Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Barry Mann (1975)

Barry Imberman (aka Barry Mann) was born on 9 February 1939, and is best know for his song-writing partnership with his wife Cynthia Weil. His first successful song as a writer was 'She Say (Oom Dooby Doom)', a Top 20 chart-scoring song composed for the band The Diamonds in 1959, which was co-written with Mike Anthony. In 1961, Mann had his greatest success to that point with 'I Love How You Love Me', written with Larry Kolber, and scoring a number 5 hit for the band The Paris Sisters , and the same year Mann himself reached the Top 40 as a performer with a novelty song co-written with Gerry Goffin, 'Who Put The Bomp', which parodied the nonsense words of the then-popular doo-wop genre. Despite his success as a singer, Mann chose to channel his creativity into song-writing, forming a prolific partnership with Cynthia Weil, a lyricist he met while both were staff songwriters at Aldon Music, whose offices were located in Manhattan, near the composing-and-publishing factory the Brill Building. In the late 1960s, Mann and Weil left Aldon Music to head for Hollywood, where they continued to rack up the hits, working with Larry Kolber on Bobby Vinton's version of his earlier hit 'I Love How You Love Me' in 1968, and following up with Jay and the Americans' 'Walking in The Rain' in 1969, and B. J. Thomas's 'I Just Can't Help Believing' in 1970. Meanwhile, in addition to his role behind the scenes, Mann occasionally sought the limelight, and in 1971 he released his own album 'Lay It All Out', featuring himself as a singer, but it did not enjoy the success of his and Weil's works for others. As well as new songs it also included his own versions of some of his biggest hits, 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling', 'On Broadway', and 'Something Better'. Unsurprisingly, considering his standing as a songwriter, it wasn't long before all of the songs on the album had received cover versions, even those three afore-mentioned hits. Rather than use the original hit recordings of them, by The Righteous Brothers, The Drifters and Marianne Faithfull, I've chosen contemporary takes of the songs from around the same time as the album, although Bill Medley still gets to sing '...Lovin' Feeling', taken from his 1971 solo album 'A Song For You'. Three extra tracks from the following year round off this collection of songs from Mann's 1971 solo album.    

Track Listing

01 Too Many Mondays (Mary Travers 1973)
02 When You Get Right Down To It (Ronnie Dyson 1971)
03 I Heard You Singing Your Song (The Partridge Family 1973)
04 Holy Rolling (The New Seekers 1972) 
05 You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling (Bill Medley 1971)
06 On Broadway (Eric Carmen 1975)
07 Something Better (Harper's Bizarre 1969)
08 Sweet Ophelia (Wicked Lester 1971) 
09 Don't Give Up On Me (Suzanne 1973)
10 Ain't No Way To Go Home (The Grass Roots 1973)  
11 Rock And Roll Lullaby (B.J. Thomas 1972)
12 So Long Dixie (Blood, Sweat And Tears 1972)
13 The Last Blues Song (Helen Reddy 1972)

Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Laura Nyro (2007)

In the mid-60's, Laura Nyro's mother Louis Nigro's work brought her into contact with record company executive Artie Mogull and his partner Paul Barry, who auditioned Nyro in 1966 and became her first managers, with Mogull negotiating a recording and management contract for her. On 13 July 1966, Nyro recorded 'Stoney End' and 'Wedding Bell Blues', as well as an early version of 'Time And Love', at Bell Sounds Studios in Manhattan, for possible inclusion on her debut album. About a month later, she sold 'And When I Die' to Peter, Paul And Mary for $5,000, and on 17 September 1966, Verve Folkways released 'Wedding Bell Blues'/'Stoney End' as a single under her own name. 'Wedding Bell Blues' became a minor hit, especially on the West Coast, and she completed her debut album in New York on 29 November 1966. In February 1967, Verve Folkways released 'More Than A New Discovery', with songs from the record later becoming hits for The 5th Dimension, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Barbra Streisand. On 17 June 1967, Nyro appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival, and although some accounts described her performance as a fiasco that culminated in her being booed off the stage, recordings later made publicly available contradict this version of events. Over the next few years more songs from 'More Than A New Discovery' were noticed by other artists and covered on their records, particularly The 5th Dimension, who had a couple of hit singles with her songs. Peter, Paul And Mary turned their investment in 'And When I Die' into a hit, and Barbara Streisand followed them with 'Stoney End'. By 1971 nearly every song on the album had been covered, and so here are some of the best of them, reinterpreting Laura Nyro's first steps into the music business.  

Track listing

01 Goodbye Joe (Carmen McRae 1970)  
02 Billy's Blues (B. J. Ward 1970)  
03 And When I Die (Blood Sweat And Tears 1968)
04 Stoney End (Linda Ronstadt & The Stone Poneys 1968)
05 Lazy Susan (Amy London 2007)   
06 Hands Off The Man (The Sunshower 1970)
07 Wedding Bell Blues (Bobbie Gentry 1970)
08 Buy And Sell (Chris Connor 1971)
09 He's A Runner (Mama Cass 1969)
10 Blowin' Away (The 5th Dimension 1969)
11 I Never Meant To Hurt You (Barbara Streisand 1971)
12 California Shoe-Shine Boys (Karen Wyman 1970)

Thanks to Ergon3 for supplying the Amy London track.

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

Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Randy Newman (1975)

Like the recent Tony Hazzard post, when Randy Newman's debut album came out in 1968, nearly all of the songs had already been released by groups and artists as singles or album tracks, generally in more fully-realised arrangements than Newman's own versions. Newman had been a professional songwriter since he was 17, and cited Ray Charles as his greatest influence growing up, and his first single as a performer was 1962's 'Golden Gridiron Boy', released when he was 18. The single flopped and so he chose to concentrate on songwriting and arranging for the next several years, with an early writing credit being 'They Tell Me It's Summer', which was used as the b-side of the Fleetwoods 1962 single 'Lovers By Night, Strangers By Day'. This led to further commissions from the Fleetwoods, as well as Pat Boone, and some of his other early songs were recorded by Gene Pitney, Jerry Butler, Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield, Jackie DeShannon, the O'Jays, and Irma Thomas, among others, with his work as a songwriter meeting with particular success in the UK. Top 40 UK hits written by Newman included Cilla Black's 'I've Been Wrong Before', Gene Pitney's 'Nobody Needs Your Love', and 'Just One Smile', and the Alan Price Set's 'Simon Smith And The Amazing Dancing Bear'. In fact, Price championed Newman by featuring seven of his songs on his 1967 album 'A Price On His Head'. Newman's eponymous 1968 debut album was a critical success but never entered the Billboard Top 200, and apparently the album sold so poorly that Warner offered buyers the opportunity to trade it in for another record in the company's catalog. It's hard to believe that the album was out of print for over 15 years until it was issued on CD in 1995, as Newman's songs have now been covered by an impressive number of artists, including Barbra Streisand, Helen Reddy, Bette Midler, Alan Price, Van Dyke Parks, Dave Van Ronk, Judy Collins, Glen Campbell, Cass Elliot, Art Garfunkel, the Everly Brothers, Claudine Longet, Bonnie Raitt, Dusty Springfield, Tom Odell, Nina Simone, Lynn Anderson, Wilson Pickett, Pat Boone, Neil Diamond and Peggy Lee, and 'I Think It's Going To Rain Today' has become something of a standard. Ten of the album's eleven tracks were covered both before and after its release, and despite Newman's undoubted songwriting skills, even his most ardent fans couldn't say that his vocals are particularly melodious, and so having professional singers performing his songs adds to them them immensely. As the original album was a bit short, I've added similar covers of half a dozen songs from his 1970 follow-up '12 Songs' to boost it to a very enjoyable 47 minutes.    

Track listing

01 Love Story (The Brothers 1967)
02 No One Ever Hurt This Bad (The Alan Price Set 1967)
03 Living Without You (Keith Shields 1967)
04 So Long Dad (Manfred Mann 1967)
05 I Think He's Hiding (Jack Sheldon 1969)
06 Linda (Jack Jones 1969)
07 Cowboy (Three Dog Night 1970)
08 The Beehive State (The Doobie Brothers 1971)
09 I Think It's Going To Rain Today (Eric Burdon & The Animals 1967)
10 Davy The Fat Boy (Joe Brown 1968)
11 Have You Seen My Baby? (Chris Smither 1970)  
12 Let's Burn Down The Cornfield (Lee Hazlewood 1969)
13 Lucinda (Joe Cocker 1975)
14 Yellow Man (Georgie Fame & Alan Price 1971)
15 Old Kentucky Home (The Beau Brummels 1967)
16 Rosemary (Blood, Sweat & Tears 1973)