ég er john seven

You can read all about Carmen Sevilla here, but prior to this record, I had never heard of her. And I have never see King Of Kings. I found this 1965 record in a pile of Spanish 7 inch EPs in an antique store in Brattleboro, VT, and picked it up because I loved the cover. I figured it would be some form of pop music, so was surprised to find such a Latin-flavored slice of bravado, and doesn’t she have the pipes to pull it off?

Jazz interpretations of rock hits are often horrible. Yeah, sure, there are some that work, but … this version of the Booker T song is pretty cool. With James on trumpet and Buddy Rich on drums, dating from 1965. 

This one taken from an Italian comp from the 1960s, Another Euro pop singer who is unknown to me, Catherine Spaak is apparently French, though most of her career was in Italy as a singer and an actress. She’s still around - she was apparently in the BBC detective show Zen - but is most notable for starring in trashy 70s movies. 

Poor, poor The Haircuts and The Impossibles. You share an album, but no one at Somerset Records thinks it’s worth notating who did what song, leaving it to the imagination who concocted this clunky remake of the Herman’s Hermits hit oddity. I’ll just pray that it was one faceless studio band and the record company just slapped the two names on after the fact to give the package some pizzaz. Usually the point of these records is to present soundalikes, but this track is a prime example of some of the stumbling that goes on here - and the fact that “Winchester Cathedral” is considered a big draw than some of the other covers on the album, including “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” hints at the bizarro world of the past.

You know on old TV shows, like from the ’60s and ’70s, when they have kids listening to rock music and it’s always this groovy, fake instrumental wig out stuff? This seems to be a whole album of that. 

I know nothing of this Italian singer other than what is written on the back of the album - a Eurovision winner, in fact the first Italian one, and a recurring presence on European television. She has apparently become somebody on that continent — Wikipedia will lay it all out for you. I didn’t know any of that when I picked it up at Goodwill, though - I just thought, “Fifty cents, pretty Italian girl, 1960s, this is a recipe for awesome.” I place this around 1965 - it’s charming and fun. 

Hey, you non-Christians, especially the hippie ones, you might think you feel love, but you don’t! Let Richard and Patti and the wonderfully-named and attired World Action Singers explain why. If you didn’t know this song was about god, the refrain of surrender would be even more disturbing than it already is.