Saturday: Things I Bought, Things I Got

There's a difference. Although if I didn't tell you the difference album by album, you'd never know. And for what little I paid, I can hardly tell myself. These are all from the pile I took a picture of the last post.

Here's one of those compilations of songs designed to "sound like" the originals. Truth is, they rarely did. The music itself may have been similar, but the singer usually wasn't, and even some of the lyrics were changed. Pickwick was one of the prime perpetrators of these musical crimes. Its "Million Or More" series followed up "Hot Hits," where a band called Kings Road actually did a better job than some at doing cheap covers of the day's most popular songs. I specialize in this badness, so expect a feature on albums like this.

Not much bad you can say about this guy. Tony Mottola was one of the world's greatest guitar players - and not just in skill. This is one of dozens of albums he did for Enoch Light's Command and Project 3 labels.

Ferlin Husky...THIS is what country is, folks. I'm not a country guy but I couldn't let this one get past.

Kip's first live album, circa 1981. Yeah, things are a little different now, but Kip's still at it - and this album is still available (albeit with a different cover) at his website, kipaddotta.com.

This is quite the compilation here. To save you from clicking the picture, I'll tell you we've got some John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Jerry Butler...and even an Eddie Harris track.

The grand finale, next post.