It's been a while since I went crate digging, but old habits die hard, and this weekend while attending a village fete, I had a rummage through an LP box at a brick-a-brack stall. Up popped this very rare record:
It's none other than volume 11 of the Plexium label's 'Nonstop top 20'. The fact that a copy had evaded me for so long is testament to its scarcity. If only there were more cover version fans out there, it would be worth something! (I grabbed it for 50p.)
This was the last LP in the series, appearing in the spring of 1973, as the cover version industry started to go into decline. There are no fake audience effects on this LP (as there were on earlier instalments in the series) but the tracks are closed up, so there is no pause between them.
Something which I wondered about was where these tracks came from. On the face of it, they are Plexium original recordings, but it was often the case that the smaller labels would share tracks or lease them in, especially when sales were dwindling and budgets were tight. What struck me reading through the listing, was the coincidence of so many titles to the mfp album, Hot Hits 17, which was one I had when I was a kid.
The two LPs have the following songs in common:
Cum On Feel The Noize
Tie A Yellow Ribbon
The Twelfth Of Never
By The Devil (I Was Tempted)
Killing Me Softly With His Song
20th Century Boy
Feel The Need In Me
Pinball Wizard
Power To All Our Friends
Never Never Never
Yep, 10 of the 12 tracks on the mfp album also appear on the Plexium set. So they have to be the same recordings, right? Wrong. They are different - much to my surprise.
Not to be beaten, I next turned to Mike Morton's current RCA album, Non Stop Hits volume 5, to see if that's where they originated.
There's plenty of cross-over here too. Plexium and RCA both selected the following:
Cum On Feel The Noize
Killing Me Softly With His Song
20th Century Boy
Feel The Need In Me
Looking Through The Eyes Of Love
Pinball Wizard
That's six songs in total - half the RCA LP, in other words. And once again, they are different.
Incidentally, I noted above how 10 of the 12 mfp titles were on the Plexium LP. The two that weren't - Gonna Make You An Offer You Can't Refuse and Doctor My Eyes - are also on the RCA album!
I must confess, it's a real mystery to me why the cover version albums
so often duplicated so much material. Of all the singles in the charts,
they repeatedly selected the same narrow set of hits, as illustrated
again here.
I did also check the current Top of the Pops album - more cross-overs abound, but yet different recordings once again.
The shared titles between Plexium and Top of the Pops are:
Cum On Feel The Noize
Tweedle Dee
Tie A Yellow Ribbon
The Twelfth Of Never
20th Century Boy
Get Down
Love Train
Power To All Our Friends
So, you can see all four albums contain their own versions of several identical tracks. Not exactly giving listeners a USP, but I suppose popular hits like Cum On Feel The Noize and 20th Century Boy were just impossible to skip.
As for the following, you can check them yourself to see if any of the recordings match up! I haven't done so - there aren't enough hours in the day...
So, there it is. The end of the line for Nonstop Top 20, with its sad-looking cover, which doesn't even carry a picture. And so far as I know, that was the end of the Plexium label too.
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...
Back in 1968 (we think!) mfp took the extraordinary step of re-issuing their first four budget cover version albums in a special box set - containing the albums, Hits '67, Smash Hits, Heart Hits and Hits '68.
Some years ago I spotted one online and bought it - I have never seen or heard of another copy anywhere until now. Remarkably, one of these mega-rare box sets is up for sale on Ebay:
More info on this box set can be found here. And here's an old blog post I did about my own copy back in 2012.
For a reasonable £29 plus shipping, this holy grail for cover version fans can be yours if you're quick. Here's a link to the Ebay listing.
It looks to be in reasonable condition, with some light wear and tear, and also has the original printed insert. Judging by the photos, the inner sleeves are later, but could easily be swapped for plain white ones, as originally issued. And some sticker removal would be in order for at least one of the record labels! Nonetheless, a great item for someone out there.
Another in our series of occasional posts, which crop up when a Top of the Pops LP makes a cameo appearance in the media.
This time out, we spotted one of the LPs in the popular British TV show, Hollyoaks, a sort-of adolescent soap opera screened in the early evenings. OK, we don't normally watch the show, and don't know much about it, but our research reveals the following:
Down in "Hollyoaks Village" is an "emporium" (a junk shop) staffed by the character, Liberty Savage. The episode screened on Valentine's Day this year saw Liberty having a tense conversation with her sister, inside the emporium, and here's what we noticed:
There it is - just behind her - Top of the Pops volume 26.
For some reason, they've stuck a big pink label over the model's face. Something's written on it, but we can't make out what!
Here's the original LP sleeve:
Next to it on the shelf is a Contour album, which may well be another budget cover version LP. Impossible to say. We don't recognise the red album sleeve behind it, but then again, it doesn't necessarily belong to the disc anyway.
Watch out for more 'Top of the Spots' - and if you see any yourself, drop us a line.
Spare Snare are (according to Wiki) a long-standing lo-fi band from Dundee, Scotland. Recently, one of the group got in touch about a record they had released back in 2015 - a single titled "Spare Snare Sing Billordo", containing two tracks, No Quise Angustiarte / More Action Heroes.
The songs are great, but the reason it finds its way onto this blog is because of the artwork on the sleeve and label. So, without further ado...
Pretty cool, eh? (Red vinyl too!) Our thanks to Jan of Spare Snare - check them out.
Top of the Pops collectors won't need to be told where the artwork originated, but here anyway are the original sleeves:
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/
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.
This week, I was contacted by collector, Benn Elsey, with details of a Top 4 EP, produced by Bill Wellings and featuring a couple of Lennon-McCartney songs on side 1.
At first, it was unclear what Benn had found - so far as we knew, there were only ever four of these EPs released, and none had "She Loves You" or "Bad To Me" on - so this would be a brand-new discovery.
What we are looking at is T4505 - the fifth EP in the Top 4 series, previously uncatalogued and not known to exist!
The Top 4 label was a cousin to the Top 6 label, whose EPs contained six tracks. Top 4 would take a quartet of them and issue them again - presumably at a cheaper price. Here, then, is the corresponding Top 6 edition, which also has versions of "I'll Never Get Over You" and "In Summer".
Dating the disc is reasonably easy, since it would have appeared while the hit versions were current. We therefore place it circa August 1963.
Great find - our thanks to Benn for the info and images.
July 2018. We couldn’t let this time pass without marking a
very important anniversary: Top of the Pops, the best and most famous series of
cover version albums is 50 years old! It would go on to enjoy some 92 standard
editions, not to mention copious spin-off releases, but here we will focus on
the first of them: Top of the Pops volume 1.
We don’t know the exact release date for this debut LP, but
it was right around now, five decades ago, that it hit the bargain record racks
of Britain.
Let’s start by listing the tracks, and where the original
versions got to in the singles charts:
Young Girl – Originally a hit for The Union Gap Featuring
Gary Puckett (No. 1)
My Name Is Jack – Originally a hit for Manfred Mann (No. 8)
Can't Take My Eyes Off You – Originally a hit for Andy
Williams (No. 5)
Blue Eyes – Originally a hit for Don Partridge (No. 3)
Something Here In My Heart – Originally a hit for The Paper
Dolls (No. 11)
Jennifer Eccles – Originally a hit for The Hollies (No. 7)
Do You Know The Way To San
Jose – Originally a hit for Dionne Warwick (No. 8)
I Can't Let Maggie Go – Originally a hit for Honeybus (No.
8)
Lovin' Things – Originally a hit for Marmalade (No. 6)
Where Is Tomorrow – Originally a hit for Cilla Black (No.
39)
La La La – Originally a hit for Massiel (No. 35)
Boy – Originally a hit for Lulu (No. 15)
Top of the shop is “Young Girl”, which had been number 1 for
most of June 1968. Here’s the Top of the Pops version, the very first thing
most purchasers would have heard when their new LP smashed down onto the
turntable, and the automatic arm jerked its way across to the vinyl…
Top of the Pops, of course, was not the first such series to
launch. Apart from mfp’s ‘Hits’ albums, the most important competition came
from the Marble Arch label, and their ongoing Chart Busters series, which
happened to hit instalment number three right around now. So, along with Top of
the Pops volume 1, buyers had the choice of the following LP:
Note how it too contained a version of “Young Girl”. Top of
the Pops were, of course, keenly aware of this rival offering, and it’s
interesting to read the sleeve notes on the back of the album, which take a sly
dig at the Chart Busters series:
Welcome to the 'Pop'
scene, here we present a wonderful bunch of 'Pop' goodies. All the songs on
this record are 'Chart-Busters' and we take great pleasure in reproducing them
for you using the swinging-est bunch of talent on the scene. Switch on and we
dare you to try and SIT through both sides.
In terms of recording Top of the Pops, it seems the early
editions were made at Marquee Studios in Soho,
under direction of Bruce Baxter. We once heard from the engineer on that very
first edition, Gery Collins, who recalled his work on volume 1 and the next few
editions which followed:
“I engineered the first TOTP album. To help date it, I know ‘Do
You Know the Way to San Jose’,
was on it. I'd only been with the Marquee for about nine months when Allan
booked us. The studio then really was stretching its facilities to burst to accommodate
such a large session. In fact, I remember the session men were in the studio and
the backing singers were hastily located in the adjoining studio office and
stairs up to the loo. Picture it if you can as you listen to the track…”
(and here it is, for you to do just that!)
Gery continues, “Bruce Baxter was the MD, and I believe the
arranger was called Andrew Jackman. As I stated, the basic rhythm, brass and
strings were laid down on an Ampex four-track machine. Yes, just four tracks! Sometimes
we pre-mixed the four across to three tracks of a Leevers Rich half-inch tape
machine, leaving one track free for vocals.”
The link between these recording artists and the Hallmark
label remains a little sketchy. It seems that Hallmark purchased the tapes, rather
than having funded them themselves, and set about putting the LP package
together. One conundrum Gery couldn’t solve when we asked, was how there came
to be stereo versions of some of these tracks in circulation; although the Top
of the Pops album was issued in mono, there exists a little-known LP without a
title, which was released on the Uni-Zel label at around the time, and which
contains nine of the recordings – in glorious stereo!
I asked Gery about this, but he was not sure how this
obscure LP came to be: “I’ve not heard of Uni-Zel. The original four-track
would have been mastered on half-inch tape, and mixed down, I’m pretty sure, to
mono. Allan [Crawford, the man behind the series] was a business-minded,
no-frills man. Don’t think he would bother then with stereo. At that time,
I know from contemporary engineers that stereo was not widely accepted for pop
singles as many thought the stereo detracted from the audio impact that mono
would give… maybe Hallmark leased the master to Uni-Zel and they remixed it
into stereo?”
Whatever the back-story, Hallmark needed to create a
striking cover for the forthcoming record, and when it emerged, it was housed in
a bright orange sleeve which couldn’t be missed! The cover design would become
iconic, and established a standard for cover version LPs from then on.
The man behind the design was Bill Graham, who worked for
Pickwick International and was in charge of the small creative studio, based in
Victoria Works, Cricklewood, designing the label’s regular sleeve art:
“I remember when the MD (Monty Lewis) briefed me on the
project. I had a couple of hours to come up with a design using an existing
photograph that, quote, ‘could be seen from the other side of Victoria
Station’.”
The photograph supplied to Bill was one which Pickwick had
used previously, on the US
album, The In Crowd – a collection of
original hit recordings:
Bill recalls, “The first picture, the girl in the cap, was
supplied to me. I can’t remember now in what form, but it was probably a
transparency. Most of the covers I worked on were photographed specially in a
small photographers in Gerrard Street.
The problem was that these were produced very quickly, the design studio had
limited facilities and remember it all relied on the printers re-touching
(I believe at film stage) to achieve any cut-outs, so sometimes it could be a
little crude especially with the hair (How easy it is now with computers).”
So contrary to popular belief, the models were not cut out
and stuck onto coloured backgrounds; rather, the colours were painted around them. Of course, there was an
issue with this particular photo in that Bill needed to select a bright, bold
colour, but the model’s hair was in jet-black shadow. Consequently, it was
subjected to an unusual cropping effect, to the left as we look!
This image, by the way, was re-used when the Best-of
collection form 1969 was assembled the following year. Here she is again, with her hair restored!
Key to getting the series launched was the title, Top of the
Pops. As Bill recalls, “We knew that the most important thing was the name and
its connection to the BBC program.” And apart from that photo, Bill also had to
come up with the logo for the albums:
“For the record, the font, Cooper Black, at that stage did
not have the outline I required – so I had to draw it, which I can say I did
not enjoy. I wanted it because the white and dark outline would ensure the
title would show up whatever the background.”
Thus, Bill’s idea for the style of lettering allowed any and
every variety of colour scheme to be used, which indeed it was. Bill had
immediately created a design classic, the basic template for which would remain
unchanged into the 1980s. “Nobody realised how popular it would be, and that
the series would continue so long. My format was hardly changed for many years.”
And here we are, half a century on, still celebrating that
first Top of the Pops LP. What followed is well-known. Top of the Pops ultimately
accounted for almost a hundred full albums, all freshly recorded and containing
over one and a quarter thousand individual cuts. That’s pushing a hundred
tracks a year. Check the little coloured panels on the front and you will see
lists of song titles which provide documentation of what was hot, and
occasionally what was not, in each six- or eight-week micro-era, which taken as
an entirety, charts the development of popular music through well over a
decade, bridging from the 1960s to the 1980s.
We salute Top of the Pops on this 50th anniversary, and the
people who worked behind the scenes to make it happen.
Happy Birthday Top of the Pops!
And finally, one last cut from the LP, for your delectation:
