The Orlons were a Philadelphia high school singing group who came to Cameo-Parkway Records on a recommendation from Len Barry of the Dovells. After a couple of flop singles they hit it big with the Kal Mann and Dave Appel’s dance tune, “The Wah-Watusi†in 1962. The single and debut album of the same name are highlighted by the terrific lead vocals of Rosetta Hightower, starting with the group’s excellent cover of “Dedicated to the One I Love.†Hightower doesn’t sing it with the power of the Shirelles’ Shirley Owen, but invests just as much heart and soul into the lyrics. Hightower also shines on the group’s cover of Dee Dee Sharp’s “Mashed Potato Time,†and its reprise, “Gravy (For My Mashed Potatoes),†each of which the group had backed on the original hits.
The group’s lone male vocalist, Stephen Caldwell, steps up front for “Tonight,†taking the group closer to doo-wop, as does Hightower’s pleading cover of the Chantels’ “The Plea†and the crooning “I’ll Be True.†Caldwell adds some wonderful bass singing behind the female duet cover of Johnnie and Joe’s “Over the Mountain, Across the Sea.†The backing harmonies are brought forward to introduce a heartbroken cover of the Chantels’ “He’s Gone,†and the Shirelles’ “I Met Him on a Sunday†is given a zesty, Latin twist by the drummer.  Like all of the Philadelphia-based Cameo-Parkway acts, the vocal group’s ace-in-the-hole was the house band, which provided incredible rhythm backing and fat-toned sax solos.
The group’s third long-player (their second All the Hits is still awaiting reissue), named for their third top-10 hit “South Street,†sounds more like a Coasters album, with honking sax and a slate full of novelties that includes the Rooftop Singers’ “Walk Right In,†John D. Loudermilk’s “Big Daddy,†Slim Gaillard’s “Cement Mixer†and the Coasters’ own “Charlie Brown.†Ironically, the latter is among the most soulful of the lot, with great harmonies and hypnotically rising piano figures. The album has a throwback feel amplified by covers of the band band-era “Between 18th and 19th on Chestnut Street†and Kid Ory’s jazz-age “Muskrat Ramble.†Stephen Caldwell is heard mostly in his low, growling “frog voice,†which feels tired by album end.
The King of the Twist does the pony and twists again on his 3rd and 4th albums
One might imagine that the passing of Allen B. Klein in 2009 has something to do with the emergence of six Cameo-Parkway CD reissues, including this one and titles from Bobby Rydell, The Orlons, Terry Knight and the Pack, a vocal groups compilation, and a novelty outing from Clint Eastwood’s years on Rawhide. The legendary Philadelphia labels operated from 1956 through 1967, hitting a peak during American Bandstand’s years as a Philly institution, and becoming the root of Klein’s ABKCO Records in 1967. Klein reissued vault material on vinyl in the 1970s, but was very slow to adapt to CDs. Bootlegs and re-recordings proliferated for decades before the embargo was broken with the 2005 box set Cameo Parkway 1957-1967, and a series of best-of discs for the labels’ biggest stars. Five years later ABKCO is really starting to dig into the vault with this volley of original full-length album reissues.
Oddly, rather than starting the reissue program with Checker’s (and the Parkway label’s) first two albums (1960’s Twist with Chubby Checker and 1961’s For Twisters Only), the series jump-starts with the twister’s third and fourth albums. Checker ignited a worldwide dance craze with his chart-topping cover of Hank Ballard’s “The Twist,†and hit the Top 20 again with a cover of the 1940’s dance number, “The Hucklebuck.†With his third album, he once again topped the charts with a novelty dance number, “Pony Time.†The album also yielded the lower-charting “Dance This Mess Around.†Later that year, he dropped his third of four albums for 1961, and with it scored a Top 10 (and a Grammy award) with “Let’s Twist Again.†He’d continue to ride novelty dance songs onto the charts into the mid-60s, including a return trip to #1 with his original recording of “The Twist.â€
Checker’s albums were literally filled with dance tunes, old and new, here including “The Watusi,†“The Hully Gully†(sung to the tune of “Peanut Butter,†which Checker covered on Let’s Twist Again) “The Stroll,†“The Mashed Potatoes†(which preceded his labelmate Dee Dee Sharp’s hit “Mashed Potato Time†by a year), “The Shimmy†(which would be recycled in 1962 as a hit duet with Sharp as “Slow Twistin’â€), “The Jet,†“The Continental Walk,†“The Charleston†and “The Ray Charles-Ton.†Throw in a couple of R&B covers, like “I Almost Lost My Baby†and “Quarter to Three†and you have a standard-issue Chubby Checker album. Despite the many variations on a few themes, Checker throws himself into each song as if it’s brand new, and the Cameo-Parkway house band swings hard on everything it plays.
Brill Building legend Carole King has really had two full music careers. Starting in the late 1950s and flourishing in the 1960s, she was part of the legendary stable of New York City songwriters who took their name from the sister building to the one in which they wrote their effervescent gems for Don Kirshner’s Aldon Music. Together with Gerry Goffin, King wrote some of the most memorable songs of the 1960s, scribing landmark sides for the Shirelles, Everly Brothers, Drifters, Chiffons, Monkees, Aretha Franklin, and dozens more. King is generally regarded, based on the chart success of her songs, as the most commercially successful female pop songwriter of the twentieth century. Had this been her only contribution to pop music, she’d be heralded as a legend, but King also had it in mind to step into the spotlight and perform her songs.
Her early attempts at a singing career, represented here by the Top 40 hit “It Might As Well Rain Until September,†fit into the prevailing Brill Building sound. She sang demos (some of which can be sampled on Brill Building Legends) and had another minor hit with “He’s a Bad Boy,†but didn’t really develop her singer’s voice until nearly a decade later. Moving to the West Coast, King recorded an album with Danny Kortchmar as The City (Now That Everything’s Been Said), and released a solo debut (Writer) that gained notice but little sales. It wasn’t until the following year’s Tapestry that King found the fame as a singer that her songs had previously found for her as a songwriter. Her songs created a lyrical voice that was perfectly in sync with 1971, and even more poignantly, her tour de force remake of 1959’s “Will You Love Me Tomorrow†highlighted the emotional depth that had been part of her songwriting from the earliest days.
Legacy’s 2-CD set looks at both sides of King’s career. Disc one samples her early solo work, her 1970s stardom with tracks from Writer, Tapestry, Music, Rhymes & Reason, Fantasy, Wrap Around Joy, Thoroughbred, her score for Maurice Sendak’s Really Rosie, and a couple of later tracks recorded with Babyface (“You Can Do Anythingâ€) and Celine Dion. Missing are the albums she recorded for Capitol, Atlantic and EMI from the late-70s into the early-90s; they may not be essential to telling the story of her breakthrough years, but a sampling of tracks would have made a nice addition. Disc two samples fifteen King compositions recorded by (and mostly hits for) other artists. The breadth of acts that made brilliant music from King and Goffin’s compositions is staggering, particularly when you realize this is a fraction of the hits she wrote, and that is in turn a fraction of the thousands of cover versions these songs earned.
All or Nothing 1965-1968 is one of four documentaries released as part of a five-DVD British Invasion box set by Reelin’ in the Years Productions. It is a spectacular collection of footage that spans twenty-seven complete vintage performances, interviews with the principle band members reflecting on their time as seminal mod and psychedelic rockers, and superb vintage clips of the band creating in the studio, shopping on Carnaby Street and gigging at iconic clubs like the Marquee. The producers have performed miracles in digging up rare television and film footage, and archival interviews with Steve Marriott (from 1985) and Ronnie Lane (from 1988, his last filmed appearance) are complemented by contemporary interviews with Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan.
Though the Small Faces had only one chart hit in the U.S. (1968’s “Itchycoo Parkâ€), their fame in the UK and Europe, not to mention their style, sound and musicianship, were in league with the Who and Stones. The band members post-Small Faces gigs brought a greater helping of stateside fame (Marriott with Humble Pie; Lane, McLagan and Jones with the Faces; and Jones with the latter-day Who), but this 101-minute documentary shows the Small Faces were a group to be reckoned with. Marriott was a ferocious front-man with an aggressive vocal delivery, hot guitar licks and a songwriting partnership with Ronnie Lane that matured from derivative R&B to original tunes that wove pop, rock and psych influences into their bedrock soul. The interviews trace the group’s original influences, the pop sides forced upon them, and the turning points at which they made artistic leaps forward.
Terrific 3-CD anthology of underappreciated powerhouse
Pacific Northwest powerhouse Paul Revere & the Raiders seem to have been lost in shadow of Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets and the hundreds of garage-rock compilations that followed in its wake. They aren’t exactly a secret, having recorded for Columbia, scoring fifteen Top 40 singles, garnering a feature spot on Where the Action Is and hosting their own shows, Happening ’68 and It’s Happening. But neither are they afforded the recognition their hits, B-sides, album cuts and live performances really earned. Perhaps it was the genesis of their stardom in Southern California or their major label association that kept them from garage band legend. Maybe it was the themed costumes – particularly the three-corner hats – or that vocalist Mark Lindsay had a soulful finesse which went beyond the typical garage-punk snot. Or maybe it’s that their run into the mid-70s outlasted their roots. Whatever it was, it’s left the Raiders rich catalog remembered only by a few high-charting hits.
The Raiders’ garage and frat-rock credentials were minted on a string of indie singles, and a recording of rock ‘n’ roll’s national anthem, “Louie, Louie,†that was laid down only a few weeks after the Kingsmen’s. The Raiders version bubbled under the Top 100, and along with the Wailers’ earlier version helped root the song in the Pacific Northwest. Picked up by Columbia the single had a good helping of regional success before Columbia A&R honcho Mitch Miller scuttled it. The group’s original follow-up “Louie-Go Home†sounds more like a grungy take on Otis Blackwell’s “Daddy Rolling Stone,†than a riff on Richard Berry’s original, and once again only managed to grazed the bottom of the Billboard chart. These early single, fueled by Lindsay’s fat saxophone tone and covers of R&B tunes “Night Train†and “Have Love, Will Travel,†weren’t as raw as the Sonics, but were still a lot meatier than most of their L.A., Chicago or Northeast counterparts.
“Louie, Louie,†originally released on the Sande label, turned out to be the Raiders ticket to the big time: a deal with Columbia Records. The group continued to crank out R&B covers for the next year, including a fuzz-heavy cover of Gene Thomas’ country-tinged “Sometimes†and a solid take on the Aaron Neville hit “Over You.†The group’s original were initially limited to B-sides, such as the instrumental “Swim,†but in 1965 the Lindsay/Revere composition “Steppin’ Out†began the group’s assault on the charts. Revere’s organ riffs and a confrontational lyric gave this single a tougher garage sound that took them just shy of the Top 40. A short-lived detour into Jan & Dean-styled car songs (“SS396†b/w “Corvair Babyâ€) was followed by a trifecta of the group’s best remembered hits.
First up was “Just Like Me,†with a wickedly insinuating organ riff, a brilliant double guitar solo, and a vocal that rises from barely contained verses to emotionally explosive choruses. Next was Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil’s anti-drug “Kicks,†turned down by the Animals and taken to #4 by the Raiders. Lindsay really sells the song, singing the lyric as both a lecture and a plea, forceful on the verses and understanding in the choruses. The group cracked the Top 10 again with another Mann & Weil tune, “Hungry,†propelled by its hypnotically powerful bass line. The group (with Terry Melcher) subsequently began writing many of their own hits and B-sides, including “Good Thing,†“Him or Me,†and “Ups and Downs,†and Melcher began adding studio musicians to the mix.
As 1967 turned into 1968 the band stretched from their Northwest rock roots into sunshine pop, bubblegum, folk rock, soul and light-psych. Fine sides from this period include the Beatle-esque “Too Much Talk,†the groovy theme songs “Happening ‘68†and “It’s Happening,†and the chewy “Cinderella Sunshine†and “Mr. Sun, Mr. Moon.†The latter two are among the sides Lindsey produced for the band after their separation from Terry Melcher and the arrival of three replacement Raiders with Southern roots. By the end of the 1960s the group’s singles were charting lower, often outside the Top 40, but their quality never dipped, and the advent of stereo releases (with 1969’s “We Gotta All Get Togetherâ€) finally detached their sound from the monophonic thrash of their Northwest roots.
Their success was renewed in 1971 with a cover of John D. Loudermilk’s “Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian),†a song that had been recorded a decade earlier by Marvin Rainwater and with some commercial success by Don Fardon. The Raiders’ version topped the singles charts – their only #1 – and sold a million copies. The renewed success was brief however: a follow-up cover of Joe South’s “Birds of a Feather†just missed the Top 20, and their next four singles charted lower and lower, ending their run with 1973’s barely charting pre-disco “Love Music.†The group’s contract with Columbia ended in 1975, lead singer Mark Lindsay left for a solo career, and though the group soldiered on with sporadic new releases they became more of a fixture on the oldies circuit.
Collectors’ Choice’s 3-CD set offers sixty-six tracks that cover all of the group’s Columbia singles. The B-sides offer some real treats, including the autobiographical “The Legend of Paul Revere,†the Las Vegas grind-styled instrumental “B.F.D.R.F. Blues,†the flower-power “Do Unto Others,†the trippy “Observations from Flight 285 (in 3/4 Time),†the muscular jam “Without You,†the Band-styled country-rock “I Don’t Know,†the Peter & Gordon-ish “Frankford Side Street,†and the organ instrumental “Terry’s Tune.†There are four rarities: the withdrawn “Rain, Sleet, Snow†and its flip “Brotherly Love,†and promo songs for the GTO (“Judge GTO Breakawayâ€) and a Mattel doll (“Song for Swingyâ€). The collection closes with the post-Mark Lindsay “Your Love (is the Only Love),†featuring Bob Wooley on lead vocal. Missing are the group’s pre-Columbia singles, including their boogie-woogie instrumentals “Beatnik Sticks†and “Like, Long Hair,†and their last single “Ain’t Nothin’ Wrong.â€
Terrific collection of AM radio’s highly varied legacy
Rather than picking an artist or label or scene or sound, Legacy’s pulled together thirteen original hit recordings that show the range of music that AM radio brought to its listeners. Collected here is New Orleans R&B (“Ya Ya,†1961 and “Working in the Coal Mine,†1966), Dixieland Jazz (“Washington Square,†1963), Easy Listening (“A Fool Never Learns,†1964), Folk Pop and Rock (“We’ll Sing in the Sunshine,†1964 and “In the Year 2525,†1969), Garage Punk (“Little Girl,†1966), Soul (“I’m Your Puppet,†1966 and “Cherry Hill Park,†1969), Bubblegum (“Simon Says,†1968), Trad Jazz Vocal (“The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde,†1968), and Vocal Pop (“Worst That Could Happen,†1969).
Even within these individual songs you can often hear more than one genre exerting its influence, such as the steel guitar and horns that provide accents to the superb pop production of Merrilee Rush’s “Angel of the Morning.†In this day of highly balkanized music channels and individually programmed MP3 playlists, it’s hard to imagine such variety inhabiting a single mass-market playlist, but that was part of AM radio’s power to attract and keep a broad swath of listeners. Playing this collection will remind you how good record and radio people were at picking and making hits – the winnowing process disenfranchised many, but what got through the sieves, particularly what got to the top of the charts, was often highly memorable.
The modern-day music market teems with cover albums featuring past-their-prime artists attempting to re-create their hit singles; there are often passed off with misleading cover art that fails to indicate these are re-recordings. But once upon a time covering other people’s hits was more of an art form, adding dashes of new creativity even as the copy rode the coattails of someone else’s stardom onto the charts. These twenty-six singles were originally released on the Bell label as covers of 1950s R&B and rock classics, with band arrangements that are polished and expertly played. A few of the top-line names, such as Sy Oliver, Edna McGriff and Jimmy Carroll will be familiar, as will be some of the ace New York session players, including Billy Mure, Al Caiola and Charlie Shavers.
The song selections will be familiar to anyone who’s heard a ‘50s hit collection, but the singers will mostly draw question marks. Jim Brown won’t make you forget Chuck Berry as he sings “Maybellene,†but hot guitar licks and a rousing sax solo signal that there’s top-flight talent on board, and Edna McGriff’s version of Lee Hazelwood’s “The Fool†is more hit parade than Sanford Clark’s rockabilly original, but it still packs a punch. The low twang, heavy sax and rolling piano of Jimmy Carroll’s “Big Guitar†fits into the Las Vegas Grind genre, and though Johnny Newton never became a household name, he sounds right at home on the Impalas’ “Sorry (I Ran All the Way Home).†The album closes with Tom & Jerry (soon to be known as Simon & Garfunkel) covering Jan & Dean’s pre-surf hit “Baby Talk.â€
Terrific early-60s Philadelphia vocal pop
