Greetings music lovers!!!!!!! It's great to be back here dishing out a few 45's for all of you who are still paying attention, I mean, I know these posts have been coming out as a mere trickle these days and I probably should do this more often, but time gets away from me real fast so I unfortunately forget the whole thing.
Thanks to all who have been leaving kind comments and adding pertinent info to my feeble attempts at chronicling the history of these 45's and the bands that played in them. Like I've always said, you are as much a part of this thing as I am.
As far as my record collection is concerned, I haven't been buying as much as I used to, mainly because of budget constraints. Not that I have less money, only because the prices on these things are going trough the roof! But hey, if you got the dough, spend it. On the bright side, if you could see what I've got here surrounding me in the deep bowels of "Dan's Garage Central", you would be shocked at how many records I've got, and most of them have not yet been chronicled on this blog so please stay tuned for more in the near future.
For anyone that's remotely interested, I continue to do a show on the Internet hosted by radiofreephoenix.com and deepoldies.com. The Radio Free Phoenix show broadcasts on the Internet every Wednesday night at 10:00 PM EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME. If you're in another time zone make adjustments accordingly. The same show is re-broadcast on Deep Oldies on Sunday afternoons at 2:00 PM EDT. What I do on these shows are basically the same as what I do on this blog. Spin records for OUR enjoyment.
As usual we've got a fine mix of cool sounds this time around. Have no fear, we are not going away anytime soon.
Love, Dan
Ritchie Dean - Time (Can' t Heal This Pain) / Farewell Angelina (1966)
Warren Schatz was a big time producer back in the 60's and early 70's and has a very long resume of hits which I won't get into here, but he did engineer some extremely cool garage 45's in the 60's on various labels, mostly studio projects like The Whispers, and The Shapes Of Things whose version of The Kinks' "So Mystifying" is probably better than the original. He also released nearly a half dozen 45's as "Ritchie Dean", most of them on Tower records and the majority being songs in the teen/pop/rock style. Except for this one. Here he taps into a very cool Bo Diddley vibe with "Time", a classic pounder, and settles down to covering a Bob Dylan song on the B side. Bothe very good but "Time" is the clear standout and a classic in my humble opinion.
Mary Jaye Four - Walk A Little Longer / Wondering Why I Can't Say (1964)
The Mary Jaye Four were most likely from the Minneapolis area, although I could be dead wrong about that because I can't find any solid info on Mary Jaye and her band on the greatest info provider on the planet Google. I tried other search engines and the only think I came up with was that this 45 was also released on Raynard, a label out of Wisconsin, so that mucks things up even more! Mary Jaye sounds real sexy on the A side, kind of like a Rock & Roll Julie London, and the B side which is a bit more up-tempo ain't bad either.
Dave Gordon & The Reb-Tides - Hard To Love You / Call Me (Press)
Press records was a pretty cool label which was distributed by London here in the U.S. They obviously were an outlet for bands coming from the U.K. and Europe and were similar to Deram, Colosseum, Chapter One,(all distributed by London) and Parrot, whose main British acts here in the U.S. were The Zombies, Them, and later in the 60's and into the 70's, Savoy Brown, as well as a host of others. Press' major claim to fame was Los Bravos whose "Black Is Black" was a pretty big hit in the U.S. but everything else on the label was fairly obscure, including this one by Dave Gordon & The Reb-Tides who do a note for note cover of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich's "Hard To Love You". Very nice, as well as the fuzz drenched flip Call Me. Dave Gordon apparently was from Germany, but I really can't say for certain.
Deep Six - I Wanna Shout (1966)
The Deep Six were a typical Folk/Psych/Pop group that basically put out very nice guy/gal vocal numbers ala The Mamas & The Papas, only not as good. Their output is real lightweight and was most likely recorded using musicians from the Wrecking Crew, but this one song is actually pretty darn good, so I'm featuring it here!
Lancastrians - The World Keeps Going Round / It's Not The Same Anymore (1966)
The Lancastrians released eight 45's, six in the U.K. and two in the U.S. all well worth finding. They were mostly folk /rock oriented (their first hit was "We'll Sing In The Sunshine") and the two 45's I have are very moody sounding including this gem, a cover of the Kinks' "The World Keeps Going Round" which is performed at least as well, if not better, than Ray Davies & Co. Jimmy Page is reported to be playing guitar on the A side.
Purple Gang - One Of The Bunch / Bring Your Own Self Down (1966)
Wow. One of my favorite 45's ever! "One Of The Bunch" is one of those songs that is clearly not a typical "garage band", but a bunch of guys (no pun intended), who really had their shit together. This is two of the best sides of sixties rock and roll I've ever heard. The Purple Gang were from North Hollywood, California and guitarist Mark Landon later went on to join The Music Machine.
Neil Diamond - You Got To Me (1967)
I asked a record collector who I once corresponded with quite a while ago what he considered really good records from the sixties and if bands from "Back From The Grave" were the best of the best and blah, blah, blah, and he rattled off some stuff that at the time I thought was really lightweight, and I asked,"so you like that?", and his answer was, "hey, a good song is a good song". He was right. As I've matured, so have my "mental taste buds" for music and I can now appreciate a truly great song like this. This was not one of Neil's biggest hits, but it's basically all of the really good ones all rolled up into one 2:45 masterpiece.
Raga & The Talas - My Group And Me / For Old Times Sake (1966)
This 45 has made the 60's comp rounds quite a bit and I really never get tired of it. I was trying to break down what the hell this band was comprised of and came to the conclusion that they don't have a bass player, at least I don't think they do, or their using a six string bass. In any case there are three guitars a drummer and a bunch of vocals flying around on this cool folk/rock two sider which was written and produced by Jackie DeShannon. Very cool stuff indeed.
Bill Wendry & The Boss Tweeds - A Wristwatch Band / Fire (1968)
Whoa. Now here's some truly cool psychedelic shit. "A Wristwatch Band" was the B side to a very mundane version of Jimi Hendrix' "Fire" which included some decent fuzz guitar but is marred by a horn section. The A side however begs you to light up as many dubys as you possibly can in it's rather short playing time. Bill Wendry and his Tweeds were from Springfield, MA and released six sides for Columbia, five of which are pretty good mod/psych/soul inspired tunes that aren't actually bad for a band with a horn section. "A Wristwatch Band" however jumps right off the wagon and hey, maybe they lit up a few joints before and while they were recording this, because it doesn't sound anything like the other five songs they cut. Kudos.
Paul Dowell & The Dolphin - It's Better To Know You / The Last Time I Saw You (1969)
Hey!!! It's one of those orange swirly labels again! This time we have a nice pop/rock two sider by Paul Dowell & The Dolphin who I believe were from the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area and evolved from The Hangmen who's "What A Girl Can't Do" is a garage band classic. The most notable thing about this particular 45 and the band that played on it, is that a young Nils Lofgren played and wrote both sides of this 45. Lofgren would later go on to join Neil Yong's Crazy Horse, play in his own band Grin, have a successful solo career and end up in Bruce Springsteen's "E" Street Band.
Phluph - Doctor Mind / Another Day (1967)
Yow! Let's light up up a few more dubys for this one out of Boston, MA!!! Phluph recorded this 45 and an LP for Verve records and I say that because this 45 version is a bit different from the LP version. Not radically different, but I believe a totally different take. I used to have this LP and thought it was good, but I sold it because i felt it was not "garage" enough to keep in my collection. What a stupid mistake that was.
Denny Ezba - Dimples (1968)
Denny Ezba was a guy from San Antonio, TX that released a bunch of 45's in different styles on different labels before he settled into whacked out Texas psychedelia. I featured "Queen Mary" in a previous post way back when, and that was an extremely cool track (anyone got a duby??), but this one is even more out there. Don't be fooled by the title, yeah, it's basically a cover of John Lee Hooker's "Dimples" and he does take credit for writing it, but the performance is classic nutty late sixties Texas psychedelia complete with crazed stereo panning of the guitar part (headphones and dubys required). Does anyone have a strobe light????
Patriots - I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better / No More (1969)
A nice treatment of The Byrds' classic that's a tad on the soft side, but AOK nonetheless. The funny thing about this 45 is that they credit "The Byrds" as opposed to the actual composer, Gene Clark. Maybe they were trying to avoid royalties, or perhaps they only heard this song on the radio a couple of times because they royally screw the lyrics up big time. Presumably these guys were from Cincinnati or somewhere in southern Ohio or northern Kentucky. The B side is actually a pretty cool moody garage ballad. There were at least two other Patriots floating around in the mid-sixties and possibly more.
Sindicate - Hangman / If You Don't Need Me (19??)
Here's another 45 where info is very scarce, in fact it's pretty much non existent. The Sindicate, which I would presume was from New Oxford, PA, put out this lone single (to my knowledge) with a way cool pink and white label that reads right side up every which way you turn it. Both sides are decent late sixties/early seventies garage/psyche with a dominant Hammond organ driving both sides. This must've been "new old stock" from a jukebox haul because it came with a real nifty card as shown here....
That must have been a pretty cool jukebox!
