RECORD MIRROR Singles Reviews, 25th November 1967

Earlier in 1967, The London Jazz Four released an album of Beatles covers, and for their second an final album in 1969, they presented An Elizabethan Songbook, jazzing up tunes such as Shakespeare's "It Was A Lover And His Lass". "It Strikes A Chord" was thus their only non-themed release. Its use of harpsichord suggests the direction in which they were travelling, and there's an appealing contrast with the vibes, making for a pleasingly groovy little curiosity.

The absurd over-valuation of Lovelace Watkins' "I Apologise Baby" (the median selling price on Discogs is £380, FFS) may be down to a renewed flurry of interest in him a few years ago, which I dimly recall but can't be arsed to trace. Hugely successful for a while in pre-apartheid South Africa (an unlikely achievement for an African American), Watkins later found his niche on the northern club circuit in the UK, which led to regular light entertainment TV appearances in the 1970s. The single is Humperdinckian shlock, but the voice is at least characterful, over-emoting for popular appeal in a way that stretches all the way back to music hall, and all the way forward to The X Factor.

Under his real name of Len Moseley, "Steven Lancaster" (an alias only used for this, his sole recording) wrote "The Night Before" for Lee Hazlewood in 1969, but little else. It's a better song than "San Francisco Street", a blatant flower power cash-in that was made with regular Kinks producer Shel Talmy (and, as Peter Jones remarks, released rather too late to ride Scott McKenzie's coat-tails). Still, the notion that "anywhere can be San Francisco", no matter how industrial and grim, if you just have "love in your heart and a flower in your hair" is cute, if silly.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I'm working over this weekend, so there's no time to write any more of these up before the poll closes - but being an inveterate completer/finisher, I'll do the rest next week. There are only eight more singles left to cover in the actual poll, and you can pick them up on YT from here. My particular favourites: Dandy Livingstone, The African Messengers, The Bunch.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Perfect result.

Originating in 1862 as "La golondrina" ("The Swallow") (here's The Red Army Choir performing it in 1962), given new lyrics by Boudleaux & Felice Bryant ("All I Have To Do Is Dream"/"Bye Bye Love"/"Wake Up Little Susie"), andfirst released in 1960 by Jimmy Bell, "She Wears My Ring" had also been covered by Roy Orbison before Kentucky's Solomon King (backed by The Jordanaires, in Nashville) got his hands on it, slowing the schlocky song down even further and making it into a worldwide hit (although not in the USA). Of the 99 singles that Peter Jones reviews this week, it has the second highest UK chart peak of any of them, beaten only by The Beatles. That's Humperdinckians for you.

There's a further Everly Brothers connection with the next single: they wrote the Beach Boys-ish "I Don't Want To Love You", and had released it as an album track earlier in the year. The Barry Lee Show's markedly inferior cover starts promisingly enough, but again it's marred by a sudden swerve into a widescreen, orchestrated boom-crash chorus.

As such, it highlights one of the underlying changes in pop music at around this time, that arguably began when BBC Radio One replaced the pirates just under a month earlier. Although ostensibly a youth station, Radio One was courting older listeners too, and "housewives" in particular, their launch line-up including Jimmy Young, Terry Wogan and Pete Murray. Where the pirates had embraced innovation, the BBC played it safer, steering listeners towards unthreatening commercial pop and hastening the emerging divide between the album-based "serious" rock market and the singles-based "disposable" pop market. Record labels were quick to respond, as we've seen here: either dropping their more adventurous acts, or else pressuring them into making artistic compromises. The gates of John Peel's Perfumed Garden had been shuttered (although a niche awaited Peel at Top Gear, which he would take over entirely from February 1968), and the doors of new-build supermarkets had been opened to the new breed of DJs, who seized every ribbon-snipping opportunity. The Love Affair and Amen Corner were waiting in the wings, and [meaningful look to camera] Nothing Would Ever Be Quite The Same Again.

https://i.imgur.com/pUTMunE.jpeg

Retaining the jauntiness of Donovan's single from earlier in the year, Dandy Livingstone's self-produced rocksteady cover of "There Is A Mountain" is a breezy, graceful, easy-skanking thing of beauty, and my favourite of this week's ska-related releases. A Jamaican who moved to London in 1958, Livingstone had cover version form, most recently with "Puppet On A String", and he'd also released the original of "Rudy, A Message to You" during 1967. "Mountain" is no "Rudy" - and how could it ever be? - but I'll take it.

I was born into the sort of upper middle-class world that Joyce Grenfell gently satirised, and it would be silly to pretend otherwise. She was the sort of woman who might have played bridge with my paternal grandmother, or gone to church with my maternal grandfather, and so my connection to her work verges on the ethnic. "Nursery School" was one of her best-known monologues, and "George, don't do that" was its best-known line. So I'm glad that somebody dobbed her a vote, cheers for that.

Wayne Carson's biggest songwriting success of 1967 was with The Box Tops ("The Letter"), and in 1972 he would co-write "Always On My Mind" (originally as a B-side for Gwen McCrae). "Mr. Bus Driver" was the first of several songs that Carson wrote for Bruce "Hey! Baby" Channel, and it could easily be read as a sequel to "The Letter", the recipient of said letter now being on the way back to his true love, and impatient for his long journey to end. (That said, he's significantly downgraded his original choice of transport, but even impatient lovers must live within their means). Perhaps it was nearing-the-end-of-the-list ennui that caused me to disbar it from the ballot, as actually it's rather good.

Like Ronnie Carroll upthread, Kathy Kirby had also sung for the UK at Eurovision, in 1965. It had been almost three years since her final hit, but she was still getting steady work, the misfortunes which befell her in the 1970s (bankruptcy, mental illness, a female lover imprisoned for fraud) being some way ahead. "Turn Around", one of several Barry Mason/Les Reed songs this week, is a melodramatic belter of the Dorothy Squires/Shirley Bassey school (like them, Kirby had a sizeable gay fanbase), which casts its singer as the other woman in a love triangle, addressing her anguished lover with an anguish to match his own (although, to be honest, I'm a bit confused: precisely in whose direction is she imploring him to turn?).

https://i.imgur.com/nmrrFVd.jpeg

Interesting to see the schism between underground hip album culture and square pop starting to appear. Looking at the BBC genome website it's amazing how fusty some of the programmes are; Joe Loss and his Orchestra, crosswords, Ted Heath, even episodes of The Navy Lark! Seems a long way from swinging Carnaby Street and dropping acid at the Speakeasy Club.

Here's the listings for 25th November 1967 https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/service_bbc_radio_one/1967-11-25

and you can listen to some of 'Where It's At' here featuring John Lennon http://retronewser.com/2017/11/25/lennon-mccartney-appear-on-bbc-radio-1s-where-its-at-50-years-ago-onthisday-otd-nov-25-1967/

I didn't know about that genome site, thanks. I see that Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera were on the following afternoon's John Peel/Tommy Vance show. And there's Keith Skues, doing Saturday mornings; I met him about 10 years later, at a very posh party, by which time he was at Radio Hallam. My dad introduced me, thinking I'd know who he was. I didn't.

Yeah, I met KSkues, he was on Pop Quest 1975 Celeb vs Winners final.

Usually a purveyor of more bluesy, R&B-type material, Hamilton King rebranded himself as Mood Of Hamilton for an atypically psychy one-off release, "Why Can't There Be More Love", complete with Procol Harum-style organ, lyrical namechecks for San Francisco and a concluding freakout fuzz guitar solo. It all feels suspiciously opportunistic, and the overall feel is too dirgey for my tastes.

The opening seconds of Jackie Rae's "Believe In Love" put me in mind of George Harrison's still unreleased "It's All Too Much" (from the Yellow Submarine soundtrack), but the resemblance doesn't last long, as Rae's dippy love song (with faintly post-flower-power imagery in its opening verse) takes over. I'm too young to remember his TV appearances (including the first series of The Golden Shot, before Bob Monkhouse took over), and this was his final single.

None of the various versions I've heard of John D. Loudermilk's "Indian Reservation" - Marvin Rainwater's original, Don Fardon's UK hit, Paul Revere & The Raiders' US Number One, Orlando Riva Sound's Germany-charting 1979 "disco" (not really) version, 999's 1981 almost-hit "punk" (not really) version - convince me of the song's worth. Apart from Marvin Rainwater, who claimed to be one quarter Cherokee, none of the other performers could claim Native American kinship, and there are some lyrical misfires, spread over the differing versions (Cherokees didn't live in reservations; nor did they live in teepees; nor did they use papooses), that suggest that a fairly superficial connection to Cherokee culture from all concerned. I dare say they all meant well, but given the late 1960s boom in Native American-derived clothing and accessories, the song's success was perhaps less about civil rights, and more about fashion.

Dublin's Danny Doyle topped the Irish charts with "Whiskey On A Sunday", and he continued having Irish hits until the late Seventies (including two more Number Ones). While Irish folk will never be my thing, the song itself is not without interest, having been written to mourn the passing (in 1902) of a Jamaican/Liverpudlian street entertainer called Seth Davy, who performed with dancing dolls attached to the end of a plank.

For their third and final single, "Nothing On", The League Of Gentlemen (nothing to do with Robert Fripp) shortened their name to The League, recording a song that was originally intended to advertise a perfume (also saucily called Nothing On). The perfume never appeared (too saucy, perhaps?), and the song eventually found its way - like so many others this week - onto the Piccadilly Sunshine series of psych-pop compilations. The howling guitar adds spice to the silly song ("I tell you all the world is in a swinging trend, bringing flowers and kisses to their best girlfriend"), and Period Charm basically saves it.

https://i.imgur.com/mTCsm4c.jpeg

A Rodgers & Hart composition for The Boys From Syracuse, a 1938 musical (and 1940 film) based on Shakespeare's Comedy Of Errors, "Falling In Love With Love" is a waltz whose gaiety belies the disillusioned cynicism of its lyrics. It was covered by all and sundry, from Frank Sinatra and Julie Andrews to Cliff Richard and The Supremes. This week, the Australian soprano Joan Sutherland gives it a bash, in a rare non-operatic excursion. Opera queens and musical theatre queens may well swoon, but I'm neither.

Dave & Don were a couple of seasoned cabaret circuit troupers (Dave Reid and Don Fox), teaming up for this Fox-penned one-off. "What A Feeling" is bog standard midtempo orchestrated MoR, the duo's showy showbiz vocals failing to satisfyingly meld. Don Fox went on to record a bunch of promotional songs for bingo halls ("Bingo Memories", "This Bingo Game", "Bingo (I'm In Love)"), which is nice work if you can get it.

Helga, daughter of the Müller family from my German language primer, was a big fan of Freddy Quinn, an Austrian schlager singer whose fame peaked in the Sixties and Seventies. She can't have heard the rumours, then: Quinn was long rumoured to be gay, but he had in fact been secretly married for nearly 50 years, expressing amusement in later life at the assumption. Anyhow, "Only A Fool Like Me" is gloopy Jim Reeves-style lonesome-cowboy pish and not worth your time.

Look, I do try to give all genres a fair hearing, but Big Johnny & The Maurice Lynch Showband's "Biddy Reilly" is a stretch too far. The titular and late lamented Ms. Reilly owned a shebeen, a term now used as much in South Africa and Zimbabwe as it traditionally has been in Ireland - but there, I would imagine, the similarities end.

If you thought the barrel was being scraped at this late stage, think again. Led by percussionist and singer Ginger Johnson - a Nigerian who had settled in the UK, helping to arrange the first Notting Hill Carnival in 1966 and performing with all manner of rock/jazz/blues luminaries - The African Messengers played Afro-Cuban music long before it was popularised. "Highlife Piccadilly", first released in 1964 and now reissued in 1967, was exhumed for an Honest Jon's compilation (London Is The Place For Me 4: African Dreams And The Piccadilly High Life in 2006, and the band's sole album (African Party), also from 1967, was reissued in 2015. This single has a lighter sound than the album, but all their stuff is great and should be heard. One of my best finds in the whole list, this one.

British trio The King Brothers had a run of hits between 1957 and 1961, but by this stage they were men out of time, nearing the end of their recording careers. Hokey song apart, "My Mother's Eyes" is a decent attempt at updating their sound, with its acappella harmony intro, a "Peter Gunn" riff, a beefy backing and Four Seasons-style vocals. After the trio split in 1970, Denis King had a successful career composing TV themes, scores and jingles, most notably writing the ever-Proustian (if you're my age) "Galloping Home" for The Adventures Of Black Beauty.

"Lapland", the Baltimore & Ohio Marching Band's kazoo-led novelty trifle, has since been eclipsed by its considerably more bearable B-side, the organ-led "Condition Red", which has ended up on a surprising number of latter-day Northern Soul compilations (it's fast and sort-of stompy, but no more than that; then again, they ended up playing any old shite at Wigan after a while, which the speedfreaks dug as the purists winced).

I've still got James Hamilton's old review copy of Anthony Quinn's "Spanish Eyes"-derived "I Love You And You Love Me" (in its 1970 reissue), holding onto it for OMGWTFLOL purposes (everyone should hear it once in their lives), and there are some lesser OMGWTFLOLs on its flip, "Sometimes (I Just Can't Stand You)". It wouldn't be surprising if William Shatner took inspiration from them both.

Mark Barkan's side hustle as a solo singer was brief, and the overcooked "A Great Day For The Clown" suggests this was no great loss, but as a songwriter and producer he was much more successful. Having written Manfred Mann's 1966 hit "Pretty Flamingo", he became the musical director on both seasons of The Banana Splits, also co-writing its theme tune, "The Tra La La Song". So, y'know, credit where it's due.

Hokey song apart, "My Mother's Eyes" is a decent attempt at updating their sound, with its acappella harmony intro, a "Peter Gunn" riff, a beefy backing and Four Seasons-style vocals.

Kevin Coyne's take on it was pretty unique.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOsnWKKfha8

Err... wow. The 1964 Big Maybelle version is pretty good, actually; it turns the greetings-card lyrics into more than they deserve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USPACVUxhKc

Bournemouth's The Bunch, whose history has been documented in exhaustive detail, are responsible for the most expensive single in this list, by some distance. Having released a couple of serviceable mod/R&B singles earlier in the year, they briefly jumped on the psych-pop bandwagon for this one, before "doing a Marmalade" and going pop for their final release. A compilation LP was eventually put out by Record Collector magazine in 2019. On the A-side, a Tony Blackburn record of the week, "Spare A Shilling", the seven-piece band do a creditable job, not far removed from what The Zombies were up to at the time, while on the equally sought after and psych-ier flip, the Lewis Carroll-referencing "Looking Glass Alice", they "do a Jefferson Airplane", coy drug references and all. It's all a bit opportunistic, but they get away with it.

Brass-playing Belgians Albert and Theo Mertens ploughed a Herb Alpert-style furrow, covering tunes such as "Puppet On A String" and "Congratulations", and even recording a track called "Marijuana Brass". We can only guess at what they did to Vince Hill's "Some May Live", the theme song from a British war movie set in Saigon, but filmed in Twickenham.

Peter Jones is way too kind to Jimmy Wilson's Humperdinckian blah, which just leaves Tuesday's Children, former psych-poppers (and good ones, at that) who were also "doing a Marmalade", ditching their own songwriter Phil Cordell for hired hacks Mitch Murray and Peter Callander ("How Do You Do It", "Goodbye Sam Hello Samantha", "Billy Don't Be A Hero"). Breezy, brassy and banal, "Baby's Gone", the first of their two Mitch-n-Pete singles, already sounds more like 1968 than 1967, and what few fans they had must have been aghast. (To hear them as they were, and if you can get past the cultural appropriation, try "A Strange Light From The East", their most anthologised track.) By 1969, the game was up, and the band relaunched themselves as Czar, whose sole and self-titled 1970 album, now seen as a progressive rock underground classic, sells for between £600 and £1200.

And that's your lot. As overall snapshots of an era go, you couldn't ask for a more comprehensive selection than this one. Was every week in 1967 as good? If so, then I should never again roll my eyes at nostalgic boomers. The lucky bastards.

Just listening to the YT playlist by itself is so much fun, thanks for this thread mike!

Yeah I couldn’t keep up with this in real time this time around but these threads are so great.

Before I finally step away from this thread (and God knows it's a wrench!), I've put together the tracklisting for a notional Bob Stanley-style compilation album based on this week's new releases, which would fit neatly onto four sides of vinyl, or a single CD. I've paid close attention to sequencing and diversity, and the finished result flows very agreeably indeed.

YouTube playlist: http://is.gd/25nov67

SIDE ONE
1. The Zombies - Care Of Cell 44
2. Country Joe & The Fish - Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine
3. The Bar-Kays - Give Everybody Some
4. Margo & The Marvettes - When Love Slips Away
5. The Orange Bicycle - Laura's Garden
6. Dandy (Livingstone) - There Is A Mountain

SIDE TWO
1. Marion - I Go To Sleep
2. Tim Hardin - Lady Came From Baltimore
3. Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera - Flames
4. The Glories - (I Love You Babe But) Give Me My Freedom
5. The Bunch - Spare A Shilling
6. Blossom Dearie - Once I Loved

SIDE THREE
1. Diana Ross & The Supremes - In And Out Of Love
2. Richard Boone - Boone's Blues
3. Gilbert (O'Sullivan) - Disappear
4. London Jazz Four - It Strikes A Chord
5. Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - The Equestrian Statue
6. Sandy Posey - Are You Never Coming Home

SIDE FOUR
1. Truly Smith - The Boy From Chelsea
2. The Searchers - Secondhand Dealer
3. Tim Andrews - Sad Simon Lives Again
4. Lyn Roman - The Penthouse
5. Kim And Kelly Braden - Didn't I
6. The African Messengers - High Life Piccadilly

well played mike, congrats on a loving document

Thanks!

That was an enjoyable listen, Mike. For me the real find here is Marion's "I Go to Sleep" which - to agree with you - is the best version of that tune I've heard (I say this as massive Peggy Lee fan). Absolutely the model for the Pretenders version.

Jayzus, I had a lot of time on my hands in December 2021. This was such fun to do, though. What a week in 1967 that was.

Dour, messy, pretentious, and Grace Slick's counterpoints particularly grate.

These are all the things I like about "The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil".