Popsicles, Icicles and More: Ace Collects The Best of The Murmaids

Item: Popsicles, Icicles and More: Ace Collects The Best of The Murmaids
Author: Joe Marchese

Ace Records has recently made quite a splash with the first-ever comprehensive compendium from one-hit wonder girl group The Murmaids. But as the collection so accurately titled A Few of the Things We Love reveals, the girls had more to offer than just "Popsicles and Icicles." This collection is pure girl group manna!

That nostalgic composition by the young David Gates, pre-"Make It with You" and "Baby I'm a-Want You" fame, of course kicks off this 21-track anthology comprising The Murmaids' recordings for the Chattahoochee and Liberty labels. The 1963 No. 3 hit (which topped the Record World chart only to be displaced by a little ditty from across the pond called "I Want to Hold Your Hand") for the independent Chattahoochee label was produced by notorious musical hustler Kim Fowley and recorded at the renowned Gold Star Studios by its owner/engineer Stan Ross; Fowley and Ross are just two of the pop greats who crossed paths with The Murmaids in their brief career. Note that this disc doesn't feature just the original teenaged trio of sisters Terry and Carol Fischer and friend Sally Gordon, but happily chronicles the various incarnations of the group.

A Few of the Things We Love surprisingly doesn't take a chronological approach to The Murmaids' recordings, though the booklet notes by Sam Szczepanski does tell their story in a linear fashion. As a complete survey of their 1960s recordings, it includes all of their Chattahoochee and Liberty singles, as well as outtakes that appeared on vinyl much later. The notes straighten out the checkered history of Murmaids releases; "Popsicles," for one thing, was released with four different B-sides. One of them, the martial "Comedy and Tragedy," is here, but was sung by an entirely different group of five girls. Two - "Bunny Stomp" and "Huntington Flats" - were instrumentals with no Murmaids involvement, and thus didn't make the cut here. Only "Blue Dress" actually featured The Murmaids!

Fowley and Gates attempted to recapture the waifish teen "Popsicles" sound on the ballad "Heartbreak Ahead" with a similarly sweet feel and arrangement, this time by the Wrecking Crew's Ray Pohlman instead of Nestor La Bonte (real name: Kent Harris). Backed by the pretty Pohlman-arranged B-side "He's Good to Me," it merely "Bubbled Under" the Hot 100. Around this time, Fowley recorded one of the ultra-rare treats here: a rendition of Gerry and the Pacemakers' "How Do You Do It," credited to The Lady-Bugs...a.k.a. Terry and Carol Fischer and none other than Jackie DeShannon!

No surprise that The Murmaids' third A-side, "Wild and Wonderful" from Brill Building scribes Mark Barkan and Ben Raleigh, has a bit of a breezy Lesley Gore feel; Barkan and Raleigh had penned the New Jersey teen's Top 5 hit "She's a Fool." Produced by Chattahoochee's Ruth Conte and arranged by Perry Botkin Jr., the melodic and bright "Wild and Wonderful" had all the hallmarks of a hit record. It was backed by Sam Friedman's offbeat "Bull Talk," also with Botkin arranging and Ross at the controls, but the track - with the girls singing in a pig Latin-esque teen argot - remains a novelty-esque curio. Fowley would return to the Murmaids fold for the 1965 single "Little White Lies" (the Walter Donaldson standard) b/w his own, slightly cloying "Stuffed Animals," but those tracks weren't the work of the original group but rather of Sally Gordon, Cathy Brasher and Yvonne Vaughan.

The Stan Silver-produced "Go Away," featuring the Gordon/Brasher/Vaughan lineup of The Murmaids, showcased a more contemporary, driving sound perfect for 1966. (Also in this vein but from the original trio is the uptempo "Don't Forget" which didn't see release until 1980 on the LP The Mermaids [sic] Resurface along with odds and ends included here like fun covers of The Shepherd Sisters' 1957 hit "Alone" and The Chordettes' "Mr. Sandman," as well as another "Popsicles" clone, "Three Little Words." One track, "Playmates," even casts the girls in a '50s tight-harmony, cocktail jazz mode with tinkling piano and vibes.) The most atypical track on the set may be The Murmaids' stellar cover of Traffic's "Paper Sun," produced on the Liberty label in 1968 by the returning Kim Fowley with Sally Gordon and two unidentified fellow Murmaids. But "Paper Sun" and its flipside, Michael Lloyd's moody, reflective "Song Through Perception," marked the end of The Murmaids...at least, for a few decades.

Terry Fischer continued her music career, joining the Brasil '66-esque bossa nova/pop group The Carnival and singing with Fabian and later, Sam Butera and the Witnesses, on their 1977 tour opening for Frank Sinatra. In the late 1990s, Terry and Carol reformed The Murmaids, and in 2001, the reconstituted group even released a new album. Ace's compilation, beautifully remastered by Nick Robbins in original mono and featuring the label's usual impressive packaging, pays fine tribute to the sweet, if short-lived, recording career of The Murmaids. It will doubtless be one of the things you love, too!

The Murmaids, A Few of the Things We Love: The Chattahoochee Recordings and More (Ace CDTOP 1459, 2015) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)