THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
876) The Cops ‘n Robbers — “I’ve Found Out”
This ‘65 B-side is a “Real UK Beat Group gem, a Subtle Soulful Ballad Gem with a Lotta Magic, Dreamy Psych mood.” (Vintage Vinyl Via Valves, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvybezASxLk) It inexplicably starts with a musical quote from “Moon River”!
Donovan was a fan, as was Pete Townshend. Vernon Joynson writes that [t]his R&B band . . . was a popular act on the club circuit during the mid-sixties. . . . Mike Stax [revealed] that Donovan was an early fan of the band and later helped set up their deal with Pye.” (The Tapestry of Delights Revisited)
Richie Unterberger elaborates:
A little-known but quality group from the R&B wing of the British Invasion, the Cops ‘n Robbers (named after a Bo Diddley song) issued just three singles in the mid-’60s, as well as a French-only EP. Their chief claim to fame is recording (and writing) the original version of “You’ll Never Do It Baby,” a cool, nasty R&B-rock raver that was covered by the Pretty Things on their second album. Cops ‘n Robbers were indeed rather similar to the Pretty Things in their punky R&B-rock approach, yet even punkier . . . Singer Brian “Smudger” Smith had an unrefined, sullen leer in his delivery, and the band was picked up by the same management team that signed Donovan . . . . They issued a good version of “St. James Infirmary” on Decca in late 1964, but after its failure moved to Pye for the rest of their meager recorded output, which included a bizarre, ill-chosen cover of the My Fair Lady standard “I Could Have Danced All Night.” Drummer Henry Harrison joined the New Vaudeville Band (“Winchester Cathedral”), an act which could have been hardly any more of a polar opposite from his previous group.
[They had an] appealingly grimy British R&B stance.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-cops-n-robbers-mn0001298490/biography, https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-cops-n-robbers-mw0001018714
Vintage Vinyl opines that the Cops ‘n Robbers was a “[s]trange group, their . . . . Their B sides strong, but the A sides Suck… [T]he A side [to ‘I’ve Found Out’] is Dylan’s ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ . . . a clunky version, much better versions than this.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvybezASxLk)
And, according to an anonymous poster, in 2014, “Pete Townshend was raving about this band in a talk he gave at a theatre in Ealing the other week. He wanted to know what happened to them.” (https://psychedelic-rocknroll.blogspot.com/2009/03/cops-n-robbers-cops-n-robbers-raw.html?m=1)
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