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)

Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Laura Nyro's 'Eli And The Thirteenth Confession' (2017)

Soon after the release of Laura Nyro's debut album 'More Than A New Discovery', David Geffen approached Mogull about taking over as her agent. She successfully sued to void her management and recording contracts on the grounds that she had entered into them while still a minor, and Geffen became her manager. The two of them established a publishing company, Tuna Fish Music, under which the proceeds from her future compositions would be divided equally between them. Geffen also arranged Nyro's new recording contract with Clive Davis at Columbia Records, and purchased the publishing rights to her early compositions. Around this time, she considered becoming lead singer for Blood, Sweat & Tears after the departure of founder Al Kooper, but was dissuaded by Geffen, and so she concentrated on recording her second album.  Her new contract allowed her more artistic freedom and control, and so her 1968 record 'Eli And The Thirteenth Confession', received high critical praise for the depth and sophistication of its performance and arrangements, which merged pop structure with inspired imagery, rich vocals, and avant-garde jazz. It was her first chart entry, reaching No. 181 on the Billboard 200, and many musicians, including Elton John and Todd Rundgren, were directly influenced by the album. It is second only to its predecessor in producing hit songs for other artists, with Three Dog Night taking 'Eli's Comin'' to the US top 10, while The 5th Dimension went to No. 3 with 'Stoned Soul Picnic' and No. 13 with 'Sweet Blindness'. Once again, it wasn't long before nearly all of the other songs from the record had been taken up and covered,  and such was their quality that they were still being recorded in the 2000's. Here is a nice collection of some of the very best versions of Nyro's songs from her rightly-regarded classic album 'Eli And The Thirteenth Confession'. 

Track listing

01 Luckie (Judy Kuhn 2007)
02 Lu (Peggy Lipton 1969)
03 Sweet Blindness (The 5th Dimension 1968)
04 Poverty Train (The Ark 1967)
05 Lonely Women (Linda Hoyle 1971) 
06 Eli's Comin' (Three Dog Night 1969)
07 Stoned Soul Picnic (The Supremes And The Four Tops 1970)
08 Emmie (Frankie Valli 1970)
09 Woman's Blues (Green Lyte Sunday 1970)
10 Once It Was Alright Now (Farmer Joe) (Rastus 2016)
11 December's Boudoir (Denise Mangiardi 2017)
12 The Confession (Billy Childs featuring Becca Stevens 2014)

Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Elton John (2018)

In 1967 Reginald Dwight (as he then was) answered an advertisement in the British music paper New Musical Express, placed by the A&R manager for Liberty Records Ray Williams, looking for prospective song-writers. At their first meeting, Williams gave him an unopened envelope of lyrics written by Bernie Taupin, who had answered the same ad, and so he wrote music for the lyrics and then sent them to Taupin, beginning a partnership that still continues. When the two first met in 1967, they recorded the first John/Taupin song, 'Scarecrow', and six months later, Dwight began going by the name Elton John, in homage to two members of his old band Bluesology: saxophonist Elton Dean and vocalist Long John Baldry. The team of John and Taupin joined Dick James's DJM Records as staff songwriters in 1968, and over the next two years wrote material for various artists, among them Roger Cook and Lulu. Taupin would write a batch of lyrics in under an hour and give it to John, who would write music for them in half an hour, disposing of the lyrics if he could not come up with anything quickly. For two years they wrote easy-listening tunes for James to peddle to singers, and their early output included a song for Lulu's entry for the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969, called 'I Can't Go On (Living Without You)', but it came sixth of the six songs up for consideration. 

On the advice of music publisher Steve Brown, John and Taupin began writing more complex songs for John to record for DJM, with the first being the single 'I've Been Loving You', produced by Caleb Quaye, Bluesology's former guitarist. In 1969, with Quaye, drummer Roger Pope, and bassist Tony Murray, John recorded another single, 'Lady Samantha', and his debut album, 'Empty Sky'. For their follow-up album, 'Elton John', John and Taupin enlisted Gus Dudgeon as producer and Paul Buckmaster as musical arranger, and the record was released in April 1970 on DJM Records/Pye Records in the UK and Uni Records in the US. It established the formula for subsequent albums: gospel-chorded rockers and poignant ballads, and the album's first single, 'Border Song', peaked at 92 on the Billboard Hot 100. The second, 'Your Song', reached the top ten in both the UK and US, becoming John's first hit single as a singer, while the album soon became his first long-playing success, reaching number four on the US Billboard 200 and number five on the UK Albums Chart. With the success of the singles and album, it wasn't long before other artists began to take notice of this new talent, and wanted to cover his songs, with big names like Three Dog Night, The Lettermen and The 5th Dimension giving us their versions. Before long nearly every track on the album had a cover version out there, even rare singles and obscure b-sides, and so here are the best of those artists re-interpreting Elton John's classic 1970 album, with just The Band Perry post-1975, covering the flip to Elton's 1970 stand-alone single 'Rock And Roll Madonna'.   

Track listing

01 Your Song (Three Dog Night 1970)

02 I Need You To Turn To (Euson 1971)

03 Take Me To The Pilot (The Orange Bicycle 1970)

04 Mijn Eerste Kiefde (First Episode At Hienton) (Connie Vandenbos 1975)

05 Sixty Years On (Hayden Wood 1970)

06 Border Song (The 5th Dimension 1972)

07 The Greatest Discovery (The Lettermen 1971)

08 The Cage (Brainchild 1970)

09 Bad Side Of The Moon (Toe Fat 1970)

10 Friends (The Square Set 1972)

11 Grey Seal (The Band Perry 2014)

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)