Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Nilsson (1971)

By 1958, Harry Nilsson was intrigued by emerging forms of popular music, especially rhythm and blues artists like Ray Charles, and he had made early attempts at performing by forming a vocal duo with his friend Jerry Smith and singing close harmonies in the style of the Everly Brothers. After learning to play the guitar and piano he started writing original songs, and after singing lessons courtesy of his uncle, along with his natural talent, he got a job singing demos for songwriter Scott Turner in 1962. After a couple of unsuccessful independent singles he started working with Phil Spector in 1964, writing three songs with him. In 1966 he signed to Tower Records, who released the first singles actually credited to him by name, as well as the debut album 'Spotlight On Nilsson', and although none of his Tower releases charted or gained much critical attention, his songs were being recorded by Glen Campbell, Fred Astaire, The Shangri-Las, The Yardbirds, and others. Later in 1966, he signed with RCA Victor and released the 'Pandemonium Shadow Show' album the following year, which was a critical success, with music industry insiders impressed both with the songwriting and with Nilsson's pure-toned, multi-octave vocals. 'Pandemonium Shadow Show' was followed in 1968 by 'Aerial Ballet', an album that included Nilsson's rendition of Fred Neil's song 'Everybody's Talkin'', which was a minor US hit at the time of release, but which became much more popular a year later when it was featured in the film 'Midnight Cowboy'. With the successes of 'Everybody's Talkin'' creating a demand for Nilsson recordings, a reissue of his first two RCA Victor albums, 'Pandemonium Shadow Show' and the out of print 'Aerial Ballet', was considered, but he thought that his early albums already sounded a bit dated by 1971, so he went back into the studio with the master tapes, and remixed, tweaked, and re-recorded vocals, and came up with a new consolidation that he titled 'Aerial Pandemonium Ballet'. This included four songs from 'Pandemonium Shadow Show' and eight songs from 'Aerial Ballet', and over the following years nearly all of these songs were picked up and covered by other artists. Because some of the tracks on 'Aerial Pandemonium Ballet' were his own covers of classics like 'River Deep, Mountain High' and 'Everybody's Talkin'', I've gone back to the original albums and added some of the tracks which were ignored in the re-issue, in order to make this post a reasonable length. Once again, it's a nice mix of famous and not so famous artists, all doing justice to some fine songs by Nilsson. 

Track listing

01 Introduction
02 1941 (Billy J. Kramer 1968)
03 Daddy's Song (The Casuals 1969)
04 Bath (Doris 1970) 
05 Sleep Late, My Lady Friend (Harry Belafonte 1968) 
06 Don't Leave Me (Hugo Montenegro 1969)
07 Without Her (Blood, Sweat & Tears 1968)
08 Together (Sandie Shaw 1968)
09 One (Three Dog Night 1969)
10 I Said Goodbye To Me (The Glass Menagerie 1968)
11 Little Cowboy (The Buffoons 1969)
12 Wailing Of The Willow (Friday Brown 1971)
13 Cuddly Toy (The Fruit Machine 1968)
14 It's Been So Long (Kenny Everett 1968)
15 Ten Little Indians (The Yardbirds 1967)
16 Closing