Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Bob Dylan's 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' (2001)

Whereas Bob Dylan's previous albums, 'Bob Dylan' and 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan', combined original material and cover songs, 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' was the first to feature only original compositions. It consists mostly of stark, sparsely arranged ballads concerning issues such as racism, poverty, and social change, and the title track is one of Dylan's most famous, with many feeling that it captures the spirit of social and political upheaval that characterized the 1960's. Some critics and fans were not quite as taken with the album as a whole, citing its lack of humour or musical diversity, but it still peaked at No. 20 on the US chart, eventually going gold, and belatedly reaching No. 4 in the UK in 1965. Work had begun on 6 August 1963, at Columbia's Studio A, with Tom Wilson once again as producer for the entire album, and the session yielded a usable take of 'North Country Blues'. Another session at Studio A was held the following day, this time providing master takes of four songs: 'Ballad Of Hollis Brown', 'With God On Our Side', 'Only A Pawn In Their Game', and 'Boots Of Spanish Leather', after which sessions did not resume for more than two months. During the interim, Dylan toured briefly with Joan Baez, performing a number of key concerts that raised his profile in the media, and when he returned to Studio A on 23 October he had six more original compositions ready for recording. Master takes for 'The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll' and 'When The Ship Comes In' came from this date, and on 24 October final takes of 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' and 'One Too Many Mornings' were recorded. The final session took place on 31 October, and the entire session focused on one song — 'Restless Farewell'— whose melody is taken from an Irish-Scots folk song, 'The Parting Glass', and it produced a master take that ultimately closed the album. Almost as soon as the album appeared in February 1964, Peter, Paul and Mary covered 'When The Ship Comes In', and by the following year Manfred Mann had charted with their version of 'With God On Our Side', while The Seekers had recorded the title track and Nina Simone covered 'Ballad Of Hollis Brown'. Most of these versions are from the couple of years following the release of the album, but it took until 1988 before someone tackled 'Only A Pawn In Their Game', and 2001 for a cover of 'Restless Farewell' to follow Joan Baez's version in 1968, so here they all are on this tribute to a classic Dylan album.  

Track listing

01 The Times They Are A-Changin' (The Seekers 1965)
02 Ballad Of Hollis Brown (Nazareth 1973)
03 With God On Our Side (Manfred Mann 1965)
04 One Too Many Mornings (The Beau Brummels 1966)
05 North Country Blues (Joan Baez 1968)
06 Only A Pawn In Their Game (The Lenny Nelson Project 1988)
07 Boots Of Spanish Leather (The Silkie 1965)
08 When The Ship Comes In (Peter, Paul And Mary 1964)
09 The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll (Phranc 1985)
10 Restless Farewell (Norman Blake & Peter Ostroushko 2001)

The Beau Brummels - Here We Are Again (1966)

Singer Sal Valentino grew up in the North Beach area of San Francisco, and following a string of appearances on local television, he received an offer to play a regular gig at El Cid, a San Francisco club. He needed a band, and so he called childhood friend and songwriter/guitarist Ron Elliott, who recruited drummer John Petersen, rhythm guitarist/singer Declan Mulligan, and bassist Ron Meagher, and that gig later led to a more lucrative deal at the Morocco Room, a club in nearby San Mateo, California. Meanwhile, San Francisco disc jockeys Tom Donahue and Bobby Mitchell were looking for new acts to bring to their fledgling Autumn Records label, aiming to capitalize on the Beatlemania craze that had originated the previous year in the UK, and which was spreading across the U.S., and The Beau Brummels, as they had named themselves, signed with Autumn, where house producer Sylvester (Sly Stone) Stewart produced the group's early recording sessions.The band had taken their name from the Regency era English dandy Beau Brummell, and they liked having a British-sounding name, which, as legend has it, so closely followed The Beatles in the alphabet that their records would be placed immediately behind those of The Beatles in record-store bins. Although Valentino has since dismissed this notion, it's a nice story. The band's debut single 'Laugh, Laugh' entered the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in January 1965, and as the song climbed the charts, many listeners assumed that the band were British, a fact which was not denied by Donahue and Mitchell, who knew that the publicity could only help the band. The follow-up single, 'Just A Little', became the band's highest-charting single in the U.S., peaking at number eight in June, and both songs were included on the band's debut album, 'Introducing The Beau Brummels', which was released in April and reached number 24 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. By the time that recording began for the band's second album, 1965's 'The Beau Brummels, Volume 2', Mulligan had left the group, and their third single 'You Tell Me Why', became their final U.S. top 40 hit, peaking at number 38 in August 1965. The band continued recording new material despite Autumn Records being on the verge of collapsing, but before the album was completed and released, the entire Autumn roster, including the Beau Brummels, was transferred to Warner Bros. Records. However, as Warner Bros. did not control the band's publishing, the company chose not to have the band release an album of original material, and instead released an album of cover versions titled 'Beau Brummels 1966'. As usual, money was the label's only consideration, and so instead of giving the group's fans a chance to hear the new songs that they'd written, they forced the band to deliver an album of old songs by other artists. Luckily, their original songs weren't thrown away, and many of them have since surfaced on box sets, and so we can piece together an album of original material which would have cemented their reputation as one of the better beat bands of the 60's. In the end we had to wait for the release of 1967's 'Triangle' before that happened, with that and the subsequent 'Bradley's Barn' proving what a great band they really were. So this is the record they should have released in 1966, and although 'Two Days 'Til Tomorrow' didn't come out as a single until March 1967, a demo titled 'She's Coming' was taped in 1966, and so that's included as well.  

Track listing 

01 Here We Are Again
02 Guitar Talk To Me
03 On The Road Again

04 Gentle Wandering Ways

05 This Is Love
06 Delilah

07 She Reigns
08 Candlestickmaker
09 God Help The Teenagers Tonight

10 Dream On

11 Down On Me

12 I Grow Old

13 Love Is Just A Game

14 Two Days 'Til Tomorrow

15 It Ain't No Use

16 Hey Love
17 Out Of Control

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)