1960s Vinyl 11 Items

Though not a household name, Bernadette Carroll is one of the more successful teen vocalists of the girl group era. She charted as a member of the Angels, as a solo act, and as a for-hire backup singer, performing on at least two #1 hits, selling over a million copies of each. You’ve heard her voice, whether you know it or not.

Experience the hip sounds of 1960s France with “Toujours Chic!”, the latest in our series of groovy Gallic girl-pop. The collection is available on 24-track CD and 12-track LP formats.

Star of the show is series debutante Laura Ulmer, who graces the cover of the CD version and contributes three pure pop tracks in the France Gall mode. Fabienne, Zouzou, Charlotte Walters, Stone, are all also new to the series.
This LP version, features a gorgeous cover photo of Françoise Hardy, is pressed on 180g lavender vinyl and comes with a fully illustrated inner bag.

The 12-track Colored Vinyl LP format opens with Brunetta’s prized dancefloor-filler ‘Baluba Shake’ and closes with ‘Pà Diglielo A Mà’, a dramatic ballad by big-voiced Nada. The prolific Mina - queen bee of Italy’s female singers - gets two tracks: folk rock nugget ‘No’ and ‘Se Telefonando’, a sophisto-pop epic courtesy of maestro Ennio Morricone.

Other highlights include the sitar-embellished ‘Il Mio Posto Qual’È’ by Ornella Vanoni, a convincing cover of ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ by beat girl Caterina Caselli, the pounding ‘Il Geghegè’ by petite dynamo Rita Pavone and breathy-voiced actress Catherine Spaak’s bossa-imbued ‘La Notte È Fatta Per Rubare’.

Few debut singles have made such an impact, or left such a mark, as the Zombies’ 1964 She’s Not There. Hard to believe that the group had only been together a year when they came to record this timeless classic. Long after its release, many fans believe the Zombies’ album recorded at Abbey Road worthy of comparison to Sgt. Pepper… Released in April 1968, Odessey & Oracle was largely ignored on its release – though today original copies sell for £500. Odessey & Oracle is widely hailed as one of the key albums of the late 60s - and was ranked No.80 in the Rolling Stone poll for the Greatest Albums Of All Time.

From a basement in New Jersey, Tommy Falcone remade himself into a DIY Phil Spector. From 1962 to 1970, he founded and ran Cleopatra Records, discovered and mentored young Garden State talent, wrote songs and produced wild studio effects, and quit his day job to promote it all himself. Trained as an accordionist, Falcone had a whirlwind imagination and an omnivorous approach to genre, expressed through acts like the Centuries, the Tabbys, Johnny Silvio, the Inmates, Bernadette Carroll, the Hallmarks, Vickie & the Van Dykes, the Shandillons, Eugene Viscione, the Shoestring, and more. Cleopatra became a time-capsule of every 1960s pop style imaginable—garage rock, psychedelia, surf, girl groups, soul, novelties, exotica, even a crooner—a kaleidoscope of sound in search of the ever-elusive hit record.

Who do we become when we live our dreams? It’s all here — the high hairdos, the dreams and schemes, the tender camp, the wedding bell fantasias and chaste tragedies. Sister acts, studio receptionists, classmates, angelic voices of the 1960s, some legendary, many hidden in the basement of expired rainbows.

"The events of May ’68 are seen as a turning point in France’s social history - pictures of the barricades are still potent images. Lines were drawn politically, culturally, socially, and pop music was not exempt.

“Paris In The Spring” is a collection of the new music, put together by Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, that emerged from France between 1968 and the mid-70s, an extraordinary blend of several previously independent strains – French chanson and yé-yé, American jazz and funk, British chamber pop – shot through with the era’s underlying mixture of optimism, uncertainty and darkness. This is the first collection of its kind, released on the 50th anniversary of the Paris uprising.

Serge Gainsbourg – a jazz pianist with a chanson past and a pop present – was in a position to play a key role in soundtracking France in flux over the next five years. His “Histoire de Melody Nelson”, with its heavily atmospheric arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier, was the acme of this new, unsettling French sound. “Paris In The Spring” includes other equally dazzling Vannier arrangements (for Léonie) and Gainsbourg compositions (for Jane Birkin and Mireille Darc).

Prior to 1968, 60s French pop had been dominated by yé-yé, the country’s unique brand of upbeat pop, a world of primary colours, mini-jupes and discothèques (a French invention, after all). Its stars either faded fast after May ’68 or adapted to the new era: Jacques Dutronc (‘Le Métaphore’) and France Gall (‘Chanson Pour Que Tu M’aimes un Peu’) discovered a moody side they had previously kept hidden, while Françoise Hardy released the Brazilian-influenced, after-hours classic “La Question”, from which we have picked ‘Viens’.

New bands like Triangle emerged, influenced by Soft Machine and Gong who became regulars on the Paris club scene. French library music from Janko Nilovic and film soundtracks (François De Roubaix, Karl-Heinz Schäfer) reflected the era’s edginess. All are represented on “Paris In The Spring”, making it a continental cousin to Stanley and Wiggs’s hugely popular 2017 Ace compilation “English Weather”..
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Limited Edition.