CTi almost....wasn't...CTi

[Rudy]

Crown Records is calling on line four...

 

[Harry]

To be fair, Butler could have been on A&M proper, not CTI.

Barbary and Jones (sounds like a law firm, or a brand of gourmet soft pretzels) also should have been elsewhere but on the other hand,

 

[Michael Hagerty]

TV character names come from the darnedest places. We can't rule out that someone had those two albums.

Ken Levine (M*A*S*H, Cheers, Frasier and others) often named incidental characters by taking the first or last name from a disc jockey, pro athlete or girl he liked in high school and combining it with the last name from one of the two remaining categories (Jennifer Koufax).

L.A. street names ended up as surnames in a surprising number of tv shows, and there are other influences.

A few years ago, when TRANSPARENT was hot, I was stuck in traffic on the 101. We were about to drive up the coast from L.A. and had just passed through the stretch of Burbank where the studios (Warners, Disney and others) are.

I'd never seen TRANSPARENT, but Jeffrey Tambor was in the news over allegations of bad behavior and they noted his character was Maura Pfefferman. Not a common surname. And there, on a building beside the freeway is the sign---Pfefferman Realty.

Could be a coincidence, but given the location, I gotta think there was at least a subliminal implant if it wasn't outright a case of crawling in traffic and having a few minutes to let that name settle in.

 

[Harry]

I always found it interesting that the background nurses in M*A*S*H were often named Able and Baker, regardless of the actress playing the part. Back in the WWII wartime military phonetic alphabet, able and baker were the first two letters.

 

[Rudy]

I don't think Lt. Dish was in the military alphabet though.

 

[Michael Hagerty]

I hadn't fully realized the hot streak that you mention (SP 4108-4137). I think everybody here knows I have a high bar for use of the word "hit", but if we just deal with cracking the Top 200 album list (a pretty low bar), the only A&M artists who couldn't do that in that period were Claudine Longet (CLAUDINE) and Chris Montez (FOOLIN' AROUND).

Popping in to correct myself here---I don't know if I was looking at the wrong line, the wrong page, or what, but CLAUDINE most certainly did crack the top 200 albums. In fact, it peaked at #11 the week of July 15, and it was by no means a slow week:

1. Beatles-SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND
2. Monkees-HEADQUARTERS
3. Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass-SOUNDS LIKE
4. Aretha Franklin-I NEVER LOVED A MAN THE WAY I LOVE YOU
5. Jefferson Airplane-SURREALISTIC PILLOW
6. Bill Cosby-REVENGE
7. Andy Williams-BORN FREE
8. Original Movie Soundtrack-DR. ZHIVAGO
9. Monkees-MORE OF THE MONKEES
10.The Doors-THE DOORS

My apologies for the error.

 

[JOv2]

Thanks for the update -- I was sure she did well and A&M clearly had very high hopes for her given she was the first A&M artist to have both the front and rear covers in full colour.

A&M was doing very well in that stretch. (I surmise, however, that had The Parade [SP 4127] been issued it would have been a dud. On a personal note, I have 8 of that top 10 -- only missing the s/t and Cosby's comedy LP.)

 

[AM Matt]

By the way, Bill Cosby's "Revenge" (1967) is his biggest album of his career peaking at # 2 (for 1 week) while Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass "Sounds Like" was # 1 (also for 1 week) in June 17, 1967 on Billboard Top 200 Album Charts.

 

[Vinylalbumcovers]

A quick rewind here...





As I listened to this single when I first found it a few days ago, I was reminded that Carpenters did a Spike Jones treatment of this song also, on their first TV special and presumably on tour during the same era. Since The Clams did this in 1974, and the Carpenters version came later, I'm inclined to think they took inspiration from the version by The Clams.

So....something else to thank Creed Taylor for, in a roundabout way!

You mean the completely and utterly copied it. It's basically the same thing.

Ed