1972

Solid Gold Parade of Pops Vol. 2

Solid Gold Parade of Pops Vol. 2

Sleeve Notes:

PARADE OF POPS is proud to present a smash selection of today’s big hit singles all on one magnificent stereo L.P. record.

Twelve of the best selling Chart Tracks which re-create for you the atmosphere, excitement and pleasure of the biggest sounds in pop music NOW!
Our selection will be your enjoyment over and over again ranging from “PUPPY LOVE” to the latest smash hit “CIRCLES”. Every Track performed to give your party and home listening all the impact in full stereo reproduction of the original versions you listen to every day.
Our Cover model is also the latest in fashion and wears a fabulous outfit obtainable from all branches of DOROTHY PERKINS at a ‘budget with quality price’ to well match this great collection of sounds.
Solid Gold Parade of Pops Vol. 2

Label: Windmill Records WPP 5002

1972 1970s Covers

The International Pop Orchestra & Chorus – At Last - 26 Non-Stop Hits For Dancing

The International Pop Orchestra & Chorus – At Last – 26 Non-Stop Hits For Dancing

Sleeve Notes:

Have Nagila, Kalinka, Wenn Ich Komm (Wooden Heart), Oh! Happy Day, House Of The Rising Sun, Plaisir D’Amour, When The Saints Go Marching In, Down By The Riverside, My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean, Michael, He’s Got The Whole World In His Hand, Uber Den Wellen (It’s The Loveliest Night Of The Year), Cielito Lindo,
Liebstraum, Thema Aus Dem Klavierkonzert Nr.1 (Tchaikovsky), Nachte In Moskau (Midnight In Moscow), Schwarze Augen, Danny Boy, Greensleeves, Habanera, La Bamba, La Colondrina, La Paloma, Aloha Oe, Guantanamera, Santa Lucia

The International Pop Orchestra & Chorus – At Last - 26 Non-Stop Hits For Dancing

Label: Contour 2870 158

1972 1970s Covers

Hot Hits Vol. 16

Hot Hits Vol. 16

Sleeve Notes:

  1. Getting A Drag – originally by Lynsey De Paul
  2. Rock Me Baby – originally by David Cassidy
  3. Crazy Horses – originally by The Osmonds
  4. Angel – originally by Rod Stewart
  5. I’m Stone In Love With You – originally by The Stylistics
  6. Gudbuy T’Jane – originally by Slade
    What Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made A Loser Out Of Me) – originally by Rod Stewart
  7. Crocodile Rock – originally by Elton John
  8. Why – originally by Donny Osmond
  9. I Don’t Believe In Miracles – originally by Colin Blunstone
  10. Lookin’ Through The Windows – originally by The Jackson 5
  11. Stay With Me – originally by Blue Mink

Label: MFP 50050

1972 1970s Covers

Big Band in HiFi Stereo

Big Band in HiFi Stereo

Sleeve Notes:

Max Greger – Java, Kurt Edelhagen – Up And Away, Kai Warner – Whispering, Max Greger – Superstar, Kurt Edelhagen – Sunshower, Kai Warner – Flamingo, Max Greger – Time Is Tight, Kurt Edelhagen – Again, Kai Warner – Work Song, Max Greger – Aquarius, Kurt Edelhagen – I Am I Said, Kai Warner – Silence Is Golden

Big Band in HiFi Stereo

Label: Polydor 2482 289

1972 1970s Covers

The Melachrino Strings and Orchestra - You and The Night and The Music

The Melachrino Strings and Orchestra – You and The Night and The Music

Sleeve Notes:

About the time the first part of this century was slipping into the second, a distinctive new orchestral sound was in the process of turning the music world on. A veritable cascade of strings. Not just strings, though. STRINGS! A 46-piece ensemble weaving through and enhancing the sonics of the regular orchestra.

Familiar standards were given a startling new quality. All-time favorites were regally packaged in lush arrangements. It was music for doing things—for dining, for reading, for relaxing, for listening to Kern and Porter and Rodgers & Hart and Dietz & Schwartz by. The well-known melodies, part of our popular musical heritage, were being reintroduced and were being heard as if for the first time.

The man behind all those strings—or, in this case, in front of them—was George Melachrino. Composer. Conductor. Arranger. His enticing, provocative, romantic, impeccable musical charts became the trademark of The Melachrino Strings. And those three words together comprised the first name in mood music, setting the standard for the instrumentalists who followed during the ’50s and ’60s.

YOU AND THE NIGHT AND THE MUSIC provides a diverse account of the creative orchestrations unique to George Melachrino. The spectrum of this collection encompasses the music of the Broadway stage, the world of films and the just plain enduring standards, all from the giants of songwriting.

It once was suggested that words are not entirely necessary to enjoy the mood(s) set by The Melachrino Strings and Orchestra. For, as Melachrino furnished the music, expert accompaniment as it were, the listener automatically—perhaps subconsciously—supplies the lyrics. Try only listening to the lovely Melachrino interpretations of Blue Moon or Fascination or Stairway to the Stars without reciting, even silently, the poetic lyrics. You’ll discover in quick order why these melodies and Melachrino’s orchestral magic mesh so well into one musical tapestry.

ALVIN H. MARILL

The Melachrino Strings and Orchestra - You and The Night and The Music

Label: RCA Camden CXS-9028

1972 1970s Covers

Chor und Orchester der Hamburgischen Staatsoper Leitung Leopold Lugwig - Große Opern-Chöre

Chor und Orchester der Hamburgischen Staatsoper Leitung Leopold Lugwig – Große Opern-Chöre

Sleeve Notes:

Many opera choruses have become popular in the best sense of the word: removed from the context of the action of an opera, they show their full richness in colours and atmosphere, and demonstrate how much stirring power composers invested in theiropera choruses.

Wagner is a central figure in this respect. The decisive inspiration for his Sailors’ Chorus came to him during a stormy voyage from Riga to London — incidentally, while fleeing from his creditors. The decorative Mastersingers’ Chorus has a similar graphic force, even without scenery and opera house: the music of a distinguished bourgeois society on the fairground outside the gates of the city of Nuremberg. In contrast, the “Entry of the Guests” from “Tannhauser” takes place in a courtly world, and Wagner manages to make even this sphere of society ring. His famous “Bridal Chorus” finally is a work of great tenderness and urgency.

Wagner has his great predecessors — here in Mozart’s solemn chorus of the Sarastro priests, and in Beethoven’s Prisoners’ Chorus, or even in Weber’s woodland romance of the hale and hearty Hunters’ Chorus, and he has his great Italian contemporary —Verdi.

Verdi always gave the choruses in his operas the most rewarding tasks. For example, what would “II Trovatore” be without the Gypsies’ Chorus of the Soldiers’ Chorus? Even the ceremonial climax of the glorious “Aida” would be unthinkable without the jubilant cries of victory of the Egyptians’ Chorus. Or its oppressive opposite: the heartrending Prisoners’ Chorus from “Nabucco” in which the fate of the defeated and humiliated is expressed so movingly.

Chor und Orchester der Hamburgischen Staatsoper Leitung Leopold Lugwig - Große Opern-Chöre

Label: Europa Exquisit ex 1216

1972 1970s Covers

Top of the Pops Best of ’72

Top of the Pops Best of ’72

Sleeve Notes:

As most pop fans know our Hallmark “Top of the Pops” albums, issued every six or eight weeks, are consistently the best selling records of their kind in the world.

Each issue of “Top of the Pops” sells, not in thousands, but in hundreds of thousands; and, such is the outstanding success of these records, we decided in 1969 to introduce a “Best of Top of the Pops”, containing the thirteen best tunes from “Top of the Pops” issued during the year.

This was a runaway success and so were the subsequent issues; and all you pop enthusiasts supported us wonderfully.

We are thus encouraged to produce yet another “BEST OF” this year and again we have gone to enormous trouble to serve up on this album a superb selection of 13 hit tunes of the year, all of which have been featured at No. 1.

You’ll swing to these rhythms made famous during the year by the greatest artistes in show business. We sincerely think some of our versions are even better than the originals! Try it.

NOW HERE’S A BIG FREE BONUS FOR YOU ALL. INSIDE IS A SUPER, EXTRA BIG (ALMOST 3 feet x 2 feet), PIN-UP POSTER CALENDAR FOR 1973, IN SUPERB, FULL COLOUR!

We think we have produced a winner. There’s rhythm and beat and wonderful sound on the record to set your feet tapping; and there’s a gorgeous gal on our poster calendar to titillate your eyes.

We’ve done our very best. We KNOW you will do your best to make this big value release an all-time winner.

Thanks a million.

Top of the Pops Best of ’72

Label: Hallmark SHM 799

1972 1970s Covers Top of the Pops Collection

James Last - In Love

James Last – In Love

Sleeve Notes:

Love, they say, makes the world go round. The very same thing is often said of music, too. What could be more natural, then, than a happy combination of the two ? Here, with the ubiquitous James Last and his fine orchestra performing twelve excellent love songs, one could say that the world has never had it so good. Love, of course, has many faces and in this well-spiced selection James Last seems to have covered most of them musically.

The melodic grace of Time After Time – a long-time favourite written by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn for the 1946 Sinatra musical film It Happened In Brooklyn—makes a fitting start to the programme. This is followed by James Last’s own hit composition of twenty years later, Games That Lovers Play – a song that brings a mature and pleasantly original twist to the adolescent taunting-and-teasing side of love. This song has been recorded by many artists all over the world but to hear the composer’s own version makes this an especially interesting track.

One of the cinema’s great love scenes provided the background for the clever merging of Moonglow and the theme from Picnic. While scoring the music for this fine 1955 film, composer George Duning was looking for a way to complement and intensify a dance sequence in which the leading characters—played by William Holden and Kim Novak—discover their love for each other. He hit on the idea of using the jazz standard Moonglow (which was composed in 1934 by Will Hudson Eddie de Lange and Irving Mills) and combining it with his own theme as an obligato for strings. The effect was not only dramatically stunning it also resulted in a multi-million selling single. It is also interesting to note, nearly twenty years later, that the song Moonglow is hardly ever played without Duning’s fine Picnic theme in attendance. On this occasion James Last offers a richly scored treatment of the famous musical tandem which moves at a slightly faster tempo than usual.

The first side of this disc is completed by two emotionally contrasting pieces—the exotic romanticism of Passion Flower and the impending disillusionment of You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’. The latter song was written in 1964 by record producer Phil Spector and the husband and wife team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill. It was recorded by the Righteous Brothers and subsequently became one of the biggest pop hits of the sixties.

Side two opens with the Academy Award-winning film song of 1953 Secret Love. Introduced by the irrepressible Doris Day in the musical Calamity Jane, it provided Doris with her fifth million-seller. In this version James Last has arranged the song in a very appealing way paying full regard to Sammy Fain’s superb melody. A somewhat more contemporary atmosphere is engendered by Last’s fine interpretation of Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man, and this adds a pleasant touch of variety to the proceedings. Tambourine, of course, was a strong hit in 1965 for that popular group, The Byrds. The contemporary flavour continues simmering in Help Me Girl, before Last returns to the super-romantic swing of Close Your Eyes, a fine and well-loved standard which is usually associated with Tony Bennett who made a very successful recording of it back in the 1950’s.

One of the best known songs of the sixties Bart Howard’s elegant Fly Me To The Moon (sometimes known as In Other Words) makes an ideal vehicle for the arranging talents of James Last who, in this treatment, brings out all the lively elements of romantic fantasy implied by the title. Finally, having run the musical gamut of emotions connected with this crazy thing called love, James Last and his fine musical organisation strike a joyously optimistic note for the finale with their version of the recent Andy Williams hit Happy Heart.

If it is true to say that both love and music make the world go round, then it is a pretty safe bet that the world of James Last will continue spinning for many years to come … at the agreeably romantic speed of 33 1⁄3 r.p.m., of course.

James Last - In Love

Label: Reader’s Digest RDS 6936

1972 1970s Covers

Big Jim H and His Men of Rhythm Play Dance Party Hammond Hits

Big Jim H and His Men of Rhythm Play Dance Party Hammond Hits

Sleeve Notes:

BACK OFF BOOGALOO SON OF MY FATHER COME WHAT MAY
STORM IN A TEACUP JUNGLE FEVER BLUES FOR RED
COULD IT BE FOREVER RAINDANCE BLUES FRANKIE AND JOHNNY
SONG SUNG BLUE

What could be better for swinging party sounds than a programme of familiar hits played by Big Jim ‘H’ and his Men of Rhythm. All the ‘Let’s Dance’ mood in the exciting pulse of the original hits dressed in the sparkling Hammond Organ colours of the keys and pedals of Big Jim ‘H’. One of Americas first organ players with big band and rhythm sections.

Big Jim H and His Men of Rhythm Play Dance Party Hammond Hits

Label: Stereo Gold Award MER 361

1972 1970s Covers