AM Gold - The Late '60s

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 1995

Labels: Warner Special Products, Time Life Music

Time-Life released this disc as Various - Superhits - The Late '60s (SUD-14) in the Super Hits series in 1992, and as Various - AM Gold - The Late '60s (AM1-14) in the AM Gold series in 1995.

℗ 1992 Warner Special Products
© 1995 Time Life Inc.

Track durations obtained from software.

Publishing:
Track 1- PolyGram International Publishing, Inc. ASCAP
Track 2- Little Fugitive Music BMI
Track 3- Big Seven Music Corp. BMI
Track 4- Low-Sal Music Co. BMI
Track 5- Delicious Apple Music Corp./Fun City Music Corp./Purple Records Distributing Corp. ASCAP
Track 6- Stone Agate Music BMI
Track 7, 10- Warner-Tamerlane Publ. Corp. BMI
Track 8- Jerry Goldstein Music Inc./Morris Music Inc. BMI
Track 9- EMI Unart Catalog Inc. BMI
Track 11- Alley Music Corp./Trio Music Co., Inc./Warner-Tamerlane Publ. Corp. BMI
Track 12, 15- Jobete Music Co., Inc. ASCAP
Track 13- Vogue Music BMI
Track 14, 20- MCA Music Publishing ASCAP
Track 16- Viva Music, Inc. BMI/WB Music Corp. ASCAP
Track 17- Adam R. Levy & Father Enterprises Inc./Doraflo Music Inc./High Concept Music BMI
Track 18- Lowery Music Co., Inc. BMI
Track 19- Longitude Music Co./Seasons Four Music BMI
Track 21- Acuff-Rose Music, Inc./Roschelle Publ. BMI
Track 22- Famous Music Corporation ASCAP

Complete liner notes:

Bubblegum music came to prominence alongside the Meaningful Rock explosion of the late '60s. If the latter-with its socially conscious, semi-poetic lyrics and its music written or at least improvised by the band members-was more accomplished and more relevant to the future of rock, the former certainly maintained that part of the tradition dealing in crassly simple songs and mindless fun. It also gave kids too young for Hendrix and the Airplane something to listen to. Like other genres, bubblegum was so imprecisely defined that it wasn't always clear who fit the description. To their chagrin, the Lemon Pipers and Tommy James and the Shondells made the cut by most definitions.

The Lemon Pipers hailed from Ohio, but Green Tambourine came out of what was left of New York's Brill Building scene. Lyricist Shelley Pinz wrote the words after reading a newspaper story about an elderly British street musician who played in front of a bank, setting a tambourine on the sidewalk in front of him to collect money (hence the "green" part). Paul Leka wrote the music, but a dozen publishers turned the song down before it caught the ear of Neil Bogart of Buddah Records, a bubblegum stronghold.

Bogart sent Leka to Ohio to play the song for the Lemon Pipers, who were selling poorly and were about to be dropped by the label. Because they were into psychedelic music, the band members rejected Green Tambourine, but Leka then informed them that Bogart would consider them history unless they rethought the offer. When they finally recorded the song, Leka's production turned out so badly that cellos and a new drum track had to be overdubbed back in New York. But it wound up the band's only Top 40 hit.

Tommy James was also a Midwesterner, but he moved east from Indiana-the only one of the original Shondells to do so-after Hanky Panky went to No. 1 in 1966. With 1968's Crimson and Clover he began producing himself, and the psychedelic bubblegum of Crystal Blue Persuasion proved an effective summer song the next year. "The title came right out of the Bible," he insisted. "Crystal blue meant truth." But when James temporarily left the business a while later to deal with an amphetamines problem, the song seemed to take on a new meaning.

The Union Gap began in San Diego as the Outcasts, but they renamed themselves after Union Gap, Washington, near where their leader, Gary Puckett, grew up. To capitalize on their name, the band members dressed in Civil War uniforms, but the success of Young Girt is probably due more to the fact that it was crafted by Jerry Fuller, one of Ricky Nelson's chief writers.

Bubblegum soul was the province of Classics IV and R. B. Greaves. The former was a Jacksonville, Florida, band that moved up to Atlanta to work sessions for producer Bill Lowery (who also worked with Joe South and Billy Joe Royal) before cutting a short string of hits like Stormy. R. B. Greaves, born in British Guyana and related to Sam Cooke, was raised on a Seminole reservation in California; a further distinction was his authorship of the undeniably catchy Take a Letter Marla.

After this, bubblegum distinctions get murkier. Frankie Valli first went solo from the 4 Seasons in 1966, but 1967's Can't Take My Eyes off You was the single that established him, and could be argued into the bubblegum camp. So could Midnight Confessions by the Grass Roots. The name of this band originally belonged to a studio group formed by writer-producers Steve Barri and P. F. Sloan as a vehicle for their songs. Once the studio band achieved a local hit, Barri and Sloan recruited a Los Angeles bar band called the Thirteenth Floor to assume the name and play live.

Even a folk-rock band like the Turtles, with their buoyant melodies and sing-along lyrics and harmonies, had at least a little in common with bubblegum. The mocking Elenore comes from a concept album late in their career in which they "played" several different types of groups and simulated a Battle of the Bands.

Creeque Alley was, of course, leader-writer John Phillips' capsule history of the genesis of the Mamas and the Papas. But it was also about the roots of the Lovin' Spoonful, because before either group formed, key members of both had worked together in various folkie outfits. The Spoonful's Darling Be Home Soon came from You're a Big Boy Now, a charming but often overlooked early movie from Francis Ford Coppola.

Every Mothers' Son grew out of the Greenwich Village folk duo of brothers Dennis and Lary Lorden. After growing to five members, the group hooked up with bubblegum producer-writer Wes Farrell, who had them cover a group called Rare Breed on his song Come On Down to My Boat. Friend and Lover consisted of Jim Post and Cathy Conn, who met at an Edmonton, Alberta, fair where he was singing and she was dancing. They soon married and began working as a vocal duet. Post's Reach out of the Darkness was inspired by hippies throwing flowers at a New York love-in. Neither Every Mothers' Son nor Friend and Lover saw the Top 40 again. Never My Love, a pop harmony ballad, was the Association's second straight megahit after Warner Brothers bought up Valiant Records in order to get the group's contract.

Petula Clark had been a star in England since she was a child but didn't conquer America until 1965, at the ripe old age of 33. This Is My Song was written by movie pioneer Charlie Chaplin (at the ripe old age of 77) for his comedy A Countess from Hong Kong, starring Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando. Pet saturated Europe with French, Italian and German versions of the song before recording it in English.

Engelbert Humperdinck was one of the British males working a middle-of-the-road pop vein roughly analogous to Clark's. His career was stalled until he cut Release Me (And Let Me Love Again), a 1954 country smash for Ray Price that had become a standard. (Cowriter Eddie Miller got the inspiration for it after overhearing a couple arguing at the club where he was working in San Francisco; the woman kept telling her spouse to "release me," and Miller liked this euphemism for "divorce," then still taboo in a song.) On the heels of By the Time I Get to Phoenix and Wichita Lineman, Galveston was Glen Campbell's third straight "countrypolitan" hit supplied by Jimmy Webb with a city name in the title.

Over at Motown, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell had a series of best-selling duets, but few were as deeply felt as Your Precious Love, a slow dance with a doo-wop/make-out feel. The Temptations' You're My Everything showed off lead singer Eddie Kendricks' gliding falsetto.

Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl-his first solo hit after leaving Them and the closest thing to a conventional pop single he ever did-was produced by Bert Berns. Impressed with Morrison's lead on the Irish group's remake of Here Comes the Night (which Berns wrote), the veteran R&B writer-producer brought the singer to New York. Berns died later in 1967, but Morrison stayed in the States to continue his solo career.

Few records caught the mood of the late '60s better than the Young Rascals' Groovin'. The New York group was known for its blue-eyed soul covers but became inspired by the Beatles to write originals. Felix Cavaliere conceived Groovin' when he found that because of his work schedule he could see his new girlfriend only on Sunday afternoons; Eddie Brigati developed the lyrics from Cavaliere's idea. Their label, which was accustomed to Young Rascals rockers, wasn't even planning to record Groovin' until influential disc Jockey Murray the K, who loved the tune, intervened. With Groovin' the Young Rascals had their second No. 1 hit, and bubblegum had to take a back seat to the new hippie anthem.

-John Morthland

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