moon Men" by John Muir ( [[ASIN:B000087DRX American Song-Poem Anthology]] CD on Bar-None Records).  "Cosmic Phone Call" from the [[ASIN:B000000HX9 Re/Search: Incredibly Strange Music, Vol. 1]] album.  Disco William Shatner.  Criswell set to dance music.

George Harrison's Radha Kirshna Temple recordings on Apple got nothing on these guys.

5 full stars!


title: Peace, Love, Polyester, and save the environment

text:
RCA VICTOR stereo CG-102 (contract pressing)

If you like BAD early '70s rock-like grooving, a kind of John Birch Society version of rock music, Nixonian rock-alternative music made FOR-youth, this is right up your alley.  BAD, just Bad, oh, really Bad.

Song list:
side one--
You Need Someone to Love/Make It With You/Wigwam/Because/Turtles and Trees
side two--
Brother/(They Long to Be) Close to You/Hard to Be Without You/South American Getaway/East & West

Instrumental backing:  the kind of rock tunes that your high school brass band got from the music teacher for pep assemblies and blat-blat-blat work up the bleachers' crowd at your small town high school football games (imagine a high school brass band trying to rock up Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4").  Trumpets blaring away on the left speaker, trombones and tenor saxes trying to sound rock-y on the right speaker, professional drummer mixing it up quite decently, a kind of walking faux pentacostal bass on the left getting somewhat funky (think those gospel-flavored rock tunes like "Delta Dawn" by early '70s diva Helen Reddy), and mass high female/tenor male choir rocking out...as hard as early Carpenters or Bread.  The kind of "rock music" that the greying middle-aged patriarchy guys running the show at Brigham Young University would think almost TOO Beatle-y but tolerable in the early '70s....when Pastor Bob Larson was hauling his trailer around to student assemblies extolling the eeevil that rock music was.

Highlights:
Well, three songs get that late '60s nonsense word-sounds Burt Bacharach chanting "dabba-dabba-dah, dabba-dah, dabba-dah" treatment ("Wigwam" by Bob Dylan, "Because" by Lennon-McCartney, and "South American Get Away" by Bacharach, by the song credits listed on the vinyl record RCA "block logo" orange label)...but, wait, you also get a cover of the Carpenters' "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and Bread's naughty come-on, "Make It With You."  Additionally, a song about "Turtles and Trees" pro-environment song (reminds me of David Hasselhoff's later song about save-the-rainforest performance on his CRAZY FOR YOU album in the '90s), and "Brother," a song about we all hold hands and put aside our differences to make the pastel bell-bottom polyester world without war a NICE place to live in harmony....

Trade market popularity:  Billboard 200 Lp chart, 11/28/1970 position #196, 12/05/1970 (peak) #195, ...over and done.

Two 15 minutes sides of gloriously awful "rock" music.  Recommended!


title: Strange, strange, strange, strange...even more strange

text:
The idea of this album is off the meter. -- April, 1968

You might imagine, in the aftermath of the Beatles' SGT. PEPPER Lp the year before, if Pat Boone ...or Lawrence Welk... had sponsored his version of the Mamas & the Papas, then whitewashed Motown soul.  Stylistically, this album more than suggests the Mike Curb Congregation's WALT DISNEY'S GREATEST HITS a few years later.  Smiley-happy, white vacant amusement park interchangable employees happily singing more-than-vanilla versions of Motown catalog.

It's a short package--10 songs, even for a period Lp.  Normally Columbia pop albums had 11 tracks when this package issued, which suggests that this album was shorted one song, mostly likely to cut down on the mechanical royalty payments due for Barry Gordy's song catalog.  Track list:

Side one--
Dancing in the Streets/Where Did Our Love Go/Reach Out (I'll Be There)/Stop in the Name of Love/Ain't Gonna Waste My Time
Side two--
Shotgun/Ain't No Mountain High Enough/My Girl/A Place in the Sun/Just Look at Her Now

"Where Did Our Love Go," "Stop in the Name of Love," and "A Place in the Sun" are treated as dreamy slow ballads, a la what the Doodletown Pipers did to the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night," and the Christies' own execreble slow version of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on their NEW KICK album a little before.  The male group vocals on "My Girl" wreaks of earnestness.  "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" is also slowed down, and the lead male vocal just calls out a vocal presence resembling Conway Twitty, if he'd crooned lounge.  The album ends with a comic reading (ugh) version of "Just Look At Her Now," complete with "wah-wah-wah..." alto sax and muted trumpet aping laughing, and guitar with a "wah-wah" pedal.  Overall, the band and backing on this set sounds like the house band for an early '70s variety/music TV show like those by Tony Orlando & Dawn, Jim Nabors, etc...--not quite right funky bass and rock guitar, too loud horn section over-weighed by trumpets blasting away, add the occasional harpsicord, orchestra string section, just oozing "This is SHOW BUSINESS!!!"

From the late '60s, this is one of three albums Columbia and affiliated acts don't seem to want remembered/reissued:  The Brothers Four, THE LENNON-MCCARTNEY SONGBOOK, and Tony Bennett, SINGS THE GREAT HITS OF TODAY.

Kitsch recommended!


title: Strange, strange, strange, strange....

text:
Maybe Columbia thought they could aim a "folk" group at Jerry Vale's audience, or that the corporate owners who bumped out Randy Sparks a year or two earlier thought an Italian language album would be in front of a developing trend (...like all those mid-'50s mambo records trying to kill the rock 'n' roll fad???), Clinto Eastwoodo with shifty Lee Van Cleefo was shooting up Italian actors filming three horse dramas in Spain, when Al Martino was selling so many Philadephia spaghetti Italio-C&W Peter DeAngelis productions at the top of easy listening charts, the Singing Nun, "Volare'" was popping up in song lists, and Eydie Gorme' made some great spanish language albums.  But American '60s "FOLK" act???  (What is '60s American folk?  old British or Scot saucy drinking tunes cleaned up for squeamish vanilla suburban Americans.  But THE CLANCEY BROTHERS SING THE BEST OF MARIO LANZA?  Uh, no?)

The STRANGEST song is a chirpy whitebread smiley-happy version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" on side one, track two.  Jaw-dropping WEIRD.

Of course, this flesh-out-the-album-with-cover-tunes album covers even themselves, chirping "Green, Green" (as "Ciao Ciao" without Barry McGuire's growling and spitting by this time) with a beautiful muzak male vocal taking the lead, and another version of the just hit "Chim Chim Cher-ee" on track one, side two.  "Chim Chim Cher-ee" ("Cam Camini") has a glitchy playback on my stereo copy:  it sounds like there's two tape or performance cut-ins or overdubs which comes in in two places on the left channel.  It reminds me of that annoying mastering "POP!" on the speakers on some of Bobby Darin's ping-pong stereo mastering on his Atlantic recordings, when the mastering engineer or producer went for a cutesy stereo effect but hadn't yet perfected making the effect seamless.  On the NCM "Cam Camini," it sounds as if they were building a finished performance for the song and tracking in/splicing another vocal and the amount of overdubbing space wasn't available for a smooth blend.  --say like the early Beatles' '64-'65 rockers when the vocals dropped out on two-track equipment for a guitar solo cut-in:  a little jarring.

By this time the NCM were thoroughly on their way to morphing in the shadow of a '60s with-lotsa-guitars...-and-banjos(!) white suburban for-college folk group into a kind of folky King Family show act, moving towards the easy pop vocal group sound of the Doodletown Pipers, New Classic Singers, Young Americans, Now Generation, Mike Curb Congregation, ... Ray Conniff Singers?  You even get harps, violins (on the left channel), harpsicord, and other not-acoustic instruments suggesting orchestra pop.  Over time, the NCM veered towards poppy covers of Motown songs (really.  ON TOUR THROUGH MOTORTOWN, Columbia CS 9616 a little later), movie tunes ("Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"), and finally in the '70s an Lp:  SING THE GREAT SOAP OPERA THEMES.

Thoroughly kitsch recommended.


title: If you thought Lorne Greene was romantic...

text:
Dot Records DLP 25851, roughly January, 1968

Track list on this bizarro release:

Side One--
For Once in My Life/The More I See You/The Nearness of You/That's All/My One and Only Love
Side two--
This Is All I Ask/Come Rain or Come Shine/The Twelfth of Never/Try to Remember/The Look of Love

Two 15 minute sides of talky lyrics--Greg talks the lyrics, a recitation reading set to music (think:  William Shatner, THE TRANSFORMED MAN; no singing).  Swooping, shimmery strings, oboe sadly moaning away, swirling harps, minor suggestion of a lounge band something like George Shearing, ...and Greg Morris talking seductively trying to lure....  Song listings that suggest Tony Bennett, Robert Goulet, Johnny Mathis, Ed Ames.  Liner notes showing credits to Carl Reiner ("There are many great singers of songs...singing.  but Greg Morris is the best teller of songs...telling."), Hank Grant (who?), Bruce Geller ("Greg, you are each lyricist's dream.  You have spoken his song, and the words are the music."), Sammy Davis, Jr., Sidney Poitier, and Steve Allen.

I couldn't help alternately laughing and grimacing throughout this album--the lowest of the low (best BAD) take is a side splitter, a howler: "The Twelfth of Never."  Tears rolled down my cheeks I was laughing so hard.  I can picture the chaos of wretching, hysterical laughing, and howling in the sound-proofed producer's control booth on playback.  And this project got out in the retail pipeline?

This album should be a high profile LEGEND of excruciating, delightful, deliciously awful BAD music; it's an overlooked gem, a golden throats' masterpiece.  Dot Records A&R exceeded themselves trying to top someone with less vocal talent than Leonard Nimoy a few months earlier.  Greg Morris's vocal stylings suggest Lorne Greene growling and emoting serious seductive intensity, Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen's "Gallant Men," Victor Lundberg's "An Open Letter to My Teenage Son," Wink Martindale cloning pop covers of Tex Ritter and Red Sovine, ...a talk album with swooning orchestra gushing away.  By 1967-68, the A&R department at Dot was on some serious trip, signing acts to album contracts like The Jerry Lewis Singers (er, Jerry Lewis corraled his own employee version of The Doodletown Pipers/New Classic Singers/Peter DeAngelis Singers/Ray Conniff Singers to sing Beatles' tunes.  Really.  I mean, really, it's true.), Barbara Eden, Leonard Nimoy, Mike Minor (TV actor on PETTICOAT JUNCTION), rounded up old crooner acts and re-recorded "hits" albums by Eddie Fisher, Vaughn Monroe, Andrews Sisters (Billy Vaughn gave 'em the massed alto saxes BIG BEAT rock 'n' roll treatment), Don Cornell...just a mountain of pop schlock.

Gorgeous!


title: If you want just ONE Eddy Arnold Lp worth hearing, this is it

text:
Eddy Arnold effectively repudiated his 1945-54 recordings right at the beginning of the 12" Lp era (if you ever spot his pre-'55 10" Lps like ALL TIME HITS FROM THE HILLS from 1953-4, jump at 'em).  Of his 12" RCA/Victor catalog, this Lp stands out as his one decent "Greatest Hits" package of those hit Tennessee Plowboy recordings.

Track list:
Side one--
Bouquet of Roses/It's a Sin/That's How Much I Love You/Don't Rob Another Man's Castle/Rockin' Alone (In An Old rocking Chair)/Molly Darling
Side two--
I'll Hold You In My Heart (Till I Can Hold You In My Arms)/Heart Full of Love (For a Handful of Kisses)/Anytime/Texarkana Baby/Will the Circle Be Unbroken/Who At My Door Is Standing

In 1960, Eddy Arnold and RCA/Victor re-recorded his "hits" for EDDY SINGS THEM AGAIN, LPM/LSP 2185, which came out to great buzz about restarting his tanking career, May, 1960, and the album stiffed.  However, thereafter RCA's repackaging of Eddy's "hits" and "Best Of..." packages all utilized the recut/regrooved 1960 versions without disclosing the nature of the recordings, which is an EXTREME annoyance for anyone looking for his GREAT legitimate hits.  This album is the antidote for all his later schmaltz recuts.

Note:  The original version of this album was issued only in mono (his pre-'55 hits were mono only) as LPM 1224, greyish-blue front cover with Eddy holding a guitar, sitting on a bench.  RCA/Victor wallpapered over all of Eddy's Lp pre-'65 catalog with new mug shots, and ANYTIME's new reissue utilized a candy-colored orange background cover shot with smiling city-fied suburban Eddy with a brown sportcoat.

Mono vs. Stereo:

If you can, avoid the stereo version of this album; RCA/Victor rechanneled "StErEo Electronically Reprocessed" versions beginning January, 1962.  The 1965 updated new cover reissue was available in rechanneled stereo (LSP 1224e), and is in the more moderated faux stereo mix--left channel with the high notes, right channel a little towards the bass frequency, and a suggestion of a ghostly "echo" on the right.  Sound seems panned a bit to the left speaker, with a little bass and whispery echo on the right.


title: Apples or Onions:  LDS "Rock Music is the Devil's Music" youth conference inspirational speaker

text:
About Lynn A. Bryson:

Lynn A. Bryson has fading renown in Provo, Utah, among BYU students who were growing up in the '80s into about 2005, for his scare-the-bejesus frightening devil worship demon-messaged backmasking conspiracies conducted usually over two nights at LDS/Mormon youth rallies. During the first night, he would scare the kids into tossing and burning their rock albums, and on the second night he'd roll out his own music tapes (1982+) to sell them, notably a 1966 recording "BYU Missionary Boy." Until maybe 2000-2005 the Mormon bookstore chain, Deseret Book, featured a bank of his tapes, among Lex De Azevedo's LDS mood easy listening albums and Jack R. Christianson's tapes and book centered on a youth talk, APPLES OR ONIONS? (also about eeevil rock music; JRC's a kind of unofficial official spokesman in Provo for the LDS theme, "don't listen to rock music"). Since the mid-'90s, it looks like the LDS church has been quietly letting the past bury Bryson's MANY, MANY LDS fireside youth market escapades, and BYU message boards are awash in speculating, "What happened to whoever this guy was who sold those demons with pointed ears in the afterworld living in backwards' messages in "Hotel California" and "Stairway to Heaven" rock records, and why can't I find them anymore in Deseret Book with all the Lex De Azevedo hymns classical-lite albums???

He specialized from the early '80s and later in cassette tapes with the most (in)famous title being ROCK MUSIC AND THE OCCULT. He was the LDS version of what Pastor Gary L. Greenwald was hyping in Los Angeles, or comparatively the same "ministry" of book and Lp album cover burnings as Dan & Steve Peters. Bryson wrote a vanity press book, WINNING THE TESTIMONY WAR, c. 1982.

This 45 RPM indie single:

"BYU Boy Missionary"/"The Flip Side," LAB 13966
Listed at position #17, up from #31, at KYME 740, Boise, ID, on 7/16/66, local radio station survey chart.

FYI--Other Lynn Bryson recording/discography projects:

"Big Mean Drag Machine"/"Pretty Things," Hook 12863.  (December, 1963)
The 45 has an orange label with black printing, no listing for record company address, no other (to my knowledge) records issued on that label.

An Lp discography, of sorts, for Lynn Bryson's Provo based vinyl record label, circa 1970, LAB PRODUCTIONS:

LAB 100, THE SONS OF MOSIAH (2 Lp set; $5.95 list)
LAB 101, THE MISSIONARY ALBUM (his 1966 45 recording of "The Missionary Song" is one of the tracks on the Lp; $3.95 list)
LAB 102, AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM VOL 1 SUNG BY THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL LAMANITE CHILDREN'S CHORUS (gatefold cover with booklet attached at the inner spine; $5.95 list)
LAB 103, AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM VOL 2 .... ($5.95 list)

Lynn Bryson was also affiliated/recorded/songwriter for several releases for Hanna-Barbera Records, on the HBR label, beginning April, 1965:

45s:
Roger and Lynn, "Summer Kind of Song"/"Baby Move In" HBR 444 (Lynn Bryson was the "Lynn" of Roger and Lynn on this uncharted 45 single release, dating July, 1965, listed as a new release in Billboard on 8/14/65. Both songs show Lynn Bryson's co-songwriting credit.

Lynn Bryson's co-songwriting credits appear also on the following HBR 45 singles:
The Creations IV, "Dance In The Sand" HBR 440 (May, 1965)
Danny Hutton, "Monster Shindig" HBR 447 (July, 1965)
Danny Hutton, "Monster Shindig Part 2" HBR 453 (November, 1965)
Pebbles & Bamm Bamm, "The World Is Full of Joys (For Little Girls and Boys)" HBR 484 (July, 1966?)

Songwriting credit on the Clinger Sisters' "Lean Back Baby" on Jo-Bee 1001, also as producer (January, 1965); credits also appear on the Clinger Sisters' "Bread & Butter" Jo-Bee 1002.

On Lp, Lynn Bryson is credited on co-songwriting credits on the HBR albums:
SNAGGLEPUSS TELLS THE STORY OF THE WIZARD OF OZ, HBR HLP 2026
WILMA FLINTSTONE TELLS THE STORY OF BAMBI , HBR HLP 2027
THE RELUCTANT DRAGON STARRING TOUCHE' TURTLE AND DUM DUM, HBR 2029

Bryson managed a Mormon rock group about 1970, THE SONS OF MOSIAH, and for a while employed Orrin Hatch (U.S. Senator since the '80s) as his music attorney.


title: Apples or Onions:  Obscure garage vanity press 45 by a Utah "Rock Music is the Devil's Music" inspirational speaker

text:
Lynn A. Bryson has fading renown in Provo, Utah, among BYU students who were growing up in the '80s into about 2005, for his scare-the-bejesus frightening devil worship demon-messaged backmasking conspiracies conducted usually over two nights at LDS/Mormon youth rallies.  During the first night, he would scare the kids into tossing and burning their rock albums, and on the second night he'd roll out his own music tapes (1982+) to sell them, notably a 1966 recording "BYU Missionary Boy."  Until maybe 2000-2005 the Mormon bookstore chain, Deseret Book, featured a bank of his tapes, among Lex De Azevedo's LDS mood easy listening albums and Jack R. Christianson's tapes and book centered on a youth talk, APPLES OR ONIONS? (also about eeevil rock music; JRC's a kind of unofficial official spokesman in Provo for the LDS theme, "don't listen to rock music").  Since the mid-'90s, it looks like the LDS church has been quietly letting the past bury Bryson's MANY, MANY LDS fireside youth market escapades, and BYU message boards are awash in speculating, "What happened to whoever this guy was who sold those demons with pointed ears in the afterworld living in backwards' messages in "Hotel California" and "Stairway to Heaven" rock records, and why can't I find them anymore in Deseret Book with all the Lex De Azevedo hymns classical-lite albums???

He specialized from the early '80s and later in cassette tapes with the most (in)famous title being ROCK MUSIC AND THE OCCULT.  He was the LDS version of what Pastor Gary L. Greenwald was hyping in Los Angeles, or comparatively the same "ministry" of book and Lp album cover burnings as Dan & Steve Peters.  Bryson wrote a vanity press book, WINNING THE TESTIMONY WAR, c. 1982, and he recounts this 45 single/song thusly on page 76 (when he was an LA DJ at KMEN in late 1963):
_____________________

"Very soon, the big record companies were sending out representatives to ask for favors.  Payola is the term used to describe the favors that D.J.'s receive from the record companies in return for "leaning" on their latest releases.  It is a criminal offense to participate in payola schemes.

Thus, MGM had a man whose job it was to become by "friend."  They, like I, wanted to avoid any illegal acts, for everyone knew that this station was being watched closely by those people whose job it was to probe into all the nasty dealings of this dirty business.

Many D.J.'s are also song writers.  It is not illegal to ask a record company to listen to your songs and record the ones they like.  That is what record companies and song writers do for each other.  Through this intrigue, I soon obtained a release on a tune called "Big Mean Draggin' Machine!"  This was during the hot rod record craze.

I was the singer and the record became pick of the week on the Gene Weed Show...the "Weedy Weekly Wailer!"...on KFWB, the nation's undisputed king of the rockers!...in Los Angeles.  And as an item of interest, that same week, a station KNEZ listed my record as their pick of the week, and listed as their runner-up, a record by a new group from England, 'I Want to Hold Your Hand,' (the Beatles).  Yes, folks, for that one brief week, as far as those two stations were concerned, I was ahead of the Beatles in the 'red hot newcomer category!'"
______________________

Based on my reading of this book, Bryson had a tendency to cast his business past in the most flattering (puffed, inflated) light possible.  What I've been able to find out about this garage one-off single:

It was listed at KMEN San Bernardino, CA, 1290AM radio station local charts as "honorable mention" during 1/10/64, 1/17/64, 1/24/64, and 1/31/64. The record appears to be a garage rock record, not an MGM (or any affiliated label) release. Per Lynn Bryson's book, page 76, he was a DJ for KMEN at the time (meaning he hyped his own record). This 45 does not show up in any of my Jerry Osborne 45RPM  singles' price guides (POPULAR & ROCK PRICE GUIDE 3rd edition, ROCK/ROCK & ROLL PRICE GUIDE,4th edition, published by Osborne-Hamilton)--meaning it was extremely obscure as an indie "spec" release or vanity press.

Bryson had a record label out of Provo, Utah with a few LDS-themed albums and managed a Mormon rock group about 1970, THE SONS OF MOSIAH, and for a while employed Orrin Hatch (U.S. Senator since the '80s) as his music attorney.


title: Before the SING ALONG WITH MITCH series that annoyed millions of listeners

text:
This little 1956 acorn from which all those SING ALONG WITH MITCH variants began.

Track list:
Kalamazoo to Timbuktu/The Sea of the Moon/Cuban Nightingale/Au Revoir Again/Oriental Polka/Under Paris Skies/The Song of Delilah/Autumn Leaves/Green Sleeves/Keep Me in Mind/Napoleon

Lp tracks from 45 rpm singles:
"Under Paris Skies" -- Columbia 40100 (also B-side 50033)
"Napoleon" -- Columbia 40261
"Autumn Leaves" -- Columbia 50033 Hall of Fame series (11/12/55)


title: A dreadfully entertaining parade album

text:
First (I'm thinking...), the track list:

Side one:
March from the River Kwai-Colonel Bogey/Who Will Kiss Your Ruby Lips/Whistle Stop/Willie Can/Wooden Shoes and Happy Hearts/Follow Me
Side two:
The Yellow Rose of Texas/The Bowery Grenadiers/The Bonnie Blue Gal/Jubilation T. Cornpone/President on the Dollar/Hey Little Baby

My copy of this, a $1 thrift shop junker find (it looked interesting for all the wrong reasons) is a VG-ish mono Columbia "six-eye" red/black label.  I'm trying to imagine how Mitch & Co. managed to haul around the flugel horns and harpiscord while the snare drummers were enthusiasically rattling away.  The opening harpsicord treatment on "Jubilation T. Cornpone" is a jaw dropper.

Stan Freberg did a great parody sendup of "The Yellow Rose of Texas," and a one-shot Capitol act, Carlson's Raiders, did a cover of the "March from the River Kwai-Colonel Bogey"--which has an excruciating rotten B-side worth checking out, "The Teenage March."

You may note that four of this album's tracks were also featured on MITCH'S GREATEST HITS, Columbia CL 1544/CS 8638 album just a little later:  "March from the River Kwai...," "The Yellow Rose of Texas," "The Bowery Grenadiers," and "Hey Little Baby."

The Lp is at least partially compiled from some 78/45 rpm singles tracks which were hits:

"The Yellow Rose of Texas" (Columbia 40540, 8/06/55, #1 pop single for six weeks)
"The Bonnie Blue Gal"  (Columbia 40575, 11/12/55)
"The President on the Dollar" (Columbia 40715, 7/21/56)
"March From the River Kwai and Colonel Bogey" (Columbia 41066, 1/13/58; flip was "Hey Little Baby")


title: If you must have just one Mitch Miller vinyl album, this is IT

text:
Mitch Miller was evil.  Thoroughly eeeevil.  Eeeevil incarnate.  And this album proves it.  You need look nowhere else.  Buy this record set (2 Lps).  Turn it up, loud.  Groove with it.

Here's a Columbia discography of Mitch Miller's albums under his own name, all that Sing Along series this album is a part of:

Mmmm Mitch! With Horns and Chorus, CL 601
Mitch's Marches, CL 1102
Sing Along with Mitch, CL 1160/CS 8004 (July, 1958)
Christmas Sing Along with..., CL 1205/CS 8027
More Sing Along with..., CL 1243/CS 8043
Still More Sing Along with ..., CL 1283/CS 8099
Folk Songs Sing Along with..., CL 1316/CS 8118
Party Sing Along with..., CL 1331/CS 8138
Fireside Sing Along with..., CL 1389/CS 8184
Saturday Night Sing Along with..., CL 1414/CS 8211
Sentimental Sing Along with..., CL 1457/CS 8251
March Along with Mitch, CL 1475/CS 8266
Memories Sing Along with..., CL 1542/CS 8342
Mitch's Greatest Hits, CL 1544/CS 8638
Happy Times! Sing Along with..., CL 1568/CS 8368
TV Sing Along with..., CL 1628/CS 8428
Your Request Sing Along with..., CL 1671/CS 8471
Holiday Sing Along with..., CL 1701/CS 8501
Rhythm Sing Along with..., CL 1727/CS 8527 (March, 1962)
Family Sing Along with..., CL 1773/CS 8573 (June, 1962)
Night Time Sing Along with..., CL 1864/CS 8664 (uncharted)
Hymn Sing-Along with... CL 2063/CS 8863 (uncharted)

Hits comp repackage, December, 1970:
A Deluxe 2-Record Set ...34 All-Time Great Sing Along Selections, CG 30250 -- that's this album.


title: Apples or Onions:  If you like G-rated Nixonian alternative acid-rock, you've gotta find this!

text:
My mother (didn't they all?) watched the Lawrence Welk show religiously.  As a teen, TV came via the VHF/UHF antenna, and that was three channels:  the stone ages.  Motels advertised "COLOR TV" on the billboard signs as a selling point.  TV was/is a drug, and I was forcibly mainlined to the Welk show's brand of hardcore video for much of the '70s.  Watching the happy singing mannequins was mesmerizing, and the gorgeous yet vacant-eyed chickies mooning on with chirpy, soulless love songs preoccupied me into late puberty.  He had some bee-yoo-tee-ful G-rated eye candy, though intoxicating (Cissy, oh, I stared at that tart, when she grooved out-of-time with Bobby on the dance floor!), strangely repellent.  We won't speak of the guys' LOUD pink, yellow, orange, purple suits, though....

Local PBS affiliate down south of here in Stepford, Utah, renowned for having so many natural blondes that the sound of whistling can be deafening if the wind direction is just so, runs the color eye candy shows like clockwork, and for a while I'll flip past the shows (faves are the 1966-68 Vietnam War era alternative universe and very late '70s primary color accordion disco shows), then come back.  Staring.  OMG.  Can't...turn...it...off!  Frankly, the shows are mesmerizing, in the same way as wee late hours movie premium channels' bad adult cinema is mesmerizing:  lousy sets, no plot, no talent, but the occasional scenes just reach out and grab you while you're staring disgusted with yourself for watching it.

Do you ever find yourself conversing with some "nice" person, happy, beautific smile, but after awhile you realize something is dreadfully, distressingly, well, wrong with them?  Something missing?  A sense of impending psychic vampirism ready to descend upon them as soon as all the public area witnesses melt away?  That you want to get away before the inevitable conversation shifts into the Twilight Zone?  You get THAT vibe listening to this album:  the backing music is professional, polished, taut.  George Cates shows on the producer credit (Welk's musical director).  And the backing on this strongly suggests those big band instrumental Capitol SOUNDS OF OUR TIMES hippy fake flower-power '60s albums; you can almost hear him instructing the orchestra between takes, "No, no!  Less feeling, less feeling!  Don't give me any jazz or soul!  Less feeling!"  The two Molly's vocals merge together as one; they sound processed, a sense of electronic double tracking, which gives them the sound of two very happy, latently vicious kitties howling gleefully.

Sandy & Sally/Sandi & Salli act signed with Capitol Records for a couple do-nothing 45s, which show Alyce King's son (look up the King Family), Alexis de Azevedo's (Lex de Azevedo, renowned producer for Mrs. Miller...and the Human Beinz, among others) producing credit:

Capitol 5794, If He Would Care/There Comes a Time --as by Sandy & Sally, November, 1966
Capitol 2089, Don't Count the Days/In This For-the-Moment World --as by Sandi & Salli, January, 1968

About that time (early '68), Randy Wood from Dot Records and Lawrence Welk put Ranwood Records in business, putting out 45s that did not much at all, even on the easy listening singles charts, and lots of similarly themed albums musically more conservative than Pat Boone's Dot recordings.  Ranwood issued one 45 from this NOW SOUND album:

Ranwood 832, We'll Make It to the Moon/I Can't Stop Runnin' Away (the last two tracks on the Lp, side two), about March, 1969.  The album/LP dates March, 1970.  Track list:

(side one)
I'll Never Fall In Love Again/Help Yourself/Try a Little Kindness/We'll Make It to the Moon/I Can't Stop Running Away
(side two)
Everybody's Talkin'/Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head/Put a Little Love In Your Heart/Early in the Morning/For Once in My Life

Listening suggestions for something similar to this album:
FOUR KING COUSINS, Capitol ST 2990 Lp (October, 1968) --also produced by Lex de Azevedo
Lennon Sisters, SOMETHIN' STUPID, Dot DLP 25797 (May, 1967; repackaged on Welk's Ranwood label, new cover art, as Ranwood 8008, a year later)
Lennon Sisters, ON THE GROOVY SIDE, Dot DLP 25829 (November, 1967; also repackaged on Welk's Ranwood label, also new cover art, as Ranwood 8004, May, 1968)
Lennon Sisters, TODAY!, Mercury SR 61164
--these chick singers made some great vanilla go-go boots groovy discs, and you should check 'em out.

Five very enthusiastic caramel-dipped onions!