Tracklist:

1. The Fifth Dimension - Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures) 4:47
2. Three Dog Night - Eli's Coming 2:42
3. The Joe Jeffrey Group - My Pledge Of Love 2:46
4. The Guess Who - These Eyes 3:42
5. The Flirtations - Nothing But A Heartache 2:42
6. Bee Gees - I Started A Joke 3:09
7. Lou Christie - I'm Gonna Make You Mine 2:40
8. The Isley Brothers - It's Your Thing 2:49
9. Steam - Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye 4:04
10. Diana Ross, The Supremes - Someday We'll Be Together 3:28
11. The Friends Of Distinction - Going In Circles 4:13
12. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Commotion 2:42
13. Edwin Starr - Twenty-Five Miles 3:19
14. B.B. King - The Thrill Is Gone 3:53
15. Marvin Gaye - That's The Way Love Is 3:30
16. Thunderclap Newman - Something In The Air 3:55
17. Cream (2) - Crossroads 4:13
18. Sly & The Family Stone - Stand! 3:05
19. Booker T & The MG's - Hang 'Em High 3:55
20. The Brooklyn Bridge - Worst That Could Happen 3:02
21. Donovan - Atlantis 4:57

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

Cat # : 2CLR-20, OPCD-2587

Barcode :

Rock, Funk / Soul, Pop / Folk Rock, Blues Rock, Southern Rock, Soul, Rhythm & Blues, Classic Rock

Notes:

Volume 20 of a 30 volume set.

Track durations obtained from software.

Complete liner notes:

The turbulent '60s reached a climax in the political, cultural and social events of the decade's last year. America moved between hope and sadness, searching for balance as Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and American soldiers wreaked havoc in the tiny village of My Lai, South Vietnam. The music industry, too, shifted precariously on its foundation. The Beatles performed their last concert on a London rooftop, and ex-Rolling Stones' guitarist Brian Jones was found dead in his swimming pool. Four-hundred thousand young music fans gathered on a farm in Bethel, New York, for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. As the year ended, Meredith Hunter was murdered by Hell's Angels security guards at a free concert given by the Rolling Stones at Altamont Speedway in Livermore, California. Popular music both reflected and provided respite from these disquieting times. 

The most successful black-owned record label, Motown, continued to evolve. Berry Gordy acquired the studio, master tapes and artists of a competing Detroit label, Golden World, and its subsidiary, Ric-Tic. As part of the sale, Edwin Starr, who had already succeeded with Agent Double-O-Soul and Stop Her on Sight (S.O.S.), came to Motown. Starr's first hit for his new label, Twenty-Five Miles, featured the sound of urgent footsteps traveling the miles that separated the singer from his lover. Only the footsteps weren't Starr's alone. "That's me, the Originals, the cat that swept the floor, and everybody else walking on a wooden board in the middle of the floor getting that effect," Starr told an interviewer. 

At the time of Starr's Motown hit, Diana Ross and the Supremes released their last record as a group. It bore an ironic title: Someday We'll Be Together. The song was originally recorded in 1961 by Johnny and Jackie for Tri-Phi Records. "Johnny" was Johnny Bristol, composer of the song and producer of this Supremes' recording. These "Supremes," however, were not the real Supremes - Cindy Birdsong and Mary Wilson - but two Motown backup singers, Maxine and Julia Waters. Bristol also contributed his own vocal line. 

Marvin Gaye's That's the Way Love Is also marked a career transition. Gaye had worked for several years with Motown producer Norman Whitfield. Together, they had produced some of the label's most popular recordings including I Heard It through the Grapevine. The sessions that yielded That's the Way Love Is were their last together. In 1971, Gaye's self-produced release, What's Going On represented a major stylistic departure. 

Between 1965 and 1968, the Isley Brothers recorded for Motown, scoring one major hit, This Old Heart of Mine. After a 1968 tour of Britain with Jimi Hendrix, a former member of the Isley band, the group revived their own label, T-Neck, which they had formed in 1964. The Isleys named the label after Teaneck, New Jersey, where they lived after moving from Cincinnati. Their first T-Neck single, It's Your Thing, echoed the contemporary cry to "do your own thing," and the song's insistent rhythm provided perfect accompaniment for whatever that "thing" might be. 

Nineteen sixty-nine brought a soul hit from across the ocean. Viola Billups, from Alabama, met Earnestine and Shirley Pearce, sisters from South Carolina, in a New York recording studio in 1965. They formed a group, the Flirtations, and played to enthusiastic audiences at the Apollo and Paramount theaters in New York. In 1967, they moved to England where they later recorded Nothing but a Heartache with producer Wayne Bickerton. It was the Flirtations' only chart hit, and the song became a favorite with audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Though Britain continued to produce plenty of hits, by 1969 the massive invasion of British pop groups had subsided. Thunderclap Newman, with members Andy Newman, Speedy Keen and Jimmy McCulloch (who would later join Paul McCartney's Wings), was a band assembled by Pete Townshend of the Who. They managed a hit with Something In the Air, a song that kept pace with the times by prophesying a coming revolution. The song appeared on the sound track of the hip period film, The Magic Christian, accompanying a scene in which people are invited to help themselves to money being dumped into a pool of cow dung. 

Booker T. and the MG's (Memphis Group) had a hit with another film song, the musical theme from Clint Eastwood's first stateside spaghetti western, Hang 'Em High. The song was their first top-10 hit since Green Onions in 1962. After success with Hang 'Em High, the band's leader, Booker T. Jones, composed his own score for the film Up Tight. That sound track also yielded a top-10 hit, Time Is Tight. 

The blues got a shot in the arm in 1969 when B. B. King gained a larger audience with The Thrill Is Gone. A former Memphis disc jockey, King had performed professionally for 20 years without a pop hit. The Thrill ls Gone combines beautiful single-string guitar lines, lush orchestral arrangements and a deep blues vocal. Under new management by accountant Sidney Seidenberg, King set the stage for his recording success by playing major rock events such as the Atlantic City Pop Festival and the Texas International Pop Festival. 

Johnny Maestro, former lead singer with the Crests, was singing a different kind of blues on Worst That Could Happen, a hit for his new group, Brooklyn Bridge. The song completed a trilogy of tunes written by songwriter Jimmy Webb about a single love affair. The other two songs were MacArthur Park and By the Time I Get to Phoenix, for Richard Harris and Glen Campbell, respectively. Maestro found Worst That Could Happen on an album by the highly successful pop group, the 5th Dimension. When the members of the 5th Dimension saw the Broadway musical Hair, they were so impressed with Ronnie Dyson's performance of Aquarius that the group decided to record the song. Producer Bones Howe suggested that they add another tune from Hair, Let the Sunshine In, to form a medley. Hal Blaine, a renowned session drummer from Los Angeles, provided the percussive link between the two songs. By June 1969, 16 of Hair's 29 songs had been released as singles by various groups and singers. Four made the top 40.

By the time Lou Christie signed with Neil Bogart's Buddah label in 1968, he had already scored with Two Faces Have I, Lightnin' Strikes and Rhapsody in the Rain. Christie had established a reputation with his orgiastic vocals that began in measured tones but eventually gave way to an ecstatic wailing; some critics compared them to sexual release. In 1969, things reached a climax when Christie appeared on Joey Bishop's ABC television show. During his performance of I'm Gonna Make You Mine, Christie entertained viewers with a provocative hip grind that sent network censors into paroxysms. The song returned Christie to the international spotlight. 

Paul Leka, Gary De Carlo and Dale Frashuer created Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye in an all-night session that was supposed to yield a B side for a De Carlo single. Leka had already produced four songs with De Carlo. Convinced that they were all hits - that they deserved to be A sides - Leka went back into the studio to record a song that no disc jockey could mistake for anything but throwaway filler. He made the song too long, he left in a nonsense dummy chorus and he invited De Carlo's cousin to add an off-key vocal track. To Leka's amazement, Mercury A & R head Bob Reno liked the recording and released it on the subsidiary Fontana label under the bogus group name, Steam. To Leka's greater amazement, the song became his second No. 1 production hit (he produced the Lemon Pipers' Green Tambourine in 1967), and it proved to have tremendous staying power. In 1983, Bananarama reached No. 10 on the British charts with the song. And most important, the song's chorus has become a favorite crowd refrain at American sports events whenever the outcome is no longer in doubt. 

- Jay Orr