THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,723) Sandy Salisbury — “Spell on Me”
Infectious, brass-infused sunshine/bubblegum pop “[f]rom one of the best sunshine pop partnerships of all time”, Sandy and Curt Boettcher. (Scott Homewood, https://therockasteria.blogspot.com/2017/07/sandy-salisbury-do-unto-others-1969-us.html) “When they sing in harmony, it’s a sound that no other act of the time, or since, has quite managed to capture. . . . ma[king] simple, tough garage rockers [like] “Spell on Me”[no way is it a garage rocker!] go down like honey . . . and generally makes them sound like the featured performers at a coffeehouse located somewhere on one of the rings of Saturn.” (Tim Sendra, https://www.allmusic.com/album/try-for-the-sun-mw0004043481, https://www.allmusic.com/album/try-for-the-sun-mw0004043481)
“[T]he question of why [Salisbury] isn’t a household name becomes inevitable as [his] great sunshiney songs fill your head with melodies a surgeon would have a hard time removing. Just sublime bubble-gummy pop.” (Scott Homewood again) As to Salisbury’s solo songs, most unreleased at the time, “The sense of hook, the clean, gorgeous vocals, the sappy melodies, and the Baroque stylings . . . make them all ready for pop heaven. . . . This is magical, beautiful, and yes, sappy pop music. It’s lush, textured, and overly sentimental, as innocent as it gets, and as pretty as it gets.” (Thom Jurek, https://www.allmusic.com/album/falling-to-pieces-mw0000663715)
Tim Sendra tells us of Salisbury:
Sandy Salisbury is a singer and songwriter whose main claim to fame is being one of the integral members of sunshine pop guru Curt Boettcher’s cast of singers and players, appearing on records by the Ballroom [see #707] and the Millennium [see #397, 506, 586, 662, 810, 1,002] in the late-60s. He also recorded solo during that time, though most of his work, like the 1969 album Sandy, remained unreleased until they were discovered and issued decades later. Salisbury was born and raised in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, but moved to Santa Barbara, California to pursue his musical dreams. After playing with a group called the Chances for a year, touring the state and cutting an album that was never released, he moved to Los Angeles. Once there, he met . . . Boettcher, who was riding high off his work on the Association’s [see #1,264] “Along Comes Mary.” The two found that their musical sensibilities and high, angelic voices were a good match and decided to pair up in a new group Boettcher was starting called the Ballroom. The group blended vocal harmonies and baroque melodies to come up with a singular sound, but their existence proved shortlived and soon Salisbury and Boettcher formed the very similar-sounding Millennium. Salisbury wrote songs as well as sang, and . . . did work on Sagitarrius’s classic 1967 album Present Tense as well as other Boettcher projects. The Millennium released only one album before the members went their separate ways. Salisbury went solo and tracked a record for producer Gary Usher’s Tomorrow label that featured most of the members of the Millennium . . . . to be called Sandy, but it was never released due to problems at the label. Also consigned to the vault were numerous songs written and performed by Salisbury over the years. He thought that Boettcher was sharing them with his music publisher, or that he might be able to record them himself, but instead the songs were kept under wraps to be used on future Boettcher-helmed projects. These imagined projects never happened, mainly because the producer lost favor with the music business and pretty much disappeared as the decade ended. Salisbury, too, put his musical career on the back burner. After reverting to his given name of Graham, he began writing well-received children’s and young adult books. . . .
[Boettcher] worked with a core group of musicians, and none of them were more talented than Sandy Salisbury. His pure-as-a-Hawaiian-beach singing was a key part of the Boettcher sound, and . . . the producer used him on a variety of sessions for artists like Tommy Roe and Paul Revere & the Raiders [see #109]. Salisbury was also a strong and prolific songwriter, and the duo worked on writing and demoing tracks at a furious pace for a few years in the late ’60s. Almost none of the songs were released . . . . and Salisbury quit the music business thinking that his songs weren’t good enough. . . . Both Boettcher and Salisbury possess high and clear voices that sound untouched by care or wear.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/sandy-salisbury-mn0000833169#biography , https://www.allmusic.com/album/try-for-the-sun-mw0004043481
Thom Jurek adds in dismay:
[Salisbury] wrote dozens of songs and recorded them demo – style on a sound – on – sound tape recorder in his California beach house before turning them over to his publisher, who did absolutely nothing with them because he was instructed by the band’s producer and arranger, Curt Boettcher, to shelve them for further band productions. What Boettcher essentially accomplished was keeping under wraps pop songs that would have . . . landed Salisbury near the top of the pop heap.
https://www.allmusic.com/album/falling-to-pieces-mw0000663715
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