Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Burt Bacharach (1971)

In 1956 Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hal David were both working in the Brill Building in New York City for Famous Music, which is where they published their first songs as co-writers. The songs published in 1956 included 'I Cry More' (featured in the motion picture 'Don't Knock The Rock'), 'The Morning Mail', and 'Peggy's In The Pantry', but their career breakthrough came when their song 'The Story Of My Life' was recorded by Marty Robbins, becoming a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Country Chart in 1957. Soon afterward, 'Magic Moments' was recorded by Perry Como for RCA Records, and reached No. 4 on the Most Played by Disc Jockeys chart, and these two songs were the beginning of a career in which they composed over 230 songs together for the pop market, motion pictures, television, and Broadway. In 1961 Bacharach discovered singer Dionne Warwick, who was working as a session backup singer at the time, and that year the two, along with Dionne's sister Dee Dee Warwick, released the single 'Move It On The Backbeat' under the name Burt and the Backbeats - the first time a record appeared under his name. Bacharach and David were both excited by Warwick's singing and decided to form a production company, Blue JAC Productions, so they could write for her and produce her recordings, and she signed with the new company, and the team subsequently secured a recording contract with Scepter Records for Warwick's recordings. Warwick made her solo recording debut in 1962 with 'Don't Make Me Over', which also became her first hit, and their partnership with Warwick became one of the most successful teams in popular music history. Bacharach released his first solo album in 1965 on the Kapp Records label, but 'Hit Maker!: Burt Bacharach Plays the Burt Bacharach Hits' was largely ignored in the U.S., although it rose to No. 3 on the UK album charts, where his version of 'Trains And Boats And Planes' had become a top five single. In 1967, he signed with A&M Records both as an artist and a producer, recording several solo albums, consisting of a mix of new material plus rearrangements of his best-known songs. In 1969 Bacharach released his second A&M album, 'Make It Easy On Yourself', which like its predecessor, featured outstanding song-writing. One of the highlights of the record was the great production between Bacharach and Phil Ramone, as well as the instrumental performances, and even songs that weren't immediately pleasing to the ear grew on the listener. 'I'll Never Fall In Love Again', 'Do You Know The Way To San Jose?' and the title track were all reclaimed and reworked for the record, and by the end of the year of it's release nearly all of the rest of the tracks had been picked up and recorded by other artists for their own records. So here are their takes on the songs from Bacharach's 'Make It Easy On Yourself' album, together with a few tracks from his 1971 eponymous release to make up the running time, and I've gone for less well-known versions of the biggest hits to give it a bit of variety.     

Track listing

01 Promises, Promises (Connie Francis 1968)  
02 I'll Never Fall In Love Again (Bobbie Gentry 1969)  
03 Knowing When To Leave (Kathy Kirby 1969)  
04 Any Day Now (Elvis Presley 1969)
05 Wanting Things (Dionne Warwick 1968)
06 Whoever You Are I Love You (Johnny Mathis 1969)
07 Make It Easy On Yourself (Long John Baldry 1966)
08 Do You Know The Way To San Jose (Rita Reys 1971)

09 Pacific Coast Highway (Jim Wilkas 2023)
10 This Guy's In Love With You (Georgie Fame 1969)
11 All Kinds Of People (The 5th Dimension 1971)
12 One Less Bell To Answer (Gladys Knight And The Pips 1971)

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.

Bobbie Gentry - Gentrification (1969)

Bobbie Lee Gentry (born Roberta Lee Streeter on July 27, 1942) is one of the first female artists to compose and produce her own material, most noticeably with her 1967 Southern Gothic narrative 'Ode To Billie Joe' which spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and earned her Grammy awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1968. She was born in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, and after her parents divorced and her mother moved to California, she was raised on a farm in Chickasaw County by her paternal grandparents. After her grandmother traded one of the family's milk cows for a neighbor's piano, Gentry composed her first song, 'My Dog Sergeant Is a Good Dog', at the age of seven. After graduating from high school, she moved to Los Angeles to enter UCLA as a philosophy major, and supported herself with clerical jobs, and occasionally performing at nightclubs. She transferred to the Los Angeles Conservatory Of Music, where she took classes in composition, music theory and arranging, and while attending a Jody Reynolds concert in Palm Springs in 1966, Gentry asked if she could sit in on one of Reynold's recording sessions, which led to an invitation to sing on two duets with Reynolds. 'Stranger In The Mirror'/'Requiem for Love' was released as a single on Titan Records in 1966, but failed to chart. Her original ambition for a career in the music industry was to write songs to sell to other artists, and she only sang on the demo of 'Ode to Billie Joe' as it was cheaper than hiring someone to sing it. On hearing her demo of 'Mississippi Delta', Capitol Records signed her to the label in 1967, and her demo was to be issued as her first single, but after hearing 'Ode To Billie Joe' with a string section dubbed onto it, it was decided that this would be the A-side. The single was released on 10 July 1967, and it still her best-known song. Following the single's success, the rest of her first album was quickly assembled from the 12 demos Gentry recorded, with overdubs completed in a matter of days. The result was a unique combination of blues, folk and jazz elements, that furthered Gentry's recollections of her home, and felt more like a concept album than a hastily assembled collection of songs. 

In February 1968, Gentry took part in the Italian Song Festival competition in Sanremo, as one of two performers of the song 'La Siepe', and after her version placed ninth, it was released as a single by Capitol. Gentry's second album, 'The Delta Sweete', was released in February 1968, and was a definite step forward from her debut in its musical ambition. It was a concept album , drawing inspiration from Gentry's Mississippi delta roots, and as well as writing most of the songs, she also played almost every instrument on the album, including piano, guitar, banjo, bass and vibes. Although the album failed to match the success of its predecessor, only reaching number 132 on the Billboard 200, critics have since hailed it as one of the unsung masterpieces of the 1960's. Gentry's third album 'Local Gentry' was issued six months later, but failed to appear on any of the Billboard album charts, and just one month later, he third album of 1968 appeared, with the release of a duets record with label-mate Glen Campbell. This album did chart, peaking at number 11 on the Billboard Top LP's chart, and earned Gentry and Campbell the Academy Of Country Music award for Album of the Year, and Gentry was also nominated for Top Female Vocalist. Her fifth album, 'Touch 'Em With Love', was released in July 1969, and for the first time in her career it featured more cover versions than original material, with only two of the ten songs penned by Gentry. 

1970's 'Fancy' followed this trend, with only the title track being a Gentry original, but for the following year's 'Patchwork' album she wrote all the songs, producing a collection of short stories in song, ranging from country to pop to blues, all stitched together with cinematic interludes to make a cohesive whole. Around the time that 'Patchwork' was released, the entire executive board that had been at Capitol throughout Gentry's career was fired, and a major restructuring at Capitol took place, resulting in the artist roster being slashed from 247 to 81, and although Gentry remained at the label, negotiations stalled over the renewal terms of her contract, as all of her supporters on the board had been fired. Since she was unwilling to release an album with Capitol on the terms offered, she found herself unable to issue an album on another label, meaning she was left with no choice but to wait out the remaining option period of her contract. 'Patchwork' would turn out to be her final record, with a proposed comeback album in 1977 coming to nothing following the failure of the first single from the sessions, 'Steal Away', to make an impact on the charts, and the album being shelved. The 2018 retrospective collection 'The Girl From Chickasaw County' unearthed a number of previously unreleased demos and studio recordings, and so for this post I've picked what I consider to be the best of them, and added in that rare 1966 single, to give an alternative look at the career of one of the first, and the best, female singer/songwriters of the 60's.   

Track listing

01 Stranger In The Mirror (single as Jody And Bobbie with Jody Reynolds 1966)

02 Requiem For Love (b-side of 'Stranger In The Mirror')

03 I Didn't Know (demo 1968) 

04 Show-Off (previously unreleased 1967)

05 La Siepe (Italian single 1968)

06 La Citta E' Grande (b-side of 'La Siepe')

07 Morning To Midnight (demo 1968)

08 Seventh Son (previously unreleased 1968)

09 Cotton Candy Sandman (demo 1968)

10 Supper Time (previously unreleased 1968)

11 Hushabye Mountain (b-side of 'The Fool On The Hill' 1968)

12 Skip A-Long Sam (previously unreleased 1968)

13 Stormy (previously unreleased 1969)

14 Conspiracy Of Homer Jones (previously unreleased 1968)

15 Windows Of The World (previously unreleased 1969)

16 Here's That Rainy Day (previously unreleased 1969)

17 Spinning Wheel (previously unreleased 1969)

18 Since I Fell For You (previously unreleased 1969)

19 More Today Than Yesterday (previously unreleased 1969)