The Young Idea — “Mr. Lovin’ Luggage Man”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — July 14, 2024

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,262) The Young Idea — “Mr. Lovin’ Luggage Man”

Delightful pop psych by a duo featuring soon to be famous producer Tony Cox. Cash Box opined in its January 27, 1968 issue that: “Stylings in the Beatle tradition of ‘Elanor [sic] Rigby’ with a lot of Association influence give the Young Idea a delightful sound that could catch the fancy of many younger pop fans. Good material in a throbbing mid-speed tempo splendidly served should find a sizeable sales market in store.” (https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Cash-Box/60s/1968/CB-1968-01-27.pdf) That sizeable sales market was not to be!

All Music Guide tells us that:

This UK duo featured Tony Cox . . . and Douglas Ugo Granville Allesandro MacRae-Brown (b. . . . Florence, Italy). MacRae-Brown, a contemporary of Jonathan King at Charterhouse Public School, met Cox at university. The duo then forged a songwriting partnership and, having committed several demos to tape, hawked the finished product around London’s Denmark Street-based publishers. Their talent secured a management and recording contract and the duo made their debut as the Young Idea in June 1966. They completed several singles before achieving a UK Top 10 hit the following year with a reading of the Beatles’ song ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’. The pair achieved a higher profile with non-original material, including the Hollies’ ‘A Peculiar Situation’ and several poppy creations by Les Reed and Barry Mason. However, the Young Idea were unable to repeat the success of their lone chart entry.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/young-idea-mn0000552791#biography

As to Tony Cox, Wikipedia says:

Tony Cox is a British record producer and arranger. As such he was influential in late 1960s and 1970s folk rock developments and the fledgling progressive rock scene, and has since worked primarily as a composer and orchestrator. He entered the music business as a performer in 1966, and as a duo with Douglas MacRae-Brown released The Young Idea LP in 1967 . . . . He continued performing in the studio with various acts he produced such as Trees and Mick Softly. . . . [I]n 1971[, he] played on the Spirogyra album St. Radigunds, and Mike Heron’s album Smiling Men With Bad Reputations. In 1972 he played piano with The Bunch alongside Sandy Denny on vocals, and in 1976 he played synth on Martin Carthy’s Crown Of Horn LP. In 1974 he founded Sawmills Studios in Cornwall, one of the first residential recording studios in the UK. In 1978 he married the singer-songwriter Lesley Duncan, and produced her single “The Magic’s Fine”. In 1979 produced and arranged the charity single “Sing Children Sing” for the International Year of the Child. . . . In 1996 they moved to the Isle of Mull, Scotland. From 1988 to 1990 he worked for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group as music supervisor, overseeing various shows. Recently Cox has been composing ‘Protomodal’ music for instrumental ensemble, creating a uniquely distinctive sound by utilizing unusual modal scales and unorthodox harmonies, mixing rigid composition rules with John Cage like chance elements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Cox_(record_producer)

Check out Cox’s very interesting website (http://arco-x.com/). Here is an excerpt:

I have had a long career as a musical jack of all trades, songwriter, pop recording artist, arranger, record producer, recording studio owner, composer of music for film, TV and commercials, general factotum to Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Broadway orchestrator.  Most of this activity occurred through happenstance rather than strategic planning and though much of it was a lot of fun, it wasn’t seriously creative.  Some further detail can be discovered in Wikipedia . . . which is quite accurate but focuses mainly on a time long gone, and possibly reveals as much about the arcane interests of its author as it does about its subject. From the start I had wanted to be a composer but, even as my range of skills grew with experience, so the flow of creative ideas seemed to diminish.  The nature of work in the commercial music field inhibits originality – ‘Can you write a string quartet like Mozart?’, ‘a song in the style of Dolly Parton?’ –  these were typical briefs, so I became a versatile pasticheur, a kind of musical forger. Eventually I cut myself off from commissioned work by moving to an island in the Inner Hebrides for a creative reboot, a search for individuality.  And there, gradually, an original idea began to form in my head to compose using unusual, previously rarely or never heard seven-note modes . . . .

The acetate:

Here is Bob Azzam and His Orchestra:

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