Hard to Find Jukebox Classics 1963 - Rock, Rhythm & Pop / Various

Hit Parade records is a division of Eric Records, so What I say about them applies here as well. Those of us who are completists, working on musical projects or just fans find out very quickly that most Cd collections have the same songs, more or less, the big hits of whatever decade. How many times did I buy a collection that had one song I wanted and fourteen I already had. Another trick was to buy a one hit wonder's Greatest Hits CD, and though some are interesting, others had little to offer besides that one hit. And even in these days of buying MP3 versions of individual songs, there are still many songs unavailable that way, especially when you go back to the Fifties and Early Sixties, which is the general territory of Eric. A British label, Ace, is similar but they rarely venture post British Invasion whereas Eric has even done some 70's and 80's material.You can be confident with this label. It's the kind of label where the people involved love the music, know their stuff and are dedicated to getting it right. You'll find only original masters here, engineered by people who know how it should sound, and highly informative booklets that discuss every track. The licensing of the songs only lasts so long so get them now. Once before most fell out of print and were selling for around $100.00Fortunately The Jukebox Classics series is recent (this one being 2014) so you have more time to consider it.The difference here is in the organizing principle, and everything else is exactly like the Hard To Find 45's series. In this case they seem to want to differentiate a new series in which each disc has hits from the same year, where the 45's series mixes years. The hard-to-find aspect still holds pretty true for the songs in general. If you sometimes listen as I do, to chart hits in a chronological fashion you will find that within the Early sixties, 1963 was a big year for changes and new styles of music. Yes, 1964 gets all the glory, what with the British Invasion and all that followed, but in 1963 change was already underway. The Top 40 hits of 1960-1962 often had a predominantly country sound with other songs coming from the more urban pop composers of the Brill Building, a bit of doo-wop here and there, some R&B, the ten idols, and the usual instrumental and novelty hits. !963 was the high point of The Girl Group Sound and its sister solo girls, the Folk Music boom and the new kid in town, Surf Music. It was a happening time!All of this is represented here, though Folk only minimally with Bobby Bare's country adaptation of 500 Miles. Folk was located more on college campuses than Top 40 radio and the hits it did make are easy to find on albums by Peter, Paul & Mary and similar artists. The disc opens with Wipe Out, not the hardest song to find, but still a great opening that immediately brings back the era. The only other track even related to Surf is Wild Weekend, which, written much earlier than its 1963 chart debut represents the wild rock'n'roll party music that Surf Music arose from but changed bu replacing the saxophone with reverbed guitar. Other instrumentals, an essential element of the Early Sixties include Bill Purcell's big hit, Our Winter Love, that started out the year and the only real hit version of More, a movie theme covered by nearly every pop singer, but in an instrumental version that featured an odd electronic instrument, the ondioline, also used successfully in the Tornadoes' Telstar.The girl groups include the Crystals' Then He Kissed Me with its Spector Wall of Sound, Darlene Love (the lead on a number of Spector productions) and Diane Ray singing Please Don't Talk To the Lifeguard, the kind of light girl pop sung by Joanie Sommers, Robin Ward, and Little Peggy March. Teen idols include Paul Anka's humorous Kissin' On the Phone and Bobby Rydell singing the great Forget Him, one of the last big hits of the era. Barry & the Tamerlanes (producer-songwriter Barry De Vorizon) with their late '63 Wonder What She's Doing Tonight with its echo-chambered vocal sounds surprisingly like Gary Lewis & the Playboys would sound in 1965.R&B is well represented here from the super smooth harmonies of the Tymes to the emotion and shout of Cry Baby by Garnet Mimms and the Memphis sound of Rufus Thomas who seems to have been an influence on Wilson Pickett. Theola Kilgore is full on Gospel in The Love of My Man and The Sapphire's Who do You Love is early Gamble & Huff, the Philly duo who gave Jerry Butler a second career in the late sixties and went on to found their own label. Jimmy Soul was from North Carolina not the Caribbean but went all the way to number one with If You Want To Be Happy, a timeless song that still gets airplay.The Early Sixties was a big time for novelty songs, but what exactly do you do with these? It's not like you really want to hear Ahab the Arab or Pepito the Italian Mouse every time you put on the disc. Their wise solution is to put the novelty songs at the end so you can easily skip them if you want to. The most listenable of them is Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh by Allan Sherman, the Weird Al of the day. But one question. What is Ahab the Arab doing here in the first place? It's clearly from the Summer of '62 and certainly the people at Eric, who know everything, would know this. And unlike Wipe Out which re-charted in 1966, it charted only in '62.There's more here, of course, 30 tracks, and I've already been very self-indulgent in commenting on so many, and the songs are arranged in Eric's usual way of putting songs that go together stylistically in groups, so it's a great program to listen to. I'm so glad this label is around.

I listened to my copy in the car and at home and enjoyed this release very much. I applaud the song selection, the sound quality plus all the new and/or rare stereo. Half the tracks are top ten hits mixed in with another fifteen songs that should have charted higher. I like how there are several instrumentals sprinkled in plus the disc ends with four novelty tunes. While I was driving around listening to the 75 minutes of great music it was almost like turning on the AM dial and traveling back fifty years.These are the new stereo cuts: “Wipe Out,” “Then He Kissed Me” and “Walkin’ The Dog.” Some hard to find songs in stereo: “Killer Joe” and “Kissin' On The Phone.” There are a few 45 versions that had never been on CD prior but debut on this disc: “Ahab The Arab” (the US single was an edit of the LP version), “Please Don’t Talk To The Lifeguard” (the single has a double tracked vocal while the LP version does not) and “Mr. Bass Man” (the LP version has no reverb like the single does). You have to read the liner notes so you can learn who the mystery vocalist was with the deep voice singing the bass lines for this song.Then how about songs that seldom appear on CD or just never show up on CD at all: “I Want To Stay Here” (written by Goffin and King and recorded by the husband and wife team of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme), “Baby’s Gone” (a song written by Bobby Goldsboro and Roy Orbison and recorded by Gene Thomas), “Look Homeward Angel,” “Please” and “Elephant Walk (Native Girl).” All good tunes that collectors may not easily find elsewhere.My personal favorites are "Who Do You Love,” “Martian Hop” and “If You Wanna Be Happy” which all sound great on here. There is an informative booklet containing info on each of the songs and artists plus the last page includes a dozen of the picture sleeves for many of the hit singles, which is nice. Overall, this 1963 volume of Hard To Find Jukebox Classics is excellent and might just be the top "oldies" release of the first half of 2014.

1963 is a year that often gets overlooked in pop music history, which makes this disc a good representation of some of the year's biggest hits in crystal clear sound. In addition to the music, you get a booklet containing information on the songs and/or performers.