AM Gold 1965

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 1994

Labels: Warner Special Products, Time Life Music

Time-Life released this disc as (SUD-03) in the Super Hits series in 1990, and as Various - AM Gold 1965 (AM1-10) in the AM Gold series in 1994.

℗ 1990 Warner Special Products
© 1994 Time Life Inc.

Track durations obtained from software.

Complete liner notes:

The term "blue-eyed soul" was invented in 1965 when critics needed a phrase to describe the sound made by the Righteous Brothers on You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'. Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield had been singing around Orange County, California, since 1962, when they were members of the Paramours. They split from the group in 1963 to record Medley's Little Latin Lupe Lu for a local label, taking the name Righteous Brothers from the slang of black marines who came to their gigs at the Black Derby in Santa Ana.

The Brothers had a couple more regional hits, appeared on Shindig! and seemed to be settling into journeymen's anonymity when producer Phil Spector took over. (He'd met them at a 1964 Beatles concert in San Francisco, where they and the Ronettes, Spector's girl group, were among the support acts.) Spector bought up the duo's contract and flew songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil from New York to Los Angeles. They holed up at the Chateau Marmont to write Lovin' Feelin'; which they based on their current fave, the Four Tops' Baby, I Need Your Loving.

Spector then took his singers into the studio for an unheard-of 10 hours and constructed his famous "wall of sound" behind Medley's rumbling bass and Hatfield's pleading tenor. The result was a record that came to define white soul music.

Folk was rocking along in 1965 too. On the East Coast, the Lovin' Spoonful was formed by Zal Yanovsky and John Sebastian, who had met while singing in the Mugwumps with members of what became the Mamas and the Papas. The basic idea was to play electric jug-band music, but when the quartet ran out of old songs to rework, Sebastian began writing. Do You Believe In Magic, inspired by enthusiastic girls in the front rows of early Spoonful gigs, was his fourth original and one of the definitive songs about rock. He later explained that he'd been seeking a new sound built around electric Autoharp (with a ukulele contact mike attached to the back). The sound quickly became known as "good-time music."

West Coast folk-rockers Salvatore Phillip Bono and Cherilyn Sarkisian met at a coffee shop next to radio station KFWB in Hollywood. He had written and arranged for Specialty Records but was working for Phil Spector when he hired 16-year-old Cher as a backup singer. Soon they were married and Sonny was pestering Spector to cut solo singles for her. His lobbying netted one single (under the name Bonnie Jo Mason) that went nowhere.

Sonny arranged a contract with Imperial and began producing Cher himself; but she feared singing alone, so the solo arrangement quickly became a duo, which then signed with Atco. Sonny wrote I Got You Babe in their Laurel Canyon home as a hippie anthem of eternal love. Ahmet Ertegun of Atco wanted to relegate it to a B side, but Sonny got it released as the A side by talking a DJ friend into pushing it.

Among other folk-rockers, We Five featured Mike Stewart, whose brother John was in the Kingston Trio; You Were on My Mind, which proved to be the group's only real winner, was written by Sylvia Fricker of Ian and Sylvia. The Seekers-the first group from down under to hit abroad-also rode the folk-rock boom; I'll Never Find Another You was their very first recording after they arrived in England, and it went to the top of the charts there.

The British Isles continued to yield a bumper crop of performers, including two acts from Wales that scored with movie themes. Shirley Bassey had transcended a tough upbringing in Cardiff to carve out a niche on the cabaret circuit, and her Goldfinger came from the third James Bond thriller. Thomas Jones Woodward had launched his career in 1963 as Tommy Scott. But his manager, Gordon Mills, who had discovered him opening for Profumo scandal call girl Mandy Rice-Davies, changed his name to Tom Jones after the movie based on Henry Fielding's novel became a hit. What's New Pussycat? was the title song from a Peter Sellers comedy, and it helped put the housewives' heartthrob on the road to Vegas.

More typical imports, perhaps, were Peter and Gordon, private-school lads from London whose early career was made easier by their access to Paul McCartney songs-the Beatle was going steady with Jane Asher, Peter's sister. But they were given I Go to Pieces by American rocker Del Shannon when they toured Australia with him. Though they enjoyed a relatively short career, Peter Asher entered the good life in the 1970s as Linda Ronstadt's manager-producer.

Petula Clark was a child radio star in England during World War II. In 1961 she moved to Paris with her music publicist husband. There she recorded in French with her British producer Tony Hatch, who then reintroduced her to English-speaking audiences by writing Downtown.

Stateside, Kentuckian Jackie DeShannon, who had once fronted a group that became the Crusaders, presented a grittier image of the female singer. What the World Needs Now Is Love kicked around in Hal David's head for two years before he and partner Burt Bacharach finished it. They didn't like the song but gave it to DeShannon for her Nashville sessions because they had nothing else for her; she proved their opinion way off the mark.

The rest of the charts showed variety, vitality and even cynicism. Producer Snuff Garrett typified this last quality when he signed Gary Lewis and the Playboys simply because he lived two doors down from Jerry Lewis in Bel Air and was intrigued by the idea of breaking a group fronted by the child of a celebrity. He moved Gary from drums to vocals, but the boy's voice made it onto This Diamond Ring only after it had been well reinforced by the overdubbed voice of one Ron Hicklin. Similarly, the Playboys didn't play on the song.

The Ramsey Lewis Trio brought jazz to a wide audience with its cover of Dobie Gray's song The "In" Crowd. The rhythm section of Eldee Young and Red Holt later quit to form Young-Holt Unlimited while pianist Lewis moved increasingly toward fusion. Roger Miller's King of the Road, inspired by a road sign he saw, recast country music's traditional hobo as a character who chose that life not out of necessity but because it beat work. His jazzy hokum won Miller five Grammys and created such a stir that the rules were rewritten to prevent a country artist from ever again dominating the pop awards.

Head Beach Boy Brian Wilson quit touring after suffering a nervous breakdown on a plane late in 1964, and California Girls was something of a farewell to life on the road. Barbara Lewis left Detroit for New York, where she and her manager-producer, Ollie McLaughlin, teamed up with producer Bert Berns to put her wistful girl-group sound on the charts with Make Me Your Baby.

And always there was Motown. Back In My Arms Again was the Supremes' fifth straight No. 1 under the Holland-Dozier-Holland team, aided no doubt by the fact that Diana dressed Flo and Mary down by name in the lyric. Smokey Robinson, with more than a little help from guitarist Marv Tarplin, had the music for The Tracks of My Tears long before he came up with the notion of tears that couldn't be wiped away.

And Smokey's My Girl marked the beginning of the David Ruffin era for the Temptations. Smokey wrote the song for himself, cutting the rhythm track in New York when the Miracles were playing the Apollo with the Tempts. When they managed to cajole him out of recording My Girl, he insisted that Ruffin be moved to lead because he wanted a harsher voice in contrast to the sweetness of the words and melody. When My Girl subsequently became the first No. 1 pop hit for a Motown male group, Ruffin settled into the lead slot for a good, long run.

-John Morthland

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