Previously reissued on CD in Japan, King’s 1977 Capitol debut is now being reissued domestically on her own Rockingale imprint with its original ten tracks and an eight-page booklet that includes lyrics and album art. Simple Things was King’s last album to reach the Top 20 and be certified Gold, breaking a string of Top 10’s that stretched back to 1971’s Tapestry. This set also includes her first collaborations with future-third-husband Rick Evans, who co-wrote three songs. Like all four of her Capitol releases, Simple Things showcases King’s songwriting craft, soulful voice and keyboard playing, but failed to make a serious dent in the charts. Even her fellow singer-songwriters – Carly Simon and James Taylor – were then having hits with other people’s material.
Excellent, but ill-fated second album with super bonus tracks
Given the indelible mark Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders made with Clint Ballard Jr.’s “Game of Love” (#2 in the UK, chart-topping in the U.S.) it’s surprising just how short they ran as a unit. Nine singles, two albums, and by 1965 they’d gone their separate ways. In fact, their run ended as their singles (“It’s Just a Little Bit Too Late” from this second LP and “She Needs Love,” included on this reissue as a bonus) failed to capitalize on their breakthrough and Fontana’s solo career was realized more quickly than had previously been expected. It’s reported that he informed the band of his departure as he walked off stage midway through an October 1965 live show. Fontana and the band continued on separately (the latter scoring quickly with Toni Wine and Carole Bayer Sager’s “A Groovy Kind of Love”), and this second album, released three months after the split, was left to founder.
Fontana and the band had been pulling in different directions before the split – the former looking to highlight his singing, the latter (lead by guitarist and future 10cc founder, Eric Stewart) their instrumental abilities. The latter’s versatility is highlighted in the range of songs tackled on this second album – a collection that was put together over a longer period of time than the single day afforded their debut. There are only two originals (“Like I Did” and “Long Time Comin’”), both mid-tempo beat numbers written by Fontana under his given name of Glyn Ellis. The rest of the album picks up songs from a talented array of American writers, including Leiber & Stoller, Gene Pitney, Chuck Berry, Van McCoy, Goffin & King, Willie Dixon and Burt Bacharach. The selections are typically UK-centric, including a UK hit (“Memphis, Tennessee”) that was a non-charting U.S. B-side, and Merseybeat favorites from Richard Barrett (“Some Other Guy”) and Bill Haley (“Skinny Minnie”).
The album included the follow-up single to “Game of Love,” sticking with Clint Ballard for “It’s Just a Little Bit Too Late.” Despite its great beat, twangy guitar and catchy lyric, it only edged into the UK Top 20, and fell short of the U.S. Top 40. The group’s last single, included here as a bonus track, was yet another Ballard beat-ballad, “She Needs Love,” which cracked the UK Top 40, but failed to chart in the U.S. The album’s original dozen tracks are augmented on this Bear Family reissue with nine rare single and EP sides. Pre-LP singles include Jimmy Breedlove’s “Stop Look and Listen” (b/w a cover of Gene Chandler’s “Duke of Earl”), and the group’s UK smash cover of Major Lance’s sweet soul “Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um.” The latter is backed by a cover of the rare Doc Pomus and Phil Spector tune, “She Needs Love,” originally recorded by Ben E. King.
Disconcerting 2012 remaster of Sinatra’s 1963 stage songbook
As has been noted widely, Concord’s 2012 reissue of this Sinatra title has provoked strong reactions among the vocalist’s knowledgeable fans. Originally recorded and released in 1963, this remastered edition remixes and rebalances the multitrack masters, and sharpens the individual tracks to the point of distraction. It’s interesting to hear the elements rendered so crisply, especially Sinatra’s vocals, but the separation, particularly between the voice and instruments, is unsettling. A great recording has an instrumental pocket into which the vocal fits, hand-in-glove, and earlier editions of this title show the pocket exists; this mix pushes Sinatra’s vocal forward, to the point at which the overall result is not cohesive. At times Sinatra sounds as if he’s overdubbed on top of the music, rather than the key player within it.
Following his 1968 break with fellow Righteous Brother Bobby Hatfield, Bill Medley kicked off a solo career with this pair of releases for MGM. Both albums grazed the bottom of the Billboard 200, and three singles (“I Can’t Make it Alone” and “Brown Eyed Woman” from the first album, “Peace Brother Peace” from the second) charted short of the Top 40. It would be Medley’s last solo chart action for more than a decade, as he’d reteam with Hatfield in 1974 and forgo solo releases for several years afterwards. By the time he re-engaged his solo career in 1981, the music world and his place in it had changed, leaving this pair of albums the best evidence of the solo sound grown from his first run with the Righteous Brothers.
Following the Righteous Brothers’ falling out with Phil Spector (who had produced three Philles albums and four hit singles for them), Medley assumed the producer’s seat for the duo’s last #1, “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration.” In conjuring a convincing imitation of Spector’s Wall of Sound, Medley showed himself to have ambition and talent that was larger than the role of featured vocalist. As he took the producer’s chair for his solo records he leaned heavily on big band arrangements of blues, soul and stage standards that suggested he’d been listening to Ray Charles and other blues and soul singers. He creates a Spectorian crescendo for “The Impossible Dream,” shouts his way through “That’s Life,” sings at the ragged edge of his husky voice on “Run to My Loving Arms,” and chews the scenery with the Neil Diamond-meets-Blood, Sweat & Tears gospel-soul of “Peace Brother Peace.”
Originally released only in Japan, this 54-minute set found Campbell entertaining with a tightly-paced set at Tokyo’s Kosei Nenkin Hall in May 1975. The chart-topping run Campbell had started with 1967’s “Gentle on My Mind” was slipping ever so slightly lower by the early ‘70s, as his television program ended in 1972. Campbell’s albums started to edge out of the Top 10 and his singles out of the Top 20, but three days before this show, he released “Rhinestone Cowboy,” and rode it to the top of the country, pop and adult contemporary charts. Oddly, the single had yet to ingratiate itself into a starring spot in Campbell’s live set, and is not included here.
Given the depth of Campbell’s catalog of hits, his live set only highlighted a few in full, and added five more in medley form. The set opens with a horn-and-tympani intro to a slick, stirring cover of Mac Davis’ “I Believe in Music.” Campbell is in terrific voice, opening “Galveston” with a few riveting a cappella notes and investing himself fully in the drama of Conway Twitty’s “It’s Only Make Believe.” The set holds several surprises, including the southern soul of bassist Bill C. Graham’s album track, “Lovelight,” touching covers of Olivia Newton-John’s “I Honestly Love You” and John Denver’s “Annie’s Song,” and the Japanese single “Coming Home (to Meet My Brother),” which had originally been popularized as a Coca-Cola jingle.
Jody Miller’s recording catalog is often abbreviated to her first hit, the Grammy-winning “Queen of the House,” and though its novelty answer to Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” may get the most spins on nostalgia radio, it’s hardly representative of her lengthy hit-making career. Her personal appearances on teen shows Hollywood-A-Go-Go and Shindig positioned her for pop success, but her follow-up singles found only middling results and failed to cross back over to the country chart. She had only one other hit for Capitol (the terrific protest song “Home of the Brave”) before moving to Epic, where Billy Sherrill was ready to leverage her pop abilities in countrypolitan arrangements.
With a zippy horn chart, fast-shuffling drums and tightly arranged choral backing, Miller’s Epic debut “Look at Mine” just missed the country Top 20. Ironically, the chorus sounds just like the country-rock Linda Ronstadt was beginning to record at Miller’s previous label, Capitol. Her next single, “If You Think I Love You” is a torchy ballad in the Patsy Cline vein, with crying steel and cooing background singers giving it a decided Nashville edge. Her catalog features a generous helping of girl group songs, including “He’s So Fine,” “Be My Baby” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” She also covered Barbara Lewis’ “Baby I’m Yours,” Phil Spector’s “To Know Him is to Love Him,” the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun,” and Aretha Franklin’s “Natural Woman,” all with polite, mainstream arrangements that kept country touches on their edges.
Shortly before the Collectors’ Choice label was sold to Super D, they embarked upon an ambitious program of reissues from the Cameo-Parkway catalog. The Cameo-Parkway tapes had mostly sat idle in ABKCO’s vault ever since Allen Klein acquired them in the late ‘60s, and the first program of legitimate reissues began in 2005 with a series of Best Of’s, including a volume on this Philadelphia vocal group. Five years later, a series of two-fers returned full, original albums to print, including this pairing of the group’s second and third albums, originally released in 1962 and 1963, respectively. This skips over the group’s first and biggest success, “The Bristol Stomp,” but joins them in a run of dance-themed hits that included “Do the New Conteinental,” “Hully Gully Baby” and “The Jitter Bug.” Missing from this period is the non-LP “Bristol Twistin’ Annie.”
There have been many actors whose musical aspirations out-distance their vocal abilities. Not so for Connie Stevens, whose singles and albums for Warner Brothers were sung with both charm and talent. Though best remembered for co-starring roles in 77 Sunset Strip and Hawaiian Eye, Stevens sang these early-to-mid ‘60s sides in a voice that conveyed both sweet innocence and Hollywood sophistication. Better yet, Warner Brothers often supplied her with very good material, top-notch arrangements by Don Ralke, Perry Botkin Jr., and Neal Hefti and the production talents of David Gates, Lou Adler, Jimmy Bowen and others. She only cracked the Billboard Top 40 twice, first with the novelty “Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb),” and later with “Sixteen Reasons,” but landed several more in the Top 100.
Real Gone’s two-disc set collects seventeen complete mono singles (A’s and B’s), the stereo single version of “Kookie, Kookie” (the B-side of which was an Edd Byrnes solo), and the superb radio promo “Why Can’t He Care for Me.” The latter was featured in the Jerry Lewis film Rock-A-Bye Baby, but never released commercially. Stevens’ early singles were similar to those of her early ‘60s peers Connie Francis, Annette Funicello and Shelley Fabares. She sang lyrics of love, longing and broken hearts, often in tunes that have novelty arrangements; but as early as 1960’s “Little Sister” you can hear a growing sophistication in the arrangements and vocals, if not yet the lyrics. Though Stevens was never a belter, she does add a bit of sass to her delivery of Goffin & King’s “Why’d You Wanna Make Me Cry.”
Superb folk-pop singles from an under-known ‘60s vocalist
Shelby Flint had but one Top-40 single, 1961’s “Angel on My Shoulder,” but the purity of her voice, the quality of her technique and the sophistication of her melodic sensibility has been enough to sustain a music career. Perhaps even more important is that, uncharacteristically for “girl singers” of the early 1960s, she wrote much of her own material. From these early singles, recorded for the Valiant label, you can hear her combining folk, pop and especially jazz in her phrasing and tone. Her jazz leanings turned overt in a 1966 cover of Vince Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” notching her second (and last) appearance on the Billboard chart, peaking at #61 pop, and just missing the Top 10 adult contemporary. Her voice attracted a young fan in Joni Mitchell, who may have also noticed Flint’s transition from folk to jazz.
These songs of happy-go-lucky days, romantic longing and heartache, feint towards other popular female vocalists of her era, but despite the orchestration, strings and chorus backing her, the thoughtful mood of Flint’s work is more apiece with the folk revival than the pop charts. Perhaps the best analog would be the sweet folk-pop of Mitch & Mickey’s “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow,” but without the satire. This is all the more evident in a spare, sensitive reading of the traditional “The Riddle Song” (or as it’s better known, “I Gave My Love a Cherry”), in which Flint lingers over the notes, investing the lyrics with enough feeling that it might even win over Animal House’s John Blutarsky.
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Carole King’s 1977 Capitol debut
