Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Paul Williams (1981)

Paul Hamilton Williams Jr. was born on 19 September 1940 in Omaha, Nebraska, and comes from a musical family, with his bother Mentor Williams also becoming a songwriter, composing Dobie Gray's 1973 hit 'Drift Away'. He began his professional song-writing career with Biff Rose in Los Angeles, who he met while the two of them were working together on a television comedy show. They wrote the song 'Fill Your Heart' (later covered by David Bowie) which was recorded by Rose on his first album, 'The Thorn In Mrs. Rose's Side' in 1968, and they later collaborated again on 'I'll Walk Away', which Rose recorded for his third eponymous album. Rose was instrumental in getting Williams his break with A&M Records, which resulted in him working with songwriter Roger Nichols, and together they were responsible for a number of successful pop hits from the 1970's, including several hits for Three Dog Night, with 'An Old Fashioned Love Song', 'The Family Of Man' and 'Out In The Country', as well as Helen Reddy with 'You And Me Against The World', and probably most notably for The Carpenters, giving them 'Rainy Days And Mondays', 'I Won't Last A Day Without You', and 'We've Only Just Begun'. An early collaboration with Nichols was on 'Someday Man', which was covered by the Monkees, for whom he unsuccessfully auditioned on a 1969 single, and he later worked on the music for a number of films, including writing and singing on 'Phantom Of The Paradise' in 1974, in which he starred and earned an Oscar nomination for the music, and also 'Bugsy Malone' in 1976. He also had a successful career as a recording artist, with his first album, 'Someday Man', appearing in 1970, followed by 'Just An Old Fashioned Love Song' being released the following year, and this featured his own versions of songs that had been already been hits for other artists. The album included one cover by him, of Graham Nash's 'Simple Man', so for this collection I've left that off and replaced it with a couple of his other songs from the same time period which were later recorded by Jack Jones and Art Garfunkel. 

Track listing

01 Waking Up Alone (David Soul 1981)
02 I Never Had It So Good (Dobie Gray 1973)
03 We've Only Just Begun (The Carpenters 1970)
04 That's Enough For Me (The Lettermen 1972) 
05 A Perfect Love (Gladys Knight And The Pips 1973)
06 An Old Fashioned Love Song (Three Dog Night 1971)
07 Let Me Be The One (Anne Murray 1971)
08 When I Was All Alone (Colin Blunstone 1974)
09 My Love And I (Mary Travers 1972)
10 Gone Forever (Sergio Mendes & Brasil '77 1971)
11 Talk It Over In The Morning (Jack Jones 1971)
12 Traveling Boy (Art Garfunkel 1973)

Andrew Gold - ...and on guitar (1981)

Andrew Maurice Gold was born on August 2, 1951 in Burbank, California, and eventually followed his parents into show business, as his mother was singer Marni Nixon, who provided the singing voice for numerous actresses, notably Natalie Wood in West Side Story, Deborah Kerr in The King and I, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, while his father was Ernest Gold, an Austrian-born composer who won an Academy Award for his score for the movie 'Exodus'. He began writing songs at the age of 13, and while in school in the UK for one year, the 16-year-old Gold scored his first recording contract on the strength of a selection of demos he submitted to Polydor Records' London office. That contract resulted in the single 'Of All the Little Girls', which was recorded with his friend and collaborator Charlie Villiers, and released in 1967 under the name Villiers and Gold. By the early 1970's, Gold was working full-time as a musician, songwriter and record producer, as well as being a member of the Los Angeles band Bryndle, alongside Kenny Edwards, Wendy Waldman and Karla Bonoff, who released the single 'Woke Up This Morning' in 1970. Four years later he played a major role as multi-instrumentalist and arranger for Linda Ronstadt's breakthrough album 'Heart Like A Wheel', as well as her next two albums. After Ronstadt's 'Hasten Down The Wind', he began a career as a solo artist, but was still loyal to Rondstadt, playing the majority of instruments on her only No. 1 Billboard hit single 'You're No Good', as well as playing in her band from 1973 until 1977, and then sporadically throughout the 1980's and 1990's. In 1975 Gold played most of the instruments on Art Garfunkel's solo hit 'I Only Have Eyes For You' and also released his eponymous debut solo album. His second studio album 'What's Wrong with This Picture?' came out in 1976, and contained the hot single 'Lonely Boy', which reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1977. The same year he played guitar on two cuts of Eric Carmen's album 'Boats Against the Current', including 'She Did It', and in 1978 his single 'Thank You for Being A Friend' from his third album 'All This And Heaven Too', peaked at No. 25 in 1978, and later gained more popularity as the theme song for 'The Golden Girls' TV series, as performed by Cindy Fee. His biggest hit in the UK was 'Never Let Her Slip Away', which peaked at number five on the UK Singles Chart on two occasions, firstly by Gold himself in 1978 and again by dance-pop group Undercover in 1992, with Gold's friend Freddie Mercury being an uncredited background singer. 

In 1981 Gold produced, co-wrote, sang and played on three songs that appeared as bonus tracks on the re-issue of the hit-making pop-rock band 10cc's 1981 album 'Ten Out Of 10', after which Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman invited him to become a member of the band, but business conflicts prevented him from joining their ranks. In late 1983 10cc broke up, and in the aftermath, Gold and Gouldman formed Wax, who recorded and toured for five years, enjoying international success, particularly in the UK, where the duo had several hits including 'Right Between The Eyes', and their biggest hit 'Bridge To Your Heart'. Gold played on Cher's hit 1989 album 'Heart Of Stone' and during the early '90s he wrote and composed hits for Trisha Yearwood as well as Wynonna Judd, for whom he co-wrote the No. 1 single 'I Saw The Light' with Lisa Angelle. In the 1990's, Gold once again joined forces with ex-bandmates Karla Bonoff, Wendy Waldman and Kenny Edwards to re-form Bryndle and release their first full-length album 'Bryndle', but left the band in 1996 to release the children's Halloween-oriented novelty album 'Halloween Howls With John Waite', featuring the track 'Spooky Scary Skeletons', and the same year he released his sixth solo album '....Since 1951'. In 1997 he released the 60's influenced psychedelic 'Greetings From Planet Love' under the pseudonym 'The Fraternal Order Of the All' on his own QBrain Records label, and if you love what XTC did with The Dukes Of Stratosphere then you really do have to hear this truly brilliant album. Gold essentially played all the instruments and sang all of the vocals on original songs in the style of his favorite 1960's bands such as The Beatles, The Byrds and The Beach Boys, and it's all done with much love and respect. He continued to record and release solo albums in the 2000's, as well as forming a Byrds tribute band Byrds Of A Feather, which performed in the Los Angeles area. In the late 2010's he was diagnosed with kidney cancer, and although he responded well to treatment, on 3 June 2011 he died in his sleep from what is suspected to have been heart failure, at the criminally young age of 59. Gold truly was the consummate musician, being able to play a large variety of instruments, as well as writing and producing hits for himself and other artists, and helping them out whenever he could by playing piano, drums, ukelele and acoustic guitar on their albums, and this tribute includes just a small selection of them where he added his electric guitar to their songs.   

Track listing

Disc One
01 Of All The Little Girls (single by Villiers & Gold 1967)
02 Woke Up This Morning (single by Bryndle 1970)
03 Sweet Turnstyle Blues (from 'Gypsy Moth' by Stephen Ambrose 1972)
04 Train Song (from 'Love Has Got Me' by Wendy Waldman 1973)
05 Isn't It Always Love (from 'Isn't It Always Love' by Karen Alexander 1975)
06 Highway Affair (from 'Farewell Fairbanks' by Randy Edelman 1975)
07 Jesus For Tonight (from 'Michel Polnareff' by Michel Polnareff 1975)
08 Love Out In The Street (from 'Playing Possum' by Carly Simon 1975) 
09 Roll Um Easy (from 'Prisoner In Disguise' by Linda Ronstadt 1975)
10 Looking For The Right One (from 'Breakaway' by Art Garfunkel 1975) 
11 On And On (from 'Careless' by Stephen Bishop 1976)

Disc Two
01 If You Have Crying Eyes (from 'Black Rose' by John David Souther 1976) 
02 Complainte Pour Ste-Catherine (from 'Kate & Anna McGarrigle' by Kate & Anna McGarrigle 1976)
03 I Hear The Laughter (from 'Endless Flight' by Leo Sayer 1976)
04 She Did It (from 'Boats Against The Current' by Eric Carmen 1977) 
05 Isn't That So? (from 'Glenda Griffith' by Glenda Griffith 1977)
06 I Can't Hold On (from 'Karla Bonoff' by Karla Bonoff 1977)
07 Runnin' And Hidin' (from 'Mr. Lucky' by Fools Gold 1977) 
08 Don't Make Me Over (from 'Shot Through The Heart' by Jennifer Warnes 1979)
09 I Did My Part (from 'Heartbreak Radio' by Rita Coolidge' 1981)
10 Runaway (bonus track from 'Ten Out Of 10' by 10cc 1981)

Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel as Tom & Jerry - Two Teen-Agers (1967)

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel grew up in the 1940's and 1950's in their predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Kew Gardens Hills in Queens, New York, three blocks away from one another. They attended the same schools, and were both fascinated by music, listening to the radio and being taken with rock and roll as it emerged, particularly the Everly Brothers. Simon first noticed Garfunkel singing in a fourth grade talent show, which Simon thought was a good way to attract girls. He hoped for a friendship, which started in 1953, when they appeared in a sixth grade adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, after which they formed The Peptones, a streetcorner doo-wop group with three friends, learning to harmonize along the way. In 1956 they wrote their first song, 'The Girl for Me', and then, while trying to remember the lyrics to the Everly Brothers song 'Hey Doll Baby', they wrote 'Hey Schoolgirl', which they recorded for $25 at Sanders Recording Studio in Manhattan. While recording, they were overheard by promoter Sid Prosen, who signed them to his independent label Big Records after speaking to the 15-year old's parents. Under Big Records, Simon and Garfunkel assumed the name Tom & Jerry - Garfunkel named himself Tom Graph, a reference to his interest in mathematics, and Simon chose Jerry Landis, after the surname of a girl he had dated. Their first single 'Hey Schoolgirl' was released with 'Dancin' Wild' on the b-side in 1957, and after Prosen bribed DJ Alan Freed $200 to play the single on his radio show, it attracted regular rotation on nationwide AM pop stations, leading it to sell over 100,000 copies and landing on Billboard's charts at number 49. Despite this early success, neither of their next two singles for Big Records got anywhere near the charts, and so after graduating from Forest Hills High School in 1958, the pair continued their education should a music career not unfold, with Simon studying English at Queens College, City University of New York, and Garfunkel studying architecture before switching to art history at Columbia College, Columbia University. 

While still with Big Records as a duo, Simon released a solo single 'True Or False' under the name True Taylor, which upset Garfunkel, who regarded it as a betrayal, and the emotional tension from the incident occasionally surfaced throughout their relationship. They continued recording as solo artists while together as Tom & Jerry, with Garfunkel's own 'Private World' and 'Beat Love' being released under the name of Artie Garr, while Simon recorded with the Mystics and Tico & The Triumphs, and wrote and recorded under the names Jerry Landis and Paul Kane. After graduating in 1963, Simon joined Garfunkel, who was still at Columbia University, to perform again as a duo, this time with a shared interest in folk music. By late 1963, billing themselves as Kane & Garr, they played at Gerde's Folk City, performing three new songs - 'Sparrow', 'He Was My Brother', and 'The Sound of Silence' — which attracted the attention of Columbia Records staffer Tom Wilson, and they were signed after auditioning 'The Sound Of Silence' for the label. Simon & Garfunkel's debut studio album 'Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.' was recorded over three sessions in March 1964 and released in October, and with five compositions by Simon, it heralded a new sound on the folk circuit. Simon was adamant that they would no longer use stage names, so the record was issued under the name of Simon & Garfunkel, and Tom & Jerry were no more. In 1967 the UK label Allegro released an album of Tom & Jerry singles, but attributed them to Simon & Garfunkel, and put a contemporary photo on the cover, with this attempt to portray the record as a new Simon & Garfunkel album so incensing Simon that he took legal action to get the album withdrawn on both sides of the Atlantic. The one odd thing about the Allegro collection was the inclusion of two instrumental tracks, the mournful 'Tijuana Blues', and the jazzy 'Simon Says', which were previously unheard, but unlike any of their other recordings. This short-ish album collects all the duo's tracks recorded as Tom & Jerry, as well as the afore-mentioned 'Beat Love' by Artie Garr, and an otherwise unreleased song by Jerry Landis as a bonus. 

Track listing

01 Hey Schoolgirl (single November 1957)
02 Dancin' Wild (b-side of 'Hey Schoolgirl')
03 That's My Story (single May 1958)
04 (Pretty Baby) Don't Say Goodbye (b-side of 'That's My Story')
05 Our Song (single February 1958)
06 Two Teen-Agers (b-side of 'Our Song')
07 Baby Talk (single June 1958)
08 Lookin' At You (single May 1959)
09 I'm Lonesome (b-side of 'Lookin' At You')
10 Surrender, Please Surrender (single August 1962)
11 Fightin' Mad (b-side of 'Surrender, Please Surrender')
12 Tijuana Blues (single October 1967)
13 Simon Says (b-side of 'Tijuana Blues')
14 Flame (recorded by Jerry Landis 1961)
15 Beat Love (single by Artie Garr October 1959)