Various - Classic Rock 1967 (CD, Comp, RE) (Near Mint (NM or M-))

Media Condition:  Near Mint (NM or M-)
Sleeve Condition: Near Mint (NM or M-)
Country:    US  
Released:  1988
Genre:       Rock, Funk / Soul
Style:         Folk Rock, Rock & Roll, Soul, Rhythm & Blues, Psychedelic Rock, Funk, Classic Rock
Location:   

Comments:

 

Notes:

There are two known variants of this CD:
(1) Original pressings have the top-of-building artwork.
(2) This release is for later pressings, which have the on-stage artwork.
The audio is identical on both of these variants.

Track durations obtained from software.

Volume 5 of a 30 volume set.

Issued with an 8 page booklet & no barcode
No mastering code or Specialty Records Corporation logo

Proprietary equipment and engineering, using AEG professional audio tape recorders

Produced in cooperation with Warner Special Products

Back cover inlay:
Manufactured for Time-Life Music by Warner Special Products, a Warner Communications Company
℗ 1988 Warner Special Products

Booklet:
Time Life Music:
The Author:
Joe Sasfy is a regular contributor to "The Washington Post", and his articles have also appeared in "Musician, Country Music and Creem". He is chief consultant for both the Classic Rock and the Rock 'n' Roll Era series.

Time-Life Music wishes to thank William L. Schurk of the Music Library and Sound Recordings Archives, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, for providing valuable reference material.

Time-Life Music is a division of Time-Life Books Inc. © 1988 Time-Life Books Inc.
Printed in U.S.A. Time-Life is a trademark of Time Incorporated U.S.A.
Manufactured for Time-Life Music by Warner Special Products,
a Warner Communications Company
℗ 1988 Warner Special Products.

Cover art by Jeffrey Oh © 1988 Time-Life Books Inc.

Disc:
Manufactured by Warner Special Products
℗ 1988 Warner Special Products
Made in U.S.A.

Complete liner notes:

On June 2, 1967, the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, an adventurous musical statement that was a creative milestone in rock history and ushered in the "Summer of Love." As Sgt. Pepper opened the door to new realms of musical expression, the counterculture that embraced the album like a religious icon was experimenting with new modes of social expression. It was the dawning of the psychedelic age and the era's mecca was San Francisco. Fueled by utopian visions, hippies, artists, bohemians, musicians and disenchanted youth from all over America flocked to the city's Haight-Ashbury district. 

Suddenly, San Francisco was the trendsetter. A local DJ named Tom Donahue inaugurated "underground" radio on KMPX, mixing progressive album tracks with laid-back raps. Rolling Stone, a new San Francisco­based magazine celebrating rock music and the drug culture, included a free "roach clip" with its debut issue. The city became the home of love-ins, be-ins, free concerts and hundreds of groups with names as far out as their music: Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Country Joe and the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother and the Holding Company, etc. Most specialized in "head music," long, feedback-drenched jams designed to enhance the drug experience. 

While many of these bands brandished an unpolished, anticommercial sound, Jefferson Airplane was an exception. They had already recorded one album in 1966 when lead singer Signe Anderson left and was replaced by Grace Slick, a former model who had sung with another Bay Area group, the Great Society. Slick not only lent a charismatic presence and icy voice to the band, she brought two songs, Somebody to Love and her own White Rabbit, that would give the Airplane the Top 40 air play eluding most psychedelic bands. 

The Love Generation's pied piper was Scott McKenzie, whose mellow San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) was written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. Phillips was an architect of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, a three-day bash in which incendiary sets by Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Who set new standards for theatrical outrageousness in rock. Meanwhile, the Mamas and the Papas continued the hits with a lush arrangement of the Shirelles hit Dedicated to the One I Love. 

Some bands were able to cloak themselves in hipness and score hits by grafting psychedelic elements onto rock songs. The Electric Prunes used a raga-style electric guitar to add a hallucinatory character to I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night), a song obviously implying that the singer had done more than just sleep. Typical of the era's "heaviness" were the profound liner notes for the group's debut album, in which their producer wrote, "Come forth, Electric Prunes, and move from the shallows and venture forth into the deep." 

In Los Angeles, the paisley-clad Strawberry Alarm Clock hit No. 1 with Incense and Peppermints, whose lyrics were little more than a string of trippy non sequiturs. While recording the song, producer Bill Holmes felt that no one in the group (then called Thee Sixpence) could deliver the song properly, so he enlisted Greg Munford, the vocalist for another Los Angeles band, the Shapes. Thee Sixpence didn't mind because they didn't particularly like the song and thought it would be the B side of their single. Though Munford vanished into the haze of rock history, one member of Strawberry Alarm Clock, Ed King, later achieved some notoriety as guitarist for Lynyrd Skynyrd. 

Perhaps the most evocative hit of 1967 was A Whiter Shade of Pale by England's Procol Harum (roughly translated from Latin as "beyond these things"). This strange fusion of Gothic classicism, rock and soul was indebted both to Bach's cantata Wachet auf (Sleepers, Awake) and Percy Sledge's When a Man Loves a Woman. Organist Matthew Fisher gives the song an atmosphere of cathedral-like solemnity; the bizarre lyrics, true to the group's name, are from a world beyond. 

While the counterculture favored the musically intense and lyrically surreal, the younger kids (now pejoratively dubbed "teeny-boppers") still dug a good pop tune. An Ohio group, the Music Explosion, came up with a catchy song called Little Bit o' Soul, and producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz turned it into one of the first "bubble-gum" hits. Kasenetz and Katz turned out a number of hits in this rock genre, including several lightweight love songs for the Ohio Express and the 1910 Fruitgum Company. The 1967 song that best summed up adolescent urges was Tommy James and the Shondells' I Think We're Alone Now, a No. 1 hit 20 years later for suburban teen queen Tiffany. 

In 1967, the Monkees rebelled against their teeny­bopper image and the puppet role that had been foisted on them by musical director Don Kirshner. On their third album, Headquarters, they finally picked their own material and played their own instruments. They also topped the charts with Daydream Believer, written by the Kingston Trio's John Stewart. The song debuted on the October 9 Monkees episode, in which the frisky foursome foiled a museum heist. 

Typical of the giddy optimism and good vibes of many 1967 hits were the Turtles' top-10 entries, Happy Together and She'd Rather Be with Me, both buoyant, romantic pop confections. An altogether more sinuous and soulful love song, Groovin', came from New York's Young Rascals. Groovin' was a clear departure from the group's up-tempo party hits, as the Rascals abandoned their drums, guitar and organ in favor of vibes, piano, harmonica, conga drum and background bird chirps. 

In Memphis, a desperately intense tone was struck with the Box Tops' The Letter, sung by Alex Chilton, a 16-year-old who managed to sound like a 40-year-old bluesman. The Box Tops recorded at the American Recording studio, which, along with Memphis' Stax Studio and the Fame studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, served as a major source of soul hits. It was at Fame that Otis Redding produced his protege Arthur Conley's hit Sweet Soul Music, a tribute to soul singers based heavily on Sam Cooke's Oh Yeah. 

Wilson Pickett also recorded a number of songs at Fame, including Funky Broadway, a dance hit earlier in the year for Dyke and the Blazers (then the backup band for the O'Jays). The most important session at Fame in 1967 involved Aretha Franklin's first soul hit, I Never Loved a Man, which returned Franklin to her gospel roots after years of pop recordings for Columbia. Though Franklin cut her next single, a galvanic cover of Otis Redding's Respect, in New York City, the Fame studio band was flown in to ensure the soul groove. When Redding heard Franklin's version, he told Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler, "I just lost my song. That girl took it away from me." 

Ironically, Motown Records, which had built its success by appealing to both black and white audiences, was now viewed by some as too white and pop-oriented compared with the grittier Southern soul acts. Motown therefore created the Soul label, featuring down-home sounds from Junior Walker and Gladys Knight and the Pips. The Motown studio band came up with its toughest funk to match the full-throated delivery of Knight and churchy response of the Pips on I Heard It through the Grapevine. The same house band also sneaked off to Chicago to lay the musical foundation for Jackie Wilson's (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher. 

Motown's song-writing team of Holland-Dozier-Holland continued to turn out hits with assembly-line regularity, penning Bernadette for the Four Tops and Love Is Here and Now You're Gone for the Supremes. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles returned to the top 10 with I Second That Emotion, a song that was inspired on a shopping trip Robinson took with Motown staff writer Al Cleveland. In a slip of the tongue, Cleveland said, "I second that emotion" instead of "motion," and both Robinson and Cleveland realized they had a great title. They went home and wrote the song that night. 

By year's end, albums like the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper were seriously discussed as art in the most sophisticated intellectual forums and rock music had become a rallying point for protesters and radicals. The result was some of the most creative and influential as well as some of the most pretentious music ever recorded. Nonetheless, rock culture was accelerating, embracing more and more diverse influences. The only real question was where it would all end up. 

- Joe Sasfy

 

1. Jefferson Airplane - Somebody To Love 3:01
2. Box Tops - The Letter 1:56
3. The Turtles - Happy Together 2:57
4. The Mamas & The Papas - Dedicated To The One I Love 3:02
5. The Supremes - Love Is Here And Now You're Gone 2:50
6. The Young Rascals - Groovin' 2:33
7. Jackie Wilson - (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher 2:58
8. Tommy James & The Shondells - I Think We're Alone Now 2:09
9. Smokey Robinson, The Miracles - I Second That Emotion 2:48
10. Scott McKenzie - San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair) 3:00
11. Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade Of Pale 4:03
12. Aretha Franklin - Respect 2:28
13. The Buckinghams - Kind Of A Drag 2:12
14. Paul Revere & The Raiders - Good Thing 3:04
15. Gladys Knight And The Pips - I Heard It Through The Grapevine 2:50
16. Wilson Pickett - Funky Broadway 2:35
17. Strawberry Alarm Clock - Incense And Peppermints 2:49
18. Arthur Conley - Sweet Soul Music 2:21
19. The Electric Prunes - I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) 2:57
20. The Music Explosion - Little Bit O' Soul 2:22
21. Four Tops - Bernadette 3:04
22. The Monkees - Daydream Believer 2:57

 

Barcode and Other Identifiers:

Matrix / Runout 10 OPCD 2558-2 SRC-02 M1 S6
Matrix / Runout 10 OPCD 2558-2 SRC=09 M2S4

 

Record Company Time Inc.
Record Company Warner Communications
Copyright (c) Time-Life Books Inc.
Phonographic Copyright (p) Warner Special Products
Manufactured For Time Life Music
Manufactured By Warner Special Products
Remastered At Masterdisk
Glass Mastered At Specialty Records Corporation
Engineered At Fry Systems
Licensed From BMG Music
Licensed From Arista Records, Inc.
Licensed From Rhino Records (2)
Licensed From MCA Records, Inc.
Licensed From Motown Record Corporation
Licensed From Atlantic Recording Corporation
Licensed From Brunswick
Licensed From CBS Special Products
Licensed From Roulette Records
Licensed From Straight Ahead Productions Ltd.
Licensed From Warner Bros. Records Inc.

Data provided by Discogs