1970s

The Ed Sullivan Singers and Orchestra - Really Big Hits

The Ed Sullivan Singers and Orchestra – Really Big Hits

Sleeve Notes:

There is no need to go into any detail about the songs in this album. Just a mere look at the titles will evoke memories of the great times you spent listening to them. I have chosen them carefully from a list of my own favorites, and the chorus and orchestra have done beautifully by them. Please note the sound quality we have achieved—it will come right out of the speakers and involve you completely. Big chorus and orchestra—big sound —really big hits. I know you will enjoy every one of them.

ED SULLIVAN

ABOUT HARMONY RECORDS

Columbia Records proudly presents on its Harmony label the most renowned artists in the world of musical entertainment in fine quality recordings. The artists and performances have either been newly recorded expressly for Harmony or have been carefully selected from Columbia’s vast library of great recordings. Every Harmony album is engineered and pressed in accordance with the highest manufacturing standards. The distinguished Harmony name has been associated with the recording industry for over 40 years, and the Columbia name on the Harmony label is your guarantee of superb artistry and quality at a price well within the means of every record collector.

The Ed Sullivan Singers and Orchestra - Really Big Hits

Label: Harmony HS 11387
Cover Photo: Columbia Records Photo Studio

1970 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 Stylistics - You Are Beautiful

The Stylistics – You Are Beautiful

Sleeve Notes:

Funky Weekend, Jenny – Featuring Airrion Love, Russell Thompkins, Jr.
That Don’t Shake, MeNa-Na Is The Saddest World, Michael Or Me, The Day The Clown Came To Town, You Are Beautiful, To Save My Rock ‘n’ Roll Soul, If You Are There , We Just Can’t Help It

The Stylistics - You Are Beautiful

Label: Avco 9109 006
Album Art Direction: Michael Mendel, Maurer Productions
Photography: Si Chi Ko
Back Liner Art: Carlo Creatore

1975 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

Sad Songs Irish Style - Various Artists, Frankie McBride sings "WITH PEN IN HAND" and Big Tom sings his 'monster' hit song "GENTLE MOTHER"

Sad Songs Irish Style – Various Artists

Sleeve Notes:

Irish people seem to enjoy a sad song, whether it be an Irish song or a Country and Western type song; and many on this fine album are of the latter.

Frankie McBride sings “WITH PEN IN HAND” and Big Tom sings his ‘monster’ hit song “GENTLE MOTHER”. They are all fine examples of the sad songs enjoyed so much here in Ireland, though most of them originated in U.S.A.

The songs have become part and parcel of the Irish music scene — and it is advisable to have a handkerchief ready as the needle drops.

© 1970, Emerald Records Limited.

Sad Songs Irish Style - Various Artists, Frankie McBride sings "WITH PEN IN HAND" and Big Tom sings his 'monster' hit song "GENTLE MOTHER"

Label: Emerald Gem GES 1029
Sleeve Photography: Stanley Matchett

1970 1970s Covers

Jerry Murad's HarmoniCats - Harmonica Rhapsody

Jerry Murad’s HarmoniCats – Harmonica Rhapsody

Sleeve Notes:

You can trust Jerry Murad and the Harmonicats to come up with something fresh and exciting every time! In Harmonica Rhapsody they blow the dust off twelve works by master composers and literally breathe sparkling new life into them. As every harmonica fan knows, there’s nothing the matter with the music of Offenbach, Rimsky-Korsakov, Liszt, Bizet and the other eminent Gentlemen represented here that can’t be made even more effervescent and captivating by the wide range of instrumental effects developed by Jerry and Harmonicats Don, Les and Al Fiore.

Offenbach’s Can-Can has never sounded more persuasively Parisian, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade has rarely told her Oriental tales more seductively, Liszt’s Liebestraum is just what it’s title implies, ‘A Dream of Love’. The suave and rousing strains of the suite from Bizet’s Carmen, the shimmering beauty of Grieg’s Anitra’s Dance and the bold blaze of colour in Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances are only some of the album’s delights. There’s no getting around it — Jerry Murad’s Harmonicats is an astonishing group of musicians!

Jerry Murad's HarmoniCats - Harmonica Rhapsody

Label: Embassy EMB 31047
Cover Design: Roslav Szaybo
Photography: Chris Yates

1974 1970s Covers

Top of the Pops Vol. 40

Top of the Pops Vol. 40

Sleeve Notes:

“What is the phenomenal release that will have legions of pop fans racing to their local record dealer or department store? Volume 40 of Hallmark Records’ Top of the Pops – a series, which since it was inaugurated six years ago has sold six and a half million records in the UK alone, more than half of those being sold in the last two years”.

No we’re not blowing our own trumpet. This was a quote from the 31st August edition of “Music Week” the leading Journal to the record trade. You want to hear more? yes? Right, here goes – from the same feature article.

“To a great extent, we have a regular buying clientele, although I think we are getting new customers all the time. Many people send us letters, telling us that for some reason or other they’ve lost or damaged one of the volumes, and would it be possible to obtain a replacement, otherwise their set will be incomplete. I’m sure that the Top of the Pops will continue as long as we give tremendous value for money and don’t go amiss with our choice of titles”.

We think this is enough to show what a great buying public we have for the longest-running, best-selling, regularly released album in the world.

Here’s Volume 40 – Enjoy it!

Top of the Pops Vol. 40

Hallmark SHM 875

1974 1970s Covers

Tony Osborne And His Orchestra – The Romantic Mr. Osborne

Tony Osborne And His Orchestra – The Romantic Mr. Osborne

Sleeve Notes:

Let’s be honest about it. This is a mood music album. It has piano and strings and some great ballads from the halcyon years of song. It’s designed to put you and your loved one in the right mood while dancing cheek to cheek. That’s what mood music is all about.

What it isn’t is musical wallpaper something you put on and forget, so that when it’s over you can’t remember a single note. Somehow that fate never befalls Tony Osborne’s records, which is why our Mr. 0. is still making musicianly albums of standards when other ex-mood music maestros are struggling against the embarrassment of trying to orchestrate banal pop tunes.

Tony realises that there’s still a demand for Romance. The stuff hasn’t gone out of fashion, whatever the trendies may say. He knows, too, that many people find it just a little difficult to get in a romantic mood to the output of the Top 20. But then why try? The greatest popular writers made it so easy with their love songs; songs of such inherent quality, both lyrically and melodically, that they have survived over the years.

Like Rodgers & Hart’s Isn’t It Romantic and Have You Met Miss Jones, Warren & Gordon’s The More I See You and Jobim’s Quiet Nights, all of which bespeak the thrill of new love. Or “lost love” songs like Irving Berlin’s plea for reassurance, Say It Isn’t So, Schwartz & Dietz’s I Guess I’ll Have To Change My Plan, McHugh & Adamson’s Where Are You and Lennon & McCartney’s Yesterday. Whatever the basic emotion, such songs are rich in the sort of melody that a mood music album cries out for.

They give an arranger something to work on and a pianist something interesting to play. When both functions are combined in one man like the multi-talented Tony Osborne, and when that man has a top-flight orchestra to work with, the result is the neatest piano playing and the richest orchestral ensemble you can imagine.

Of course, the only thing wrong is that it defeats its object as mood music. It’s so darned interesting as music per se you’re bound to stop whatever you’re doing to listen to it.

ARTHUR JACKSON

Tony Osborne And His Orchestra – The Romantic Mr. Osborne

Label: Rediffusion ZS135

1973 1970s Covers