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

1,893) The Flame — “See the Light”

Here is an A-side from a South African band so Beatlesque that it “had people wondering aloud” as “it certainly sounded like the Beatles from their ‘Daytripper’ period and the vocals were a little McCartney-like. . . . [I]n the absence of much information people speculated.” (Graham Reid, https://www.elsewhere.co.nz/fromthevaults/3306/the-flame-see-the-light-1970/) This “up tempo rocker in the mould of . . . “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” [has] a killer George Harrison style guitar sound, especially on the riff during the outro. [It] was chosen as the single to promote the album in the USA [where it reached #95] and UK (Peter Gough, https://biteitdeep.blogspot.com/2012/05/flame-flame-1970.html?m=1) The “effervescent” song was “reprised at the conclusion of the effort in a slower, slinkier, and definitely funkier interpretation”. (Lindsay Planer, https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-flame-mw0000404758)

The South African Rock Encyclopedia tells us:

Formed in 1962, The Flames featured core members Steve Fataar, Edries “Brother” Fataar, Ricky Fataar, and later Blondie Chaplin. Their multicultural background and genre-defying style made them stand out in apartheid-era South Africa, where they gained popularity with covers and original material that fused R&B, rock, and soul. Their 1968 chart-topping hit “For Your Precious Love” became a defining moment, showcasing their vocal harmonies and emotional depth. In 1970, the band relocated to London and caught the attention of Beach Boys member Carl Wilson, who produced their final album, The Flame, released on the Beach Boys’ Brother Records label. Ricky Fataar and Blondie Chaplin later joined the Beach Boys, contributing to their early 1970s work. Though The Flames disbanded shortly after, their legacy endures as one of South Africa’s most influential and boundary-pushing musical acts.

https://sarockmusic.com/rock-legends/rock-legends-artists/the-flames/

Peter Gough tells us more:

[The band] was formed in 1963 by brothers Steve  and Brother Fataar on guitar and bass respectively. . . . [V]arious members came and went until 1967, when third Fataar brother, Ricky (drums) and friend Blondie Chaplin (guitar, vocals) completed the ultimate line up. The band released several soul/pop covers albums in Africa and became one of the country’s most popular acts. In 1968 South Africa was becoming more segregated and made it impossible for the band to play to a white audience, so with Ricky still only 16 years of age, they left their home land, seeking success in the UK. Whilst playing in London they were spotted by Beach Boy [see #667] Carl Wilson (on a tip from Al Jardine) who liked the band so much that he signed them up to the Beach Boys new record label Brother. The Flame would be the only band, other than the Beach Boys to release music on Brother. The band moved to LA to record an album, with Carl Wilson taking the role of producer. The self titled LP was released in 1970. . . . [T]he whole album is comparable Badfinger at their best.  “Don’t Worry Bill” and “High’s and Lows” are pure Abbey Road . . . . Following the album’s lack of big sales, Ricky Fataar and Blondie Chaplin were asked to join the Beach Boys replacing Dennis Wilson who had broke his hand putting him out of action for a while and Bruce Campbell who had just departed. They are present on Carl and the Passions and Holland and contribute vocals and even songwriting credits on both albums. Ricky Fataar went on the play the role Stig O’Hara in the Rutles then moved into session work playing with artists like Ian McLagan, Bonnie Raitt and Crowded House. Blondie Chaplin released three solo albums and has played as a session guitarist with the likes of Rick Danko, David Johansen and the Rolling Stones [see #382, 298, 537, 579, 1,098, 1,403].

https://biteitdeep.blogspot.com/2012/05/flame-flame-1970.html?m=1

Lindsay Planer adds:

[T]he Flames (they’d soon drop the “s” to avoid confusion with James Brown’s backup band) emerged out of the rich South African/Malaysian pop scene as a superb cover combo. They even scored a number one with an update of the Impressions’ [see #118, 285, 1,347, 1,544, 1,848] R&B classic “For Your Precious Love.” . . . [A]fter the quartet . . . had moved to England and were gigging around London that Al Jardine convinced fellow Beach Boys co-founder Carl Wilson to sign the Flame to the[ir] Brother Records label. The eponymously monikered platter would become their best-known thanks to Ricky and Chaplin’s association as part-time members of the Beach Boys circa the mid-’70s. During the drawn out legal and political processes that would allow them to earn a living Stateside, the Flame collaborated with Wilson (producer) and Beach Boys’ engineer of choice Steve Desper to craft this ten-song collection, which reflected the overwhelming similarities and obvious inspiration to the Beatles’ post Rubber Soul . . . period. Particularly, Lennon and McCartney’s progressive and keenly developed compositional style, which surfaces here as a running motif throughout the whole work.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-flame-mw0000404758

The one “dislike” is probably from Mike Love.” (lukehixon724, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8MmosnYn4s) Ha, ha, ha . . .

Here is the reprise on the LP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmL1EBHEZqw (starting at 37:05)

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

1,892) Bill Fay — “Goodnight Stan”

British cult folk rock singer-songwriter Bill Fay (see #774, 953) passed away almost exactly a year ago. Here is a beautiful and haunting song from his first LP, possibly inspired by an uncle of his who was poisoned by mustard gas in World War I.

Robert Leeming writes:

Bill says “My Uncle Will was poisoned by mustard gas in the trenches, I can remember him just sitting there, in his chair, while my Aunt May played ‘Sunshine of your Smile’ on the piano for him.” He is inspired still by that 1915 generation. “They were not confronted with the same things I was in the 60’s.” Like many men and women of the time, the relatives he recalls from his formative years gave up jobs, love and a fuller life, to care for kin scarred by war. The ghosts of these people dwell within Bill’s music, his grandfather writing music hall songs on his guitar, his aunts and uncles singing around the piano. In the song “Goodnight Stan” he sings about an ‘old boy’ coming home from his allotment, with nothing to defend himself against a drastically changing world but a watering can and a weary knowledge.  An ode to an aging man, who couldn’t comprehend a new age.

https://robertleeming.com/2010/08/18/still-some-light-bill-fay/

As to the LP, Bill Fay recalls that:

[T]he first album was recorded in one day and mixed the day after. I had been to [album musical director] Mike Gibbs’ house and played him the songs on piano, which he recorded on a cassette tape recorder. Mike then went to work on arranging them. I recall arriving at the studio slightly late on the morning of the session, and upon opening the studio door I turned to go, thinking I’d entered the wrong studio, until I spotted a nervous Mike Gibbs standing in the midst of a 27-piece orchestra. It was his first arrangement session and he confessed that he’d added various things to my songs and had been awake all night worring, unsure if the arrangements were going to work. Apart from one song . . . his arrangements did works and it was a very moving experience to sing and not know what you were going to hear next. . . . The variety and augmentation makes the work more interesting and meaningful now. I value it a lot.

liner notes to the CD reissue of Bill Fay

As to Fay, Grayson Haver Currin writes:

[He] stumbled into music in the ’60s. As a college student in Wales, he began to forsake his electronics curriculum for writing songs featuring piano and harmonium. His demos found their way to Terry Noon, briefly Van Morrison’s drummer and a budding music impresario, who helped Fay secure a contract with an imprint of Decca Records and assemble a sharp studio band.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/arts/music/bill-fay-countless-branches.html

Richie Unterberger gives Fay’s post-single and pre-rediscovery history:

British singer/songwriter/pianist Bill Fay cut two albums for Deram during the early ’70s that became bona fide cult classics. His self-titled debut appeared in 1970 and was linked by comparison to recordings by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, but Fay’s songs were more cosmic in scope lyrically and featured pop-orchestral arrangements. 1971’s Time of the Last Persecution . . . won the lion’s share of media attention because of its rather dire and apocalyptic subject matter. There was even speculation by music journalists about the decaying state of Fay’s mental health that proved to be nonsense. Fay’s records fell into obscurity, and he virtually vanished from music for more than two decades.

Fay issued . . . his lushly orchestrated self-titled debut [album] in 1970. While critical notice was favorable, there was precious little airplay, and the label’s marketing department had virtually no idea how to place his work. Though Bill Fay sold poorly, the label chose to record a follow-up in hopes of building interest. . . . Given its gaunt, haunted-looking cover photo of the artist, as well as the deeply pessimistic spiritual subject matter about the world coming to an end, journalists speculated Fay was a hopeless drug addict and/or mentally ill. Some even claimed he was homeless and raving on the streets. None of it was true. . . . Due to poor sales of both albums, Fay was released from his contract and Deram eventually deleted both recordings. They subsequently became cult classics and were reissued in 1998; they were finally greeted with nearly universal acclaim.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/bill-fay-mn0000073553/biography

Fay graciously reflected that:

Decca . . . wasn’t too sure what was going on musically — what musical styles might become successful, and therefore rewarding to them, or not. Someone once said that Decca’s policy was to throw many pieces of musical mud at a wall in the hope that some of it would stick. I was one of those pieces that fell off the wall, along with others, but I had a chance before, my contract expired, to make a single and two albums that featured a lot of musical contributions from others and a lot of diversity in content. I’m thankful to Decca for that and for the freedom . . . to do it.

liner notes to the CD reissue of Bill Fay

Album producer Peter Eden later reflected that “Bill’s an appreciative guy who genuinely didn’t mind if he had a hit or not. He never wanted or craved success — the songs were all that interested him.” (liner notes to the CD reissue of Bill Fay)

Here is the Bill Fay Group (recorded sometime between 1978 and 1980 (https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/albums/bill-fay-group-tomorrow-tomorrow-and-tomorrow-charts-humane-compassionate-songs)):

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

1,891) Jacqueline Taïeb — “Ce Soir Je M’en Vais”/”Tonight I’m Leaving”

Here is JT’s love letter to Swinging London (where she recorded this and her other early songs), an “[e]xcellent song, delicate, moving, tender… and what a sublime rhythm, not to mention the perfection of the voice… A must-listen!” (hubertdevillers4421 (courtesy of Google Translate), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6gu-MKAXfc) “[It] hits the sweet spot, with its lush arrangement, melancholic lyrics, and appealing melodic charms.” (astroturf78, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/jacqueline-taieb/ce-soir-je-men-vais-la-plus-belle-chanson/)

Tunisian-born yé-yé great Jacqueline Taïeb (see #39, 1,305) took Paris by storm with “7h du matin”/“7 in the morning” (see #39), about a schoolgirl waking up and wishing that Paul McCartney could help her with her English homework.

Jacqueline recalls (courtesy of Google Translate):

The record company assigned me a genius arranger, Jean Bouchéty, a man who worked for Michel Polnareff, for example. He always recorded his arrangements in London, and I found myself at 17 in a London studio with big names, chosen by Bouchéty, who were on all the records I recorded at that period.

https://gonzai-com.translate.goog/jacqueline-taieb-interview-la-french-mademoiselle/?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

And she recalls (courtesy of Google Translate):

My father, a dental surgeon, gave me a guitar for my 12th birthday . . . . [and] a slightly older friend taught me chords and my goal became to compose songs. I could no longer leave my guitar, I took it everywhere and sang the hits of the moment and my first compositions. The one that made friends laugh was “7 a.m.”. During the summer holidays in Tunisia, I am surrounded by friends and I put on my show. That’s when Rolande Bismuth, the editor of the already famous Michel Fugain, passed by  and said to me “that’s what you’re doing, here’s my card, come see me in Paris in September”. I went there and it all started: contract then recordings in sight! All these titles were recorded in a great studio in “swinging London” at the end of the 60s, with crazy English musicians, led by Jean Bouchety, an exceptional arranger, who let me express my ideas despite being 18 years old. . . . Magical memories that often come back to me…

https://www.7×7.press/7-questions-a-jacqueline-taieb-la-lolita-chic

Wikipedia adds (courtesy of Google Translate):

Jacqueline Taïeb arrived in France at the age of 8 with her parents. She released her first album in January 1967, a maxi 45 rpm with which she achieved good success thanks to the title 7 hours in the morning. H[er] second album was released in April 1967 . . . . Several records followed without achieving the same success, and Jacqueline Taïeb temporarily disappeared from the French recording landscape. She reappeared in 1978, writing for others and producing several records under her own name, without however attracting the general public. At this time, she composed the title Ready to Follow you for Dana Dawson, a young singer from New York.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Ta%C3%AFeb

In English:

Here’s the 2022 remix. Jaqueline’s review (courtesy of Google Translate):

I find Thierry Wolf’s idea for this EP truly brilliant, and the work of the “Le Goût Du Son” collective superb, both inventive and faithful to the original. Their sound is fabulous, and the music is accompanied by delightfully kitschy music videos. So, there are two approaches: First, the tracks that have benefited from a ‘facelift‘ (unlike the singer, lol), such as . . . ‘Ce Soir Je M’en Vais‘: a very good idea to have sped up the tempo, thank you Antoine Martin, whom Thierry Wolf chose for this Roman-like work on our songs!

https://www.7×7.press/7-questions-a-jacqueline-taieb-la-lolita-chic#qu-est-ce-que-ca-fait-d-etre-aujourd-hui-une-icone-de-la-pop-francaise

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

1,890) The Family — “Scene Through the Eye of a Lens”

“Someone coined the word groovy after hearing this” (john022560, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ9b3z65VXs) “[t]ranscendent . . . just brilliant” (happening45, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVLbBJ_j_90) “masterpiece” (Focus B, https://www.45cat.com/record/lbf15031), “a thrilling Eastern-tinged epic that introduced [a] unique combination of violin, sax and Roger Chapman’s tremulous warble” (David Wells, Record Collector: 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records: High Times and Strange Tales from Rock’s Most Mind-Blowing Era), a “superb slice of British pop-psychedelia which goes from an evocation of a poetic, pastoral idyll in the first part, suggestive of an enchanted forest into a fully fledged [instrumental] faerie storm in the second part”, “quite wonderful . . . probably just too esoteric to make the charts”. (Lejink, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/family/scene-through-the-eye-of-a-lens-gypsy-woman/)

John Lennon enthused that it “Scene” “ha[s] got a fantastic blend of sound, the best I have heard for a long time”. (David Wells, Record Collector: 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records: High Times and Strange Tales from Rock’s Most Mind-Blowing Era) However, “few of [Family’s] fans had any inking of this one-off 1967 single on Liberty, a longtime favorite of ours with its druggy Eastern vibe and trippy effects. Alas, they never did anything else in this vein.” (liner notes to the CD comp Electric Sugar Cube Flashbacks)

Family (then billed as the Family) had some heavy backing on this song from Gustav Holst (“like Sand’s ‘Listen To the Sky’ (see #1,066) [it] makes good use of ‘Mars Bringer Of Wars’ from Gustav Holst’s ‘Planets'” (wilthomer, https://www.45cat.com/record/lbf15031)) to Steve Winwood and Traffic. Berkin Altinok tells us that:

[Producer] Jimmy Miller required a little help from Traffic for the recording of Family’s debut single . . . . An incredible collaboration between the 2 bands, with. . . Winwood . . . unleashing on the Mellotron . . . . [T]his . . . single was released 2 months prior to the release of “Mr. Fantasy”… which means, this is the very FIRST TIME, we get to hear the LEGENDARY Mellotron… The rest of Traffic were on “Assorted Percussions” which really CATAPULTS this “SHOULD HAVE BEEN a JAMES BOND THEME” to new heights… I am INSISTENT that Master Wood is 100% on the Triangle🔺, which is super prominent towards the end…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ9b3z65VXs

Chris Goes Rock notes that:

Family made their London debut at the Royal Albert Hall in July 1968, supporting Tim Hardin [see #457]. Alongside Pink Floyd [see #13, 38, 260] , Soft Machine, The Move and The Nice, Family quickly became one of the premier attractions on the burgeoning UK psychedelic/progressive “underground” scene. Their lifestyle and exploits during this period provided some of the inspiration for the 1969 novel, Groupie, by Jenny Fabian (who lived in the group’s Chelsea house for some time) and Johnny Byrne. Family featured in the book under the pseudonym, ‘Relation’.

https://dariuschrisgoes.blogspot.com/2014/12/family-music-in-dolls-house-1st-album.html

John Dougan gives us some more Family history:

A blues-based band with art rock inclinations, Family were one of the more interesting groups of hippie-era Britain. Fronted by the deft and frequently excellent guitar playing of John “Charlie” Whitney and the raspy, whiskey-and-cigarette voice of Roger Chapman, Family were much loved in England and Europe but barely achieved cult status in America. . . . Although the band’s first official release was Music in a Doll’s House in 1968, the roots of the band went back as far as the early ’60s, when Whitney started a rhythm & blues/soul band called the Farinas while at college. In 1966, Whitney met Roger Chapman, a prematurely balding singer who had a voice so powerful that, to quote Robert Christgau, “It could kill small game at a hundred yards,” and the two began a creative partnership that would last through two bands and into the early ’80s. . . . Family became whole with the addition of bassist Ric Grech, saxophonist Jim King, and drummer Rob Townsend. Within a year they were hyped as the next big thing, and under that pressure and intense British pop press scrutiny delivered their debut record in 1968, Music in a Doll’s House. . . . Chapman’s voice is rooted in the blues and R&B, but the record is loaded with strings, Mellotrons, acoustic guitars, and horns — essentially all the trappings of post-psychedelia and early art rock. Almost completely ignored in the States, Doll’s House was a hit in Britain and Family began a string of . . . albums that ended . . . in 1973. After Family’s demise, Whitney and Chapman formed the blues-rock Streetwalkers; other Family members . . . such as John Wetton (King Crimson, Asia) and Jim Cregan (Rod Stewart) went off to find fame and fortune elsewhere. . . . [I]t was Ric Grech who was the first to leave Family in 1969 to become the least well-known member of supergroup Blind Faith. . . . Charlie Whitney went on to play in an extremely low-key country/blues/bluegrass band called Los Rackateeros, and Roger Chapman moved to Germany, where his solo career flourished.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/family-mn0000171133#biography

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,200 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

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

1,889) The Chosen Lot — “If You Want To”

Not only should this romantic ’66 garage rock B-side be on a thousand lists of the top thousand garage rock songs, it should have been a nationwide hit, it should have been covered a thousand times and become a standard at thousands of proms around the country. “You don’t have to love me . . . if you don’t want to . . . but . . . I wish you would love me like I love you”.

And how come there is almost nothing about the this song or this Cincinnati band to be found on the Internet??? Thank you, Buckeye Beat, thank you:

The Chosen Lot was formed by Tony Brazis after his parting with the Bandits. A swap of players between three bands had Tony fronting members of the Continentals, including Rick Coghill (guitar) and Denny Bayless (drums). Panny Sarakatsannis, who was a few years older and working as a school teacher, played bass. The band recorded a 45 for a Detroit label, Sidra records, that made the local charts. The band was around for a year or so before Coghill and Bayless rejoined their old band mate Steve Mendell in the Experimental Blues Band.

https://buckeyebeat.com/chosenlot.html

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,200 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

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

1,888) Barbara Lynn — “Sufferin’ City”

This “[b]rass laden track[] . . . [is] a soulful blast” (David Bowling, https://www.dailyvault.com/toc.php5?review=8450) It is indeed, but the lyrics are more downbeat. A woman done wrong by her man just wants to return to her home town so she asks him “Can you find it in your heart to show a little pity and help me get away from this sufferin’ city?”

Peter Margasak writes that Lynn “was not only a remarkable vocalist with a plush, throaty, and powerful instrument, but one hell of a songwriter and a terrific guitarist (the latter two skills were generally suppressed in female artists during the early 60s, when she first emerged).” (https://chicagoreader.com/blogs/until-then-ill-suffer-classic-late-60s-soul-from-barbara-lynn/) She is “a singer with a raw soulful style that really deserved greater exploration”. (FunkMySoul, https://www.funkmysoul.gr/barbara-lynn-1968-barbara-lynn/) And “[w]hile she may not have attained the commercial success of some of her contemporaries, she has produced a catalogue of music that is equal to the best of her era.” (David Bowling again)

As to Barbara Lynn’s ’68 LP — Here Is Barbara Lynn — FunkMySoul writes:

[It is a] fantastic album of soul . . . an oft-overlooked gem in the crown of Atlantic during their glory soul days in the 60s . . . . The album’s filled with wonderful original tunes, written either by Barbara or arrangers Cliff Thomas, Ed Thomas, and Bob McRee [who collectively penned “Sufferin’ City”] – and there’s an overall style that’s nicely free of some of the more familiar Atlantic Records modes of the time – quite possibly because the set was recorded at the Grits & Gravy Studios in Clinton, Mississippi by Huey P Meux – who mostly did more obscure indie work at the time. Whatever the case, the whole thing is Barbara Lynn’s lasting tribute.

https://www.funkmysoul.gr/barbara-lynn-1968-barbara-lynn/

Steve Huey gives us some history:

Singer/guitarist Barbara Lynn was a rare commodity during her heyday. Not only was she a female instrumentalist (one of the very first to hit the charts), but she also played left-handed — quite well at that — and even wrote some of her own material. Lynn’s music often straddled the line between blues and Southern R&B, and since much of her early work . . . was recorded in New Orleans, it bore the sonic imprint of the Crescent City. Lynn was born Barbara Lynn Ozen in Beaumont, TX . . . [S]he played the piano as a child before switching to guitar, inspired by Elvis Presley. In junior high, Lynn formed her own band, Bobbie Lynn and the Idols . . . . After winning a few talent shows and playing some teen dances, the still-underage Lynn started working the local clubs and juke joints, risking getting kicked out of school . . . . Singer Joe caught her live act and recommended her to his friend, producer/impresario Huey P. Meaux, aka the Crazy Cajun. With her parents’ consent, Meaux brought Lynn to New Orleans to record at the legendary Cosimo’s studio. Lynn cut a few singles for the Jamie label with the understanding that if none hit, she was to attend college instead of pursuing music right off the bat. In 1962, her self-penned ballad “You’ll Lose a Good Thing” became a national hit, reaching the pop Top Ten and climbing all the way to number one on the R&B charts. Her first album . . . was also released that year, featuring ten of her originals . . . . Lynn continued to record for Jamie up through 1965, producing follow-up R&B hits like “You’re Gonna Need Me” and “Oh Baby (We Got a Good Thing Goin’),” the latter of which was recorded by the Rolling Stones . . . . In 1966, Lynn switched over to Meaux’s Tribe label and cut “You Left the Water Running,” which became something of an R&B standard and was covered by the likes of Otis Redding [see #1,333, 1,385]. In 1967, she signed with Atlantic and had another R&B hit with “This Is the Thanks I Get” early the following year; she also issued another album, Here Is Barbara Lynn, in 1968. Lynn scored one last hit for Atlantic in 1972’s “(Until Then) I’ll Suffer,” but by this point, she had several children to worry about raising; dissatisfied with her promotion anyway, she wound up effectively retiring from the music business for most of the ’70s and ’80s . . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/barbara-lynn-mn0000149973#biography

FunkMySoul adds:

[A]t elementary school . . . [Barbara] told her mother she wanted to play guitar. “I decided that playing piano was a little bit too common, you know what I mean?” says Lynn in the new liner notes [to Here Is Barbara Lynn]. “You’d always see a lady or a little girl sitting at a piano. I decided I wanted to play something more unexpected, so that’s when I got interested in learning to play the guitar.” . . . Hers was a powerful talent in a petite package, a performer who could stand up against the best–even as a teenager. Spotted while performing, underage, in Louisiana, she was offered the chance to record her own material, songs that filtered the experience of being a black Texan teen with power, feel, and guts.

https://www.funkmysoul.gr/barbara-lynn-1968-barbara-lynn/

And Dave Stephens adds:

In an Aquarium Drunkard interview . . . . [she said that she] “had been playing the keyboard, but I thought it was so very common seeing a young lady sing at the piano. So I thought, ‘I want to play something odd.[‘] Something I felt I could make money at. And I made money at it, too! I really did.” In grade school she started an all female band called Barbara Lynn and Her Idols and commenced playing local dances and entering – and winning – talent competitions. Singer Joe Barry saw her at one of these gigs and was so impressed that he brought her to the attention of producer/manager/label owner/all-round music man, Huey P. Meaux. After asking her parents for permission, the latter took her to Cosimo Matassa’s famous studio in New Orleans, where apparently she knocked out the session musicians with her ability on guitar (and we are told that Mac Rebennack/Dr. John [see #177, 769] was one of them”.

https://www.toppermost.co.uk/lynn-barbara/

Here is Johnny & Lilly:

Here is Johnny Copeland solo:

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

1,887) Sandy Salisbury — “I Just Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye”

From another of the great lost albums of the 60’s, here is a gentle, bittersweet, and “breathtaking harmonica-led” (Stanton Swihart, https://www.allmusic.com/album/sandy-mw0000108193) ode to the end of a relationship written by Sandy Salisbury (see #1,723) and Joey Stec. “[It] is an almost perfect realization of the styles of [the Association (see #1,264), the Beach Boys (see #667) and “the budding country-rock of The Byrds” (see #1,430, 1,605)] though the tune and loose, gentle optimism of Salisbury’s vocal give it a strength to stand on its own.” (Dominique Leone, http://therockasteria.blogspot.com/2017/06/)

“Such a beautiful song. Had this gotten the proper distribution at the time should have been a huge hit”. (willrue, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX78M0tD0n0) It hit me like a punch in the gut when I read Dawn Eden Goldstein’s account of how close the song actually came:

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about this beautiful tune penned by Graham Salisbury . . . and Joey Stec, which nearly made it onto the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack. Although I prefer the version that Curt produced that kicks off Sandy’s solo album, this version by the Groop is evocative and haunting. Here is what Salisbury said about the song when interviewed by Bryan Thomas of NightFlight.com a few years back: “The Four Star Music Company, led then by Dave Burgess, held out for one more point in royalty in order to allow this song to be used in Midnight Cowboy. So the film producers went elsewhere. That one fussy bit of monetary disagreement was VERY short-sighted on Four Star’s part. But that was the way it was done. Money, money, money…. Looking back, it would have been amazing to have had “I Just Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye” as part of the Midnight Cowboy production. No question about that! But I don’t look back with anything but gratitude for all that came my way in the music industry. There are riches far, far greater than a few coins and a bit of fame. Just making music with a bunch of talented good-guys is one of them.”

https://www.facebook.com/groups/curtboettchersunshinetoday/posts/10157632883108859/

Here is Stanton Swihart’s story of (the sadly unreleased at the time album) Sandy:

Sandy Salisbury was the shy romantic of the loose group of musician friends who formed the legendary studio combos Sagittarius and the Millennium [see #397, 506, 586, 662, 810, 1,002]. He was also the one to eschew drugs entirely, a distinction that could not necessarily be made based on the evidence of this previously unreleased solo album, originally recorded for Together Records in 1968 . . . . Like the music his bandmates made both solo and collectively, Sandy Salisbury is a heady, trippy, captivating concoction. In fact, of the first series of sensational albums that Poptones cobbled together or excavated from the Sagittarius/Millennium vaults, it is the finest, most complete work of the lot, nearly on a par with even the classic albums officially released by the collective. The album is a showcase for a talent who could sometimes get submerged in the shuffle of the group. Salisbury wrote or co-composed most of the songs in collaboration with various of his MIllennium cohorts, and drenches them in one of pop music’s most angelic tenors, a voice that is nearly identical in creamy, heavenly grace and elegance to that of Curt Boettcher [see #1,881, 1,886], who co-produced the album along with future Fleetwood Mac engineer Keith Olsen. Musically, the album is luminous, hallucinatory, and full of typically cherubic sweetness. The collective’s signature romantic fervor surfaces throughout . . . . [W]hile the album has all of the familiar Boettcher hallmarks, the production diverges in some minor but intriguing ways. . . . The album is simply joyous and celebratory . . . . Salisbury’s performance is . . . bouyant and accomplished throughout, and if it threatens to burst the album at its seams, it is also what makes this such a satisfyingly unforeseen delight.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/sandy-mw0000108193

“[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,  https://therockasteria.blogspot.com/2017/07/sandy-salisbury-do-unto-others-1969-us.html) 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 in the late-60s. He also recorded solo during that time, though most of his work . . . 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 “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

Talk about bittersweet.

Here is a longer version, with Sandy accompanied by a chorus of voices:

Here is the Groop:

Here is the Millennium:

Here is Johnny Chester (’74):

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

1,886) Curt Boettcher and Lee Mallory — “You Know I’ve Found a Way”

Here is a gorgeous song written by Curt Boettcher [see #1,881] and Lee Mallory [see #18, 1,693, 1,885], “pure baroque pop of the highest caliber, and overall a very pretty love song.” (DoYouLikeVeggies (talking of Sagittarius’ orchestrated version), https://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/sagittarius/you-know-ive-found-a-way-the-truth-is-not-real.p/) I actually prefer the stripped down demo version by Curt and Lee, so here it is. Did I make a mistake including a clip from a track on Eternity’s Children’s debut LP? No way. I love me my Eternity’s Children (see #706, 1,131, 1,286), whose “finest moments rank alongside anything in the soft pop canon”. (Jason Ankeny,  https://www.allmusic.com/album/eternitys-children-mw0000221884). However, Dawn Eden Goldstein has let us know that “[t]he Children are completely absent from” the song. According to Dawn, “[t]he recording is in fact Curt Boettcher and Lee Mallory’s publishing demo of the song best known in it’s more elaborate incarnation on Sagittarius’ Present Tense. [Eternity’s Children’s co-founder] Bruce Blackman suspects that [managers Ray Roy and Guy Belello] solicited the readymade track[] to save money.” (liner notes to the CD reissue of Eternity’s Children)

As to the Children, they came up with the Biloxi Beat! Dawn tells us that:

They were from Mississippi, yet they excelled in West Coast soft pop. They were co-produced by the legendary Curt Boettcher, yet they made some of their best music without him. They were intelligent and college-educated, yet they signed their lives away to a pair of entrepreneurs whose previous management experience extended only to a chain of health clubs. . . .  [They were] the best West Coast soft pop group ever to come out of Biloxi. . . . Once the group signed to Tower, it was decided to . . . hire Keith Olsen as their producer. That meant of necessity hiring Curt Boettcher too, since he and Olsen by then came as a package. . . . Curt Boettcher was on top of the world, a hotshot Columbia staff producer involved with . . . Gary Usher’s Studio group Sagittarius and his own . . . “supergroup,” the Millennium [see #397, 506, 586, 662, 810, 1,002]. . . . On Eternity’s Children, as well as the Millennium and Sagittarius albums, they used highly innovative reverb effects that turned background vocals into thick, foam-padded walls os sound . . . . The result was something more felt than heard, fulfilling Boettcher’s desire to create music that would affect people on a sub-conscious level.

liner notes to the CD reissue of Eternity’s Children

Here is Sagittarius:

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,200 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

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

1,885) Lee Mallory — “Come On In (Ode to the Be-In)”

This ingratiating love song is a demo written by Lee (see #18, 1,693) and produced by him along with Curt Boettcher. It contains some of the sweetest and most affecting lyrics I have ever had the pleasure of hearing. “If I were a little boy, I’d get you with my smile, and if I were a city man, then I’d win you with my style . . . If I were a millionaire, I’d take you all around the world . . . But all that I am is me, and this is all I can ever hope to be.” How it wasn’t released for decades . . . (ah, but that is a familiar story on my blog).

Richie Unterberger writes of Mallory:

Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Lee Mallory might be best known as a member of the Millennium [see #397, 506, 586, 662, 810, 1,002], the late-’60s sunshine pop group . . . . Mallory wrote or co-wrote some of the material for the elaborately produced band, which crossed the sound of the 1966-1967 Beach Boys with more pop-oriented Southern California harmony pop. On the Millennium’s  Begin album, Mallory was the sole writer of the tracks “I’m with You,” “Sing to Me,” and “Some Sunny Day,” co-authoring some of the other tunes as well. Mallory also did a couple of singles under his own name for Valiant Records in 1966-1967. The most successful of these, “That’s the Way It’s Gonna Be,” [see #18] reached number 86 and was a big hit in Seattle. It was also the most notable of his recording efforts, with a buoyant yet complex production heavy on producer Curt Boettcher’s trademark high vocal-harmony arrangements. Surprisingly, [it] was a cover of a song written by Phil Ochs and folk musician Bob Gibson . . . though its folk roots were pretty unrecognizable by the time Mallory and Boettcher had made it over into a densely produced pop/rock single. Mallory had in fact been a folk musician in the early and mid-’60s, though he went in a very pop direction after hooking up with Boettcher. Mallory also contributed to various other Boettcher-associated groups, including the Ballroom [see #707], Summer’s Children, and Sagittarius. Mallory did quite a bit of recording in the 1960s that was never issued at the time.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/lee-mallory-mn0000189312#biography

Jason Penick chimes in:

An introspective folkie with an innate desire to rock . . . Lee Mallory is one of the great troubadours of his era. Born to cab driver parents . . . Lee was raised in Berkeley, California. He first picked up the guitar at the age of sixteen, and by nineteen he had begun playing local venues . . . in . . . San Francisco. In 1965 Lee journeyed to Greenwich Village in order to sing and play alongside folk musicians like the Lovin’ Spoonful (whom he opened for at their first gig at the Cafe Bizarre). After spending time in New York, Chicago and Boothbay Harbor, Maine, Lee ventured back to California later that year. It was at Claudia Ford’s . . . home that Lee would first meet the man who would help guide his early career, Ford’s boyfriend Curt Boettcher. Lee and Curt’s first evening together was apparently a prolific one, as the duo penned four songs that night including the gorgeous “Forever”. When Lee explained to the young producer that he was in town looking to get something started musically, Curt suggested that Lee accompany him back to Hollywood, and the rest is music history. . . . Lee was already a prolific writer by the time he met up with Curt. Some early Lee Mallory compositions include “Better Times”, which was recorded by The Association [see #1,264] for their Boettcher-produced debut album. Though The Association would ultimately pass on “Better Times”, the song was picked up by another band named The Brothers Cain . . . . Another one of Lee’s early songs, “Sing to Me”, was given to the popular vocal group The Clinger Sisters for an unreleased, Curt Boettcher-produced single in 1966. In between penning songs, Lee was building up his chops by jamming with the Our Productions House Band and was starting to lay down some of his own tunes in the studio. Lee’s early recordings had a style all their own; a sparkling brand of modern folk music, infused with a groovin’ rock backbeat and topped off with a dollop of majestic, Boettcher arranged vocal harmonies.

http://therockasteria.blogspot.com/2017/07/lee-mallory-many-are-times-1966-69-us.html?m=1

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,200 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

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

1,884) Gordon Alexander — “Windy Wednesday”

Ethereal pop psych for gentle people from “an L.A. singer songwriter who once got mentioned in the same breath as Harry Nilsson [see #1,168, 1,298, 1,854] and Randy Newman [see #174] . . . [and] now remembered mainly for the fact that . . . Curt Boettcher produced and sang on a couple cuts on his sole LP”, including today’s song. (liner notes to the CD comp Mystic Males: Soft Sounds for Gentle People Presents Tripped-Out Troubadours from 1965-1970) Sonny Knight [see #487] produced the rest of the LP. (RDTEN1, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/gordon-alexander/gordons-buster/)

As to Gordon Alexander’s LP — Gordon’s Buster — Forced Exposure calls it “a lost classic of West Coast psychedelic pop”(https://www.forcedexposure.com/Artists/ALEXANDER.GORDON.html) and Monocled Alchemist calls it “a very diverse collection of freak rock, psych tinged folk with jazzy & blues touches”, with the Boettcher-produced songs displaying his “unmistakable soft psych touches” and “really stand[ing] out from the rest of the album, either with some haunting echo throughout or some tasty psych guitar lines.” “You could say all from Boettcher’s isn’t gold, but here it sounds like he really made a difference, even the singing is better somehow.” (https://monocledalchemist.com/2024/12/28/gordon-alexander-one-real-spins-free-columbia-1968/)

RDTEN1 is dubious:

Columbia may have signed Alexander, but judging by this album they were clueless with what to do with him. That left the guy a no-win situation. . . . “Windy Wednesday” seemed intent on selling watered down pop-psych tunes to middle America that wanted to be culturally relevant, but not too relevant. . . . Alexander wrote all eleven tracks . . . . He was certainly a versatile writer, though his lyrics were dense, stream-of-consciousness affairs that haven’t aged all that well (“Autumn is a Bummer” probably sounded ancient in 1970). It made for one of those albums where you can spend a lot of time playing spot-the-influence. His voice was okay, though I always smile when I see the picture of a young man and then hear his gravelly vocals which sound like they were coming from a much older performer. Alexander’s delivery was also odd displaying a penchant for putting a bizarre echo effect on his voice.

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/gordon-alexander/gordons-buster/

Richie Unterberger is dubiouser:

[Gordon’s Buster] mix[es] slightly trippy lyrical sensibilities with more pop-friendly arrangements . . . [and] fairly lush orchestral horns and strings . . . .

Columbia sure put out a lot of albums in the late 1960s that were too strange to stand much of a chance of being big sellers, yet had a little too much pop (and sounded a little too contrived) to get much of a toehold in the freaky underground. Singer/songwriter Gordon Alexander was one such act, offering songs that reflected the beatific side of the hippie experience on Gordon’s Buster, yet in a mild, faintly sunshine pop-influenced style that steered it well clear of the weirdest things coming out of California at the time. There’s a sense of the playful psych-pop of, say, Sagittarius or Chris Lucey/Bobby Jameson [see #219, 1,255, 1,303, 1,380-81], yet Alexander seems earthier and a little more connected to some genuinely stoned whimsy. . . . Alexander’s not too distinctive a singer or crafter of melodies, however. Too, the production often seems a little half-hearted, except when those easy listening strings and horns are piled on — something to be expected, perhaps, considering the arranger was David Angel, the same guy who’s famous for doing the same thing on Love’s classic Forever Changes album. “I like to fly using my middle eye” and “I went looking for the sun in the darkness of my mind” are typical Alexander lyrical musings, but he’s no Arthur Lee when it comes to putting enigmatic imagery to song and voice. Gratuitous washes of echo and distorted guitar come into the mix at times, yet sometimes it sounds like he’s trying to do a psychedelic take on Glen Campbell. In all it’s an eclectic period curiosity with some interesting Baroque touches, but one that lacks the vision, sincerity, or even the good tunes of the best similarly naive psych-pop from the era.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/gordon-alexander-mn0001420282#biography, https://www.allmusic.com/album/gordons-buster-mw0000851706

As to Alexander, RDTEN1 says “[He] was supposedly part of the duet Peanut Butter ‘n’ Jelly and generated a little attention placing the song ‘Strawberry Tea’ on Tiny Tim’s debut album. If you’ve never heard that LP, I’ll tell you that Alexander’s contribution was easily the album’s most psychedelic number.” (https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/gordon-alexander/gordons-buster/)

Eye Magazine (Dec. 1968) talked to Alexander:

[Gordon Alexander:] “I remember the first time Derek Taylor heard me, he was standing in the other room and I did this medley I had worked out back then – I did a lot of songs with this transition thing worked in between em – and suddenly he goes CRASH!, drops everything, falls against the wall, and then when I finished he comes over and he says, ‘Well, I , oh – what good are words, anyway? I just wanted to say, I really enjoyed your… music.’ And I’m saying ‘Uh, right,’ and the walls are going ka-choonga, you know? One of those mystical experiences.” 

Gordon met Clive Davis, the president of Columbia Records, who said something like ‘yeah’, and signed him, and Gordon finally made his album – something he’d waited for a long time, and while making it someone phoned in a bomb threat. “A bomb threat, can you imagine? But we kept on recording. Studio time is scarce at Columbia.” One of the strange things about Gordon is the way he sings: hard to describe, one of those things you have to hear. He sings echo with himself, sends his voice around the corner, through a filter, brings it back again, sings echo with himself. The music at first hearing may sound foreign, jarring, unapproachable – especially the more electronic space songs. Maybe you can’t see it at first, but then later when you find it has all worked out, it is most accessible. The first album Buster, doesn’t have too many really difficult electric space songs. “We thought we’d keep this one pretty basic,” Gordon says. “But I certainly do try to remind people about life and death and those things.”

https://rockasteria.blogspot.com/2012/11/gordon-alexander-gordons-buster-1968-us.html?m=1

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

1,883) Song — “Like We Were Before”

With apologies to the Talking Heads, the name of this band is Song. And I am featuring a Song song that has a “[s]uperb 1970 power pop Beatle-ish vibe . . . and is produced by Curt Boettcher & Keith Olsen.” (Discogs, https://www.discogs.com/release/11525133-Song-Like-We-Were-Before-Sugar-Lady) Jasonbear writes:

[The song] goes after a Rubber Soul-era Beatles vibe and actually winds up succeeding, although perhaps it’s just a little too on the nose for an homage. Again I really can’t say enough about the lead guitarist Clark Garman– he’s not super flashy, but he manages to extract some really cool, down-home counterpoint licks. Guitarists like him really don’t get enough recognition in my book.

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/jasonbear/jasonbears-reviews-you-can-use-60s-and-70s-albums-only/2/

The name of Song’s album is, of course, Album. Jasonbear thinks “Like We Were Before” was the single (yes, it was the A-side), but he “can’t remember and can’t be arsed to sift through a billion Google results for ‘Song Album’.” (https://rateyourmusic.com/list/jasonbear/jasonbears-reviews-you-can-use-60s-and-70s-albums-only/2/) Ha, ha, ha!!! I had this very problem trying to locate the LP on YouTube after jotting down a note to myself that I had to listen to it. As Song’s only LP, I guess you can call it their swan song.

Jasonbear gives us Song’s history:

This is an interesting one-off from an aggregate led by Mickey Rooney, Jr. (yes, the son of elfin actor Mickey Rooney). Apparently deciding to go the scene band route after some minor movie roles and pop singles didn’t result in stardom, Junior formed a band called Song and released this one album and a single on MGM before parting ways with the label and the group. . . . Rooney Jr. . . . surrounded himself with some bona fide musicians. Lead guitarist Clark Garman absolutely shines on his featured parts, while drummer Shelly Silverman is allotted not one but two solos here, and does a great job of holding down the groove. As for the songs themselves, they tend to be quite melodic, especially when compared alongside much of their competition at the time. (Remember that 1970 was the height of the “heavy rock” era, with fuzz-drenched white blues music being all the rage.) [They] have obviously never abandoned their love of the Beatles and Badfinger, and as such we are treated to some actual melodies amidst the requisite chug and boogie. . . . [T]he amount of solo percussion on this album is greatly enhanced by the incredible Sound City studio drum sound as dialed in by co-producer/engineer Keith Olsen. Nobody could record drums like Keith (the timbre of the kick drum alone is worth the price of admission) . . . . [T]he album ALBUM by the band SONG is recommended, by me, to anybody who enjoys crate digging for old rock bands but who also seeks an album with actual songcraft and melodic components instead of yet another bad trip soundtrack by hippie dope experimentalists with a penchant for fuzztone.

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/jasonbear/jasonbears-reviews-you-can-use-60s-and-70s-albums-only/2/

Not that there’s anything wrong with another bad trip soundtrack by hippie dope experimentalists with a penchant for fuzztone! In fact, Jasonbear says that “if it’s bad hippie dopers you seek instead, well, hit me up because I can recommend several of those as well”!

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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term Like Thisfamiliar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).

The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,200 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.

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

1,882) Bobby Jameson — “Right By My Side”

Riveting pop rock by Bobby Jameson (see #219, 1,255, 1,303, 1,380-81) produced by Curt Boettcher, who added insanely catchy and effervescent female background vocals that take the song to another level.

“The classic Boettcher drums, and overall sound that would later appear on Millennium & Sagittarius records.” (popville217, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbzAt491T8g) Bobby recalled: “Michele O’Malley Jim Bell Curt Boettcher and Lee Mallory on vocals…..arranged by Curt….Reversed tape playing…idea taken from The Beatles by me and Curt!” (jamesonbobby4, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbzAt491T8g)

Tosh Berman says of Jameson’s LP — Color Him In — that:

The [LP] is co-produced by Boettcher, as well as Jim Bell and Steve Clark. All three producers part of the Los Angeles music scene along with Bobby. Color Him In conveys a sound of sweetness with Jameson’s soulful voice, but the songs also have slicked backup singing. There is tension between the backup singing and Jameson’s lead. It conveys a lightness but with an undercurrent of dread and anxiety. There are traces of Forever Changes by Love within the songs, and there are intense Arthur Lee-like vocalisms throughout the album. . . . [T]his record refuses to leave, and layers of meaning or sounds come through repeated listening.

https://tosh.substack.com/p/jameson-color-him-in-verve-records

Richie Unterberger adds:

[I]t’s much more a Californian-sounding, faintly psychedelic-speckled pop/rock record than a British Invasion one. Produced by Curt Boettcher, it’s an odd LP . . . [for] its strange juxtaposition of 1966-1967 rock styles. Jameson writes intense songs of soul-searching and questioning, yet the tunes are dressed up in rather normal good-time Southern California pop/rock arrangements, with cheerful female backing vocals that verge on the too-chipper, sometimes to the point of annoyance [not to me!] At times, his sly, mind-rushing-to-keep-pace-with-the-tongue lyrics recall early Arthur Lee . . . . It’s an interesting, but not terribly interesting [yes, terribly interesting!] mildly eccentric pop/rock album with a dash of flower power.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/color-him-in-mw0000989607

“Of all the Curt Boettcher related records, those wonderful productions & arrangements for Sagittarius, Millennium, Tommy Roe, The Association, etc. – this is my favourite.” (bonzoboots, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/jameson/color-him-in/)

Jameson himself recalled:

Color Him In was a psychedelic work of the times. Much of what is on the record was inspired by LSD, Vietnam, and the Peace Movement. The overall context was freedom from the establishment or so we thought. It was basically a concept album, but most of the music’s conceptual arrangements were Curt’s. Songs I wrote like “See Dawn” dealt with duality. “What goes up must come down.” The lyric “See dawn, see dawn the setting sun” attempts to look at things from opposite ends of a single spectrum simultaneously. These pairs of opposites run throughout the work. Curt Boettcher was delighted by this kind of lyric. My words and melodies, according to Curt at the time, were like a playground for his arrangements. He would take the demos I made of me and a guitar, and arrange vocal harmonies and instrumentation around them. He would come up with entire arrangements based on a specific lick or chord progression of mine. . . . Another problem we encountered . . . was that Curt Boettcher was trying to finish up an album with The Association at the same time. The Association wanted to produce themselves and argued with Boettcher all the time about who had the final say. So as you can imagine we were never just concentrating on one thing. We were always arranging time to suit numerous demands made by several different entities. This tended to make Curt crazy and unable to do what he wanted on some of our work. . . . Curt was surrounded by people who all became friends of mine, like Michele O’Malley, Jim Bell, and Lee Mallory. . . . At one point I moved into a house with all of these people and we tried living together but it proved too difficult in the long run. Too many dominant personalities in one place. Working together was one thing, living together was another. Curt and I were very close friends while we worked on Color Him In. We were never anymore or less than friends. Those of you who are familiar with Curt’s personal life can put your questions away. Curt and I were good friends. We liked working together and we inspired each other.

https://bobbyjameson.blogspot.com/2008/04/part-38-curt-boettcher-and-bobby.html

As to Bobby Jameson, Jason Ankeny tells us:

West Coast folk-rocker Bobby Jameson is best known — or, perhaps, not known at all — for Songs of Protest and Anti-Protest [see #219] the sought-after cult LP he recorded under the alias Chris Lucey. . . . Jameson cut his debut single, “I Wanna Love You,” for the Talamo label in early 1964. The record was a regional hit, and even earned him an appearance on American Bandstand. Although the follow-ups . . . went nowhere, Jameson nevertheless captured the attention of Rolling Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham, and in late 1964 he flew to London to record the Decca single “All I Want Is My Baby,” co-written by Oldham and . . . Keith Richards . . . . After a 1965 one-off for the Brit imprint, “I Wanna Know,” Jameson returned to Los Angeles, where he befriended producer Marshall Lieb. . . . [who] was in the midst of helming the debut Surrey Records release by folkie Chris Ducey, but with the album covers already printed and the disc ready to ship, contractual snafus forced the project into limbo. Lieb coerced Jameson into writing and recording a new batch of tunes based on Ducey’s existing song titles, and after some creative tinkering with the cover art, [the album] — now credited to Chris Lucey and, for reasons unknown, featuring a photo of Rolling Stone Brian Jones — finally hit retail. Promoted via what was then the most expensive and lavish Billboard advertising supplement ever printed, the album — a deeply idiosyncratic psych-folk opus . . . proved a commercial flop . . . . Jameson did not resurface until mid-1966, releasing “Gotta Find My Roogalator” — arranged by Frank Zappa . . . . He then signed to Verve, where the Our Productions team of Curt Boettcher, Jim Bell, and Steve Clark helmed his 1967 LP Color Him In. That same year, Jameson also appeared in the infamous American International Pictures documentary Mondo Hollywood . . . . A 1969 album for GRT, Working!, proved Jameson’s swan song. During the ’70s, his frustrations with the music industry manifested themselves in substance abuse and two suicide attempts. . . . After he left the music business in 1985, he lived so quietly with his mother in San Luis Obispo County, California that many thought he was dead. He didn’t resurface until 2003, when he learned that Songs of Protest and Anti-Protest had been reissued unbeknownst to him . . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/bobby-jameson-mn0001425046#biography

If you’d like to read Jameson recounting his life, and his overwhelming bitterness, see:

https://bobbyjameson.blogspot.com/?m=1, https://lifeandtimesofbobbyjameson.blogspot.com/

He also left this disturbing video monologue:

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,200 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.

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

1,881) Curt Boettcher — “Sometimes“

This B-side written by Curt Boettcher and Lee Mallory (see #18, 1,693) “honestly might be the best song Curt ever wrote”, the B-side from the “only single from what would have been Curt[‘s] first solo album, if not for Together’s untimely demise”. (DoYouLikeVeggies, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/curt-boettcher/share-with-me-sometimes/)

Magic Pop Blog rhapsodizes (courtesy of Google Translate — I’m sure it would sound even more rhapsodic in the original Italian):

[It is a] pristine combination of rhythm and melody without a single flaw or added embellishment. A pop song in all its splendor, it transforms the solemn into the celestial, while the lead vocals envelop us with a perfect and tender range, interwoven with string arrangements and baroque and psychedelic effects.

https://magicpopblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/17/el-maravilloso-sunshine-pop-de-curt-boettcher-recopilado-en-misty-mirage/

For those of you who know Curt Boettcher’s work, he needs no introduction. But here are excepts from a fairly recent piece by Lucy Harbron in Far Out Magazine:

At first, he started out as part of The GoldeBriars, a folk unit. . . . It was . . . in that band that he started to craft his sound. It was folk at first, but it quickly morphed into something broader, bringing in elements of rock, a hefty dose of pop, but also more left-field elements, even being inspired by his childhood as the son of a navy man and the army songs he’d heard then. His scope was massive, and it was making him well-known, so when that band stopped, he was called on quickly. From there, he started applying all those skills to the work of others. Most notably, he produced for Lee Mallory and became the first person to use the reserve echo, although Jimmy Page [see #110, 589] likes to take credit for that . . . .But as Boettcher produced “That’s the Way It’s Gonna Be” [see #18], the earlier sound of it there gives the medal to him as proof of just how much the producer was ahead of the game. That’s truly the pattern in his career; Boettcher was always a step ahead. In his production work, he inspired bravery in others, pushing the boundaries of genre and studio capabilities, and getting experimental with the kit in a way no one else was. In The GoldeBriars, as early as 1964, he was starting to merge sounds and inspirations in a way that The Beatles [see #422, 1,087, 1,256] wouldn’t date until Rubber Soul, or The Beach Boys [see #667, 1,825] wouldn’t really start to do until 1966 with Pet Sounds—after Brian Wilson had met Boettcher. Boettcher and Wilson met in early 1966, and Gary Usher, who was there at the time, claimed that, Wilson was openly inspired by him, playing a significant role in pushing his production further on Pet Sounds after hearing what Boettcher was doing.* . . . It seems that at every turn, here we have the originator, yet his name is forgotten. . . . “If his life had gone just a bit differently, [he] might have been another Brian Wilson,” [Alexandra Molotkow] theorised [in the New York Times Magazine on August 9, 2013 in an essay about Boettcher and Dawn Eden Goldstein —https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/magazine/she-told-herself-she-couldnt-die-because-she-had-to-write-his-story.html (paywall)]. Clearly with the same musical intuitions, Boettcher seemed just as deserving of the genius status Wilson was awarded, but instead, he was forgotten . . . [As Molotkow] wrote, “As it stands, Boettcher — a pop-music producer whose heyday was the late ’60s — now survives in rock history mostly as a liner-note credit. He could have been, but never was. Yet he enjoys a godlike status among a select group of music fans, for whom obscurity is more enticing than fame.”

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/curt-boettcher-man-who-couldve-been-brian-wilson/

• There is no more classic description of being gobsmacked than the story Gary Usher told Dawn Eden Goldstein about the time Usher and Wilson first met Curt (to be found in the liner notes to the CD reissue of Sagittarius’ Present Tense).

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,200 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

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

1,880) The Consortium —  “All the Love in the World”

On Valentine’s Day, what could top this over-the-top “glowing piece of sunshine pop” (Bruce Eder, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/west-coast-consortium-mn0000207892#biography), a “highly-strung, vaguely Honeybus [see #6, 52, 207, 434, 562, 605, 764, 1,100, 1,439, 1,582, 1,715, 1,833]-sounding ballad with an exquisite arrangement” (David Wells, liner notes to the CD comp West Coast Consortium: Looking Back: The Pye Anthology) that reached #22 in the UK? It literally packs all the love in the world into less than three minutes.

“Psychedelic pop doesn’t get much better than [the UK’s] West Coast Consortium [/Consortium (see #1,742), who] were responsible for some of the finest light psychedelic pop of the late ’60s.” (Tim Sendra, https://www.allmusic.com/album/all-the-love-in-the-world-collected-recordings-1964-1972-mw0004138712). Sendra elaborates:

They magically combined Beach Boys [see #667, 1,825]/Four Seasons [see #1,454]-style vocal harmonies with lush, string-filled backing to create a sound that was as smooth as paisley velvet and also criminally overlooked. Apart from one medium-sized hit, 1969’s “All the Love in the World,” the band’s singles weren’t hits and they never managed to release an album. Not officially anyway. While they were struggling to hit the charts, they were simultaneously making home demos that stripped away the ornate glow of their singles and replaced it with an intimate, rough-hewn, and fascinating take on psychedelic pop. . . . The[ir] singles are a high-level course in MOR psych, built around the group’s slick harmonies, with arrangements chock-full of strings, keyboards, and polish, and featuring songs that were pitched somewhere between the merrily twee approach of the Ivy League and the rambling glee of the Move. Consortium prove to be pleasing balladeers on tracks like “All the Love,” but they also get pretty weird on the phased psych nugget “Colour Sergeant Lillywhite” and delve into bubblegum sweetness on later songs, especially the insistent “Cynthia Serenity.” All A+ work that when stretched end to end rates right near the top of what was coming out of the U.K. during the era.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/all-the-love-in-the-world-collected-recordings-1964-1972-mw0004138712

Bruce Eder adds:

West Coast Consortium . . . was a British pop/rock group with a harmony-rich, gently psychedelic sound . . . . [that was] one of the great under-rated groups of the era. The band initially coalesced under the name Group 66, featuring lead vocalist Robbie Fair, guitarists Geoff Simpson and Brian Bronson, bassist John Barker, and drummer John Podbury. . . . [O]ne day, they were working on a rendition of the Four Seasons’ “Rag Doll” and discovered that they could harmonize better than they could play. A similarly successful attempt at performing the Beach Boys’ “I Get Around” proved to the quintet that vocals were their strong point and could set them apart from most of their rivals. By 1967, Simpson had started writing songs . . . . They were signed by Pye Records . . . . [I]n the interest of emphasizing an American cultural connection, they arrived at [the name] West Coast Consortium. The group’s original sound was rooted in high harmonies and midtempo songs, similar in style to Ivy League. Their first two singles failed to chart, as did a 45 released under the name Robbie[] . . . . The band generated one poppish freakbeat single, “Colour Sergeant Lilywhite[]” . . . [that] didn’t chart, but . . . bec[a]me a minor classic of British psychedelia. . . . [T]he group was given the chance to record an entire LP, despite not having had a hit. They rehearsed and self-recorded an album’s worth of demos, but ultimately decided to focus their efforts on playing live. . . . [I]n late 1968 recorded another album’s worth of demos . . . . Fate then took a hand in a very unexpected way. The group suddenly found a new fan in the form of the head of Pye Records, the legendary producer/ bandleader Cyril Stapleton. A revered figure on the British music scene, he chanced to attend a performance by the band and was so taken with them that he decided to give them his personal attention on their next record. At the time, they’d cut a version of Simpson’s “All the Love in the World” that wasn’t coming out right with Dorsey, and, astonishingly, the label chief violated all corporate protocol by agreeing. Dorsey was taken off production and the existing recording was junked. The band started over with Stapleton producing; they also shortened their name to the simpler and more mysterious Consortium. . . . The effort paid off and “All the Love in the World” was their first real hit, reaching number 22 on the U.K. charts in the course of a nine-week run.. . . . [This all got] the group a fresh round of music press coverage, along with better gigs . . . . [But] they were unable to build on their previous chart success. . . . [I]n 1970 the original group’s history effectively ended as Simpson quit, unwilling to leave his wife or their recently born twins for a six-week tour of Italy.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/west-coast-consortium-mn0000207892#biography

Here is some nice video:

Here is the demo. As Geoff Simpson relates:

This is the easily most important demo for me … a total scene changer. It gave us faith that you don’t need an expensive studio to promote your ideas. It’s a recording from a Revox A77 reel to reel tape recorder owned by our bassist John Barker, we recorded this track in early 1968 . . . . We’d then take the recorder to . . . our manager Ken’s brother Cliff[‘s] . . . mellotron in a room above his paper factory . . . . fond memories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9Z45ZSt9go

En français, here are Dominique et les Fléchettes — “Tout l’Amour du Monde”:

In italiano, here is Nomadi — “Vai Via, Cosa Vuoi”: 

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

1,879) Hot Butter’s Sound — “Pa Pa Pa”

“Pa pa pa” is the new “la la la”! This Peruvian B-side is “garagey psychedelic rock . . . with fuzzy lead guitar and an underground feeling” (roquecolor, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/hot-butters-sound/renacera-pa-pa-pa.p/), “psychafunkadelia (I just made that word up) . . . . [that] really make[s] this [Peruvian underground comp] worth it”. (cancon, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/comp/various-artists/back-to-peru-the-most-complete-compilation-of-peruvian-underground-64-74/) Cancon, just to let you know I might have to steal “psychafunkadelia” from you!

The Listening Post featured this song just weeks ago:

Whoa!! This little scorcher is HOT!! Brace yourself for this burning groove and the coolest vocal accompaniment you could possibly imagine! . . . The groove gets under your skin with its fiery funk and the pulse sets the senses ablaze! . . . It’s sooo good!!

https://thelisteningpostblog.wordpress.com/2026/01/06/song-of-the-day-hot-butters-sound-pa-pa-pa/

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,200 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

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

A psych pop masterpiece by the Easybeats with a version rivaling its brilliance on the only single by an obscure band out of Connecticut. Ah, the 60’s!

1,877) The Easybeats — “Land of Make Believe”

This “psychedelic gem” (http://www.milesago.com/artists/easybeats.htm) by the Easybeats (see # 201, 1,310, 1,359, 1,415, 1,683, 1,777) is “Australian 60s pop at its best” and “Also the world’s 60s pop at its best”! (zBeestBeest, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBeea0r6ioA) Indeed.

Kennethosborne6497 writes “This song has always been my fave Easybeats number, even though quite different to any of their other tracks. I met [vocalist] Stevie [Wright] & asked him about this one, he said it was also his favourite, & recalled the piano player [Nicky Hopkins] etc.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBeea0r6ioA)

The definitive MILESAGO: Australasian Music & Popular Culture 1964-1975 states the importance of the Easybeats:

To describe The Easybeats as “Australia’s Beatles” is not to damn them with faint praise. They were without question the best and most important Australian rock band of the 1960s, and their string of classic hit singles set the benchmarks for Australian popular music. They established a unique musical identity, and they became our first homegrown rock superstars, and for quality, inventiveness and originality their work is arguably unmatched by any other Australian band of the period. The Easybeats scored fifteen Top 40 Singles in Australia between 1965 and 1970, including three No.1 hits. Chief among their many achievements, the Easybeats hold the unique honour of being our first bona-fide rock group to have an major overseas hit record – the legendary “Friday On My Mind”. They were also one of the few major Australian bands of their day to perform and record original material almost exclusively. 

http://www.milesago.com/artists/easybeats.htm

Milesago gives “Make Believe” some context:

[In the summer of 1967] the Easybeats — plus session drummer Freddie Smith and renowned session keyboardist Nicky Hopkins — went into the famed Olympic Studios in Barnes, London . . . to record their next LP, produced by Shel Talmy’s erstwhile engineer, the now legendary Glyn Johns. This should have been the breakthrough they needed and the sessions produced some of their best material to date. But although an entire album was recorded, sequenced, mastered and titled (Good Times) and a cover prepared, it was never released. The band had become involved in a complicated contractual wrangle, with five companies claiming rights over their work. The immediate result was that Albert Productions, who had been footing most of the bills, now closed their chequebook. With both Johns and Olympic still unpaid, the record stayed in the can, and only two cuts — the magnificent title track, “Good Times”, and the psychedelic gem “Land Of Make Believe” managed to emerge, many months later. The remaining tracks languished for another decade, until Raven Records released them on the 1977 LP The Shame Just Drained. In June, UA released the superlative psychedelic rocker “Heaven & Hell”. It was their last Talmy-produced single, with Nicky Hopkins prominent on harpsichord, and some great bass playing by Dick. It was released in June, with the wonderful “Pretty Girl” relegated to the b-side, and became another Top 20 hit in Australia. By rights, it should have been a double-sided hit for them worldwide. For a while it looked set to restore their chart fortunes, especially in the US, but once again bad luck intervened: just as it entered the charts, the single was banned by various US stations, due to the line “discovering someone else in your bed” and supposed drug references. Inexplicably, it also failed in the UK. Based on the success of “Friday”, Vanda & Young had naturally continued with that winning formula, packing remarkable musical and lyrical innovation into a concise single format (what George later called their “three minute operas”). When they saw one of their best efforts fail, they effectively gave up trying. They began making music primarily to please themselves, and according to George a lot of similar material was shelved. Their fortunes were further hindered by consistently poor timing and choices of material by United Artists, and by lack of direction and support from both label and management. From this point on, according to George “the rot set in”. The outcome was doubly lamentable — abandoning any pretense of ‘commerciality’, the group went on to produce some of their most outstanding material over the next year, but sadly many of the tracks were only ever cut as demos, and the public never got to hear them until years later. . . . In June [1968], a second United Artists LP Vigil was released in the UK. The album . . . . [included] two escapees from the doomed Glyn Johns LP, “Land Of Make Believe” and “Good Times”, which were paired on 45 in Australia in July and reached #22 in August. “Land of Make Believe” was coupled with a (Beatles-inspired) b-side “We All Live Happily” for June release in the UK . . . .

http://www.milesago.com/artists/easybeats.htm

Bruce Eder tells us of the Easybeats:

The Easybeats . . . met in Sydney . . . [but] lead singer Stevie Wright originally came from England . . . and bassist Dick Diamonde hailed from the Netherlands, as did guitarist Harry Vanda, while the others, guitarists George Young and drummer Gordon “Snowy” Fleet, were recent arrivals from Scotland and England . . . . [They were] a piece of authentic Brit-beat right in the heart of Sydney. . . . After honing their sound and building a name locally . . . in late 1964, the group was signed to [Ted] Albert Productions who, in turn, licensed their releases to Australian EMI’s Parlophone label. . . . Working from originals primarily written by Stevie Wright, by himself or in collaboration with George Young, the group’s early records . . . were highly derivative of the Liverpool sound . . . . [but] they were highly animated in the studio and on stage, they looked cool and rebellious, and they sang and played superbly. . . . [T]heir debut single [was] issued in March of 1965 . . . . “She’s So Fine,” their second . . . two months later, shot to number one in Australia and was one of the great records of its era . . . . Their debut album Easy, issued the following September . . . . [Their] attack on their instruments . . . coupled with Wright’s searing, powerful lead vocals, made them one of the best British rock & roll acts of the period and Easy one of the best of all British Invasion albums . . . . In Australia, they were the reigning kings of rock & roll . . . assembling a string of eight Top Ten chart hits in a year and a half . . . . Their second album, It’s 2 Easy, was a match for their first . . . whose only fault . . . was that it seemed a year out-of-date in style when it was released in 1966. . . . [They] could do no wrong by keeping their sound the same . . . . [but] George Young . . . had ideas for more complex and daring music. By mid-1966, the Wright/ Young songwriting team had become history, but in its place Vanda and Young began writing songs together. . . . In the fall of 1966, the Easybeats were ready to make the jump that no Australian rock & roll act had yet done successfully, and headed for England. In November of 1966 . . . the group scored its first U.K. hit with “Friday on My Mind[“, which] embodied all of the fierce kinetic energy of their Australian hits but . . . at a new level of sophistication . . . . It rose to the Top Ten . . . across Europe and much of the rest of the world, and reached the Top 20 in the United States . . . . The group spent seven months in England, writing new, more ambitious songs[, ] performing before new audiences, most notably in Germany . . . . [and] mov[ing] their base of operations to London . . . . Some of the songs were superb, but the[ir] . . . charmed existence . . . seemed to desert them in 1967-1968 — their single “Heaven and Hell” was banned from the radio in England for one suggestive line, and a six-month lag for a follow-up cost them momentum . . . . [But] the songs . . . were as good as anything being written in rock at the time. . . . By mid-1969, the band had receded to a mere shadow of itself, and their music had regressed to a form of good-time singalong music . . . . The band decided to call it quits following a return to Australia for one final tour . . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-easybeats-mn0000145086#biography

Here is the 45 version:

1,878) Jennifer’s Friends — “Land of Make Believe”

This “sublime” (Clegg, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcgnw1vtXXI) and “fabulous cover . . . [had] a stellar arrangement . . . [and] should have hit the charts”. (CorporalClegg, https://www.45cat.com/record/bda51) It is from Jennifer’s Friends’ only single, which had “[t]wo killer psychedelic tunes . . . a masterpiece” which “quite frankly . . . one-upped the[ Easybeats] with their own song”. (thomassmith8721, ,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg3m3cMpt68) I could actually be persuaded — the Friends transform the song into glorious technicolor!

Oh, kevinweaver6999 comments “Nostalgia.  I don’t think I have a copy of this and I was the drummer!” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnM4CIn0peE)

Despite CorporalClegg despairing that “looking them up nowadays [is] hard as hell thanks to the Friends TV show” (https://www.45cat.com/record/bda51) — ha, ha, ha!!! — RateYourMusic tells us:

Matt Lawton and Ben Mochan had been friends for several years prior to forming this band, and had been performing together as well, primarily folk music. Ben met Mark Lipson, a high school student, and Kevin Weaver, a math teacher, around their mutual home area of southern Connecticut. They formed a band under the original working name of Zyme, but decided to change it when it came time to record. . . . Around this time, Barry Buxbaum quit his existing band (only to be replaced by Michael Bolotin, later Michael Bolton) and joined the group as lead singer. After recording some home-made demos, the band were able to secure a management contract with Schwade-Merenstein . . . . [who] was able to acquire some recording time with Buddha Records. . . . [A] number of tracks were laid down[ but] only one single was ever released, with “Land of Make Believe” hitting the top 40 [in what universe did this occur?]. . . . The band was also offered a song to record that they decided to pass on, titled “The Worst That Could Happen”. This was later recorded by the Brooklyn Bridge, and went to number one on the charts. Jennifer’s Friends had another close call with bigger success when they recorded a song titled “Lay Lady Lay”. Bob Dylan’s version was released a week prior and so the song was eventually cancelled by Buddah. They also wrote and recorded the musical score to the Michael Douglas film Hail, Hero!, but their version was passed over in favor of one recorded by Gordon Lightfoot [see #92, 167, 392]. . . . Mark Lipson became a cantor, then a Rabbi . . . .

https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/jennifers_friends

18 RODAS writes that he wrote an e-mail to guitarist Matt Lawton”, who relayed some band history, which 18 RODAS summarized, including:

The name Jennifer’s Friends came about while . . . [recording]. Jennifer was one of the young women sitting around with the band during practice. We needed a name for our upcoming recording session in New York, and someone suggested Jennifer’s Friends. The stuff of history. . . . Matt Lawton quit the band for personal reasons around 1970. Mark and Ben talked Lou Merenstein into producing an album of original music ultimately released . . . under the band name Smokey John Bull.

https://18rodas.blogspot.com/2014/11/jennifers-friends-land-of-make-believe.html

Here is Bobby Sherman’s questionable version:

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

1,876) Os Selvagens/The Savages — “Coração de Pedra”/”Heart of Stone”

No, this is not the Stones’ “Heart of Stone”! It is the Brazilian group Os Selvagens’ (the Savages) propulsive ’70 rocker. The band featured a young Michael Sullivan, sorry, Ivanilton de Souza Lima, who would later become one of the biggest Brazilian stars ever.

Hedson tells us (courtesy of Google Translate):

In the wake of the Jovem Guarda* [Young Guard] movement, many bands emerged meteorically but failed to establish themselves in the musical context of the time. One of these groups was Os Selvagens, which emerged in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1960s, in the post-Jovem Guarda era, on the CBS record label, under the artistic production of Rossini Pinto. Probably, if they had emerged a few years earlier, they would certainly have been more successful and had more market opportunities. Another fact that was mentioned in publications at the time was the record company’s lack of effort in promoting the group, since the music market was already in a new wave, Tropicália**. The initial proposal of the band Os Selvagens aimed to create a fusion of Pop and Soul styles, which did not happen in practice, remaining within the Jovem Guarda pop style of the time.

https://laplayamusic.blogspot.com/2012/08/os-selvagens-1970.html

Grokipedia adds:

Michael Sullivan, born Ivanilton de Souza Lima . . . in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, is a renowned Brazilian singer, guitarist, composer, and music producer, celebrated for his prolific songwriting career spanning over five decades. Sullivan’s early career in the mid-1960s involved performing as a guitarist and singer in rock-dance bands such as Os Selvagens and later Renato e Seus Blue Caps [see #1,011, 1,815] before launching his solo career in 1976 . . . . At age 19, around 1969, Sullivan joined Os Selvagens as a singer and guitarist, further immersing himself in Rio’s vibrant music community during the tail end of the 1960s. . . . [T]he group operated in the Jovem Guarda movement, focusing on rock and roll covers with energetic live performances at local venues. . . . Sullivan’s early years were immersed in the local music scenes of Pernambuco, known for traditional rhythms such as frevo and maracatu, which provided a foundational exposure to Brazilian musical heritage amid the challenges of his upbringing . . . . [He] began his professional music career in the mid-1960s, debuting around 1964–1965 at age 14 as a singer in Recife’s nightlife venues. At age 15 in 1965, he participated in talent contests such as Varieté on Rádio Jornal do Commercio, winning first place and earning a professional musician’s card . . . along with a contract with TV Jornal do Commercio. This led to appearances on programs like Você Faz o Show, Noite de Black Tie, and Bossa 2, marking him as a rising talent from Pernambuco. In 1967 . . . [he] moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he adopted the stage name Michael Sullivan, inspired by a name from a telephone directory, reflecting the era’s interest in Anglo-American musical influences. He began performing in live settings focused on dance-oriented rock music popular among youth audiences. . . . Sullivan is recognized as one of the most prolific songwriters in Brazilian music history, with over 1,800 recorded songs to his credit, many emphasizing romantic ballads that delve into the emotional intricacies of love, betrayal, and redemption, alongside social commentary on relationships within patriarchal structures and inspirational anthems promoting hope and unity. . . .

https://grokipedia.com/page/michael_sullivan_singer_songwriter

As to his later career, Grokipedia tells us:

launching his solo career in 1976 with the English-language single “My Life,” which served as the theme for the Globo TV novela O Casarão. His breakthrough came through a 16-year partnership with lyricist Paulo Massadas from 1978 to 1994, during which they co-created hundreds of hits . . . . These compositions, often blending melody composition by Sullivan with Massadas’s lyrics, were recorded by major Brazilian artists . . . contributing significantly to the MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) and pop genres. . . . In the late 1970s and 1980s, Sullivan also performed with groups like The Fevers and released solo albums such as Sou Brasileiro (1978) and Michael Sullivan (1979), initially favoring English-sung repertoire akin to Morris Albert. After a hiatus in the 1990s, during which he relocated to Miami to produce international acts including Ricky Martin and Menudo for Sony Latina, he returned to music in 2003 with the collaborative album Duetos. . . . Over his career, Sullivan has penned more than 1,000 compositions, with around 500 becoming major hits, many serving as themes for TV novelas and children’s programs like Trem da Alegria. . . . His production work has resulted in over 60 million disks sold worldwide, earning 600 gold, 240 platinum, and 60 diamond certifications across Brazil and Latin America.

https://grokipedia.com/page/michael_sullivan_singer_songwriter

Grokipedia’s biography of Sullivan is much more expansive, for those who are interested: https://grokipedia.com/page/michael_sullivan_singer_songwriter.

* Wikipedia says:

Jovem Guarda was primarily a Brazilian musical television show first aired . . . in 1965, although the term soon expanded to designate the entire movement and style surrounding it. The members of the program were singers who had been influenced by the American rock n’ roll of the late 1950s and British Invasion bands of the 1960s, although the music often became softer, more naïve versions with light, romantic lyrics aimed at teenagers.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jovem_Guarda

* * Wikipedia says:

Tropicália . . . was a Brazilian art movement that arose in the late 1960s. It was characterized by the amalgamation of Brazilian genres—notably the union of the popular and the avant-garde, as well as the melding of Brazilian tradition and foreign traditions and styles. Contemporarily, tropicália became primarily associated with the musical faction of the movement, which merged Brazilian and African rhythms with British and American psychedelia and rock . . . . The movement was begun by a group of musicians from Bahia . . . . Later the group moved to São Paulo . . . . [T]he 1968 album Tropicália ou Panis et Circencis [Latin for “Bread and Circuses”] . . . served as the movement’s manifesto. . . . The tropicália movement came to fruition at a time when Brazil’s military dictatorship and left-wing ideas held distinct but prominent amounts of power simultaneously. The tropicalists’ rejection of both sides’ version of nationalism (the military’s conservative patriotism and the ineffectual bourgeois anti-imperialism) was met with criticism and harassment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropic%C3%A1lia

Here are Os Jovens:

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

1,875) Appaloosa — “Tulu Rogers”

This “[u]nbelievably gorgeous” song (whose “strings make my heart ache”) (knitchywa, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9GbOcHxGAE) is off of Appaloosa’s sole album (see #463, 674). It “employs Dylanesque prose to describe the titular character who reads John Locke and listens to Sebastian Bach”. (oldscreamo, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/appaloosa/appaloosa/) RDTEN1 astutely notes that “[w]hile Compton’s lyrics were occasionally on the clunky and fey side, I’m sure college English majors were sent into fits of delirium by the sensitivity and insight reflected in numbers like ‘Tulu Rogers'”. (https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/appaloosa/appaloosa/) Indeed — the song sent me into a fit of delirium with its rhapsodizing about Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach and Lost‘s John Locke! RDTEN1 sums up the LP perfectly — “Admittedly the set’s arty and delicate feel coupled with those touchy-feely lyrics spelled instant obscurity, but what a way to go down in flames.” (https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/appaloosa/appaloosa/) Indeed! Singer, songwriter and guitarist John Parker Compton noted that when he was 16, he wrote the song’s lyrics for poetry homework at boarding school. (https://garagehangover.com/john-compton/)

All Music Guide says the LP “bears the heavy scent of the ’60s coffeehouse scene, with overtones of jazz (there’s some nice saxophone work here) and Renaissance minstrel sounds (a la Steeleye Span) threaded through literate, melancholic singer-songwriter fare.” (https://www.allmusic.com/album/appaloosa-mw0000260326)

As to Appaloosa and “folk-baroque”, Richie Unterberger relates:

Although the term somehow didn’t stick as part of standard rock criticism vocabulary, for a while in the late 1960s, there was a vogue of sorts for music that was described in the press as “folk-baroque[]” . . . . folk-oriented material with classical-influenced orchestration. . . . One of the most talented such acts was Appaloosa, whose self-titled 1969 LP matched . . . Compton’s thoughtful, melodic compositions to sympathetic arrangements . . . . In both its combination of instruments and the absence of a drummer, it was a most unusual instrumental lineup for a rock band, even at a time when boundaries and restrictions were routinely bent. The core quartet were bolstered by top session players (including members of Blood, Sweat & Tears [see #765]) and, above all, producer Al Kooper [see #642, 705, 804, 1,447] , who also added a lot of his own keyboards and guitar to the album.

http://www.richieunterberger.com/appaloosa.html

As to Appaloosa’s history and how the band hooked up with Al Kooper, Joslyn Layne explains that:

Compton co-founded the acoustic band Appaloosa with violinist Robin Batteau in the late ’60s. Both musicians had been heavily influenced by the folk scene in their hometown, Cambridge, MA. . . . [and] began playing the coffeehouse circuit together. [Compton] showed up at producer Al Kooper’s Columbia Records office in late 1968, hoping to show him his songs. Uninterested, Kooper [asked] the kid [then 18] to come back some other time. But a little while later, Kooper came in on Compton and Batteau performing for the office secretaries. Finally won over, [he] recorded their demo,* and within a year the newly signed musicians had released an album . . . . Appaloosa soon gave way to a duo project for Compton & Batteau [see #468]. . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/appaloosa-mn0000496918

* Well, maybe, maybe not. Compton told Richie Unterberger that “[m]eeting Al Kooper was just a fluke. We were playing for some secretaries at Columbia while waiting for an appointment. Al Kooper walked by and instantly asked us if we would like to make a demo tape that night.” (http://www.richieunterberger.com/appaloosa.html)

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,200 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

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

1,874) The Monitors — “Bring Back the Love”

How was this James Dean/William Weatherspoon/Brian Holland/Jack Goga written “blazing ballad” (RDTEN1, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the-monitors/greetings-were-the-monitors/) “featuring [future Temptation (see #142) Richard] Street at his best” (Classic Motown, https://classic.motown.com/artist/the-monitors/) not a hit?!

RDTEN1 writes:

Unless you were tone deaf, or simply had no interested in music, even if you didn’t know who The Monitors were, there’s a good chance you’d recognize “Bring Back the Love” as part of the Motown sound. That distinctive production sound was seldom as strong . . . . Moreover, Street seldom sounded as good and the Fagin-Harris backing harmonies were sweet, sweet, sweet.

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the-monitors/greetings-were-the-monitors/

RDTEN1 turns his exasperation as to the fate of the Monitors up to 10!

I’m routinely amazed to discover just how deep and talented the Motown recording roster was. Anyone listening to 1968’s Greetings! We’re the Monitors [their sole LP] is likely to wonder how these guys were so overlooked. Had they been signed by any other label, it’s hard to imagine them meeting with the same indifference that befell them on Motown.

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the-monitors/greetings-were-the-monitors/

Well, my exasperation is turned up to 11!

Richie Unterberger is not exasperated:

Even many knowledgeable Motown fans haven’t heard of, or have barely heard of, the Monitors, despite the group’s five-year stint with the company. Like some other Motown acts who didn’t have an extensive release schedule and barely dented the charts, however, they managed to record quite a bit of material for the label. . . . The problem the Monitors faced commercially, in common with some other obscure Motown acts, was that they didn’t sound different enough or get a song or two strong enough to serve as a hit that would have launched their career. . . . The result was music that, while pleasing, was rather generic Motown. . . . The biggest of their two modest R&B hits, “Greetings (This Is Uncle Sam),” was something of a novelty given currency by the escalating Vietnam War. . . . But it wasn’t enough to lift the Monitors above second-tier or third-tier Motown status . . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/album/say-you!-the-motown-anthology-1963-1968-mw0002145741

Andrew Hamilton tells us about the Monitors:

A short-lived group, the Monitors had only one release on Motown from November 1965 to August 1968. The group consisted of Richard Street, Warren Harris, and Sandra and John Fagin . . . . the Peps, a group including Joe Harris . . . . The Peps, like the Monitors, were exciting live and very visual, but couldn’t translate that to recording success. After Street formed the Monitors with Harris and the Fagins, the group debuted on VIP Records with “Say You,” a coy, sweet ballad that lacked promotion. . . . The next Monitor singles, “Greetings This Is Uncle Sam” and “Since I Lost You Girl,” appeared within several months but did nothing to advance the Monitors’ career. Motown iced them until April 1968 before releasing “Bring Back the Love.” The label then switched the Monitors to its Soul imprint for the group’s final single, “Step by Step,” released in August 1968. Three months later Greetings! We’re the Monitors, originally scheduled for release on VIP, surfaced on the Soul label.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-monitors-mn0000406062#biography

Oh, and “[w]hen Paul Williams was forced to depart The Temptations due to the failing health . . . Richard Street stepped in for him in 1971 and The Monitors’ fate was sealed.” (Doo Wop Heaven, https://doowopheaven.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-monitors-3.html?m=1)

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,200 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

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

1,873) The Individuals — “She’s Gone Away”

How the West(chester) was won!– with a “tough Farfisa-led garage rocker” (Munster Records, https://munster-records.com/en/producto/the-sky-is-falling-the-best-of-johnny-farfisa/) with surf rock notes. Band leader Andy Cahan — aka Johnny Farfisa — wrote this instrumental rave.

Munster Records gives us the Farfisa story:

[Andy] Cahan and his teenage bandmates produced a remarkable set of R&B/garage/blue-eyed soul tracks of outstanding quality . . . . Growing up in the town of New Rochelle, New York, young Andy Cahan got his kicks making horror films using an 8mm movie camera and a Wollensak tape recorder. But Cahan was also a gifted piano player with a good musical ear. Like thousands of American kids, his life changed forever on . . . the day The Beatles debuted on The Ed Sullivan Show. “I was totally amazed at these four guys who could sing and play perfectly and had awesome haircuts, matching suits and very cool boots,” he says. His first surf band The Jaguars became The Tokays, named after a brand of sweet white Hungarian wine. The group started to play some of Andy’s original material, inspired by The Beatles and other British invaders . . . . “Reno Franze and Richie Struts were the lead singers, Sandy Reiner was on drums, Larry Kramer on guitar, and I played the grand piano and organ. There was no bass.” Soon after, Andy made an important change. “The Beatles all played guitars, so I had to either learn guitar or, since I already was a piano/organ player, emulate Mike Smith of The Dave Clark Five [see #208, 320, 411-12, 565, 716] with his red Vox organ. That’s when I traded my old Thomas organ for the new Farfisa Combo Compact red organ. . . . I purchased Beatle boots, as did my band buddies, and we changed the name to The Individuals.” . . . The Individuals worked hard and soon began making a name for themselves. “We rehearsed every day until we were so good that we won three separate Battle of the Bands contests in New Rochelle and other cities in Westchester County, New York.” The group also found time to go into the studio in 1965 and 1966 to record demos . . . . The Individuals broke up around 1967 when Larry Kramer elected to go to college rather than pursue music full-time. Andy, Sandy and Reno reconfigured as The Boys in Dutch, adding Jerry Delesio on guitar, and gigged across the New York area throughout 1967. After that band ran its course, Andy decided to start a new project, Euphorian Railway, with Reno on lead vocals, Vinny Derminity on guitar and vocals, Ken Lennington on bass and vocals, and Frank McConville on drums. Euphorian Railway went into the studio in March 1968 and in one five-hour session cut an album’s worth of original material. . . . [but t]he band was short-lived. In the summer of 1968 Cahan relocated to Los Angeles, where he quickly made a name for himself as a keyboard player and arranger, working with such people as Graham Bond, Dr John [see #177, 769], Chuck Berry [see #361, 886, 1,340], Little Richard, Harry Nilsson [see #1,168, 1,298, 1,854] and Flo & Eddie of The Turtles. He was also a founding member of Geronimo Black, along with ex-Mothers [see #793] Jimmy Carl Black, Denny Walley and Bunk and Buzz Gardner, and one-time Love member Tjay Contrelli. As for his Johnny Farfisa alias, that originated with David Gibson of Moxie Records, who in 1980 released a seven-inch EP of The Individuals’ mid-60s recordings titled Johnny Farfisa’s Greatest Hits: “He was the one who gave me the name Johnny Farfisa from the idea of combining Johnny Rotten and my Farfisa organ!”

https://munster-records.com/en/producto/the-sky-is-falling-the-best-of-johnny-farfisa/

Here’s an aborted vocal demo:

I have added a Facebook page for Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock! If you like what you read and hear and feel so inclined, please visit and “like” my Facebook page by clicking here.

Pay to Play! The Off the Charts Spotify Playlist! + Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock Merchandise

Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term Like Thisfamiliar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).

The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,200 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.

Just click on the first blue block for a month to month subscription or the second blue block for a yearly subscription.