These days, singer-songwriter and actor David Blue tends to be remembered only in relation to Bob Dylan. A member of the supporting cast in mid-60s Greenwich Village and The Rolling Thunder Revue. Yet to categorise Blue in this way is reductionist, and does him an injustice. He was something of an archetype of the 60s generation of Greenwich Village singer-songwriters. Yet, esteemed by his peers, he was overlooked. He released seven albums in a decade, and his acting career was shaping up when he died suddenly at the age of just 41.

His passing was barely noted in the rock press, and in the subsequent years Blue was all but forgotten. Of late, though, that's changed. His albums started to reappear on CD on small labels and, in 2020, both Rolling Stone and Mojo magazines published major reappraisals. Blue - at last - was getting the attention denied him in life.

It wasn't until 1965 that Blue, as Dave Cohen, released his first recordings - three songs on Elektra's Singer Songwriter Project. All betrayed a debt to pre-electric Dylan. But then again, so did much else coming out of Greenwich Village at the time. Elektra contracted Blue to do his own album, and in 1966 "David Blue" was released - his first recording to appear under that name. Electric folk rock with a garage band attitude, somewhat in debt to Highway 61, it didn't sell well. Shortly after the album's release Blue formed and toured with The American Patrol, a four-piece rock band, recording an album for Elektra that was never released.

Now, for the first time, Hanky Panky and Mapache release those historical abandoned American Patrol recordings, along with the three tracks included on Elektra's 1965 LP Singer Songwriter Project, as David Blue And The American Patrol "The Lost 1967 Elektra Recordings & More" and "David Blue", his self-titled 1966 debut album, on two exclusive vinyl editions limited to 500 copies each.

The post David Blue appeared first on Guerssen Records.

These days, singer-songwriter and actor David Blue tends to be remembered only in relation to Bob Dylan. A member of the supporting cast in mid-60s Greenwich Village and The Rolling Thunder Revue. Yet to categorise Blue in this way is reductionist, and does him an injustice. He was something of an archetype of the 60s generation of Greenwich Village singer-songwriters. Yet, esteemed by his peers, he was overlooked. He released seven albums in a decade, and his acting career was shaping up when he died suddenly at the age of just 41.

His passing was barely noted in the rock press, and in the subsequent years Blue was all but forgotten. Of late, though, that's changed. His albums started to reappear on CD on small labels and, in 2020, both Rolling Stone and Mojo magazines published major reappraisals. Blue - at last - was getting the attention denied him in life.

It wasn't until 1965 that Blue, as Dave Cohen, released his first recordings - three songs on Elektra's Singer Songwriter Project. All betrayed a debt to pre-electric Dylan. But then again, so did much else coming out of Greenwich Village at the time. Elektra contracted Blue to do his own album, and in 1966 "David Blue" was released - his first recording to appear under that name. Electric folk rock with a garage band attitude, somewhat in debt to Highway 61, it didn't sell well. Shortly after the album's release Blue formed and toured with The American Patrol, a four-piece rock band, recording an album for Elektra that was never released.

Now, for the first time, Hanky Panky and Mapache release those historical abandoned American Patrol recordings, along with the three tracks included on Elektra's 1965 LP Singer Songwriter Project, as David Blue And The American Patrol "The Lost 1967 Elektra Recordings & More" and "David Blue", his self-titled 1966 debut album, on two exclusive vinyl editions limited to 500 copies each.

The post The Lost 1967 Elektra Recordings & More appeared first on Guerssen Records.

The post Moor Room (+CD) appeared first on Guerssen Records.

Over the course of their stop-start five years together, Honeybus ventured into the BBC studios on a dozen occasions, leaving a catalogue of recordings that mirrored their latest releases as well as offering up a fascinating alternate history. The songs that make up 1970's much-loved "almost didn't happen" Story album (reissued by Hanky Panky/Mapache in 2018, along with the rest of the group's output) began appearing as early as the summer of 1968. The likes of 'Scarlet Lady', 'Black Mourning Band' and 'Under The Silent Tree' appear almost fully-formed, played as ensemble pieces, suggesting that their album counterparts were captured quickly and without fuss during snatched studio sessions throughout late 1968 and 1969. They also demonstrate Honeybus's often overlooked skills as a live unit - BBC sessions notoriously allowed little scope for re-takes or overdubbing; you went in and you laid it down while the men in white coats watched the clock.

Thrilling as it is to finally hear these alternate versions of familiar Honeybus cornerstones, it's the surfeit of otherwise unrecorded material that's the most startling revelation here. Under The Silent Tree: Gentle Sounds With Strings And Things At The BBC 1967-1973 presents no less than 10 unique Honeybus songs (plus a further four on the CD version only) that virtually constitute an entire second album's worth of unheard material. We find ourselves in a kind of musical hall of mirrors, revealing in a whole new perspective on one of the last great cult pop groups of the '60s, where every track offers a fresh outlook, a fresh thrill, a fresh sound. With strings and things.

The post Under The Silent Tree: Gentle Sounds With… (2LP) appeared first on Guerssen Records.

The music contained on this LP was created in a unique historical moment -the late 60's and early 70's-when the lines that had long divided "serious" from "popular" music had begun to dissolve. In its ambition and eclecticism, the Neon Philharmonic's work compares favorably to that of such contemporaries as Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb, and The Beatles -all of whom viewed pop song forms as vehicles for more than two-and-a-half minutes of verse/chorus/verse.

Not a group so much as a project, the Neon Philharmonic compromised vocalist Don Gant and Tupper Saussy, a decidedly unconventional songwriter/arranger/keyboardist who was the duo's guiding creative force. Signed to Warner Bros. Records, their debut single "Morning Girl" quickly climbed to No. 17 on the Billboard chart in April 1969 and was nominated for two Grammy Awards. By year's end the duo had released two more singles and two LP's, The Moth Confesses and The Neon Philharmonic, recorded at the Acuff-Rose studios in Nashville and featuring a host of top-flight session players (Norbert Putnam, Jerry Kerrigan, Kenneth Buttrey, Chip Young...).

The Neon Philharmonic recorded the material collected on this album during an extended period of studio activity in 1970-71. The thirteen songs assembled here on To Be Continued--five A-sides, five B-sides, and three songs unissued at the time--comprise a third Neon Philharmonic album quite different from its predecessors, largely because it was never envisioned as an album at all. After waiting for another "Morning Girl" for more than two years (only "Heighdy-Ho Princess" grazed the outer limits of the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in 1970), Warner Bros. gave up and dropped the group in mid-1971, leaving this period of The Neon Philharmonic's work unknown and unavailable to all but the most dogged collectors of promo 45s for the next several decades.

Now all those songs are available once again on vinyl, for the first time in 50 years!

The post To Be Continued. The Warner Bros. Non Album Single appeared first on Guerssen Records.

First ever vinyl release

Includes 4 page insert with notes by Bryan Thomas, and many rare pictures and graphics

Best known as the right-hand-man and arranger of producer Phil Spector and for his work with the Rolling Stones or Neil Young, among many others, Bernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche also worked extensively in film scores, notably for films such as Performance, The Exorcist and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (in 1983, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for co-writing "Up Where We Belong"). As a solo artist, he scored one of Reprise label's first pop hits with his instrumental "The Lonely Surfer" in 1963.

Between January 14-23, 1974, Jack Nitzsche recorded a self-titled album at Cinderella Studios in Madison, Tennessee, and a release date was set for April 26, before it was pulled from the label's schedule by Warner Bros. label chief Morris "Mo" Ostin. The project was a collaboration between Nitzsche and underground filmmaker Robert Downey.

The album remained unreleased, abandoned in a North Hollywood storage facility that Warner employees call "the Vault," until Rhino Handmade included all eleven tracks in their Jack Nitzsche collection Three Piece Suit: The Reprise Recordings 1971-1974, a long out of print internet-only CD issued to great critical acclaim in 2001. This Hanky Panky / Mapache LP release marks the first time it has been made available on vinyl, as originally intended.

Press for "Jack Nitzsche":

"With a nod to primal Todd Rundgren and the quirky harmonic genius of Brian Wilson, tracks such as "Lower California" and "I'm the Loneliest Fool" recall the idiosyncratic nature of his collaborative efforts with Van Dyke Parks, and arrangements for Tim Buckley and the Buffalo Springfield." Lindsay Planer

"Acid-trip mariachi, warped lounge music, and Randy Newman-on-a-binge pop. Captivating."
David Browne, Entertainment Weekly

"A key lost chapter of the ultra-hip early 70s Warner Brothers rock scene ... done with a style that's a bit like the best Reprise work of Van Dyke Parks, Jimmy Webb, Randy Newman, and Paul and/or Mason Williams." Dusty Groove

"An ambitious affair in the Smile/Song Cycle mode" Barney Hoskyns, Waiting For The Sun

"Jack's one of the modern-day masters. His creations are on par with Mozart and the composers of the Renaissance" Neil Young

The post Jack Nitzsche (The Lost 1974 Reprise Album: A Forg appeared first on Guerssen Records.

The post Eulalie appeared first on Guerssen Records.

The post So Many People: The Reprise Mono Singles & More appeared first on Guerssen Records.