Am I Dreaming? Cherry Red’s RPM Label Collects Pop, Soul, Prog, and More on Collector-Aimed Box Sets
Cherry Red’s RPM imprint has recently touched on a variety of genres in a trio of 3-CD box sets which are small in size but chock full of rare musical offerings.
Am I Dreaming? 80 Brit Girl Sounds of the ’60s draws on a diverse range of Brit girl styles including pop, rock, folk, mod, R&B, and psychedelia. It showcases how Motown and the Brill Building sounds traveled across the Atlantic, as well as uniquely homegrown British sounds. RPM previously chronicled this era on eight volumes of Dream Babes, released between 1994 and 2007, and this box is positioned as an honorary concluding chapter of that series. (The title Am I Dreaming? even graced the first Dream Babes volume.) As such, none of the tracks are repeated from Dream Babes, and in fact, five songs are previously unreleased.
While the emphasis here is on rarities, there are, naturally, some big names peppered throughout. Dusty Springfield appears as a member of folk-pop group The Springfields with “Come on Home,” and then as a solo artist with her own self-penned B-side, “Something Special.” Petula Clark is represented by “Baby It’s Me,” a pre-“Downtown” cut also written and produced by Tony Hatch under his “Mark Anthony” nom de plume, as well as by her own “Love is a Long Journey.” Hatch’s future wife and collaborator, Jackie Trent, is heard on a Pye cut from before their partnership began: “I Heard Somebody Say” from writer Chris Andrews, before his own creative partnership began with singer Sandie Shaw, included here via her striking rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Your Time is Gonna Come.” No Brit girl comp would be complete without an appearance by Cilla Black, whose 1963 recording of “A Shot of Rhythm and Blues” from her very first Parlophone recording session showcases her raw, young voice. Cilla also gets a hearing on her rip-roaring cover of the Motown staple “(Love is Like a) Heatwave.”
Marianne Faithfull, Lulu, Lesley Duncan, and Kiki Dee all make appearances here, as well as future Fleetwood Mac member Christine Perfect (later Christine McVie) and an early track from “Right Back Where We Started From” singer Maxine Nightingale. There are songs by Tony Macaulay (Cinnamon’s “Broken Hearted Me, Evil Hearted You”), Teddy Randazzo (Sylvia McNeill’s “Catch a Robber by the Sea”), Chip Taylor and Al Gorgoni (Judi Scott’s “Billy Sunshine”), Smokey Robinson (Louise Cordet’s take on Mary Wells’ “Two Lovers”), Van McCoy (The Carrolls’ “We’re In This Thing Together”), and Gerry Goffin and Russ Titelman (Cheryl St. Clair’s “My Heart’s Not in It”). Compiled by Michael Robson and producer Mark Stratford, and remastered by Simon Murphy, this set beautifully captures the exciting stylistic breadth of these young artists in the most vibrant musical decade of the rock era. Housed in a clamshell box, it includes a thick, 36-page booklet with track-by-track liner notes as well as essays from Bob Stanley and Ian Chapman.
Night Comes Down roughly tackles the same period of time, but its attention is focused on ’60s British Mod, R&B, Freakbeat, and Swinging London Nuggets. This set continues from the past releases Looking Back and Keep Lookin’ (as well as U.S. counterpart Looking Stateside) and includes gems from some artists covered in individual compilations on RPM (and reported on here at The Second Disc) including The Bo Street Runners, The Mike Cotton Sound, The Mickey Finn, Guy Darrell, The Tomcats, The Spencer Davis Group, and The Stormsville Shakers, among others.
Though the set isn’t sequenced strictly chronologically, it does take listeners through the development of those Swinging London sounds, from early rock-and-roll and R&B through mod, garage punk, and, later, psychedelia and sunshine pop – – with a dash of jazz, as heard on cuts by Cotton (“Like That”), Mark Wirtz (the lounge take on “Comin’ Home Baby”) and Sounds Incorporated (“How Do You Feel”). These tracks come from the vaults of Ember, Chapter One, Parlophone, Pye, Decca, MGM, Mercury, RCA Victor, U.K. Columbia, and many other labels.
There’s a youthful spirit to these often rough-and-tumble tracks. Among the more well-known names here are the aforementioned Spencer Davis Group, The Moody Blues, Chad and Jeremy, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and even Twiggy. Mike D’Abo of Manfred Mann shows up with his early group A Band of Angels on “Gonna Make a Woman of You” as well as on “Going Going Gone,” a collaboration with Mike Hurst. Future Deep Purple guitar hero Ritchie Blackmore can be heard wailing on “Big Fat Spider” as a member of The Wild Boys, backing Joe Meek protégé Heinz. Glenda Collins, another artist with the Meek imprimatur, offers “You’re Gonna Get Your Way,” recorded with The Riot Squad Many cues, of course, came from the likes of The Who or The Kinks, but there’s a Beach Boys influence on the cuts by The Cymbaline and Tony Rivers and the Castaways. Future Beatles associate and Apple Records artist Jackie Lomax’s “Give What You Take” is reprised here from RPM’s comprehensive look at Lomax, Lost Soul.
A 36-page booklet tells the story of each and every one of these artists via detailed track-by-track notes, and compiler John Reed has also offered a personal reminiscence of discovering much of this music. Simon Murphy at Another Planet Music has again remastered.
Lastly, the label takes aim at Dancefloor Prog, Brit Jazz, and Funky Folk (1968-1975) with One Way Glass, an intriguing collection of groove-based rarities from, mainly, the mod and progressive rock eras – employing soul, R&B, funk and jazz rhythms into the rock sound. As compiler John Reed writes in his introductory note about the tracks collected on this set, “They’re a unique hybrid of black America and white Britain, which was actually more ubiquitous than the history books record.” The 58 tracks on these three discs prove that with a surprising alternate view on British rock of the period, and a number have been sampled for their breaks. Many, but not all of the tracks, have been drawn from Pye’s prog-centric Dawn label, along with Vertigo, Purple Records, Deram, and other hip imprints. The title track of this set ,first recorded by Manfred Mann Chapter Three, is presented twice: once from seven-piece rock outfit Trifle, and once in a surprising version by easy listening maestro John Schroeder and his orchestra.
Deep Purple’s “Hush,” though not on this collection (which focuses on lesser-known recordings) is one the tracks cited by Reed as an example of the funky rock style here. The band’s own Purple Records discography has been tapped for tracks from the recently-anthologized Hard Stuff and Curtiss Maldoon. Colosseum’s Valentyne Suite has also been reissued in 2017 by Cherry Red; its “Elegy” epitomizes how the band pushed the envelope of what was expected from progressive rock. Pentangle remains a cornerstone of the fusion of folk, rock, and jazz, but “I Saw an Angel” qualifies for inclusion here with its funky groove. Also from the folk realm, Melanie’s cover of “I’ve Got My Mojo Working” upped the soul quotient of the fifties blues standard. Pop features here, too, via Blue Mink’s rave-up “Eyeballs” and cuts from The Foundations (“In the Beginning”) and The Tremeloes (“Instant Whip”), both seeking artistic independence from the hitmaking machine.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Noel Redding features on Fat Mattress’ “Cold Wall of Stone” and “Margarita,” and there’s another Hendrix connection with selection of “The Devil Made Me Do It” by Curtis Knight Zeus, otherwise known as, simply, Curtis Knight – Hendrix’s onetime bandleader in The Squires. Knight had learned a thing or two from his protégé, forming his own heavy rock band in the wake of Hendrix’s success, and enlisting Eddie Clarke (later of Motorhead) on axe duties.
All three of these sets are aimed at collectors but make fascinating listens for anyone interested in the cross-section of genres represented. One Way Glass has been remastered by the team at Fluid Mastering, and boasts a 44-page booklet with copious track-by-track notes and Reed’s introductory essay. You can look for all three of these box sets at the links below, and you’ll find track listings at each of the Amazon pages!
Am I Dreaming? 80 Brit Girl Sounds of the ’60s : Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
Night Comes Down: ‘60s British Mod, R&B, Freakbeat, and Swinging London Nuggets: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
One Way Glass: Dancefloor Prog, Brit Jazz, and Funky Folk (1968-1975) : Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
Joe, is “A Shot of Rhythm and Blues” the Arthur Alexander tune? Thanks.
Yes it is! The young Cilla did a bang-up job with it! 🙂
The “Am I Dreaming” set has lots to recommend it, though I wish they’d chosen some of the original mixes in some instances. The stereo mix of Petula Clark’s “Baby It’s Me” is pretty bad – unusual for Tony Hatch. It was probably done in haste for the “Downtown” LP, with a bunch of echo added to one channel. I don’t think the Cilla tracks play to her strengths at all – it would have been nice if they’d included some of the unavailable on CD single mixes of Black’s hits – “Don’t Answer Me”, “Surround Yourself With Sorrow”, or “If I Thought You’d Ever Change Your Mind”. Still, it’s great to have Helen Shapiro’s self penned b-side, “The Way of the World”, on CD finally, even if it seems to have been sourced from vinyl – I hope that was out of necessity rather than due to lack of adequate tape research.