Music Week's round-up of the latest album reissues and catalogue releases, including Lulu, Doris Day and more...
LULU
Decade 1967-1976
(Edsel LULUBOXD 1)
Just 15, and with an undeniable raw and soulful energy when she made her chart debut with Shout in 1964, Lulu subsequently developed a richer vocal style, without losing her characteristic edge. Between 1967 and 1976, she released six albums – two apiece for Columbia, Atco and Chelsea – working with legendary industry figures including Mickie Most, Arif Mardin and David Bowie. Those albums, and a plethora of bonus tracks form the basis of this 5 CD set, which comes with an informative and lavishly illustrated 36 page book. Issued to mark Lulu’s 70th birthday earlier this month, it starts with the Loves Loves To Love Lulu album, whence came her terrific US No.1 hit, To Sir With Love which served only as a b-side in the UK, and was the theme from her debut film. That album, and the subsequent Lulu’s Album were produced by Mickie Most, and feature the least demanding but successful material here including The Boat That I Row, I’m A Tiger and Boy plus a terrific brassy, kickass version of The Beatles’ Day Tripper and a fine interpretation of The Bee Gees’ To Love Somebody. She was to return to both catalogues again, particularly The Bee Gees, after her marriage to Maurice Gibb. Loves Loves To Love Lulu includes a fine selection of singles A&B sides as bonus tracks, while Lulu’s album is supplemented by the more questionable songs on the Eurovision shortlist, and the song she sang to (joint) victory in the competition, Boom Bang-A-Bang, which is presented here not just in English but also in rarer French, Italian, German and Spanish versions. Working with Arif Mardin at Atco, Lulu released the more sophisticated and soulful New Routes and Melody Fair albums. Both recorded as Muscle Shoals and released in 1970, their quality exceeded their success, New Routes was home to the excellent single Oh Me, Oh My (I’’m A Fool For You Baby), a poignant take on Mr. Bojangles and Barry Gibb’s almost hymnal In The Morning. Melody Fair was more patchy, though Burt Bacharach’s Don’t Go (Please Stay), Randy Newman’s Vine Street and Jerry Lieber & Mike Stoller’s gospel anthem Saved are all worthy of attention. An unreleased third Atco album, some singles, foreign language versions of hits and even some German-language originals produced by Giorgio Moroder complete the Atco CDs. Three years later, Lulu turned up at Wes Farrell’s Chelsea label. The eponymous first of her two albums there was pleasant but unexceptional but 1976’s Heaven & Earth & The Stars was much better, mopping up her 1974 Bond theme The Man With The Golden Gun, and a David Bowie produced version of The Man Who Sold The World, and adding some strong original material including Kenny Nolan’s Take Your Mama For A Ride, which became a hit, and Lulu’s own Baby I Don’t Care. There are no bonus tracks from the Chelsea years. Released simultaneous with the box set is The Best Of Lulu: 1967-1975 (Demon DEMREC 315), a heavyweight red vinyl album with 14 songs, most of them hits.
VARIOUS
Cover Me: The Eddie Hinton Songbook
(Ace CDTOP 1535)
A session musician best known as the lead guitarist of the legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section between 1967 and 1971, Eddie Hinton is one of the less well known names to be accorded entry into Ace Records’ ongoing and prestigious Songwriter Series. Cover Me is named after a song first recorded by Percy Sledge but performed as a smooth slab of southern soul here by Jackie Moore. Like many of the other 23 songs on this album, it is making a long-overdue CD debut. Hinton’s best-known song, Breakfast In Bed – one of many here he co-wrote with fellow Muscle Shoals musician Donnie Fritts - appears here in its best-known version, by Dusty Springfield. Dusty wasn’t the only diva to endorse Hinton’s handiwork, as the album also includes Aretha Franklin’s take on Every Natural Thing, Cher pleading Save The Children and Lulu wondering Where’s Eddie?. Among lesser known acts, Don Varner turns in a good performance on Masquerade, a Motownesque Northern soul track; Brick Wall contribute Poor Mary Has Drowned, a pretty, string-laden psychedelic ballad, that served as the flipside to their only single; and Satisfaction Guaranteed, a terrifically intense R&B cut with a scorching vocal from Judy White. Ill-fated Hinton, who fought health woes for much of his life before dying at the age of 51 in 1995, recorded fully fleshed-out demos for many of the songs, of which three volumes were released on the Zane label after his death. One of those songs is It’s All Wrong, But It’s Alright, best known in a version by Laura Lee, it appears in Hinton’s own version here in a highly creditable impassioned and slightly throaty version. As this is an Ace release, lengthy and informative liner notes and copious illustrations are a given.
DORIS DAY
Latin For Lovers
(Strike Force Entertainment SFE 076T)
Recorded in 1965, just two years from the end of her 20 year tenure with Columbia Records, Latin For Lovers found Doris Day musically visiting South America, with a well-chosen collection of Latin lovelies, with bossa novas, cha chas and tangos all grist to her rhythmic mill. Of the 12 tracks she recorded for the album, the one that has emerged more latterly as the best-known is the excellent Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps, though her playful vocal style also works particularly well on Antonio Carlos Jobim’s Corcovado and Desafinado, as well as adaptations of US material like Our Day Will Come and Fly Me To The Moon. This expanded three disc edition includes the entire album in both mono and stereo mixes, plus a CD labelled Other Latin Direction And Selected A &B Sides 1964 To 1967, which allows for the introduction of her version of Swingin’ On A Star, a rare single edit of Soft As The Starlight, an alternate version of Glass Bottom Boat, and both the 1956 original and 1964 remakes of the charming Que Sera, Sera (What Will Be, Will Be).
