Top of the Poppers ... featuring Alan Caddy ?!?

Surely some mistake? Well, read on...

Over in New Zealand, Top of the Pops recordings were originally issued on a local version of the Hallmark label. Then, in the mid-1970s, Music World took over - the label having been created by budget record entrepreneur, Hoghton Hughes.

Before and after the switch, New Zealand tended not to simply re-issue the UK albums, but instead create their own collections, many of which plugged specific artists in the titles - so, for example, we find albums with novel names such as, 15 Hits of Slade, T Rex, Sweet, 20 Hits of Abba and Other Great Groups, and 20 Hits of the Wombles and Other Pops for Children.

All good fun, of course, and fitting in with these was the 1973 LP, The Top of the Poppers Present Elvis Gold: 16 of The King's Greatest Hits. Here's the cover:

This album was issued by Hallmark New Zealand, before Music World became involved. What's odd, is that even by the close of 1973, The Top of the Poppers only had 13 cover versions of Elvis hits to compile. Yet the album promises 16 titles - so how did they do that?

The answer may surprise you - the album contains only three Top of the Pops recordings ("Polk Salad Annie"; "I'm Leavin'" and "Burning Love"). The rest of the tracks? One was borrowed from Hallmark's Revived 45s album (and was previously issued as a 45 on the Embassy label) - namely, "Surrender" - but the other 12 consist of the whole of this LP:

Yes, indeed. The bulk of the New Zealand album purporting to be by the Top of the Poppers actually had nothing to do with them! For those who don't know, Ross McManus was a modestly successful singer better known today for the fact that he was Elvis Costello's father. (This album was once re-issued on CD as Elvis's Dad Sings Elvis!)

(Bear with us, we're getting to the Alan Caddy bit...)

Come 1975, the Music World label had superseded Hallmark New Zealand, so far as Top of the Pops was concerned, and among the many interesting records which were issued, was this one - The Top of the Poppers Present Elvis' 20 Golden Hits.

Now, the proprietors of this blog, and the Top of the Pops fan website, have known about the LP for several years. But without full scans of the cover and labels, we did not know the track listing - until now. Buying Top of the Pops albums from such far-flung places is an expensive hobby, so when a copy turned up on Ebay from a UK seller, at a bargain price, we felt we should snap it up. What we discovered came as a surprise...

This LP contains all the material on the earlier New Zealand record, but contains four additional tracks: "Promised Land"; "Fool"; "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me" and "Rags To Riches". All of these songs were to be found on earlier Top of the Pops albums, so one might suppose they were the source.

Well in fact, that was true for three of them - "Promised Land"; "Fool" and "Rags To Riches". But when it comes to "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me", the Music World label eschewed the Poppers' recording from volume 15, and substituted a completely different soundalike cover version. Some intrepid detective work (ie, we listened to it) revealed this is none other than the recording by Alan Caddy, which was originally released in 1971 on the following Avenue label LP:

So what's the deal? We have to confess, we have no idea. Firstly, there's no obvious reason why the bona-fide Top of the Pops version would be ignored; and secondly, how did Music World manage to get the master tape of Alan Caddy's recording? And could the switch somehow have been a mistake? It's hard to see how!

Whatever the story, this is a possibly unique example of an Alan Caddy track being issued under the name The Top of the Poppers!

We might also mention that research into overseas releases is not always easy, and it's often the case that one discovery leads to more. In this instance, we were able to identify three other Top of the Poppers releases from the listing on the back:

 Hopefully, one day, copies of these will also surface.  Maybe they too hold surprises for us...

Bowie tribute LP arrives.

We were delighted last week to get out hands on a copy of the much-anticipated David Bowie LP issued by Electronic Sound magazine: The Top of the Poppers Sing and Play the Hits of David Bowie.

As detailed in our last post, it compiles nine tracks from the Top of the Pops albums and is the first new vinyl release from the series in 33 years. Check out the fabulous purple vinyl!

Of course Poppers fans will know exactly what the record contains - nine cover versions bridging across Bowie's 1970s output, from "Space Oddity" through to "Fashion".

This LP is certain to become highly collectable, and I would recommend snapping a copy up while you can. And while you're at it, check out the mag as well, which carries an article about the Top of the Pops series by (ahem) a certain collector and blogger.

Mag and vinyl are available here: https://electronicsound.co.uk/

Top of the Poppers Sing & Play David Bowie!

If you thought another vinyl Top of the Poppers LP would never appear, then, like me, you were wrong.

Details have started emerging on the internet of a forthcoming vinyl LP, Top of the Poppers Sing & Play the Hits of David Bowie, issued by the Electronic Sound label.

Check out the groovy coloured vinyl as well:

The record is not available yet, but I would recommend anyone interested place a pre-order here as these are bound to become collectors' items, and likely to be limited editions.

The track listing is:

• Starman (from TOTP volume 25)
• Life On Mars? (from TOTP volume 32)
• Sorrow (from TOTP volume 34)
• The Man Who Sold The World (from TOTP volume 36)
• TVC15 (from TOTP volume 52) 

• Space Oddity (from TOTP volume 48)
• Heroes (from TOTP volume 62)
• Boys Keep Swinging (from TOTP volume 73)
• Fashion (from TOTP volume 83)
 

 More info will be posted here in due course...

Bill Wellings - did he start his own label??

A short while ago, we were contacted by Clive Hetherington about an album he had chanced upon, called "Top Hits of '72". here are some images of the LP in question:

If the model on the sleeve looks vaguely familiar, it's because we've seen her before, on the Deacon label's "Top Hits of the Year" for 1971:

So what have we here? Initially, this looks to be a typical LP of soundalike cover versions on some obscure label - International Hits Series London - so maybe this is an overseas release? The tracks on the album look familiar to us, even if the label does not - all of them were also included in the "Hot Hits" series - ranging across volumes 9 (January 1972) to 12 (July 1972).

Clive kindly did some sound checks to compare, and was able to confirm that these are the very same recordings. Of course, we didn't realise at first, but this could be one of our most significant finds for a long while.

What Clive has found is a previously unknown compilation from mfp's "Hot Hits" series, which appears in fact to be a UK release, as we shall see. This is amazing enough to a seasoned collector like myself, but is just the tip of an iceberg or two, which we need to explore in more detail.

First of all, there is a Canadian edition of this in existence too. This was released on the Arc label:

Highlighted above is the small print on the back of the sleeve (not stated on the UK edition) - "A BWD Production". This is the more obvious clue that these recordings are from the mfp stable. So is Clive's LP really a hitherto unknown UK album? I think so!

The International Hits Series London released several others which look very much like editions or compilations of Bill Wellings' mfp material. Here are some more examples:

"Soul Hits", "Million Seller Hits", "Smash Hits Presley Style" and so on - this could be mfp itself, in some parallel universe! More significantly, Clive's album is catalogue-numbered BW 012 - while the other six examples above are numbered BW 004; BW 005; BW 016; BW 018; BW 023; BW 027.

These are clearly Bill Wellings' recordings - and the catalogue numbers starting BW, his initials, surely point to this being Bill's very own label! This being so, how has it escaped our attention for so long???

If I have convinced you, I'm about to throw a spanner in the works. This is bothering me, and I would like to know the whole story...

Check out the last of the images above. "Smash Hits Presley Style" was almost issued on mfp in the UK, but the last three tracks are different. Here's the standard edition we know and love:

The trouble is, Bill Wellings' own edition (if that's what it is) was issued in Italy on the Broadway label:

Why does this matter? Because Broadway issued a long run of albums, many of them nothing to do with Bill Wellings, or mfp for that matter. In fact, we featured one on this blog just a few days ago (here). Broadway, and Broadway International, used the same catalogue prefix BW (presumable short for "BroadWay")... so perhaps BW does not stand for Bill Wellings, and the albums on the International Hits Series London label are just re-issues of Italian albums?

It's impossible to be sure, but my hunch is that they are the creation of Bill himself, and the coincidence of the "BW" catalogue numbers is just that - a coincidence.

Looking at the Italian album above, it has the Broadway logo on the front, but also that of the International Hits Series London label - what's that doing there if Broadway were the original issuers? Surely it implies International Hits Series London were the creators of the album? And similar logic applies to that Canadian press of "Top Hits of '72" - it mentions BWD, but nowhere does it mention Broadway. So in both cases, the overseas editions point back to the UK for their source, and not at each other.

So, we can cautiously conclude that Bill was indeed behind the International Hits Series London label - his own outlet, with his initials given in the catalogue numbers!! Clive's discovery is not just a hitherto unknown compilation, but a hitherto unknown label and whole series of albums containing our celebrated cover versions.

As a point of interest, here is mfp's year round-up for 1972. Only a couple of tracks duplicate Bill's selection (and in fact half of mfp's album is all-new, rather than being compiled from the usual albums - which is perhaps a clue to the fact that two labels were going at once in the UK).

One final thing to note - Clive's album was pressed on the same nearly black vinyl we have covered several times lately, which is in fact coloured when held up to a strong light. Here's an image:

What an amazing new find. Moments like this make me realise how little I really know about all this! Despite the confusion of the Broadway label, I do believe we have documented a Bill Wellings UK label for the first time. Please help us with any info you may have, so we can get to the bottom of it all!

Thanks to Clive for flagging this all up to us.

Copycat ... er ... Covers - part 5

Another installment of our ongoing series of blog posts, bringing together cover version and budget LP sleeves which resemble other cover version LPs. We'll kick off this selection with some overseas albums using similar artwork to our own UK covers LPs...

First up, the Boulevard LP, "16 Hit Songs", which is in fact volume 1 of what would become Flag's "World Top 12" series. Below are four annual releases from the US, rounding up cover versions of summer hits. Notice how on the fourth they have simply discarded the cover model!

Next, to Stereo Gold Award's "12 Tops" series. The cover of volume 8 featured a model who would shortly turn up on the front of the German album, Tanz-Party 2 - the photo is from the same session:

"12 Chart Buster Hits" volume 15 was issued in the UK by Pye around Easter 1975. Probably around the same time, volume 4 of "Special Disco Party" was released in Israel, with the same photo on the front:

Next up is Rediffusion's "Hit Parade Special" volume 8. There are two overseas albums with similar photos. The first is the German LP, "Amarillo", the second an Australian album called "The Hits of Simon & Garfunkel", which we've featured before in this series, but which is worth juxtaposing with the other two; the photo has been flipped over:

Another one we've seen before is the Israeli album below left, which has a similar cover photo to that used on Contour's "16 Chart Hits" volume 10. We're re-running it here as we've found a third: "Top Hit Famous Theme From Films", which we believe is an Italian release.

...which leads us nicely onto the UK/UK examples below, the first of which features another photo from the session. Here, the model's swapped her hat for a fag. (No chance that would be allowed these days!)

The rest of these don't need much introduction. They are all UK albums with similar or identical photographs on the covers...

Check back here for another installment in a few days' time...