London 5th June
2009
Bringing Back The Music
Dave Ferguson
has invited me to write a regular blog for the Merseycats
site and as a member of Merseycats for over a decade I'll
be more than pleased to do so.
I suppose to
start with I'd better tell you what I've been up to. This
week I concluded a deal with a record company to go ahead
with my dream of compiling the ultimate collection of
music from the days of the Mersey
Sound.
Depending on
whether they can obtain the rights at a reasonable price,
it should be available in
September.
This is
something I've wanted to do for years. I suppose my first major
compilation was 'Mersey
Beat' released by Parlophone on 31 October1983
for which I compiled 34 tracks. There were Beatles tracks on
the album, which was in vinyl and released only in
the
U.K. It was one of the very few
albums which had permission to include Beatles tracks. They
were 'She Loves
You' and 'I Want To Hold Your Hand'.
Other tracks included Rory
Storm & the Hurricanes
with 'America'
,
'Bad To
Me' by Billy J. Kramer and
'Love Of the
Loved' by Cilla
Black.
I'd actually
compiled 40 tracks but the record company wasn't able to obtain
the tracks for Kingsize
Taylor & the Dominoes and
the
Liverbirds that I'd selected and when it
was reviewed in the NME, although the review was
positive, they wondered why I hadn't included
Kingsize
Taylor & the
Dominoes!
They were all there
- Gerry, the
Big Three, Mojos, Faron's Flamingos, Koobas, Escorts,
Dennisons, Beryl Marsden, Freddie
Starr and so
on. Frankly, I never thought much of Freddie's single, but I
felt I had to include him for old time's
sake.
For the cover I suggested
a painting based on a photo of
the Merseybeats at the Cavern. It was taken from the
rear of the group with them looking out onto a sea of faces and
I asked them to place the faces of some of the artists such
as Cilla and
Gerry on
members of the audience.
In 2004
EM1 Gold
asked me to compile an album of
the Mersey
groups for them, but
confined to EMI acts. As you can understand, this was
extremely limiting. EMI might have signed up
the
Beatles and Brian's other acts such as
Gerry, Billy J.
Cilla, the Fourmost and a couple of
others such as the
Swinging Bluejeans, but the majority of
Mersey recordings were on other labels including
Decca, Pye,
Piccadilly, Polydor, Oriole
etc.
Last year,
to tie-in with the European Capital of Culture I was asked to
compile another collection for EMI Gold, this time with 30
tracks, but still confined to EMI artists. The ones I selected
were tracks by Gerry &
the Pacemakers, Cilla Black, the Swinging Bluejeans, Cindy
Cole, Billy J. Kramer &
the Dakotas
, the Fourmost, Beryl Marsden, the
Blackwells, the Scaffold, the Pathfinders, Lee Castle
& the Barons, Jason Eddie & the Centremen, Steve
Aldo, Tiffany's Thoughts and the
Kubas.
Someone on a
website commented that the
Pathfinders were a Scottish group, but as far
as I knew the track I selected was by
the Mersey outfit. Names of bands were
duplicated across the country. The Chants were originally
called the Shades, but had to change because a group in the
South had that name, the
Fourmost had to change from the Four Jays
because a Southern group had registered the name and so
on.
The Blackwells recording was
on the EMI catalogue because they'd appeared in
the Locarno group contest scene in the film
'Ferry 'Cross The
Mersey'.
Beryl
Marsden's 'Break-A-Way' appeared on
both compilations because, although I regarded her as the
best girl singer in Liverpool
at the time, her recording
career was a limited one.
For this
compilation I prepared a booklet to go with it, detailing the
story of the original Mersey scene.
I named the
compilation 'The Mersey
Sound' because
that was what the media referred to at the time. It was
never actually called Mersey Beat or
Merseybeat in
those days because that was the registered name of my
newspaper.
The compilation I'm
putting together is the most definitive collection of Mersey
records ever assembled and will contain 100 tracks - and the
one difficulty is that the records stretch across so many
different record companies that everything depends on the deal
which can be worked out - although most of the major record
companies in Britain such
as Decca
andPolydor were absorbed into Sanctuary,
which was absorbed into Universal, so perhaps that makes
it easier, having to deal with only one or two companies
rather than several.
I've also been
asking the artists to select their own personal
favourites. Steve Aldo told me: 'My favourite recording
of mine has always been 'Baby What You Want Me To
Do', firstly
because jazz and blues was always my preferred vocals and
the musicianship on this track is unbelievable, I may be biased but
Griff's solo
(Ed. Griff Griffiths later lead guitar with
the Big Three) intro is the best blues guitar I have
ever heard and considering the track was done in one take
is pretty magnificent, as we didn't have any studio time
left.
"All Dick Rowe had to do was turn on the tape and let
it run, and as you know an original copy of this track is now
worth in excess of £400.00."
Incidentally,
if anyone wants to ask me any questions, please feel free
to do by emailing me at info@merseycats.com.
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