Friday, January 9, 2009
Creamtastic Hit Records: the Nashville British Invasion
Posted by Steve Haruch on Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 7:03 AM
I think all of us beyond a certain age have, at one point in our lives, owned at least one compilation album that's made up of all the big hits of the day--as performed by some anonymous cover band(s), not the real artists. I've got a record called Convoy, with a picture of a semi on the front and the most atrocious cover version of "Rock and Roll All Night" you could possibly imagine, along with a bunch of equally bad versions of even worse songs.
Anyway, in that spirit, here's some fun (in the bad-good way) stuff from Tobaldolang's House of Music: two volumes of British "Mersey Beat" hits, by way of Nashville. (Amazingly, as I was putting this entry together, a commenter described the "CMT mentality" as "co-opt whatever is popular and shit out a Nashville version." Ta-da!)
[The] "Hit Records" outfit in Nashville was cranking out approximately 12 double sided "hits" per month back in the mid sixties. Because the tunes were put out as quick as possible to capitalize on the national hit lists, often times the lyrics were not exact, but what they sounded like to the "Hit" factory personnel. This is especially true for the "Mersey" tunes and also for many of the "Surf and Drag" tunes as posted above. But we bought them cause they sounded like the ones coming from our little AM radios. Another note: the Nashville boys had a tough time with the English accents, but they did their best and usually wasn't too bad.
For your listening pleasure (or pain, as the case may be), here are two "gems."
First up, "Tobacco Road" as performed by The Roamers. The fantastic irony here is of course that this song was a hit for a band called The Nashville Teens--who were from England. Second, just for fun, is "Can't Buy Me Love," performed by--who else--The Beagles. (Definitely feeling the Western Swing vibe on this one.)
Snag both volumes here, but be warned: The download is a RAR file, which, once unarchived, yields OGG files, not MP3s. In other words, it's going to take some technical competence to do all the conversions if your player doesn't support OGG files.
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