🎵 AotW Classics CANADIAN SWEETHEARTS SP-4106

[Harry]

Bob Regan - Lucille Starr
(INTRODUCING THE) CANADIAN SWEETHEARTS
A&M SP-4106

Tracks:

Side One
1. Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes (Slim Willet)
2. Half-breed (John D. Loudermilk)
3. Freight Train (James-Williams)
4. Blue Canadian Rockies (Walker)
5. Love (Burnette-Osborne)
6. Blowin' In The Wind (Bob Dylan)

Side Two
1. Hootenanny Express (Bob Regan)
2. I'm Leaving It All Up To You (D.Terry, Jr.-D.Harris)
3. Rocky Mountain Special (Bob Regan)
4. Out For Fun (Bob Regan)
5. We're Gonna Stand Up On The Mountain (Burnette-Osborne)
6. This Land Is Your Land (W. Guthrie)

Produced by: Herb Alpert & Jerry Moss
Co-Producer: Dorsey Burnette
Arranged by: Herb Alpert & Dorsey Burnette
Album Design: Peter Whorf Graphics

Liner Notes:

MY DEAR FRIENDS:

It has been a great honor to me to have been asked by A&M Records to write this little message in behalf of my two best friends - Bob Regan and Lucille Starr - THE CANADIAN SWEETHEARTS.

It is needless to say that these two young folks rank high among the countless artists in our particular industry and that their personalities and talents cannot be surpassed by anyone in the entertainment world for their particular style, their fine duets, their fine renditions on solos by each of them, the extreme potency, trueness, and range of the great yodels as only Lucille can do them, their humor, plus the magic fingers of Bob on the guitar all add up to one thing - another great act and one that I am proud to know and call my friends.

I have had the pleasure of having this fine team on several tours with me and the overwhleming applause on their every performance proves to me that you have a treasure in your home to be well proud of when you have a copy of this great album packaged by two of today's leading recording artists.

Let me be one of the many who have already predicted that this album will be a leading seller along with other great albums by our many top stars wherever it is offered to our wonderful record-buying public and to you - Bob and Lucille - continued success with your careers in the future.

Hank Snow

Hank Snow is an exclusive RCA Victor Recording Artist

 

[Harry]

A couple of notes of my own:

I've wondered how and where to file this album. Is the artist officially "Canadian Sweethearts" or is it "Bob Regan and Lucille Starr"?

As such would it be filed under "C", "B", "R" or even "S" to be next to the followup solo album by Lucille Starr?

The title, it would seem, is "Introducing the Canadian Sweethearts", and yet the spine only lists "Canadian Sweethearts" (at least that's true on my Canadian copy from Quality Records).

For simplicity, I've generally filed it under "C" for Canadian Sweethearts since that's the way I think of this album and the artist(s).

As for the back cover, one track is misspelled there: "Hootenanny Express" should have two "n's" but someone missed one.

And is Hank Snow the champ when it comes to run-on sentences and hyperbole or what?

Also, this is perhaps one of very few A&M Records I own that doesn't list the song timings. Perhaps because it's a Canadian pressing?

Harry

 

[Dave]

I remember easily finding a copy of this as I was just joining A&M Corner and just getting into its artists, and having to order the follow-up, Lucille Starr's solo album w/o Bob Regan, The French Song, from a dealer Online...

Or maybe it was the other way around... I'm sure they were both American pressings, but a proliferation of Canadian copies could easily be a common thing, maybe not... And lastly, one of them or perhaps both were Mono...

Interesting selection of songs, though and done in a manner of sometimes Country/sometimes Pop... The Ian & Sylvia Tyson, purveyors of "You Were On My Mind", before We Five... (though don't quote me as my music trivia here being Official!)

"We're Gonna Stand Up On The Mountain" (which appeared on the first A&M multi-artist sampler, $$ Million Dollar Sampler $$) is an unusual next-to-last track, while it was interesting when playing Side 2 first then Side 1, to have "Blowin' In The Wind" end the album, and to me sounding much better, though "This Land Is Your Land" is also just as good...

The "Half-Breed" here is a much different song than what Cher would do a decade later... John D. Loudermilk, its author (who also wrote "Tobacco Road" and "Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye") writes this from more of a third-person perspective...

"I'm Leaving It All Up To You" gets my vote as a favorite track, and this is before Marie Osmond brought out her cheesy, overwrought interpretation, over-lapped with the extravagant orchestrations, while here done much more sincerely as it is a lot more low-key...

And a fairly good album for Sunday Morning Listening, as well...!

Dave

 

[Steve Sidoruk]

Session info:

8/17/64 - Radio Recorders - Blue Canadian Rockies, This Land Is Your Land - Herb Alpert - trumpet, Jerry Williams - drums & percussion, Dennis Budimir - ?, George Callender - ?, Robert Florence - ?

8/18/64 - Gold Star Recording Studios - Blowin' In The Wind, I'm Leaving It All Up To You - Herb Alpert - trumpet, Julius Wechter - marimba, Bud Coleman - guitar & mandolin, Hal Blaine - drums, Ray Pohlman - bass, Tommy Tedesco - guitar.

8/21/64 - Gold Star Recording Studios - Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes, We're Gonna Stand Up On The Mountain - Herb Alpert - trumpet, Julius Wechter - marimba, Dave Wells - trombone, Bud Coleman - guitar & mandolin, Hal Blaine - drums, Russell Bridges - piano, Lew McCreary - trombone, Bill Pitman - guitar, Ray Pohlman - bass, Tommy Tedesco - guitar, Jerry Williams - drums & percussion.

The first two sessions had a mix of Canadian Sweethearts (SP 106) and The French Song (SP 107) tracks. The second and third sessions also recorded 8 tunes for South Of The Border (SP 108) and In A Little Spanish Town, which wasn't released until 3 years later in the ...Sounds Like... album (SP 4124).

Original A&M SP 106 pressing with logo at the top. Note that timing is screwed up on side 1
label - side 2 did better with 4 of 6 tracks having the correct digits to indicate timing minutes
and seconds.

 

[audiofile]

May I ask where you get the session info for these early A&M albums and what others do you have?

 

[Harry]

May I ask where you get the session info for these early A&M albums and what others do you have?

Our Steve is a treasure-trove of information, a cumulation of a lifetime spent researching this stuff, and we're glad to have him share it with us!

Harry

 

[Steve Sidoruk]

If I gave away all my info sources and years of research, then what would be left for my book???

 

[Mr Bill]

Weird!

If I gave away all my info sources and years of research, then what would be left for my book???

If I gave away all my info and years of data checking, what would I have left for my book???

Frighteningly uncanny or uncannily frightening? Hopefully it's not a creepy omen!

--Mr. Bill

 

[Steve Sidoruk]

My question had a big smiley at the end.

 

[Tom Wallace]

Steve, I wonder if the version of "In a Little Spanish Town" recorded at the third session is actually the one that appears on Lucille's "French Song" LP, rather than the "Sounds Like" version from 1967. The "Sounds Like" version sounds much more 1967-ish to me, if that makes sense, and it fits in well with the overall sound of "Sounds Like."

Thanks for providing this fascinating historical information.

Cheers,

Tom

 

[Steve Sidoruk]

I can tell you that it was grouped with the SOTB tunes and we've heard that Herb often had extra songs that were used later, so who really knows? I can see it going either way, as the recording session notes sometimes create more mystery than what they tell.

 

[DAN BOLTON]

Steve, I wonder if the version of "In a Little Spanish Town" recorded at the third session is actually the one that appears on Lucille's "French Song" LP, rather than the "Sounds Like" version from 1967. The "Sounds Like" version sounds much more 1967-ish to me, if that makes sense, and it fits in well with the overall sound of "Sounds Like."

Thanks for providing this fascinating historical information.

Cheers,

Tom

There might have been some overdubbing done at a later date...


Dan

 

[DAN BOLTON]

I can tell you that it was grouped with the SOTB tunes and we've heard that Herb often had extra songs that were used later, so who really knows? I can see it going either way, as the recording session notes sometimes create more mystery than what they tell.

I've often wondered about CANTINA BLUE...to me, it sounds like it might have been recorded earlier than the rest of the WNML tunes; maybe as far back as SOTB. Maybe not...


Dan

 

[Rudy]

I thought I'd posted this here, but apparently not. Probably because the vinyl is trashed and worn out. On the hunt for a better copy without the groove burn.




Listening to it a few times, they could have called the album Songs About Trains. "Freight Train," "Hootenanny Express" and "Rocky Mountain Special" all have trains as the subject. The latter two were penned by Bob Regan. "We're Gonna Stand..." has been a favorite from one of the A&M compilation records, and "Don't Let The Stars..." is probably my favorite on the record.

They recorded a single for Ditto Records as Bob and Lucille in 1958 that showed up in rockabilly circles back in the day. "Eeny-Meeny-Miney-Moe" (penned by Regan). I have it here on a Rhino box set, Rockin' Bones.

 

[Bobberman]

I listened to this on YouTube despite the groove burn and noise I found it to be a most enjoyable country/pop album and like Lucille's French Song album its nice to know some of the same Session players participated such as Herb, Julius, and a few other familiar names such as Dave Wells Russell Bridges ( Aka Leon Russell) Bud Coleman. Hal Blaine etc.

 

[Harry]

Like some other albums that we've analyzed a bit, this one has some songs in stereo and some in "modified mono". Steve's session info above details all of the stereo tracks. The mono ones are:

Half-Breed
Freight Train
Love
Hootenanny Express
Out For Fun

These all have the same traits of some rather distorted leads, and to make a sense of stereo, there's a light echo trail off to the sides.

I can hear the groove distortion in the copy above - it's a little worse than my own copy, which I guess is a little cleaner.

 

[Rudy]

My guess is that those mono tracks were recorded for another label at an earlier time. I know they were more popular in Canada, so it's possible some early recordings are (so far) lost to history or were released as Lucille Starr singles. There are very few Bob and Lucille records listed on Discogs for now. Aside from "Eeny-Meeny..." and "What's The Password?" (both Regan tunes), "The Big Kiss" and "Demon Lover" were written by Shrager-Chorney-Shrager, all for Ditto Records singles in the late 50s.

A Bob & Lucille CD compilation from 1998 collects 30 tracks, some of them not on either these listed singles or the A&M album. Some of the CD's tracks were officially Lucille Starr recordings. They also had a 1967 album on Epic, Side by Side -- Pop & Country.

A list of singles appears here:

https://www.45cat.com/artist/the-canadian-sweethearts/all

Their records were labeled under variations of the names Bob and Lucille, Bob & Lucille, Bob Regan & Lucille Starr, Lucillle Starr with Bob Regan (the Canadian 2-LP SP-9015 collection) and The Canadian Sweethearts, plus Regan appeared on Starr's recordings under her name alone. That sometimes makes records hard to track down.

The CD compilation:



1 Teen - Age Boogie
2 Lost
3 When You Say I Love You
4 Vibratin'
5 Hen House Rock
6 Eeny Meeny Miney Moe
7 Demon Lover
8 The Big Kiss
9 What's The Password
10 No Help Wanted
11 The Flirting Kind
12 The French Song (When The Sun Says Goodnight To The Mountains)
13 Freight Train
14 Wayward Wind
15 Looking Back To See
16 I'm Leaving It Up To You
17 My Happiness
18 Tarantula (Instrumental)
19 Heartaches By The Numbers
20 Highland Lassie (Instrumental)
21 Crazy Arms
22 Colinda
23 Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes
24 Hootenanny Express
25 Jolie Jacqueline
26 Rocky Mountain Special
27 Love
28 Don't Knock On My Door
29 Teen - Age Boogie
30 Eeny Meeny Miney Moe

 

[Rudy]

I am just now listening to "Eeny" from that CD compilation, and I have my doubts as to its authenticity--the video above is a noisy needle drop. I have this track on a Rhino box set and it's clean. Makes me wonder if all the tracks sound rough on this CD...

 

[GroovinGarrett]

I have a sealed stereo copy of this one sitting on the shelf, I've never got around to opening it. One of these days I'll crack it open and needledrop it.

As far as the mono tracks on the album, Rudy is correct, they were issued as Canadian Sweethearts singles prior to the album sessions in August 1964:

"Freight Train" b/w "Out For Fun" - A&M 713/Quality 1563X, July 1963.
"Hootenanny Express" b/w "Half Breed" - A&M 727/Quality 1591X, January 1964.
"Love" b/w "Rocky Mountain Special" - A&M 737/Quality 1627X, April 1964.

 

[Mr Bill]

I have it here on a Rhino box set, Rockin' Bones.

The same "Rockin' Bones" covered by The Cramps on 1981's Psychedelic Jungle (I.R.S. SP 70016)?

--Mr Bill

 

[Rudy]

That's the one--the box set is bookended by two different versions. I prefer the second one.





"This here's the rockin' gears of a boppin' machine..."

 

[Mr Bill]

Hmm, I like 'em both. The second one has more in common with the The Cramps' version... But there's something about the young teen rockabilly vibe to that first one...

--Mr Bill