Tag Archives: Capitol

Neil Diamond: The Very Best Of Neil Diamond – The Original Studio Recordings

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An oddly sequenced collection of Diamond’s diamonds

As anyone familiar with Neil Diamond’s career knows, he’s had more hits that could possibly fit onto a single CD. But drawing across his stints on Bang, Uni, Capitol (for which he recorded the soundtrack to The Jazz Singer) and Columbia, this twenty-three track set shows Diamond’s maturation from Brill Building songwriter to hit-making singer to worldwide superstar to reinvented elder statesman. Of course, given the set’s non-chronological programming, you’ll only hear the actual arc of his artistic development if you reprogram the tracks as 12, 4, 9, 10, 16, 21, 20, 18, 6, 11, 21, 7, 5, 13, 8, 17, 2, 14, 1, 3, 15, 22, 23, 19. If you play the set as-is, you’ll start near the end of Diamond’s hit-making career with 1978’s “Forever in Blue Jeans” and spin through a few other 1970s releases before jumping back to 1966’s “Cherry, Cherry.”

Given the focus on hits, it’s easy to excuse the great album tracks left behind, but the inclusion of lesser sides in place of the hits “Thank the Lord for the Night Time,” “Longfellow Serenade” and “Heartlight” is surprising. The mix of Top 10s, Adult Contemporary hits (“Beautiful Noise”), low-charting singles that were hits for other artists (“I’m a Believer” and “Red Red Wine”) and latter-day sides with Rick Rubin (“Pretty Amazing Grace” and “Hell Yeah”) covers the breadth and depth of his career, but the muddled timeline and interweaving of mono Bang-era tracks with modern stereo productions is without obvious purpose. Segueing from the 1980’s “Love on the Rocks” to hard-rocking guitars of “Cherry, Cherry” is awkward, as is the mood shift from 1972’s “Play Me” to 1967’s bubblegum-soul “I’m a Believer.”

Despite the set’s odd characteristics, Diamond shines as a talented songwriter who learned early on how to write a hook, and a dramatic vocalist with a memorable voice. He’s been well-served by arrangers and producers who fit his voice into a variety of contexts – guitar-charged rock, organ-backed soul, contemporary pop and huge productions that echo the operatic grandeur of Roy Orbison. Diamond’s song-by-song notes are peppered with interesting recollections and generous sharing of credit with his many exceptional co-workers. It may surprise casual fans to find that he co-wrote with Marilyn and Alan Bergman, was produced by Robbie Robertson, and recorded several of his biggest hits in Memphis at Chips Moman’s American Sound Studio.

Noting the missing chart entries, as well as the terrific list price, this is a good single-disc sketch of Diamond’s career as a hit maker, but it’s only a sketch, and only a sketch of his hits. It balances his years at Bang (seven tracks), Uni (seven), Columbia (six) and Capitol (three), and plays well for those wishing to relive the artist’s most familiar songs. The two Rick Rubin-produced cuts, “Pretty Amazing Grace” and “Hell Yeah,” show Diamond still vital and growing in his fifth decade of recording. Still, a career as rich as Diamond’s can’t really be condensed onto one disc; even the three-disc In My Lifetime left fans arguing about what was missing. A more complete picture of Diamond’s early years can be heard by picking up The Bang Years: 1966-1968 and Play Me: The Complete Uni Studio Recordings… Plus!, and his Columbia years are well represented on original album reissues and several anthologies. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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Various Artists: The Minit Records Story

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Two eras of seminal New Orleans label

Originally released by Capitol in 1994 as a limited edition 2-CD set, this 52-track collection is now rescued from the high-prices of the secondary market with an affordable MP3 reissue. Minit Records was established in the early ‘60s in New Orleans by Joe Banashak, and distributed by Imperial. Minit was acquired by Imperial in 1963, but many of the label’s key sides and all of its biggest chart hits, starting with Jessie Hill’s “Ooh Poo Pah Doo, Part 2” and peaking with Ernie K-Doe’s chart-topping “Mother-in-Law,” came before the acquisition, and more importantly, before the departure of the label’s key asset: Allen Toussaint.

Toussaint had made a name for himself in New Orleans music circles as a teenager, and in a fortuitous reassignment of duties at Minit he started scouting new acts and then writing, producing and playing on their records. He infused each production with an irresistible dollop of New Orleans soul that made his records stand out from those produced on the coasts or in hot-spots like Chicago or Memphis. Toussaint is responsible for some of the labels greatest sides, including Benny Spellman’s “Lipstick Traces (On a Cigarette),” and its oft-covered flip, “Fortune Teller,” Aaron Neville’s “Over You,” Irma Thomas’ “Ruler of My Heart” and Ernie K-Doe’s “Mother-in-Law.”

Following Toussaint’s departure, the label continued to produce interesting records throughout the 1960s, as showcased on the second disc of this set. The label turned from the New Orleans style of its early singles to soul sounds influenced by Stax (especially its post-Atlantic work), Muscle Shoals and Motown. The results weren’t often as unique, but several singles scored on the R&B chart, and a few crossed over to pop success. Here you’ll find Ike & Tina Turner’s horn-driven soul cover of “I Wish it Would Rain,” electric boogaloo “I Wanna Jump,” and a gritty take on “Come Together,” Bobby Womack’s minor hit cover of “California Dreamin’,” Clydie King’s exuberant “I’ll Never Stop Loving You” and pre-Philly sides by the O’Jays.

Capitol’s digital download edition omits Chris Kenner’s “I Like it Like That, Part 1” (which can be found here), as well as the detailed liner notes that accompanied the CD set, but there’s a lot of great music here, particularly on disc one, at a good price. All selections in this set are mono except for stereo on disc one track 3, 6 and 7 and most of disc two. If your interest is limited to the label’s earlier Allen Toussaint sides, check out the single disc Finger Poppin’ and Stompin’ Feet; for the post-Toussaint releases only, find a copy of The Soul of Minit Records. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Buck Owens & Susan Raye: The Very Best Of

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Terrific early ‘70s duets from Buck Owens and Susan Raye

Susan Raye was a solid 1970s country hit maker, but having shared peak years with Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette, her long-term fame has been overshadowed and her Capitol catalog has been neglected by the reissue industry. The last collection of her solo work, Varese’s 16 Greatest Hits, was released over a decade ago, and is now joined by this selection of fourteen duets recorded with her mentor, Buck Owens. The pair recorded four albums between 1970 and 1973, launching six chart hits, all of which are featured here. The hits include Buck Owens originals “We’re Gonna Get Together,” “The Great White Horse” and “The Good Ol’ Days (Are Here Again),” as well as endearing covers of the Browns’ “Looking Back to See” and Mickey & Sylvia’s “Love is Strange.”

Owens had been a hit maker for over a decade when he and Raye cracked the charts as a duo. He continued to be a strong presence in the Top 10 for another five years before switching to Warner Brothers and successively peaking lower and lower through the rest of the decade. In 1970, however, Owens could virtually do no wrong; he was co-hosting Hee Haw, and the stinging Bakersfield sound he’d pioneered with the Buckaroos had broadened over the years alongside his public appeal. Owens had long been absorbing pop influences, heard here in the harpsichord on “The Great White Horse,” and the rock ‘n’ roll dynamics of the Buckaroos continues to spark up the twang. Amid all the influences, though, Owens’ voice always retained its country core.

Raye proved to be an excellent traveling partner for Owens’ explorations. The duo’s song list reprises several of Owens’ earlier hits with the Buckaroos, including “Together Again,” “Cryin’ Time,” “I Don’t Care (Just As Long As You Love Me),” “Think of Me When You’re Lonely,” and “Your Tender Loving Care.” Many of Owens’ recordings with the Buckaroos were sung with his own voice doubled in harmony, or with the backing of Don Rich, but Raye adds a female dynamic that winningly changes the tenor of the lovelorn lyrics. Owens’ albums with the Buckaroos have been extensively reissued, but most of these superb sides with Raye have previously remained in the vault. Lawrence Zwisohn provides liner notes and the CD is screened in the orange of a 1970s Capitol label, but the gold is in the grooves. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Wanda Jackson: Let’s Have a Party – The Very Best of Wanda Jackson

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Capitol sides from the Queen of Rockabilly

With Wanda Jackson’s profile raised by her new Jack White-produced album, The Party Ain’t Over, Varese Sarabande offers up sixteen sides from her key years on Capitol. The set opens with 1956’s “I Gotta Know,” storms through rockabilly classics “Fujiyama Mama,” “Mean Mean Man,” “Rock Your Baby,” and “Let’s Have a Party,” adds incendiary takes on The Robins’ “Riot in Cell Block #9,” Little Richard’s “Rip it Up” and Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On,” and fills out the picture with a few of Jackson’s country ballads, including two Top 10 hits, “Right or Wrong” and “In the Middle of a Heartache.” It’s a quick look at a catalog that is deeper on both sides – rockabilly and country – than could fit into sixteen tracks. More specific collections can be found in Ace’s Queen of Rockabilly and The Very Best of the Country Years, and Bear Family’s monumental Right or Wrong and Tears Will Be the Chaser for Your Wine. Fans might also want to pick up Capitol reissues of Jackson’s original albums, but for a quick introduction to her musical brilliance, this is a good bet. Tracks 1-7 and 9 are mono, the rest stereo. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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Les Baxter: Space Escapade

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Lush string scores from Les Baxter

This is indeed the sound of an escapade in space, if it were to be accompanied by sprightly melodies and lush, string-heavy arrangements whose vibrations somehow transcended the vacuum of outer space. Throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, arranger/conductor Les Baxter lent his touch to all manner of musical trends, including exotica, jazz, folk, show tunes and film soundtracks. This 1958 entry plays up the theme of outer space with its cover art and song titles, but musically it’s akin to Baxter’s intricate orchestral music rather than the space age pop of Esquivel or the piano early experimentation of Ferrante & Teicher. The percussion and the pizzicato of “The Commuter” sound more like a busy day in New York than a Mars fly by, and “Saturday Night on Saturn” suggests the oppressive, syncopated work of Raymond Scott’s “Powerhouse” rather than the idle living of a modern society. Like many of Baxter’s albums, this is perched on the edge of kitsch; but also like many of Baxter’s albums, the listener’s ears are rewarded by the quality of the maestro’s orchestrations. Those who picked up El’s 2009 mono CD will be happy to learn that this MP3 collection is in full-spectrum, space-age stereo. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Starz: Attention Shoppers!

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‘70s hard-rock band goes power-pop

For those not paying attention to hard rock in the mid-70s, the terrific power pop of Starz’s third album seemed to appear out of thin air. For those who had listened to the band’s first two albums, Starz and Violation, the change in direction must have been a rude surprise. The band had always shown a keen sense of melody and even harmony vocals, but their riffing guitar jams and macho arena rhythms had been more apiece with Kiss and Aerosmith than the Raspberries. In retrospect, you can hear the change coming as the band’s lone Top 40 hit, “Cherry Baby,” opened Violation. The rhythm guitar had the richness of a 12-string, the lead vocal was softened slightly, and the chorus had the hook of an Andy Kim record. The remainder of the album, save the prog-folk “Is That a Street Light or the Moon,” fit more with the hard rock of the debut, but the dream of commercial success was clearly planted.

For their third album, the band produced itself and chased the pop sound that had garnered brief chart success. From the opening drumbeats of “Hold on to the Night,” the melodic twin guitar intro and the mid-tempo major key melody were a new direction that surely caused existing fans to blanch. Yet, anyone who was grooving to Dwight Twilley would have warmed quickly to Starz’ new sound, with the remainder of the album’s first side paying more dividends as the bands sounds like Bram Tchaikovsky, 20/20 and the Beat. Michael Lee Smith sings lovelorn lyrics without the macho strut of the band’s earlier pop-metal, though the power ballad “Third Time’s the Charm” would work well in a set with Poison’s “Every Rose Has its Thorn,” and the album closing “Johnny All Alone” has the length of an arena showcase.

The guitars offer up memorable hooks, and the band’s harmonizing works even better here than it had on their earlier albums. There are a couple of tracks, the bluesy night out, “Waitin’ On You” and especially “Good Ale We Seek,” that flash the band’s hard-rock roots and prog-rock edges, and a taste of punk rock’s abandon can be heard in “X-Ray Spex.” Unfortunately, Starz’s core fans weren’t buying this, and power-pop fans couldn’t seem to shake the band’s history. It’s too bad that college radio wasn’t yet as influential as it would become a few years later, as Attention Shoppers! slipped onto quite a few campus turntables between Cheap Trick and Sparks. It’s great to have this in a digital reissue, all that’s missing is the shopping bag liner that came with the original record! [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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Merle Haggard: Hag / Someday We’ll Look Back

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merlehaggard_hagStellar pair of 1971 albums continues Haggard’s incredible run

Merle Haggard proved himself a triple-threat country legend – a compelling live performer, a repeat hitmaker and one of the genre’s best album artists. When he started his run on Capitol with 1965’s Strangers and 1966’s Swinging Doors/TheBottle Let Me Down, he packed each with superb originals and beautifully interpreted covers. Even more impressive is that the quality never dipped as he released multiple albums per year throughout the 1960s and well into the 1970s. By the time he released this pair in 1971, Haggard was an international success (having been named the “Entertainer of the Year” in 1970 by both the ACM and CMA) and so deeply in the zone as to make these works seem completely effortless.

1971’s Hag followed tribute albums to Jimmie Rogers (Same Train, A Different Time) and Bob Wills (A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World), and found Haggard returning to songwriting. He sustains the melancholy broken hearts of earlier albums in troubled romances, teary goodbyes and even a happy-go-lucky capitulation to bad luck. Though Haggard’s politics had been misinterpreted with “Okie Muskogee,” the social tolerance of “The Farmer’s Daughter” is plainspoken, and his call to a higher authority, “Jesus, Take a Hold” is clear in its assessment of the world’s ills. He holds true to himself with “I Can’t Be Myself” and closes the album with an inventory of some unusual experiential riches.

The album’s covers include Redd Stewart and Ernest Tubb’s “Soldier’s Last Letter,” as sadly poignant in the Vietnam era as it had been during World War II. Dave Kirby’s down-and-out “Sidewalks of Chicago” mirrors Haggard’s own hard-luck songs, as does the cast off alcoholic of Dean Holloway’s “No Reason to Quit.” This CD reissue adds three bonus tracks: a superb version of Hank Cochran’s outlaw declaration “I’ll Be a Hero (When I Strike),” a relaxed jazz-tinged cover of the blues “Trouble in Mind,” and a previously unreleased cover of the tin pan alley standard “I Ain’t Got Nobody” whose lively yodel, fiddle and swing beat recall Haggard’s love of Bob Wills.

The year’s second album, Someday We’ll Look Back, is more subdued, with several ballads lined by strings and pedal steel. There’s infidelity, relationships teetering on the edge and a tearful memory of better days, but there are also moments of optimism as Haggard dreams of a brighter future and considers dipping his toe back into the mainstream. There’s also some twangy Bakersfield-styled guitar licks and songs of the California fields. Dottie West’s “One Row at a Time” follows a Georgian’s migration to the coast, Haggard’s classic “Tulare Dust” sings of the hard labor at journey’s end, and Dallas Frazier’s “California Cottonfields” surveys the Golden State’s broken promise.

The gulf between hippies and straights is bridged once again on “Big Time Annie’s Square,” and the hopeless dreams of a convicted man provide grist for “Huntsville.” The bonuses include a cover of Bob Wills’ fiddle tune, “Spanish Two Step,” and Haggard’s multi-symptom “Worried, Unhappy, Lonesome and Sorry.” Haggard’s first dozen albums are remarkable in their consistency, and though this pair, much like the last few, consolidates rather than pushes forward, they remain among the best in his catalog.

Capitol’s series of two-fers include both original album covers (one on each side of the booklet), color photo reproductions, and newly struck liner notes. Though Haggard fans are likely to have a lot of this material on previous single-CD reissues or box sets, the logical album pairings and remastered 24-bit sound make these sets especially attractive. The only real nits one could pick is the absence of session credits, master numbering and chart positioning, as well as a lack of detail on some of the bonus tracks. These are minor issues for such a stellar series of five-star reissues. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Glen Campbell: Meet Glen Campbell

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glencampbell_meetBrilliant update of country-pop legend

In contrast to Johnny Cash’s stark reinvention at the hands of Rick Rubin on the American Recordings series, the cheekily titled Meet Glen Campbell sets out to simply reintroduce a legendary artist to contemporary audiences. Co-producers Julian Raymond and Howard Willing are quite obviously steeped in Campbell’s classic hits and sound, and rather than reframing him in something stark or contrasting, they find relevancy in contemporary material and beautifully constructed arrangements that blend guitars, bass, drums, banjo, mandolin and strings. The layered instruments push the songs forward with soaring strings, shuffling country-pop rhythms, and background washes that give this release an updated sound without trying to completely recast its star. Campbell’s voice is mixed further forward than on many of his classic hits, and he sounds remarkably at home atop non-Nashville production that perfectly blends acoustic and electric instruments. This is pop music in the vein of Campbell’s iconic recordings of Jimmy Webb’s songs, mixing craft and roots for the broadly accepting top-40 of four decades past.

The album’s ten tracks are carefully selected from the catalogs of well-known modern pop artists, and adapted with flourishes of Campbell’s earlier work. The rolling rhythm of “Gentle on My Mind,” for example, is added to a cover of Tom Petty’s redemptive “Angel Dream,” and the dramatic strings introducing the Foo Fighters’ “Times Like These” play upon the original opening of “Wichita Lineman.” Among the album’s highlights is a cover of Jackson Browne’s “These Days,” on which Campbell seems to reflect wearily on the chaos of his earlier years, and finds a modicum of satisfaction in simply having lived through it all. The arrangement of strings and acoustic guitars takes a cue from Nico’s 1967 version, but Campbell’s lengthy career and public life resonate deeply with the lyrics. The Replacements’ “Sadly Beautiful” is arranged with strings in place of the original volume-controlled guitar counterpoint, and ‘70s soft-rock fans will recognize the underlying guitar vibrato from Bread’s “If.” Campbell’s shell-shocked reading of Paul Westerberg’s sorrowful lyrics is supported by layers of acoustic guitar, strings, keyboards and backing vocals. Even the Velvet Underground’s “Jesus” is made to reflect Campbell’s tumultuous history, recast from a libertine’s consideration to an elder statesman’s plea.

If there’s a weakness to the album, it’s the lack of new material. The all-covers format leaves listeners to compare Campbell’s versions to the originals, rather than providing an opportunity to introduce definitive interpretations. Thankfully, many of the selections are pulled from albums rather than hit singles, and avoid the novelty of a mature artist trying to look hip. Even when Campbell does remake an icon, such as Tom Petty’s “Walls” or Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” the songs are given new life from Campbell’s classic sound. “Walls” opens with the sort of orchestral attack that cued the vocal of “Galveston” and “Good Riddance” is turned into a shuffle that’s equal parts country and modern pop. Campbell’s return finds his skills as a vocal interpreter undimmed, and his producers amplify his native talent with cannily picked songs and deftly arranged productions. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Hear “Sadly Beautiful”