Tracklist:

1. The Spencer Davis Group - I'm A Man 2:53
2. Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell - Ain't No Mountain High Enough 2:30
3. The Hollies - On A Carousel 3:15
4. Jay & The Techniques - Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie 2:27
5. The Monkees - (I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone 2:25
6. Otis Redding, Carla Thomas - Tramp 3:00
7. The Easybeats - Friday On My Mind 2:45
8. Etta James - Tell Mama 2:22
9. The Fantastic Johnny C - Boogaloo Down Broadway 2:34
10. The Mamas & The Papas - Creeque Alley 3:50
11. Brenda & The Tabulations - Dry Your Eyes 2:39
12. The Association (2) - Windy 2:55
13. Keith (2) - 98.6 3:04
14. Diana Ross, The Supremes - Reflections 2:53
15. The Music Machine - Talk Talk 1:59
16. Aretha Franklin - Baby, I Love You 2:39
17. Janis Ian - Society's Child 3:15
18. The Turtles - She'd Rather Be With Me 2:21
19. Sonny & Cher - The Beat Goes On 3:23
20. The Young Rascals - I've Been Lonely Too Long 3:02
21. Bar-Kays - Soul Finger 2:22
22. Bobbie Gentry - Ode To Billie Joe 4:12

Media Condition: Very Good Plus (VG+)
Sleeve Condition: Very Good Plus (VG+)

Cat # : 2CLR-15, OPCD-2578

Barcode :

Rock, Funk / Soul, Pop / Folk Rock, Rock & Roll, Pop Rock, Soul, Rhythm & Blues, Psychedelic Rock

Notes:

Volume 15 of a 30 volume set.

Track durations obtained from software.

Complete liner notes:

For many music lovers, 1967 was so full of milestones that the year came to define the very nature of popular music. Particularly in San Francisco, three events shaped the idea that rock was indeed a progressive art form. Disc jockey Tom Donahue inaugurated free-format FM radio on KMPX, Jann Wenner published Rolling Stone and a huge open-air festival in Golden Gate Park, billed as the Human Be-In, was created, along with a follow-up festival, Monterey Pop. The notion of progressive rock was underscored by the release of the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper. During the next few years, the major American record companies spent fortunes recording and publicizing the sound of progressive rock. But while the press and industry discussed "art" and "progress," well-crafted pop continued to blast forth from the AM radio - often out of nowhere. 

From Chickasaw County, Mississippi, Bobbie Gentry, a former philosophy major at UCLA, played a hypnotic, bluesy guitar lick woven around a tale about a mysterious jump from the Tallahatchie Bridge. Like a Flannery O'Connor short story, Ode to Billie Joe evoked the atmosphere of the Deep South. "I don't sing white and I don't sing colored," Gentry once said. "I sing southern." With dramatic cellos embellishing the music and Gentry's drawl enhancing the narrative, the record topped the charts, catapulting the Mississippian into the world of show business. 

In 1967, Gentry's hit was controversial. What actually happened to Billie Joe McAllister when he jumped from the bridge inspired much debate. However, from New York City there came another record that created even greater controversy. Society's Child, a ballad about miscegenation, was not the sort of song AM disc jockeys were used to playing. Written and recorded by Janis Ian, a 16-year-old folk singer clearly influenced by Joan Baez, the song was released on Verve, a label that had already recorded two other controversial groups of the time, the Velvet Underground and the Mothers of Invention. The initial popularity of the record arose out of a television special on rock. Leonard Bernstein, conductor for the New York Philharmonic, introduced the diminutive Miss Ian, who performed her song about a white girl's love for a young black man. 

For sincere teeny-boppers, there was James Barry Keefer, otherwise known as Keith, a seemingly shy kid from Philadelphia who scored with a song about body temperature, 98.6. Like Scott McKenzie's San Francisco that same year, Keith's song echoed the sentiment that ran through many 1967 pop songs: the belief in peace and love as the path to world harmony. Despite his good vibes, Keith had some bad luck. Two months before 98.6 went top 10, his first single, Ain't Gonna Lie, climbed the charts but dropped instantly when it was discovered that most copies had been pressed off-center. Even worse, at the height of his popularity, Keith got a call from Uncle Sam and was shipped off to New Jersey. 

While San Francisco recordings were often relaxed and experimental, records made in Los Angeles were frequently polished and professional. Consisting of six members, the Association supplemented their harmonies with an array of instruments. Clean-cut and unrebellious in an age of long hair and revolt, the group appealed to sophisticated young adults. Ironically, the Association's career was launched by the misconception that their first record, Along Comes Mary, was about the highs of marijuana. Windy boasted a complex arrangement and a soft sound guaranteed to attract radio listeners who had grown weary of folk-rock and the British Invasion. 

In contrast, Los Angeles' the Music Machine, along with other great California garage bands such as the Seeds and the Standells, sounded downright angry. Dressed in black from head to toe, each Music Machine member wore a single black glove. Talk Talk was a kinetic display of growling fuzz-tone guitars. Vocalist Sean Bonniwell called the song's quirky rhythms "Chinese jazz." 

At the tail end of the British Invasion came the Spencer Davis Group, one of the better British R & B bands of the era with a line-up and sound similar to that of the Animals. By showcasing a younger singer, Stevie Winwood, who had a real feel for soul music and the blues, the group avoided the pitfalls encountered by many British performers covering R & B material. The band was discovered in 1964 by Chris Blackwell, the owner of Island Records, which specialized in Jamaican music for West Indian immigrants living in Britain. For their hit I'm a Man, Blackwell brought producer Jimmy Miller to London, where he later worked with the Rolling Stones. Meanwhile, with Miller producing, Winwood went on to concoct a fusion of rock, jazz and folk as the leader of Traffic.

Soul of another variety was a mainstay in Philadelphia. The forlorn voice of Brenda Payton, along with the support of her three well-dressed male friends, the Tabulations, shaped the perfect song for close dancing. An aching ballad, Dry Your Eyes had a seductive yet innocent sound that would sustain Payton's career for several more years. Originally from South Carolina, Johnny Corley moved to Philly to sing gospel music. His manager, Jesse James, persuaded Corley, known as the Fantastic Johnny C, to strut his stuff on a song James had written, Boogaloo down Broadway. The result was one of the most exciting dance numbers of the '60s. In Allentown, Pennsylvania, two black vocalists backed by five white musicians formed a dance band called Jay and the Techniques. While playing local hops, the Techniques developed an electrifying stage show and then surfaced nationally as a pop act with the lively Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie. Like the Stax team of Sam and Dave, the Techniques' black duo, Jay Proctor and Karl Landis, worked the soul to death.

Not surprisingly, soul was abundant in the Deep South. During the early '60s in Chicago, Los Angeles' Etta James recorded many top-10 R & B songs for Argo, a Chess subsidiary, but by 1964 her hits started to dwindle. In August 1967 Leonard Chess brought James to the Fame Recording Studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to pump some life back into her career. Under producer Rick Hall, Fame had become the chief competitor of Memphis' famous Stax label, releasing recordings by Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge. Tell Mama, co-written by Fame's single most consistent hit-maker, Clarence Carter, was one of the first tracks that James recorded there. The record placed James firmly on the charts and became her signature song. Although the James sessions were the final landmark soul sessions at Fame, the studio did become a haven for rock musicians, including the Rolling Stones, and Tell Mama was eventually covered by Janis Joplin. 

In Memphis, Al Jackson, the drummer for Booker T. and the MG's, Stax's house rhythm section, molded the Bar-Kays into a tight-knit, funky instrumental combo much like his own. Otis Redding, too, thought so much of the Bar-Kays that he groomed them to be his regular backing band on live gigs. A dance instrumental with added party noises, Soul Finger remains the greatest hit of Stax's second house band. 

Also in Memphis, while home for the Christmas holidays in 1966, Carla Thomas, Stax's ranking female artist, recorded an album with Otis Redding called King and Queen. Album concepts were then in vogue, and Stax's owner, Jim Stewart, had the idea of pairing his leading vocalists. Thomas was apprehensive about the project, but as she recalled, "I just talked with Otis and he just said, 'Well, hey, you from Memphis, you from Tennessee, you can hang.' We just ad-libbed and it came off great.' Tramp, a No. 5 R & B song for Lowell Fulsom in 1966, was the first session cut, and it was Otis' idea to cover the song. Fueled by the singers' good-hearted exchange of insults, Tramp is wild and down-home, a soulful duel between two friends. 

Thomas remembers that there were plans to record a duet album with Otis each subsequent Christmas. But these plans were never realized. On December 10, 1967, the light aircraft carrying Redding and most of the Bar-Kays crashed into frozen Lake Monono in Wisconsin. Suddenly, the pop events of 1967 seemed as though they had occurred years ago. 

- Robert Hull