Another early one from Concert Hall...

A couple of weeks ago, I posted details of a very early covers album on the Concert Hall label, Hit Parade 1963. Although the label seems mainly to have been interested in classical music, I have since discovered another album released by them, also filled with pop hits. This one's from 1964, and is broadly contemporary with a few other pioneering covers albums released at the time.

It's called Pick of the Pops, but of course had nothing to do with the later series of the same name on the Deacon label. This album, like the earlier Concert Hall LP, has specific acts named on the cover, all of whom appear to be bona fide artistes, albeit largely session men and women, and/or acts associated with live radio. In other words, not popular recording artists in their own right. (As for the backing group, The Comets, I can only assume they are nothing to do with Bill Haley!)

The track listing is interesting. There are two Beatles songs on the set, one ("Long Tall Sally") from their current hit EP and another ("Hard Day's Night") their current hit single. Neither of these are soundalikes though, consisting instead of instrumental versions. There's also a couple of tracks which were not hits at all ("Night In Madrid" and "Dreambeat"), both written by someone called Clynan, who in fact turns out to be a writer associated with the Concert Hall label itself. It is not known if either of these songs was recorded elsewhere.

As for the rest, they are soundalikes, or, it might be more accurate to say, 'in the style of' the hit artists. By way of example, here's this LP version of "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself", classic Bacharach-David, which was taken into the UK charts by Dusty Springfield. It's easy to spot the difference, but fair play to Concert Hall and the lead vocalist Rosemary Scott, for having a stab at this challenging track:

I Just Dont Know What To Do.mp3

All the songs on this album which were hits, entered the UK charts in May to August, 1964, giving a pretty accurate release date of circa September of that year. 

Hit Parade 1963

A while ago, I posed the question of when the hit cover LP started. 1964 seemed to be something of a turning point, but I recently found the LP below, which dates to 1963 - and the first half of the year, at that.

 

This album was released on the Concert Hall label, which was mainly involved in releasing classical music, pressed in high quality, in short print runs. This digression into the world of the pop charts seems to have been something of an experiment; Concert Hall had a related label called Pop Parade, which specialised in EPs containing no fewer than eight tracks each, and these too contained chart hit cover versions. In fact, some are known from 1962 so they comfortably pre-date this LP.

It seems, from looking at the track listings and the artists who are claimed/credited on the sleeves, that this LP is partly or wholly compiled from the EP series. Below are four sample EPs on Pop Parade which contain songs also found on the LP - I've not had a chance to hear them, but I'll bet they are the same recordings...

The LP itself contains 16 tracks, including a fair few from Cliff and/or the Shadows. Of the 16 titles, no fewer than five entered the UK charts in March 1963, and none later than this, and so we can speculate that the LP was released in April/May of that year. Is this the earliest UK release of chart hit soundalikes? Tell us, if you know different! And were there any more released by the label?

I did consider uploading a sample track, but since the best thing on the LP is probably a version of "Bachelor Boy", I decided to spare readers. Thank goodness the Beatles arrived in 1963 to save the UK pop industry!!

I couldn't leave this blog post without reproducing the sleeve notes, since they are so similar in style to the later budget LP-style notes:

Here are some of the "top pops" of 1963, together with one or two "classics" like Samantha and St. Louis Blues, sung and played in the fashion of today. Needless to say, there's plenty of the ever-popular guitar, and The Highlights vocal group - famous for their numerous TV and radio appearances - are featured in several numbers. The Pop Paraders and The Timebeats include many of Britain's finest instrumentalists, and singers Rita Williams, Barbara Moore and Charles Young are much in demand whenever there is a "pop session" in view.