The GREATEST HITS, and record stores

rockdoctor

Well-Known Member
The different color covers for Brasil'66 Greatest Hits is also a puzzle. I first saw it as green everywhere but then I found a copy with the brown cover years later at a thrift store. I looked and do not see any information about a record club issue on it but was thinking that might have been the reason.
 
Nope, that's a puzzler. It's possible that some others in the series all tended toward the brownish-reddish.

 
TJB - orange
Sandpipers - blue
Sergio Mendes - green or brown
Wes Montgomery - black (correct?)

Are there any I'm missing?

That sure is a curiosity why the Sergio one had its color changed. Maybe Sergio (or Herb, or Lani, or Gracinha) just hated the green and asked for it to be changed. It IS a pretty garish cover compared to the others. Or maybe somebody in the art department envisioned a darker green, hated the printed result and asked for a change after a few had been printed. Is one or the other more prominent in the marketplace? I've only ever seen the green one.
 
Are there any I'm missing?

Baja.

I had a cassette of the Brasil '66 but have no idea what it looked like anymore. The original W. German CD version was that ugly green.

And the Baja set was a darker brick red...? I had the TJB, but can't remember if I ever had the Baja. (I may have, but it's been decades since I've seen those records--they're buried in storage.)

A weird series overall. I realize Wes passed away and it was a fitting tribute, yet pulling that out of the jazz category (from CTi, no less) was an oddball move. Also, the series might also have included a few more classic A&M artists, although I have no clue as to which ones had genuine charting hits vs. the compilations being popular or favorite tracks of whoever assembled them.
 
I'm pretty sure that the green was the final decided-on color. If I'm not mistaken, even some or one of the other entries had changes to the fancy lettering colors somewhere along the line.

Maybe a trip to discogs will sort it out.
 
I'm pretty sure that the green was the final decided-on color. If I'm not mistaken, even some or one of the other entries had changes to the fancy lettering colors somewhere along the line.

Maybe a trip to discogs will sort it out.
Green is what was on the tapes years back that I saw and then it is on the cd's as well.
The brown was a complete surprise when I found it.
 
Aside from a sea of poor white balance in the images on Discogs, these are some variations:

The common green version:

1657747694009.png

Brown version:

1657747748885.png


A brick red version from Brazil:

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An orange version from Spain, with altered tracks:

1657747653881.png

Possibly a yellow-ish version from Australia (unless whoever uploaded had very poor white balance):

1657748039295.png
 
Herb's entry in the UK had a white cover and more tracks.
 
TJB - orange
Sandpipers - blue
Sergio Mendes - green or brown
Wes Montgomery - black (correct?)

Are there any I'm missing?

That sure is a curiosity why the Sergio one had its color changed. Maybe Sergio (or Herb, or Lani, or Gracinha) just hated the green and asked for it to be changed. It IS a pretty garish cover compared to the others. Or maybe somebody in the art department envisioned a darker green, hated the printed result and asked for a change after a few had been printed. Is one or the other more prominent in the marketplace? I've only ever seen the green one.
Or maybe the printer was running low on one of the colors or the colors weren’t aligned correctly, and they figured that with it being a record club release they wouldn’t do a reprint.
 
I do not know if the brown was a club release or not. There are no markings on to show that it was from a club. Columbia House usually had a sticker with CRC. On the spine or other location a very small CRC might be there. RCA would have the "Made Under License" form on theirs and Record Club of America did not have a license from A&M to manufacture. I never saw albums from the Capitol or Citadel Clubs so I do not know what their markings might have been. My original copy was bought at a store and it was later damaged and I got a copy from Columbia House that was the newer label issue and green cover. In any case, it was nice to find the brown cover as a variant.
 
Capitol Record Club releases would have an SMAS-xxxx catalog number on the jacket and the label.
 
Looks like this Capitol Record Club variation has the A&M catalog number top right, but the SMAS numbers on the label.

1657800597190.png

1657800648743.png
 
Columbia Record Club jackets always had a small "CRC" on the backside of the jacket.

I can't believe I forgot about the BMB in my shortlist of the greatest hits albums! (I never saw that one in the flesh though, so maybe that's why it didn't spring to mind. Or I'm just getting old, one of the two.)
 
One thing that always sort of bugged me about this album is the way they used "Look of Love" as the title of that song, when the actual song title is "The Look of Love." Without "The" on there, the words don't make much sense; that beginning article tells a lot about the lyrical content of that song; I think it should be included.

I have less trouble with "Fool on the Hill," which is properly titled "The Fool on the Hill," but since that title is about a person (rather than the emotion), the article doesn't seem as important. "The" is also left off of the Brasil '66 album title, so it makes some sense to leave it off the song, too. I was surprised the first time I saw the entire correct title written out (probably on a Beatles album).
 
I'm thinking that the color change from brownish to green might have been in response to some criticism along the way. That red text on a tan background doesn't exactly "pop."

1657889231483.png

Maybe it was one of those "East Coast/West Coast" things? Who knows? Its one of those probably-never-answerable things that we'll just have to go on wondering about.

I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship with this title. I pretty much love the track list. I was delighted that they included "Like A Lover", one of my longtime favorites, even though it wasn't really anything other than a b-side.

I have always hated the fact that they had to go ahead and subject this whole album to that crappy CSG processing. It wouldn't have been so bad if they'd left that in the LP days, but - even today - the album is still available on CD and even a newer LP - and the CSG processing remains. Happily, technology can finally undo the CSG crap and make the album sound normal. It's actually a pretty good-sounding disc once you do the "undo".

Of course there are many other Brasil '66 compilations out there from over the years. One (with the cigar cover) has all of these tracks plus four more. But this one has happier memories of the classic days of A&M as the first major compilation of Brasil '66 material.
 
Harry,
I notice a difference on the Capitol Record Club label. It does not have CSG 4403 for side A as my brown copy does. On the green copy label, it has SP 4403 and not the CSG 4403. My green copy is a Columbia House issue( with the newer label design). I no longer have my original copy that I bought in 1970 as it got damaged somewhere along the line so i do not know if CSG was on the label or not.
 
Maybe they thought this brownish color was too close to the brownish-red Baja cover, hence the switch to the green. But I agree, the red-on-brown doesn't exactly stand out.
 
Maybe they thought this brownish color was too close to the brownish-red Baja cover, hence the switch to the green. But I agree, the red-on-brown doesn't exactly stand out.
The red on brown does not pop for sure and "Look Of Love" was a puzzler as there is room for "The" to be used to complete the title.
The only other lp in this series that I have is TJB with the spelling error on the spine.
 
Baja.

I had a cassette of the Brasil '66 but have no idea what it looked like anymore. The original W. German CD version was that ugly green.

And the Baja set was a darker brick red...? I had the TJB, but can't remember if I ever had the Baja. (I may have, but it's been decades since I've seen those records--they're buried in storage.)

A weird series overall. I realize Wes passed away and it was a fitting tribute, yet pulling that out of the jazz category (from CTi, no less) was an oddball move. Also, the series might also have included a few more classic A&M artists, although I have no clue as to which ones had genuine charting hits vs. the compilations being popular or favorite tracks of whoever assembled them.
Rudy, the only other A&M artists, outside of Brasil '66 and TJB that I was hearing regularly on the radio back in the late 60's were The Sandpipers and Claudine Longet. Those were from their 1968 albums. Let Go for Sandpipers and Hurry On Down and Scarborough Fair for Claudine Longet were getting a lot of play. I have no idea if they were singles or not. The station that I would listen to played a lot of album cuts of Brasil'66 so maybe these were just that as well.
 
I remember seeing this in the stores between 1977 and the mid 80s I got my copy in 1979 some still had a mix between the gatefold and non gatefold sleeves mine didn't have the gatefold but it was all the same price going anywhere from $5.99 to $7.99 respectively but still now that it's been out of print since the 80s it still holds many wonderful memories for me kind of like how Harry liked the Brasil 66 in a sentimental sense Even though this and the Brasil 66 and a few others were CSGd I wasn't aware of the technical details at 12 years old
 
The only one of these I ever actually owned on LP was the TJB one. Once I realized there were "liner notes" inside the gatefold, I really wanted to see what the other albums said. Our local record store (actually a "department" in a variety store) only ever carried the TJB and the Sergio Mendes albums, so I would wander in there from time to time (this pre-dates us selling LPs in our store). I loved to glimpse inside the gatefolds, but didn't have the cash to buy everything I wanted to, so I would slit open the bottom of the shrinkwrap and "peek" inside to see what was in there. It took me several trips to the store to read all the fine print in the Sergio album!
 
I think I waited awhile to buy the green GREATEST HITS for Sergio Mendes. I have two LP copies and both feature the silver/tan label, both have the newer catalog number, and neither have the gatefold. I did manage to find an ochre label version with the alternate cover and a gatefold Unipak.

Someday, I'll scan all of the insides of the five discs and maybe make a gallery thread here.
 
I think I waited awhile to buy the green GREATEST HITS for Sergio Mendes. I have two LP copies and both feature the silver/tan label, both have the newer catalog number, and neither have the gatefold. I did manage to find an ochre label version with the alternate cover and a gatefold Unipak.

Someday, I'll scan all of the insides of the five discs and maybe make a gallery thread here.
I would like to see that myself it would provide a sort of "Historical perspective " and I love seeing the differences
 
I think I waited awhile to buy the green GREATEST HITS for Sergio Mendes. I have two LP copies and both feature the silver/tan label, both have the newer catalog number, and neither have the gatefold. I did manage to find an ochre label version with the alternate cover and a gatefold Unipak.

Someday, I'll scan all of the insides of the five discs and maybe make a gallery thread here.
I never saw this album with the different catalog/non Unipak cover. When I bought the cd, it had the newer number. I did see the non gatefold for Fool On The Hill at one record store and have never seen it since. It is amazing to see all the interest in the varied covers and labels. My favorite label has always been the tan.
 
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