Strawbs - Or Am I Dreaming (1969)

After doing the rounds of the folk-club circuit in the early 60's with their banjo-based bluegrass tunes, The Strawberry Hill Boys shortened their name to the Strawbs and decamped to Denmark to record an album of their songs with future Fairport Convention stalwart Sandy Denny. That deal fell through and the album wasn't issued until many years later on a budget label, but word got around and in 1968 they were signed to Herb Albert's A&M label for a one off single in 'Oh How She Changed'/'Or Am I Dreaming'. That record did well enough for the label to offer the band the chance to record an album, so they headed off to the studio, with Nicky Hopkins, John Paul Jones, and the Ted Heath Orchestra in tow, to record their grandoise concept masterpiece. The finishing touch would be short snippets of spoken word between the tracks, but no sooner had they come up with that than Simon & Garfunkel beat them to it with 'Bookends', so the idea was abandoned. When the completed album was finished they proudly presented it to the record label, only to have it firmly rejected by a company who expected more of the psychedelic pop of the single rather than these ambitious pieces, complete with orchestra and a quintet of Middle Eastern musicians they'd met in a restaurant. They had to junk half of the songs and return to the studio to record replacement material which was more in keeping with what the label wanted, and the resultant 'Strawbs' album was released to some acclaim in 1969. Dave Cousins still thought that the rejected songs had some merit, but the band were tied to their A&M contract and so could do nothing with them, but when sessions for their second album produced some left-over material, Cousins decided to compile both sets of songs into a publisher's demo album, to be hawked around other record companies to see if anyone wanted to cover their songs. Just 100 copies were pressed, and it was distributed in a plain white sleeve with 'Strawberry Music Sampler No' 1' stamped on it. Most of the copies have since been lost, and at one point in the 90's only two copies were known to exist, but most of the songs have since leaked onto the net or been included in archive collections. Using a pretty good guess at the likely track listing of the rejected album, I've pieced it back together, including both sides of the single and a couple of early versions of tracks from the released debut album, together with some of the unheard songs from the 'Strawberry Music Sampler'. I agree with Cousins, in that these songs deserve to be heard, although you could understand the record company's trepidation about releasing them from an unknown band, but it's great to hear them at last, even the oddly appealing 'Sweetling', with Ted Heath's Orchestra swinging in the background.

Track listing

01 Or Am I Dreaming
02 Nothing Else Will Do
03 Poor Jimmy Wilson
04 Oh How She Changed
05 Just The Same In Every Way
06 All I Need Is You
07 I've Been My Own Worst Friend
08 And You Need Me
09 Pieces of 79 And 15
10 Stay Awhile With Me
11 Whichever Way The Wind Blows
12 Indian Summer
13 How Everyone But Sam Was A Hypocrite
14 The Falling Leaves
15 Sweetling

I originally made a cover based on the Japanese picture sleeve of the 'Thirty Days' single, but I had second thoughts and made this one instead, although I've left the old one in the download in case you prefer it.