Various Artists - Covered: Teddy Randazzo & Bobby Weinstein: 1960-2024

Here's another album in my "Covered" series. This time, the focus is on the songwriting team of Teddy Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein. Chances are you haven't heard of them. But I'd also bet that you're very familiar with some of their songs, such as "Goin' Out of My Head," "It's Gonna Take a Miracle," "Pretty Blue Eyes," and "Hurt So Bad."

Randazzo was born in New York City in 1935, and Weinstein was born there four years later. (I've noticed an unusual number of talented songwriters from this era were born in New York City, with many of them being Jewish. In this case, Randazzo was ethnically Italian and Weinstein was Jewish.) Both of them got involved with rock and roll bands. Randazzo had more success, being a member of the Three Chuckles. They had a Top Twenty hit in 1954, and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show several times. In 1957, they began writing songs together. Their first big success was "Pretty Blue Eyes," which was a Top Ten hit for Steve Lawrence in 1960.

Randazzo had the good looks of a potential star, and kept a solo career going for several more years, but didn't have any big hits. However, he and Weinstein found more and more success as songwriters. Their biggest success of all was probably "Goin' Out of My Head." Little Anthony and the Imperials first had a Top Ten hit with it in 1964. But it's endured strongly, with over 400 cover versions, some of them hits as well. It's now in the top 50 of the most recorded and best selling songs of all time. Randazzo and Weinstein wrote many more songs for Little Anthony and the Imperials, even arranging and producing entire albums for them. Another big hit for that band was "Hurt So Bad," which was written by Randazzo, Weinstein, and Bobby Hart of the Boyce and Hart songwriting team. (I've already posted a "Covered" album for them, which includes a Linda Ronstadt version of that song.)

Most of the hits by Randazzo and Weinstein were in the 1960s. "It's Gonna Take a Miracle" was first a hit for the Royalettes in 1965. However, I've included a 1982 version by Deniece Williams because that was a bigger hit, reaching the Top Ten. It seems the songwriting partnership faded in the 1970s. Randazzo continued writing some hits in that decade, particularly for the soul groups the Manhattans and the Stylistics. However, I've only included one, "A Million to One" by the Manhattans in 1971.

Randazzo moved to Hawaii and had some limited success as a producer and songwriter there. He died in 2003 at the age of 68. Weinstein became a music executive, eventually becoming the president of the National Academy of Popular Music. He died in 2022 at the age of 82.  

Here's the Wikipedia entry for Randazzo:

Teddy Randazzo - Wikipedia 

And here's the entry for Weinstein:

Bobby Weinstein - Wikipedia 

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Pretty Blue Eyes (Steve Lawrence)
02 Let the Sunshine In (Dee Dee Sharp)
03 Goin' Out of My Head (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
04 I'm on the Outside [Looking In] (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
05 Can't Stop Running Away (Ian & the Zodiacs)
06 Hurt So Bad (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
07 Trick or Treat (Teddy Randazzo & All 6)
08 Don't Tie Me Down (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
09 Buttercup Days (Kane Triplets)
10 Sweet Cream Ladies, Forward March (Box Tops)
11 I'm Hypnotized (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
12 Yesterday Has Gone (Cupid's Inspiration)
13 Rain in My Heart (Frank Sinatra)
14 A Million to One (Manhattans)
15 It's Gonna Take a Miracle (Deniece Williams)
16 Where's the Love (Vivian Buczek)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QvDtpPAd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/WIWApBKiDxZyoXB/file

Photos of Teddy Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein are extremely rare. Luckily, I found one of them hugging each other. It's from when they were older. That's Randazzo on the left and Weinstein on the right.

Various Artists - Covered: Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham, Volume 1: 1960-1968

If you don't know of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, you should. The allmusic.com website says, "Dan Penn is one of the major figures in soul music, composing many of the genre's standards," and he co-wrote most of those songs with Spooner Oldham. So this songwriting duo is the subject of the next albums in my "Covered" series highlighting great songwriters. I've found enough for two albums. Here's the first one.

Dan Penn has been the main figure in this duo, with Spooner Oldham playing a supportive role. Penn was born in 1941 in rural Alabama. He co-wrote his first hit in 1960, "Is a Blue Bird Blue" by Conway Twitty, while he was still in high school. However, after that, he struggled in the music business for a few years. Penn (who is still alive and performing as I write this in 2025) has an excellent, soulful voice. However, he wasn't able to find success as a performer.

But in the early 1960s, he began collaborating with Oldham, after the two of them were in an early band together. The earliest song here co-written by them is "Strangest Feeling," written in 1963. Oldham was also born in rural Alabama, two years after Penn. The two of them became very involved with writing, recording, and producing songs in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, especially at the FAME studio there. 

Things changed drastically for Penn and Oldham in 1966, when they co-wrote the song "I'm Your Puppet." The version by James and Bobby Purify was a big hit. When the royalty checks started coming in, Penn decided he could make a living just from songwriting. So he put his struggling career as a performer on the backburner. However, he usually made demos of the songs he wrote, and they often rivaled or even surpassed the hit versions. (A couple albums of these demos would be released decades later.)

Penn both wrote lyrics and music for his songs. However, aside from his first hit "Is a Blue Bird Blue," he almost never wrote a song by himself. He said he liked the instant feedback of songwriting collaboration. Most of his hits were co-written with Oldham (while Oldham only had one hit without him, "Lonely Women Make Good Lovers"). But he wrote with many others, and had some big hits with them. For instance, he only briefly wrote with Chips Moman in 1967, before they decided they clashed too much. But during that time, they co-wrote two of the greatest soul songs of all time, "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" and "The Dark End of the Street."

1966 to 1968 was a particularly productive time for Penn and Oldham. If you look at the below song list, they wrote one classic song after another. 

I found an interview with singer-songwriter Elvis Costello in which he expressed his admiration for Penn and Oldham. I wrote down a bit of what he said: "They wrote this extraordinary group of songs, and they made no acknowledgement of all the road signs that people erect to try to separate music. You can't really tell where the country and the soul and the rock and roll and the gospel stops and begins."

Costello further praised Penn's singing ability. "Dan is one of the greatest singers American pop music has ever created. Dan Penn is Elvis Presley if he had better taste. Dan Penn is every bit as good a singer as Elvis Presley and some, 'cos he has humility and restraint." I've included one song sung by Penn here, "Strangest Feeling," and another one on Volume 2. Hopefully that can give you a sense of his singing talent.

All the songs here are the original hit versions, in rough chronological order. Only a couple weren't at least minor hits at the time, most especially "Strangest Feeling," which was one of those demos I mentioned above that weren't released until decades later. 

Here's the Wikipedia page for Dan Penn:

Dan Penn - Wikipedia 

And here's the one for Spooner Oldham:

Spooner Oldham - Wikipedia 

This album is 43 minutes long. 

01 Is a Blue Bird Blue (Conway Twitty)
02 Strangest Feeling (Dan Penn)
03 I'm Living Good (Ovations)
04 I'm Your Puppet (James & Bobby Purify)
05 It Tears Me Up (Percy Sledge)
06 You Left the Water Running (Otis Redding)
07 I Can't Stop [No, No, No] (Arthur Conley)
08 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Aretha Franklin)
09 Out of Left Field (Percy Sledge)
10 The Dark End of the Street (James Carr)
11 Happy Times (Box Tops)
12 Nine Pound Steel (Joe Simon)
13 Cry like a Baby (Box Tops)
14 Sweet Inspiration (Sweet Inspirations)
15 I Worship the Ground You Walk On (Etta James)
16 Everything I Am (Plastic Penny)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jTgXP7Fy

alternates:

https://bestfile.io/en/DamfGUvp4kzoY7H/file

The cover image is taken from a photo of a band called the Pallbearers, from around 1964. Both Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham were members. So, using Photoshop, I cut on their parts of the photo and rearranged them so their heads were close together. Also, it was black and white photo, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program.

Oldham is on the left in the grey jacket. Penn is on the right with the black jacket. 

Various Artists - Covered: Lee Hazlewood, Volume 1: 1956-1967

It's time to highlight another talented songwriter in my Covered series. This time, it's Lee Hazlewood. He's best known for writing hit songs for Nancy Sinatra, especially the huge hit "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'." But he did a lot more than that. He had a quirky style with songwriting, production, and his own singing so unique that he practically created his own musical genre. The intro paragraph to his Wikipedia entry states: "His collaborations with Sinatra as well as his solo output in the late 1960s and early 1970s have been praised as an essential contribution to a sound often described as 'cowboy psychedelia' or 'saccharine underground.'" I found enough interesting cover versions of his songs for two volumes.

Hazlewood had an unusual career, just like how he had an unusual sound. It seems he marched to the beat of his own drummer. Sometimes that meant big hits, sometimes obscure records. 

He was born in 1929, and mostly grew up in Texas. After serving in the military during the Korean War in the early 1950s, he began working as a DJ. This gave him a foot in the door into the music business. He soon started producing and well as selling songs he'd written. His first big hit was "The Fool" by Sanford Clark in 1956. After that, he had the most success in the late 1950s and early 1960s writing songs for guitarist Duane Eddy. His biggest success was with "Rebel-'Rouser," a Top Ten hit in the U.S. in 1958 and a true classic. He wrote a whole series of hits for Eddy, most (but not all) of them guitar-based instrumentals. I only included a few of those here because, in my opinion, most of them are similar to each other and don't really stand out.

Hazlewood's hits for Duane Eddy petered out by the end of 1963, probably due to a change in the public's musical tastes. That was right when the Beatles and the British Invasion hit it big. Hazlewood was so disappointed in the change that he took a break from the music business for most of 1964. 

But in 1965, his career resumed when he got a chance to work with Nancy Sinatra. She was both very beautiful and a talented singer. Plus she was the daughter of music legend Frank Sinatra. However, she'd had a series of nothing but failed singles from 1961 to 1965, and was in danger of being dropped from her record label. Then she began working with Hazlewood. He drastically changed her sound, including having her sing in a lower register, and with a more sultry style. Their first single in 1965 didn't do that well. But their second one was "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," which went to Number One in the U.S. singles charts and instantly turned Sinatra into a big star. That led to a whole series of hit songs he for Sinatra through the end of the 1960s.

The Sinatra collaboration turned Hazlewood into a minor star as well. That's because not only did he write and produce all her hits, he sang on some hit duets with her as well. It was a very odd combination, since Hazlewood had a low, gruff voice that typically wasn't found on hit records. But the clash with Sinatra's conventionally pretty voice somehow worked, in large part due to Hazlewood's songwriting and production.

The account of his career will continue with the second volume. Note that, on this volume, I generally stuck with the hit versions, even though that means a big cluster of Nancy Sinatra songs in the second half. Those versions are so distinctive and definitive that it seemed wrong to use different ones.

This album is 48 minutes long. 

01 The Fool (Sanford Clark)
02 Snake Eyed Mama (Don Cole with Al Casey)
03 Don't Look Now, but I've Got the Blues (B.B. King)
04 Rebel-'Rouser (Duane Eddy)
05 The Girl on Death Row (Lee Hazlewood with Duane Eddy & His Orchestra)
06 Shazam (Duane Eddy)
07 Guitars, Guitars, Guitars (Al Casey with the K-C-Ettes)
08 [Dance With] The Guitar Man (Duane Eddy)
09 Baja (Astronauts)
10 These Boots Are Made for Walkin' (Nancy Sinatra)
11 Friday's Child (Nancy Sinatra)
12 Need All the Help I Can Get (Suzi Jane Hokom)
13 How Does That Grab You, Darlin' (Nancy Sinatra)
14 Sugar Town (Nancy Sinatra)
15 Guitar on My Mind (Duane & Miriam Eddy)
16 Sand (Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood)
17 Summer Wine (Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood)
18 The Last of the Secret Agents (Nancy Sinatra)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WWRmU6q7

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/suoWRc31ARIiIoR/file

I had a hard time finding good color images of Hazlewood when he was young, so I had to resort using an album cover photo. The cover image was taken from a 1960 album called "Something Special."

Various Artists - Covered: Aaron Schroeder: 1956-1978

Until recently, I had never heard of Aaron Schroeder. I'll bet that's the same for you. But he was the songwriter behind a lot of classic hits, especially for Elvis Presley, so here's a "Covered" album about him.

Aaron Schroeder was born in New York City in 1926. Once he became an adult, he went straight into songwriting. It's said that he wrote more than 1,500 songs, with about 500 of them recorded by professional musicians. 

He got an early connection with Elvis Presley, writing songs for him in 1956, a year after Presley became a star. He went on to write 16 songs done by him. That's the second most of anybody, behind only the great songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. (Check out the Covered albums I made for them.) He wrote or co-wrote no less than five Number One songs for Presley, more than anybody: "I Got Stung," "A Big Hunk o' Love," "Stuck on You," "It's Now or Never," and "Good Luck Charm." (Although note that "I Got Stung" was only Number One in Britain, not the U.S.) Unfortunately, he broke with Presley in 1962 due to a dispute about royalty rates. Presley's manager, Tom Parker, was notoriously stingy about paying for good songs.

Undoubtedly, Schroeder's biggest success was "It's Now or Never." That single sold about 20 million copies, making it the seventh best selling single of all time by anybody, as of 2025. The music was based on an Italian song written in the 1800s, "O Sole Mio." Presley heard the Italian version while stationed in Europe as a U.S. soldier. He liked it and wanted to sing an English version. Schroeder co-wrote the English lyrics (which were not a translation of the Italian) with another professional songwriter, Wally Gold, in less than half an hour. 

Schroeder generally co-wrote songs, and Gold was his most frequent collaborator. The two of them also co-wrote "It's My Party," "Good Luck Charm," "It's Now or Never," "Because They're Young," and others. And speaking of "It's My Party" (another Number One hit), Schroeder is not officially credited as a songwriter for that song, but it's well known that he was involved. The story is that both Schroeder and Gold took part, finishing a song started by a freelance songwriter named Seymour Gottlieb. But they were only given one songwriting portion between the two of them, so they flipped a coin for it, and Schroeder lost!

Schroeder's songwriting career declined after the early 1960s. But that's probably because he devoted most of his time to other music business. He started his own record label, Musicor Records. It was only moderately successful, but it did release a series of hits by Gene Pitney. He got even more involved with music publishing. Together with his wife Abby, he helped the music careers of many other performers and composers through their publishing agency, including Barry White, Randy Newman, Al Kooper, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Jimi Hendrix. 

He did occasionally keep a hand in songwriting well into the 1970s. The three last songs on this album are examples of that. Note by the way that "Love's Theme" was a Number One hit as an instrumental for Love Unlimited in 1974. Schroeder wasn't involved with that, but he wrote the lyrics for a version that group put out on their next album, so that's the version I included here.

It seems Schroeder could be pretty ruthless as a music publisher. Another songwriter I've profiled in this "Covered" series, Tony Macaulay, had a protracted legal battle with Schroeder's publishing company in the early 1970s, claiming the terms of his contract weren't being fully honored. Macaulay won the battle in 1974, in a landmark decision which encouraged other artists to challenge the terms of their contracts. 

Schroeder died in 2009 at the age of 89. 

Here's the Wikipedia entry about Schroeder, which mentions the coin flip story:

Aaron Schroeder - Wikipedia    

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Cincinnati Fireball (Johnny Burnette)
02 Got a Lot o' Livin' to Do (Elvis Presley)
03 My Boy Elvis (Janis Martin)
04 I Got Stung (Elvis Presley)
05 Glad All Over (Carl Perkins)
06 A Big Hunk o' Love (Elvis Presley)
07 Rubber Ball (Bobby Vee)
08 Because They're Young (Duane Eddy)
09 Time and the River (Nat King Cole)
10 Stuck on You (Elvis Presley)
11 It's Now or Never (Elvis Presley)
12 Half Heaven, Half Heartache (Gene Pitney)
13 Good Luck Charm (Elvis Presley)
14 It's My Party (Lesley Gore)
15 Love's Theme (Love Unlimited)
16 Move Me No Mountain (Dionne Warwick)
17 She Can Put Her Shoes Under My Bed [Anytime] (Johnny Duncan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/46ZLUsm6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/pJTVzztHa4VwQZ3/file

Aaron Schroeder is such an obscure and forgotten figure that it's lucky I was able to find any photo of him at all. The one I could find (which you can see in his Wikipedia article) was black and white and generally low-res. I colorized it via the Kolorize program. Then I had to do a lot of work with Photoshop and Krea AI to get the half decent result you see here.  

Various Artists - Covered: Tony Hatch: 1960-2016

Here's another "Covered" album highlighting a key British pop songwriter from the 1960s: Tony Hatch. He's best known for writing "Downtown" and many other big hits sung by Petula Clark, but his musical legacy goes well beyond that.

Tony Hatch decided he wanted to become a musician at a very young age while growing up in Middlesex, England. After attending choir school in London, he got a job at a music production company when he was only about 15 years old. Starting as a tea boy, he quickly found himself writing songs and producing. His first hit song was "Look for a Star," which was a hit for four different singers in 1960. He wrote that under the alias "Mark Anthony," which he used until 1964. Although he wrote and produced a lot, he didn't have more big successes until 1963, when "Sugar and Spice" was a big hit for the Searchers (under yet another alias) and "Forget Him" was a big hit for Bobby Rydell. (I've included the version of the latter by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, as I like that one better.)

Things drastically changed for Hatch in 1964. He began working with Petula Clark, and had his biggest songwriting success with her straight away with "Downtown." It became one of the biggest hits of the year, hitting Number One in many countries, including the U.S. (though it was kept out of the top spot in Britain due to "I Feel Fine" by the Beatles). Clark was already a veteran hit maker in Britain, having first sung for the BBC in 1942 at the age of seven! But by 1964 she was 32 years old and already starting to seem washed up when "Downtown" broke her in the U.S. and many other countries and totally revitalized her career. Over the next three years, she had nine more Top Twenty hits in the U.S., with most of them written by Hatch.

In fact, Hatch wrote so many hits for Clark that I made an effort to find other versions by other singers, so this didn't end up practically a Petula Clark "best of" album. I found alternate versions for a few, such as "The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener," "My Love," and "I Couldn't Live without Your Love," but I generally found the Clark versions were the best versions, so I ended up with eight hits sung by Clark.

But Hatch was a very busy guy, because writing and producing songs for Clark was just one of his many jobs in the 1960s. He produced singles and albums for many other musical acts, including everything the Searchers recorded from 1963 to 1967, when they were one of the most popular acts in Britain. He also recorded some lounge music style albums on his own, and even did some singing, though he didn't have any hits that way. He also got involved making music for TV shows and movies. His first big success in that domain was writing the theme to the TV show "Crossroads" in 1964. I've also included "Man Alive" from 1965 and "Neighbors" from 1985 as other similar successes. He even briefly was in the Lower Third, a band led by David Bowie in 1965! (They broke up not long after failing a BBC audition.)

Hatch was never romantically connected to Clark (she was married and had children at the time), but Hatch discovered another female singer, Jackie Trent, and they soon were romantically linked. It turned out that Trent had serious songwriting talent as well as being a pretty vocalist. Hatch and Trent co-wrote "Where Are You Now (My Love)" which hit Number One in Britain in 1965. After that, many hits were co-written by them, including: "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love, "Who Am I," "What Would I Be," "Colour My World," "Don't Sleep in the Subway," "You've Got to Be Loved," "Joanna," and "The Two of Us." They got married in 1967 and stayed married until 2002. Their song "The Two of Us" wasn't a hit in Britain, but a duet version they did together was a Number One hit in Australia in 1967.

Hatch's hits petered out around 1970. However, his career as an entertainer kept going strong. He and Trent focused more on writing for musicals, movie soundtracks, and TV shows. In the 1970s, he also became a panelist on the TV show "New Faces," and kept doing that for many years. He and Trent also hosted their own TV shows together, "Words and Music" and "It's a Musical World." 

In 2020, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to music and charity. He is still alive and 85 years old as I write this in 2025.

Here's a Wikipedia article if you want to know more:

Tony Hatch - Wikipedia 

This album is an hour and seven minutes long.

01 Look for a Star (Garry Mills)
02 Sugar and Spice (Searchers)
03 Downtown (Petula Clark)
04 Crossroads (Tony Hatch Orchestra)
05 Forget Him (Gary Lewis & the Playboys)
06 I Know a Place (Petula Clark)
07 Man Alive (Tony Hatch Sound)
08 Round Every Corner (Petula Clark)
09 Where Are You Now [My Love] (Jackie Trent)
10 You're the One (Vogues)
11 A Sign of the Times (Petula Clark)
12 Roundabout (Connie Francis)
13 Heart (Barry & the Remains)
14 Color My World (Petula Clark)
15 Major to Minor (Settlers)
16 Who Am I (Petula Clark)
17 You've Got to Be Loved (Montanas)
18 The Two of Us (Jackie Trent & Tony Hatch)
19 Don't Sleep in the Subway (Petula Clark)
20 Joanna (Scott Walker)
21 The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener (Vikki Carr)
22 Look at Mine (Petula Clark)
23 My Love (Sonny James)
24 Neighbours Theme (Barry Crocker)
25 I Couldn't Live without Your Love (Mari Wilson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qqoKPXLb

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/vBQkt4rjVnkXDo2/file

The cover photo is from 1974. 

Various Artists - Covered: Jesse Stone: 1942-1985

Until a few days ago (writing this in May 2025), I had never heard of Jesse Stone. But I found out about him while research possible additional subjects for my "Covered" series on well-covered songwriters. What really caught my eye was that he was the one who wrote the song "Shake, Rattle and Roll." That was one of the most pivotal songs that launched the popularity of rock and roll music. Rolling Stone Magazine has rated it as 127 on their list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

But while Stone is best known for that song, he wasn't a songwriting one-hit wonder. Ahmet Ertegun, the head of Atlantic Records, the most important R&B record company in that era, once stated that "Jesse Stone did more to develop the basic rock and roll sound than anybody else."

Stone's music career went way back. He actually came from a family who put on minstrel shows, and began performing at the age of four! His first big success as a songwriter came with the song "Idaho," which sold over a million copies in 1942. That's not really a style of song I like, but I've included it since it was a pivotal song in his career. Things got more interesting as the rock and rock era dawned in the early 1950s. Another big success for him was "Money Honey" by the Drifters, which Rolling Stone Magazine also put on their list of the top 500 greatest songs of all time. "Flip, Flop and Fly" by Big Joe Turner and "Don't Let Go" by Roy Hamilton were also especially big hits.

Stone had his own career as a singer, as well as a producer and arranger. He had a fine voice, but never had any hits of his own. He certainly stood out for being a successful Black songwriter in the 1950s when there were very few others. (Although Otis Blackwell comes to mind as another key exception.) His success as a songwriter petered out in the early 1960s as musical styles change. Most of these songs are the original versions, except for the last three, which came significantly later. He died in 1999 at the age of 97.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on him:

Jesse Stone (musician) - Wikipedia

This album is 47 minutes long. 

01 Idaho (Benny Goodman with Dick Haymes)
02 Cole Slaw [Sorghum Switch] (Louis Jordan)
03 Losing Hand (Ray Charles)
04 Money Honey (Drifters)
05 Shake, Rattle and Roll (Bill Haley & His Comets)
06 As Long as I'm Moving (Ruth Brown)
07 Razzle-Dazzle (Bill Haley & His Comets)
08 Flip, Flop and Fly (Big Joe Turner)
09 Crazy, Crazy Party (Cues)
10 Don't Let Go (Roy Hamilton)
11 Love Is A-Breakin' Out (Roberta Sherwood)
12 Red Hot Love (Billy Williams)
13 Private Eye (Buddy Wilkins)
14 Like a Baby (Elvis Presley)
15 Smack Dab in the Middle (Ray Charles)
16 Your Cash Ain't Nothing but Trash (Steve Miller Band)
17 Lipstick, Powder and Paint (Shakin' Stevens)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8ndetrSq

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/oVOghCZORLncBUR/file

I don't know much about the cover photo except that it looks to be a promotional photo from the 1950s. It was originally in black and white, but I colorized it using the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Neil Sedaka & Howard Greenfield, Volume 1: 1958-1970

I have to admit that, until very recently, I hadn't given much thought to the musical career of Neil Sedaka. I just assumed he was one of many pop stars that had hits mostly or entirely written by others from the 1960s, like Bobby Darin or Bobby Dee. But it turns out that he not only wrote most of his hits, but he wrote plenty of hits for others. Most of his songwriting was done with Howard Greenfield, who avoided the spotlight and didn't have a recording career of his own. I found enough for two volumes. Here's the first one.

Neil Sedaka grew up in a middle class Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. From a young age, he developed a talent for playing classical music on the piano. He even won a piano scholarship for the prestigious Julliard's School of Music as a teenager, and he's retrained an interest in playing classical music his entire life. While only 13 years old, he met another teenager living in the same apartment building, Howard Greenfield, who already was an aspiring lyricist and poet. 

The two started writing show tunes, but they soon got turned on to pop music. In 1958, they got hired to be professional songwriters for a company that eventually moved their offices to the Brill Building, a building in New York City where as tremendous number of hit songs were written. But Sedaka also got signed by a record company as a recording artist. He began having hits almost immediately. Eventually, he would sell over 25 million records on his own. Soon, much of Sedaka's time was taken up with promoting and touring to support his recordings. His songwriting with Greenfield continued. But Greenfield had more free time, so Sedaka was okay with Greenfield cowriting with others when Sedaka was too busy. In particular, Greenfield often wrote songs with another professional songwriter named Jack Keller.

The point of my "Covered" series is to focus on songwriting careers. So I've tried hard to avoid having lots of songs here performed by Sedaka. I managed to include only one in this volume, "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do." But I didn't have that self-imposed rule, probably more than half of the songs here would have been performed by him. Sometimes I had to look hard to find good versions of songs that he had a hit with. But there are plenty of songs here that were first hits for others, such as the four performed by Connie Francis.   

From 1958 to 1963, Sedaka and Greenfield had hit after hit after hit, both recorded by Sedaka and by others. I've only included some of the best and most popular ones here. But then in 1964, their songwriting style fell out of fashion, when the Beatles and Bob Dylan drastically changed things. For much of the rest of the 1960s, they struggled. 

However, they still did find some successes. For instance, Greenfield wrote some popular TV show themes with Jack Keller (who I already mentioned above). That's represented by the inclusion of "Theme from Bewitched" here. They also had some successes with songs recorded by the Fifth Dimension. That includes "Puppet Man," which appears on Volume 2. They also had a quirky minor hit in 1970 with "Rainy Day Bells," which has a throwback sound to an earlier era. It was supposedly recorded by the comedic basketball team the Harlem Globetrotters. But in fact it was recorded by some professional soul singers.

But still, by 1970, it looked like most of the successful years of both Sedaka and Greenfield were behind them, due to changing musical trends. However, they would come back with many successes in the 1970s, which will be dealt with in Volume 2. 

Here are the Wikipedia pages of both:

Neil Sedaka - Wikipedia 

Howard Greenfield - Wikipedia

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Stupid Cupid (Connie Francis)
02 Since You've Been Gone (Clyde McPhatter)
03 My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own (Connie Francis)
04 Stairway to Heaven (Gary Sherbert)
05 Everybody's Somebody's Fool (Connie Francis)
06 Fallin' (Wanda Jackson)
07 Where the Boys Are (Connie Francis)
08 Oh Carol (Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons)
09 Venus in Blue Jeans (Jimmy Clanton)
10 Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (Neil Sedaka)
11 Foolish Little Girl (Cookies)
12 Calendar Boy (Dee Dee Sharp)
13 Get Rid of Him (Dionne Warwick)
14 It Hurts to Be in Love (Gene Pitney)
15 Theme from Bewitched (Warren Barker)
16 Workin' on a Groovy Thing (5th Dimension)
17 Rainy Day Bells (Globetrotters)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qA2y8xMu

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/X3TCL8MKpdiL5Hi/file

The cover image is a composite that I made. The picture of Sedaka is from 1962. I don't know when the picture of Greenfield was taken, but clearly it's from when he was young. (He's the one with the visible tie.) Both pictures I started with were in black and white. But I converted them to color with the use of the Kolorize program. 

Various Artists - Covered: Luther Dixon: 1957-1972

I'm trying to use my Covered series to shine a spotlight on some talented songwriters who aren't widely known. Luther Dixon definitely qualifies as little known. I didn't select a lot of songs written or co-written by him. All I came up with was one relatively short album. But he wrote a fair number of classics. For instance, two of his songs, "Tonight's the Night" by the Shirelles and "Big Boss Man" by Jimmy Reed, have been included on a Rolling Stone Magazine list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

Dixon was born in Florida in 1931, but grew up in New York City. He was probably lucky his family made the move, since there was more economic opportunity for a Black man in a northern city back in that era of segregation. There were very few successful Black professional songwriters in the 1950s. But while Dixon started out as a member of a doo-wop group, he quickly discovered he preferred songwriting and producing to performing. His first big success was "Why Baby Why," a hit for Pat Boone in 1957. 

 

In 1959, he found a ideal job working as a producer for an up-and-coming record label, Scepter Records. What made the job ideal was that he was given great independence to produce and record as he liked. He soon began working with the Shirelles, and largely pioneered the classic "girl group" sound with his song "Tonight's the Night." (That, presumably, is why Rolling Stone put that song in its top 500 list.) He had a lot of success in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Two of his songs, "Boys" and "Baby, It's You," were recorded by the Beatles. That second one was co-written by  Burt Bacharach.

 
However, the Beatles were also largely to blame for a drastic change in musical tastes away from his 1950s style, along with Bob Dylan and others. He did have some hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but few compared to what he'd accomplished before. He died in 2009 at the age of 78. Here's his Wikipedia entry if you want to know more about him:

Luther Dixon - Wikipedia

Generally speaking, I included the original hit versions of each song, in rough chronological order. However, "Baby, It's You" was first a big hit for the Shirelles in 1961, but I already included that version on a Burt Bacharach and Hal David "Covered" album. So instead I used the version by Smith, which also was a big hit in 1969.

This album is 43 minutes long. 

01 Why Baby Why (Pat Boone)
02 Sixteen Candles (Crests)
03 So Close (Brook Benton)
04 Lovin' Up a Storm (Jerry Lee Lewis)
05 Tonight's the Night (Shirelles)
06 Big Boss Man (Jimmy Reed)
07 A Hundred Pounds of Clay (Gene McDaniels)
08 Mama Said (Shirelles)
09 Irresistible You (Bobby Darin)
10 Soldier Boy (Shirelles)
11 Boys (Beatles)
12 Sha La La (Manfred Mann)
13 With This Ring (Platters)
14 Soul Serenade (Aretha Franklin)
15 Baby It's You (Smith)
16 I Don't Wanna Cry (Ronnie Dyson)
17 Funk Factory (Wilson Pickett)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8DykqLaZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5pykEJmtUAXngfP/file

I don't know when or where the cover photo is from. I was lucky to find a good photo of Dixon at all. But I'd guess it's from the 1950s or early 1960s. The original was in black and white, but I converted it to color with the use of the Palette program.

Various Artists - Fallout, Season 1 - The Unreleased Complete Soundtrack (2024) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here is another guest post from contributor Mike Solof. This time around, he's chosen to do a post of the complete soundtrack to season one of Netflix’s 2024 drama "Fallout," known for its extensive use of music. Normally, I would write a long introduction about the show and Mike's post of the music. But the problem is that I confess I have never watched the show, played any of the video games it was based on …and basically know nothing about it… other than I like the music. So for this post I’ll keep it short and sweet.

"Fallout," the 2024 Netflix series inspired by the popular video game franchise, plunges viewers into a post-apocalyptic world where remnants of civilization clash with mutated creatures and survivoralist factions vying for power. The show artfully blends dark humor and action, following a diverse cast of characters navigating the desolate wasteland. A standout feature is its extensive use of music from the 1940s and 1950s, which not only enhances the nostalgic atmosphere but also juxtaposes the grim setting with a sense of charm and irony, providing a captivating backdrop to the unfolding drama.

Mike’s PDF file is a "Fallout" soundtrack guide and includes details about every song and when it appears in the show. Much like its video game counterpart, each episode of the Fallout TV show features all kinds of songs that bring the franchise's 1950s aesthetic to life. Many of these songs were popular picks from the era, while other songs were lesser-known selections. 

The Fallout TV show follows the story of its three main characters, Lucy, Maximus, and Cooper Howard, as they each race across the wasteland in an attempt to chase down a valuable head. Fallout's cast of characters have their stories interweave throughout the show, with each of their various adventures being scored by these popular songs. Since there's no official soundtrack album with all the songs, Mike decided to make one. He realized on a Fallout fan wiki that had details about all the songs on the show.

One problem Mike and I faced is how to divide the music up into something listenable. All in all, this makes up two hours and 15 minutes of music. That's way too much for an album. But there were eight episodes, and if you break this up into one album per episode, some of those are too short. For instance, one episode only had two songs in it that weren't in previous episodes. So we decided to split this into four albums, each containing the music from two episodes. 

Thus, this ends up being either one really big album, or four smallish albums, depending on how you look at it. To cover all bases, we made one album cover for the whole thing, then individual album covers for each of the four sub-sections.

The show has been a big hit and already has been renewed for a second season. So let's hope Mike will be game to make a sequel to this if the next season has lots of interesting music like the first one.

By the way, a real technical note here. I used the fan wiki mentioned above to track down the years each song was first recorded (which get mentioned in the mp3 tags, as well as Mike's PDF file). But three songs were so obscure that the wiki didn't know when they were released, and I couldn't figure those out either. So, for those three songs, I just put in the year 2024.

EPISODES 1 & 2:

01 Orange Colored Sky (Nat King Cole)
02 Journey into Melody (Sam Fonteyn)
03 Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes (Perry Como)
04 Who Do You Suppose (Connie Conway)
05 Some Enchanted Evening (Castells)
06 Keep That Coffee Hot (Scatman Crothers)
07 A Nervous Kiss (Carl Coccomo)
08 So Doggone Lonesome (Johnny Cash)
09 All Over Again (Johnny Cash)
10 Brighter Side (Connie Conway)
11 Mariachi de Amigos (Donald Quan)
12 Crawl Out Through the Fallout (Sheldon Allman)
13 Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall (Ink Spots)
14 Don't Fence Me In (Bing Crosby & The Andrew Sisters)
15 It's a Man (Betty Hutton)
16 I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire (Ink Spots)

EPISODES 3 & 4:

01 Maybe (Ink Spots)
02 We'll Meet Again (Ink Spots)
03 Tweedle Dee (LaVern Baker)
04 In the Mood (Glenn Miller Orchestra)
05 Act Naturally (Buck Owens)
06 Let's Go Sunning (Jack Shaindlin)
07 Just Fine (Michael Brown & Company)
08 What to Do (Buddy Holly)
09 It Ain't the Meat, It's the Motion (Swallows)
10 I Can Dream, Can't I (Andrews Sisters)

EPISODES 5 & 6:

01 Jet Tones (Henry)
02 Robin in the Pine (Bonnie Guitar)
03 Battle Hymn of the Republic (Rick Rhodes & Danny Pelfrey)
04 National Pride (Cedric King Palmer)
05 Ladyfingers (Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass)
06 What a Difference a Day Makes (Dinah Washington)
07 It's Just a Matter of Time (Brook Benton)
08 Texas and Beyond (John Scott)
09 Improvisation on Tchaikowsky's Pathetique Andante (Django Reinhardt)
10 Dardanella (Alvino Rey)
11 The Theme from a Summer Place (Percy Faith & His Orchestra)
12 Lonely Hours (Gene Armstrong)
13 Summer in Love (Romolo Grano)
14 Give Me the Simple Life (June Christy)
15 Skitter Skatter (Metrotones)
16 I'm Tickled Pink (Jack Shaindlin)

EPISODES 7 & 8:

01 Sixteen Tons (Tennessee Ernie Ford)
02 Only You [And You Alone] (Platters)
03 Bossa Angela (Roland Kovac Rhythm & Strings)
04 Annie's Song (John Denver)
05 Yeah Yeah Baby (William 'Cool Papa' Jarvis)
06 You're Everything (Danleers)
07 From the First Hello, to the Last Goodbye (Jane Morgan)
08 Oktoberfest (Douglas Wood)
09 I Don't Want to See Tomorrow (Nat King Cole)
10 We Three [My Echo, My Shadow and Me] (Ink Spots)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gYtxA

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5WhqrY3f

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/gDalFJYahfb6har/file

The cover art comes from a promotional poster for the show. Don't look at what the dog has in its mouth!

Various Artists - Covered: Berry Gordy: 1957-1982

As I move forward with my "Covered" series highlighting great songwriters, it's time I start to unravel the big ball of wax that is the Motown Records hit making machine. Although there were some key exceptions, the hits at the Motown record company were generally written by professional songwriters. It turns out a relatively small number of them wrote nearly all the hits, so they are ideal subjects for my Covered series.

When it comes to dealing with the Motown Records company, it's fitting to start with Berry Gordy, who is practically Motown Records personified. He started the company in 1959 and it was a massive success nearly from the start. Being Black, he turned Motown into the most successful Black-run private business in the U.S. for decades. Gordy became a household name, thanks to Motown's distinctive sound and his innovative business practices. 

That said, I don't think a lot of people appreciate that, on top of all of his business success, he was actually a very talented songwriter! He was a songwriter first, and he had a lot of success writing or co-writing hits for Jackie Wilson, Etta James, and others before Motown Records even existed. The reason he formed the company was because he was frustrated at how little money he was getting writing hit songs. He correctly realized that he was getting ripped off by very ruthless music companies.

A challenging question here though is just how much he actually participated in the writing of the songs presented here. Gordy wasn't above being ruthless himself sometimes. For instance, I haven't included any version of the song "You've Got What It Takes," even though it was a big hit multiple times by different artists, and Berry is typically considered one of the co-writers. That's because soul guitarist Bobby Parker wrote it and released it in 1958. Then, in 1959, Marv Johnson put out a version on Motown Records and simply ignored the songwriting credits of the earlier version, giving the songwriting credit to Gordy, his wife, and two others instead.

So if Gordy did that once, he could have done it other times. That said, it seems he generally played it straight while running Motown. I've read a bunch about Motown, and other people like Motown star Smokey Robinson have said that Gordy's songs were treated the same as those of any other songwriter at the time. Motown was run much like an assembly line, with strict rules about every aspect of the business. As part of that, over a dozen company leaders had weekly meetings to decide which songs would get released as singles. Majority vote ruled, and songs written or co-written by Gordy got rejected just like everyone else. 

Furthermore, there's plenty of evidence that Gordy was a talented songwriter, even putting aside his songwriting success prior to Motown. He usually co-wrote songs with others, but not always. For instance, the Contours song "Do You Love Me," reached Number Three on the U.S. single chart in 1962, and it was written solely by him. Some other songs here were also credited just to him. In fact, songwriting legend Smokey Robinson says that in the late 1950s, Gordy was actually his songwriting mentor, since Robinson was just starting out at the time and Gordy already had multiple hits he'd been involved with. Robinson seemed very impressed with Gordy's songwriting talent.

What seems to have happened is that, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Gordy wrote a lot of songs. But as the 1960s progressed, he was increasingly preoccupied by running the Motown company, and he realized he could delegate most of the songwriting to other very capable people. So his songwriting credits steadily declined as the decade went on.

Then something curious happened around 1969. Motown's top songwriters, the Holland-Dozier-Holland team, left the company in 1968 due to a dispute over not getting enough royalties. By that time, Holland-Dozier-Holland had gotten very famous due to writing so many hit songs. Gordy wanted to make sure this didn't happen again. So he created something called "The Corporation." This was a group of four songwriters who wrote most of the songs for Motown's hot new act, the Jackson 5. Their records were credited simply to "The Corporation" so the individuals wouldn't get too famous and thus later make big demands on him. The four main songwriters involved were Freddie Perren, Alphonso Mizell, Deke Richards, and... Gordy himself. 

But was he actually involved in co-writing the songs, or was this a new scheme to take some of the profits by a new songwriting team? I suspect it was a bit of both. The first big hit by the Corporation, which turned out to be one of the greatest songs of all time, was "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5. Since it's such a famous, classic song, I was able to find out some about how it came to be. It turns out it was originally written by the other three in the team. (Perren, in particular, would go on to great songwriting success. I plan on having an album of his songs in this series.) However, when the song was first presented to Gordy, it was a very different song, including having the title "I Want to Be Free." Gordy made numerous improvements to it, so he definitely deserves songwriting credit for that one.

I suspect that was the case for the other big hits by the Jackson Five. Gordy promised the band that their first three songs at least would all be Number Ones, and that surprisingly turned out to be the case. He really, really wanted this band to succeed, and it seems he pulled out all the stops to make them a success, including getting directly involved in the songwriting. But the Corporation is credited with writing dozens of songs around the early 1970s, and I'm making the guess that Gordy was too busy running Motown to be involved with most of those. 

If anyone has a better idea about this, please let me know. Gordy's songwriting is rarely discussed, since his success running Motown totally dominates any discussion about his life. (Remarkably, as I write this in 2024, he is still alive at the age of 94.) 

Anyway, it seems after this final flurry of songwriting activity for the Jackson 5, Gordy essentially gave up songwriting altogether. The songs here are presented in rough chronological order (check the mp3 tags for details). The last two songs, "Good Thing Going" and "I'll Be Satisfied," were hits by Sugar Minott in 1981 and Shakin' Stevens in 1982 respectively. However, both songs were actually written and first released by others in the 1960s. The last new song Gordy was involved with that's included here is "Get It Together" by the Jackson 5 in 1973.

Here's Gordy's Wikipedia entry if you want to know more:

Berry Gordy - Wikipedia

This album is an hour and 15 minutes long.

01 Reet Petite (Jackie Wilson)
02 To Be Loved (Jackie Wilson)
03 It's So Fine (LaVern Baker)
04 Lonely Teardrops (Jackie Wilson)
05 Come to Me (Marv Johnson)
06 That's Why [I Love You So] (Jackie Wilson)
07 I'll Be Satisfied (Jackie Wilson)
08 All I Could Do Was Cry (Etta James)
09 Shop Around (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
10 Seven Day Fool (Etta James)
11 Do You Love Me (Contours)
12 Shake Sherrie (Contours)
13 Money [That's What I Want] (Beatles)
14 Try It Baby (Marvin Gaye)
15 Do Right Baby, Do Right (Chris Clark)
16 I Want to Go Back There Again (Chris Clark)
17 I Want You Back (Jackson 5)
18 I'm Livin' in Shame (Supremes)
19 ABC (Jackson 5)
20 You've Made Me So Very Happy (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
21 I'll Be There (Jackson 5)
22 Mama's Pearl (Jackson 5)
23 The Love You Save (Jackson 5)
24 Get It Together (Jackson 5)
25 Good Thing Going [We've Got a Good Thing Going] (Sugar Minott)
26 I'll Be Satisfied (Shakin' Stevens)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mqBqcwWo

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/iusPNyrGMG2z4cI/file

The cover photo is a very early publicity photo of Berry Gordy. (It might be hard to tell from just this much, but he has a black jacket slung over one shoulder.) I'm guessing this is from around 1960. The photo was in black and white, but I colorized it using the Palette program.

Various Artists - Covered: Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong, Volume 1: 1960-1967

The "Covered" series rises from the dead again. Singer and songwriter Barrett Strong died over a month ago as I write this in March 2023. He died on January 28, 2023. He was 81 years old. I got a request in the comments section to include him in the Covered series. I thought that was a good idea, except he mostly wrote songs with producer Norman Whitfield, so this features songs by either or both of them, though most often both.

Strong is probably best known as the singer on the classic 1959 hit "Money (That's What I Want)." It was a very pivotal record because it was the very first hit for the soon to be legendary record company Motown Records. Rolling Stone Magazine has listed it as one of the 500 greatest songs of all time. Technically, the song was only written by Barry Gordy (the founder of Motown) and Janie Bradford. However, Strong has always claimed he had a role in writing it, and his name was on the credits as late as 1968. Given his later track record of songwriting success, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt in having a role.

Strong had a strange career because he had that big hit, and he clearly was a talented singer. But he soon retired from singing and releasing records in favor of being a professional songwriter for the Motown label. (Yet in the 1970s he would briefly resurrect his singing career, as I will explain another time.) 

Whitfield and Strong soon began writing songs together, because they co-wrote "Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)," which was a minor hit for Marvin Gaye in 1962. I'm not including it here because it was a Number One hit for Paul Young in the 1980s, so I will be including that version. But I guess it took time for their songwriting partnership to jell, because most of the songs on this volume were written by Whitfield or Strong with others, not with each other. They would hit their stride as a songwriting team with "I Heard It through the Grapevine" in 1967, one of the most popular songs of all time (and of course also on that Rolling Stone Magazine list), and almost always wrote together after that.

Whitfield began as a songwriter for Motown in the early 1960s at the tender age of 19. He was fairly successful, co-writing songs like "Too Many Fish in the Sea" and "Needle in a Haystack." But he slowly moved into production, most crucially taking over production of all records by the Temptations in 1966. He would do so well in that that his production work generally overshadowed his songwriting.

If you want to know more, here's the Wikipedia page on Strong:

Barrett Strong - Wikipedia

And here's the page on Whitfield:

Norman Whitfield - Wikipedia 

Note that for different songwriters in the Covered series, I use different self-imposed rules. If an artist generally doesn't have a lot of hits, I usually pick the versions of the songs that I like the most, and try to keep it to one song for each artist. But with Whitfield and Strong, it's pretty much ALL hits in this collection, and enough for three volumes. I decided to usually go with the biggest hit versions, since those usually were also the best. Thus, there tends to be many songs by a small group of musical artists, because Strong and Whitfield typically were only assigned by Motown to those artists.

One oddity here is the song "Stay in My Corner," by the Dells. I believe it's the only song in this volume that wasn't done by a Motown artist. Strong was one of three co-writers on that, without Whitfield. It was first released by the Dells in 1965, but they had a Number One hit on the R&B charts in the US with it in 1968.

Generally speaking, the songs appear here in chronological order by year, though I moved a couple a little bit to limit the number of times there were two songs in a row by the same artist.

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 Money [That's What I Want] (Barrett Strong)
02 Pride and Joy (Marvin Gaye)
03 He Was Really Sayin' Somethin' (Velvelettes)
04 Girl [Why You Wanna Make Me Blue] (Temptations)
05 Needle in a Haystack (Velvelettes)
06 Too Many Fish in the Sea (Marvelettes)
07 Throw a Farewell Kiss (Velvelettes)
08 Can't You See [You're Losing Me] (Mary Wells)
09 A Bird in the Hand [Is Worth Two in the Bush] (Velvelettes)
10 Stay in My Corner (Dells)
11 Lonely, Lonely Girl Am I (Velvelettes)
12 [I Know] I'm Losing You (Temptations)
13 Ain't Too Proud to Beg (Temptations)
14 [Stop Leading Me On] I Know How to Love Her (Jimmy Ruffin)
15 Beauty Is Only Skin Deep (Temptations)
16 Everybody Needs Love (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
17 I Wish It Would Rain (Temptations)
18 Take Me in Your Arms and Love Me (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
19 You're My Everything (Temptations)
20 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Gladys Knight & the Pips)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/FzWPRsrJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/CXmhHbpU0tKl9vs/file

I actually finished putting these Whitfield and Strong volumes together a couple of weeks ago. But I didn't post them because I couldn't figure out what to do for the cover art. The number of photos of Whitfield and Strong together is extremely small, and most of them are of low quality. I especially had trouble finding any for this time period, because they got famous. 

Eventually, I found this one, which is from 1969, probably at some awards ceremony because they're wearing tuxedos. It was black and white, naturally, and very small, but I did my best to enlarge it, colorize it, and make it look decent. Although it's from 1969, it was right before both of them got afros. From other, even worse pictures, usually of just one of them, I can saw they looked pretty much like this for most of the 1960s, with short haircuts and little facial hair.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Cliff Richard - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1958-1960

Here's another artist for my BBC project. British singer Cliff Richard is a minor musical footnote in the U.S., but he's a household name in Britain. He's sold over 250 million records worldwide, making him one of the top ten musicians of all time. He's also the third most successful singles artist in Britain, behind only Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Furthermore, he's been in the charts for an astoundingly long time, having had Number One hits in Britain for five decades in a row.

Due to all of that success, it's not surprise that he's done many BBC sessions over the years. I've prepared six BBC albums for him, and that only deals with his career from the late 1950s to the end of the 1970s.

There are some fair critiques one can make of Richard's musical career as a whole. It's very mainstream and show-biz, and he never was much for writing songs himself. However, his 1950s material, the subject of this volume, is different. Back then, plain ol' rock and roll was all the rage, and that's what he specialized in at the time. This album consists of a mix of songs that Richard made famous, such as his first hit, "Move It," which went to Number Two in Britain in 1958, and covers of rock and roll classics, with occasional change of pace ballads.

His rocking backing band would become quite accomplished in their own right. First known as the Drifters, they changed their name to the Shadows in 1959 due to legal problems because of the already established Drifters soul group in the US. They would go on to have many instrumental hits in Britain, including five Number Ones, while staying Richard's backing band until 1968. 

All of the recordings here have been officially released on a BBC compilation album called "Let Me Tell You Baby... It's Called Rock and Roll." I removed a few songs that were performed more than once. I also removed a bunch of instrumentals by the Drifters/Shadows, since I wanted to keep the focus on Richard. However, I kept one instrumental, "Apache," since it was such a huge hit, staying at Number One for five weeks in Britain in 1960. (A cover version by Jorgen Ingmann topped the charts in the U.S.) I put that at the very end though, as a quasi-bonus track.

The sound quality starts out a bit rocky. The first four songs come from a 1958 recording session, and the quality of those songs are merely good, not excellent. But hang on, because it sounds much better for the rest. We're lucky these recordings survived at all, since the BBC didn't generally keep copies of their shows and these date all the way back to the 1950s.

This album is 58 minutes long. 

01 Move It (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
02 My Babe (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
03 Summertime Blues (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
04 Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
05 Baby I Don't Care (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
06 Down the Line (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
07 C'mon Everybody (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
08 Steady with You (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
09 Ready Teddy (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
10 Apron Strings (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
11 Never Mind (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
12 Danny (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
13 Don't Bug Me Baby (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
14 Dream Lover (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
15 Mean Streak (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
16 Rip It Up (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
17 Living Doll (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
18 Dynamite (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
19 I'm in Love Again (Cliff Richard & the Drifters)
20 You're Just the One to Do It (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
21 What'd I Say (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
22 Where Is My Heart (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
23 Please Don't Tease (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
24 Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
25 Apache [Instrumental] (Shadows)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687689/CLIFFRCHRD1958-1960_BBSessonsVlum1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from a 1959 concert in England. I believe that's Bruce Welch of the shadows on guitar behind Richard.

Various Artists - Covered: Curtis Mayfield, Volume 1: 1958-1971

It's been a while, but here's another major songwriter for my "Covered" series. To refresh your memory, this series highlights important songwriters, but only with cover versions of their songs, not versions they did themselves. Curtis Mayfield was a very successful musician and lead vocalist, first as part of the Impressions in the 1960s and then on his own from the 1970s until his death in 1999. But he had many successes writing songs for others. In fact, he was kind of a one man Motown, writing and producing tons of hits for others, and eventually having a record company of his own. 

I found four albums worth of cover material from him. They're a mix of covers that he wrote for others and covers of the songs that he made famous with his own versions. Note that if you look at any given volume, you might think that some key songs are missing. But this is ordered chronologically by the year the cover versions were done, and some of the ones I chose didn't come out until long after the song was first released.

This album largely overlaps with his years as a member of the Impressions, which lasted from 1956 until 1970. He wrote and sang lead on virtually everything they did, while they had a long series of hit singles. About the only key hit single not included in this series is "Amen," because Mayfield didn't write that one. The one exception to him singing lead on their hits is their very first hit, "For Your Precious Love" in 1958. Jerry Butler sang lead with Mayfield being one of the backing singers. But Butler left shortly after that for a long and successful solo career. I've included that song here even though Mayfield was part of the group at the time because he didn't sing lead on it.

Even as he was having great success with the Impressions, he was writing many more songs for others. Such big hits included "He Will Break Your Heart" by Jerry Butler, "Mama Didn't Lie" by Jan Bradley, "The Monkey Time" and "Um Um Um Um Um Um," both by Major Lance. Frankly, he had many, many more songs he wrote for others. But most of them were just okay, in my opinion, so I didn't include that many. Not surprisingly, he saved the best for himself and his group at the time, the Impressions.

I'm not going to say much more about his life and career. So if you want to read more, here' s the Wikipedia page on him:

Curtis Mayfield - Wikipedia 

This album is 48 minutes long. The three other albums in the series have similar lengths.

01 For Your Precious Love (Jerry Butler & the Impressions)
02 He Will Break Your Heart (Jerry Butler)
03 Mama Didn't Lie (Jan Bradley)
04 The Monkey Time (Major Lance)
05 You Must Believe Me (Don Covay)
06 Um Um Um Um Um Um (Major Lance)
07 Woman's Got Soul (Joe Williams)
08 Queen Majesty (Techniques)
09 Girls Are Out to Get You (Fascinations)
10 I'm the One Who Loves You (Five Stairsteps)
11 Man's Temptation (Al Kooper & Michael Bloomfield)
12 I Thank You Baby (Donny Hathaway & June Conquest)
13 Choice of Colors (Della Reese)
14 Keep On Moving (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
15 Gypsy Woman (Brian Hyland)
16 Mighty Mighty [Spade and Whitey] (Alexis Korner)
17 Hard Times (Baby Huey)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Cwf4FkrX

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/vYqjomvjMrlEJxp/file

Typically, I have a really hard time finding color photos of these songwriters early in their careers. That was the case here. But I managed to find a good color photo of him off one of the earliest Impressions album covers (from around 1960, if I recall correctly). But I had to make some edits. I cropped the group photo to focus on him, and then edited out the background and other band members, since that stuff was distracting. Also, his eyes were looking to the side, so I edited them to hopefully make it look like he's staring straight ahead.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Willie Dixon, Volume 1: 1954-1966

Next up for the "Covered" series is Willie Dixon. You may not be familiar with him unless you're a blues fan, but he's a musical legend. I would guess that maybe half of all classic blues songs were written by him. And since blues has had such a massive impact on rock and soul music, he's a towering figure for those genres too. Chuck Berry has said of him, "He made me what I am, so far as the basics of my music." And Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones has said, "He is the backbone of post-war blues writing... the absolute." His nickname is "the poet laureate of the blues."

But despite his influence, he isn't as well known as he should be because he wasn't much of a performer. He did play bass on a lot of records, but he didn't sing much, or put out many albums under his own names. Instead, he was mainly content to write for others, most especially blues legends Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf.

If you want to know more about him, here's the link to his Wikipedia entry:

Willie Dixon - Wikipedia

I've found enough great songs from him for three albums. I could fill those albums mostly with performances by Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and other blues greats. But since I want to introduce people to his musical legacy who aren't already big blues fans, I've tried to pick versions done by rock artists. In order to help with that, I'm limited myself to only one song for each musical artist for all three of his albums in this series. You'll still find some blues artists on this volume, but less so on the other two. The songs are sorted chronologically, and rock artists began covering him around 1964, which is in the later half of this album, when the Rolling Stones took his "Little Red Rooster" all the way to number one on the British charts.

This album is slightly longer than 45 minutes, and the other two volumes have similar lengths.

01 I'm Ready (Muddy Waters)
02 My Babe (Little Walter)
03 Pretty Thing (Bo Diddley)
04 I Don't Care Who Knows (Harrold Burrage)
05 I Cry and Sing the Blues (Buddy Guy)
06 Lovin' Up a Storm (Jerry Lee Lewis)
07 I Can't Hold Out (Elmore James)
08 For My Baby (Brook Benton)
09 Three Hundred Pounds of Joy (Howlin' Wolf)
10 Little Red Rooster (Rolling Stones)
11 Just like I Treat You (Rod Stewart & Long John Baldry & the Hoochie Coochie Men)
12 Meet Me in the Bottom (Everly Brothers)
13 Seventh Son (Johnny Rivers)
14 You Need Love [You Need Loving] (Small Faces)
15 Spoonful (Cream)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bTrMTB8u

alternate link:

https://bestfile.io/en/yDS6Hs3sOaAwQVe/file

I have no idea what year this photo of Willie Dixon is from. But pretty much all of the other photos I've found him show him at least partially bald, so I figure he's fairly young here. The original of this photo was in black and white, but I colorized it. His skin is fairly dark in the (actual color) photo I've chosen for the third volume in this series, so I darkened his skin some on this one to better match that one. 

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Boudleaux Bryant & Felice Bryant: 1955-2004

The "Covered" series is back again. I thought I was done with all the great songwriters with careers that began before the 1960s, but boy was I wrong. Recently, I stumbled across a Rolling Stone Magazine list of who they consider the top 100 songwriters of all time. I disagree with some of their choices, but the list made me recall some songwriters I'd overlooked.

Here's one: Boudleaux Bryant & Felice Bryant. They were a husband and wife team all the way. They met in 1945, when they were young, and married right away. They stayed married Boudleaux passed away in 1987. Felice Bryant lived until 2003. There are some occasional examples where one of them wrote a song without crediting the other, but those are rare.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on them. I find it interesting that they're so closely linked to each other that there's just one entry for their partnership:

Felice and Boudleaux Bryant - Wikipedia

The Bryants didn't write as many songs I deemed worthy of inclusion as some others. For instance, I've posted six albums of songs by Bacharach and David, and seven albums of Goffin and King. But some of the songs they wrote are all time classics. For instance, Rolling Stone Magazine includes three of their songs in their list of the 500 greatest songs of all time: "Bye Bye Love," "Wake Up, Little Susie," and "All I Have to Do Is Dream."

Many of the songs they wrote were country songs. I can only take country in limited doses, and I'm sure others feel the same. So in deciding which songs to include, and which versions, I've focused on their more widely accessible material, often done by non-country artists. 

At first, I wasn't going to make a Covered album for them, because they're so closely associated with the Everly Brothers. One could make an excellent album just of the hits the Everly Brothers had that were written by the Bryants. But I decided there were a good number of their songs done for others, plus I could select alternate versions so this didn't basically turn into an Everly Brothers greatest hits of sorts. I tried hard not to have more than one song by any one artist. I mostly succeeded, although in the end I went with two by the Everly Brothers. I included their version of "Bye Bye Love" because it's so iconic, and there isn't a really famous version done by someone else. I also included their version of "Problems" because there were almost no cover versions of it I could find.

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 Nightmare (Jack Turner)
02 How's the World Treating You (Elvis Presley)
03 Bye Bye Love (Everly Brothers)
04 Problems (Everly Brothers)
05 Raining in My Heart (Buddy Holly & the Crickets)
06 Let's Think about Living (Bob Luman)
07 Mexico (Bob Moore & His Orchestra)
08 So How Come [No One Loves Me] (Beatles)
09 Some Sweet Day (Fairport Convention)
10 All I Have to Do is Dream (Bobbie Gentry & Glen Campbell)
11 Rocky Top (Laurie Anderson)
12 Take a Message to Mary (Bob Dylan)
13 Brand New Heartache (Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris)
14 Love Hurts (Nazareth)
15 Devoted to You (James Taylor & Carly Simon)
16 Poor Jenny (Rockpile)
17 Wake Up Little Susie (Simon & Garfunkel)
18 Bird Dog (Joan Jett & the Blackhearts)
19 Like Strangers (Emmylou Harris)
20 Living with the Shades Pulled Down (George Thorogood & the Destroyers)
21 Sleepless Nights (Norah Jones) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PGKoN3eV

alternate link:

https://bestfile.io/en/KEMPKn7XboOg8KP/file

UPDATE: On May 12, 2026, I replaced the cover image. I wanted to have one where they were looking at the camera. The image was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. I don't know what year it's from.

J. J. Cale - The Early Years, 1958-1967

J. J. Cale had a long and successful career with his laid back singing and lead guitar style, from his first album in 1972 until his death in 2013. But did you know that he spent well over a decade in the music industry before he could put out his first album? That's what this album is about, Cale's little-known early years.

This album isn't for everyone. It took a long time for Cale to find his distinctive style. Some of his early stuff is fairly generic and forgettable. But there are some gems there too, including a version of his classic "After Midnight" that was released as a B-side in 1966. If you're a J. J. Cale fan, you may well find this interesting, but if you're not, this isn't the place to start.

Cale spent many early years mostly as a sideman prized for his lead guitar skills. But even so, he sang lead as far back as 1958 on some fairly obscure singles, and wrote a lot of songs too. I've created two versions of this album. The first one is 39 minutes long, and contains just the songs where Cale sang lead vocals, or instrumentals that prominently featured his guitar work. The second one is an hour and 12 minutes long (32 minutes longer than the other version). That one includes all the same songs, plus many more songs where he played lead guitar on other people's songs. A lot of those extra songs aren't that great, so the long version is more for the J. J. Cale die-hard fan.

Before I say any more, I should point out that this album is almost entirely the work of MZ, a musical friend of mine. You may recognize his name because he's helped with audio editing from time to time. A few days ago, he came to me with this idea, and a list of songs for it. I told him "go for it." I didn't do much except to come up with the idea of creating two versions. So here's a big, big thanks to MZ. 

Note the first batch of songs are credited to "Johnny Cale." He switched to "J. J." at some point in the mid-1960s. Apparently, a club owner made the suggestion, saying that there were too many other guitarists at the time named Johnny, such as Johnny Rivers, and J. J. would stand out more. I've put the "J. J. Cale" part in parentheses for consistency's sake. And rest assured that for band like the Starlighters and the Leathercoated Minds, Cale was a member. He bounced around a lot in the 1960s, joining and leaving bands while doing studio work. He often worked with keyboardist Leon Russell. You'll see Russell's name a few times in the credits for the full version (including when he went by "Leon Russell Bridges"). but there are quite a few additional songs where he and Russell worked on the same songs, but just didn't get their names on the records.

Thanks again to MZ for making this. He says he's going to follow this up with one or more albums of Cale rarities from the rest of his career, so look forward to that soon, knock on wood.

Here's the streamlined 39 minute version:

01 Shock Hop [Instrumental] (Johnny Cale [J. J. Cale])
02 Sneaky [Instrumental] (Johnny Cale [J. J. Cale])
03 Ain't That Lovin' You Baby (Johnny Cale [J. J. Cale])
04 She's My Desire (Johnny Cale [J. J. Cale])
05 Purple Onion [Instrumental] (Johnny Cale Quintette [J. J. Cale])
06 Troubles, Troubles, Troubles (Johnny Cale Quintette [J. J. Cale])
07 Creepin' [Instrumental] (Starlighters)
08 Hot Licks [Instrumental] (Starlighters)
09 It's a Go-Go Place (J. J. Cale)
10 Dick Tracy (J. J. Cale)
11 In Our Time (J. J. Cale)
12 Outside Looking In (J. J. Cale)
13 After Midnight (J. J. Cale)
14 Slow Motion (J. J. Cale)
15 Sunset and Clark [Instrumental] (Leathercoated Minds)
16 Non-Stop [Instrumental] (Leathercoated Minds)
17 Arriba [Instrumental] (Leathercoated Minds)
18 Pot Luck [Instrumental] (Leathercoated Minds)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/d7gaahQV

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/BQNk0LmUg2hRPUv/file

And here's the longer 112 minute version, including songs where Cale prominently played lead guitar on other people's records:

01 Shock Hop [Instrumental] (Johnny Cale [J. J. Cale])
02 Sneaky [Instrumental] (Johnny Cale [J. J. Cale])
03 I Hate Myself (Al Sweatt with Johnnie Cale & the Valentines)
04 Let's Paint the Town Red (Al Sweatt with Johnnie Cale & the Valentines)
05 There's a Big Wheel (Jerry Adams & the Starlighters)
06 Old Black Joe (Jerry Adams & the Starlighters)
07 All Right (Leon Russell Bridges & the Starlighters)
08 Swanee River (Leon Russell Bridges & the Starlighters)
09 Ain't That Lovin' You Baby (Johnny Cale [J. J. Cale])
10 She's My Desire (Johnny Cale [J. J. Cale])
11 Purple Onion [Instrumental] (Johnny Cale Quintette [J. J. Cale])
12 Troubles, Troubles, Troubles (Johnny Cale Quintette [J. J. Cale])
13 Creepin' [Instrumental] (Starlighters)
14 Hot Licks [Instrumental] (Starlighters)
15 Black Cherry (Junior Markham & the Tulsa Review)
16 Gonna Send You to Georgia (Junior Markham & the Tulsa Review)
17 It's Alright with Me (Leon Russell)
18 Everybody's Talking 'bout the Young (Leon Russell)
19 It's a Go-Go Place (J. J. Cale)
20 Dick Tracy (J. J. Cale)
21 In Our Time (J. J. Cale)
22 Outside Looking In (J. J. Cale)
23 After Midnight (J. J. Cale)
24 Slow Motion (J. J. Cale)
25 The Green Hornet [Instrumental] (Super Dupers)
26 I'm Puttin' You On (Sunday Servants)
27 Who Do You Love (Sunday Servants)
28 Lazy Me (Jimmy Boyd)
29 Sunset and Clark [Instrumental] (Leathercoated Minds)
30 Non-Stop [Instrumental] (Leathercoated Minds)
31 Arriba [Instrumental] (Leathercoated Minds)
32 Pot Luck [Instrumental] (Leathercoated Minds)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/F7pZuLeD

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/0qOKxTmASJTDVfE/file

It should come as no surprise that good photos of Cale before he became famous in the 1970s are few and far between. In fact, I couldn't find a single color photo of him from that time. The photo I used is black and white and I colorized it. I'm not sure when and where it was taken, but I would guess roughly 1966 to 1969. MZ found another photo of him in 1965 with a similar "poofy" haircut, though it was much more combed and slicked back.

In February 2025, I upgraded the image with help of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Volume 1: 1960-1963

It's time for more of the "Covered" series, looking at the best songs from the greatest songwriters of all time. Here, I'm starting to post my albums on Gerry Goffin and Carole King, one of the greatest songwriting teams ever, if not the best and most commercially successful.

This should probably be called "Carole King and Gerry Goffin," because King was especially successful, having a big career as a songwriter with Goffin and then having a huge solo career of her own. But I'm going with "Goffin and King" because that's how they're commonly referred to, just as it's always the "Lennon and McCartney" songwriting team in the Beatles, never "McCartney and Lennon." Anyway, King has had 116 Top 100 hits in the US, making her the most successful female songwriter of the 20th century. Goffin though was very successful after the songwriting partnership with King ended, and has has 114 Top 100 hits in the US.

Goffin and King met in college in the late 1950s and immediately began writing songs together. They married in 1959. In 1960, they wrote "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," one of the biggest and most covered songs of all time, and went from success to success after that. Every now and then, they would have hits writing songs without the other one, but in the 1960s the last majority of their songs were written together.

Because these two songwriters have been so exceptional, I've dug especially deep. Sure, I've included virtually all of their hit songs, but I've also included songs that weren't hits at all but I think are very good. I found so many songs that I like that this series on them totals six albums, with each album being about 45 to 55 minutes long.

One important caveat. As I mentioned above, King has been hugely successful on her own, especially with her 1971 album "Tapestry," which sold 25 million copies worldwide. I've deliberately avoided including any performances by King. I have three albums I've posted her of her demos, so there's no need to repeat that. And I figure any fan of this would have "Tapestry" and her big solo hits. So, for instance, she had a rare early solo hit in 1963 with "It Might as Well Rain until September." But I didn't include that here. Instead, I'll include a cover of it from 1964 in the next album in this series.

By the way, here are Wikipedia links if you want to know more about them

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Goffin

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carole_King

This album is 49 minutes long. 

01 Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Shirelles)
02 Some Kind of Wonderful (Drifters)
03 Don't Ever Change (Crickets)
04 Take Good Care of My Baby (Bobby Vee)
05 Every Breath I Take (Gene Pitney)
06 Halfway to Paradise (Billy Fury)
07 Crying in the Rain (Everly Brothers)
08 The Locomotion (Little Eva)
09 Go Away Little Girl (Steve Lawrence)
10 Chains (Cookies)
11 Up on the Roof (Drifters)
12 Make the Night a Little Longer (Shirelles)
13 How Can I Meet Her (Everly Brothers)
14 Keep Your Hands Off My Baby (Little Eva)
15 Point of No Return (Louis Jordan)
16 Hey Girl (Freddie Scott)
17 I Can't Stay Mad at You (Skeeter Davis)
18 One Fine Day (Chiffons)
19 Don't Say Nothin' Bad [About My Baby] (Cookies)
20 Poor Little Rich Girl (Steve Lawrence)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KWiT4b4H

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3PVZ7qcgINbxmSn/file

I'm not sure what year the photo for the cover art was taken. But both Goffin and King look very young, so I'm using it first. Unfortunately, there seem to be virtually no color photos of them from the 1960s. So I've had to use a black and white one, but I colorized it to make it more interesting.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.