The Latest In Rock 'N' Roll: The Earliest in Counterfeit Music

It's not always easy to tell a counterfeit. But sometimes you come across something that just screams it's fake. Even if you have to turn it around for it to start making noise. And this album's gonna get loud. Oh, it's a real record, and there's real music on it...just not the exact music '50s kids were clamoring for. And as you'll find out later, the music's not all that's loud on this album - one of the earliest from a genre I call "rocksploitation."

You've probably seen it on TV innumerable times: Now That's What I Call Music has done over 50 albums of repackaged hits. K-Tel, Ronco and Adam-VII used to do the same thing. They were pretty top-tier since they were all from the "Original Hits, Original Artists" school. Lesser labels like QMO and Pickwick had in-house bands to re-record popular songs, and occasionally rewrite a few lyrics to avoid having to pay royalties.

Then you had the bottom of the barrel: the strictly no-name bands on strictly no-name labels trying their damnedest to cash in on whatever was popular at the time, artistic integrity or even ethics  notwithstanding.

OK, let's dissect all this:

16 COMPLETE SONGS
That's the first clue you've got something a little bit special. They're bragging that you get to hear 100% of every song!  They recorded every note. In fairness, I point out that that didn't always happen with albums like these.

ALL OF YOUR FAVORITES
"OK, uh...Let's Go? The crystal ball lady said that won't be a hit for a few years yet. Round Robin? I don't remember the words exactly, but that doesn't sound right. Low Man? Stampede? Blazing Home? Well, now it sounds like I bought a country-and-western album! What's going on here? And I've never heard Moon Dream and Sky Rocket on my transistor radio before. I must have the wrong station on. Where are those 'top hits and current favorites' I thought I was getting?"

MUSIC FOR DANCING
I know I didn't ask for any of these songs, but yes, I guess you can dance to them, so technically they may have been honest about that.

And speaking of "technically:" I cleaned this record before I dubbed the two tracks you're about to hear. These budget labels were not well known for sound quality, despite what some of them would have you believe. I've even heard of some labels recycling their vinyl, melting it down to be pressed into other records. I can't help but wonder if this happened here...or whether people who bought this record wished they could do.

Here's that little-known gem, Jump The Gun. How many defenseless sax reeds had to die for this one?


I think someone deserves a Time Out:

Are You 36 Today?

Or perhaps a little younger or older? Is it even your birthday? Well, I just had a birthday (not my 36th), and if I got this album for a present I'm not sure how I'd react.

36? She doesn't look a day over 29.

 This is a collection of 36 great songs...that somehow turned maybe a little less great through a Columbia Records house band, trying to get "The 'Now' Sound Of Young Music" to appeal simultaneously to the "now" set and people with "then" musical sensibilities. As you'll hear, their efforts met with varying success.

On the other hand, maybe the band should've stopped at 29.

It's likely that the group you hear here is called The Copycats. I discovered an album of theirs recently, also on Columbia. Ray Conniff and Percy Faith did enough of this type of work that The Copycats weren't really necessary, but here you go.

And in answer to Jimmy Ruffin's question, this is what becomes of the brokenhearted:


As for The Yardbirds...I wonder whatever became of them:


What kind of song is this? Columbia always got little digs in at their own acts on these records. Respectable? Not really:

The Fools Of April #2: Short Cuts

I know those last couple of songs were a little rough. So I'm gonna go easy on you this time. Three mercifully quick ones..."edited to fit this screen and run in the time allotted," as they say on TV.

"There's a girl right next to you, and she's just waiting for something to do." But she won't be waiting long...because there's at least a verse and a half missing from this song!


Hey...what is this? No, really. What IS this? It might be half a song by Free. Just long enough to feature a moment of self-discovery not in the original version of the song.


I beg your pardon...I never promised you this Lynn Anderson song. So you'll have to hear some other lady sing it instead.

The Fools Of April

What's worse: the ides of March...or the fools of April? Come back to this blog often enough and I bet you'll say it's the latter. There's a whole slew of bad, weird and otherwise unusual music waiting to knock you silly this month. And the first of it is right here in this post. I'd preface this but it would ruin the surprise. And boy will you be surprised.

Yep...that's the uneasiest rider ever. Somehow the song takes on a whole new meaning when that guy does it. It's from one of the many soundalike albums from QMO Sales, a prime perpetrator of those "as-seen-on-TV" records. Not as well known as K-Tel, Ronco or Adam-7, QMO certainly was prolific. Groups like Northern Lights and The Sound Effects (heard here) got together and did an album of the day's hits every season or so. When they weren't screwing around with inflection, they were messing up words...or just singing along to the song they were covering. On some songs they managed to do both. Listen all the way through, if you can stand to:

Just so you know, there's more - a LOT more - where these came from. They may not all be quite like this...but they're gonna be here sooner or later.

The Cruisin' Years

I'm not sure about you, but this winter has sucked pretty hard for me. All that polar vortex crap (speaking of suck) has just about done me in. And it's made me seriously question my career choice, since the 24/7-ness of my job requires me to BE there in any weather.

Two workfriends just got back from cruises. They haven't told me what kind of entertainment they saw...but I bet it was nothing like what I'm gonna serve up for you right now. Time was, the only entertainment you had on your ship was some Italian band mixing it up with old "Amore Scusa' me"-type Italian songs and "now sounds." Maybe if the band kept you entertained enough on your cruise, you could get them to autograph their album for you as a memento to take home.

Then that band could maybe keep you entertained enough at home to fire up the old Astro-Sonic Magnavox once in a while.

Or not.

Hit any thrift store at any given time and you're bound to find at least one old cruise ship album there, autograhps and all. If you do, look 'em over. Sometimes you'll get 12 tracks of Amore Scusa' Mi...sometimes you'll get some surprises. I'm not at the stage yet where I can offer compilations, but I can offer you one track at a time for your picky-choosy pleasure. To christen this post, the Romy Formica Theme by...well, the Romy Formica Orchestra, silly! Who'd you expect? (And why's he named after the stuff your counter is made with?) Typical of the music you'd hear on a lot of cruise albums. Recorded underwater before a live audience. Or maybe just the audience was underwater:

A lot of cruise albums just have songs like The Donkey Song, from the cruise album kings, The Rolando's (The Rolando's what? You're killin' me here). WARNING: man-made animal sounds.

Some albums are more adventurous. Here's a foggy little version of Glen Campbell's hit By The Time I Get To Phoenix by Il Milionari:

Here's "Il Mil" again, with a colorful version of a Procol Harum hit. And so it was that later...they decided to sing in Italian.

Here they are doing a whole song in Italian. The song: Black Is Black, originally by Los Bravos - a Spanish group with a German lead singer. Singing in English.

Now, one of the world's shortest versions of Satisfaction, from Murolo-Salviati.

It's The Rolando's again, still with that apostrophe. But this time, maybe a little soul.

And finally, a real off-the-board choice, again by The Rolando's. I bet some of you don't remember the original. I forgot who did it when it hit in 1970 (and can't explain why I remember that). Turns out it was a group called Christie.

Bon Voyage!

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.