🎵 AotW Classics We Five MAKE SOMEONE HAPPY SP-4138

What is your favorite track?

  • Let's Get Together

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • High Flying Bird

    Votes: 1 16.7%
  • Make Someone Happy

    Votes: 1 16.7%
  • Five Will Get You Ten

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Somewhere

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • What Do I Do Now?

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The First Time

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Our Day Will Come

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Poet

    Votes: 1 16.7%
  • What's Goin' On

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The Inch Worm

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • You Let A Love Burn Out

    Votes: 3 50.0%

  • Total voters
    6

Harry

Charter A&M Corner Member
Staff member
Site Admin
We Five
MAKE SOMEONE HAPPY

A&M SP-4138

sp4138.jpg


Released as LP-138 in mono, and on Japanese CD POCM-2022 and on a Collectors Choice two-fer with YOU WERE ON MY MIND DPSM-5172

Tracks:

Side One:
1. Let's Get Together (Chet Powers) 2:13
2. High Flying Bird (Billy E. Wheeler) 2:55
3. Make Someone Happy (Styne/Green/Camden) 2:01
4. Five Will Get You Ten (Frank May) 2:17
5. Somewhere (Bernstein/Sondheim) 1:42
6. What Do I Do Now? (Stewart/Steirling) 2:25

Side Two:
1. The First Time (Ewan MacCall) 2:25
2. Our Day Will Come (M. Gorson/B. Hilliard) 1:44
3. Poet (J. Stewart/M. Stewart) 1:27
4. What's Goin' On (Mike Stewart) 2:23
5. The Inch Worm (F. Loesser) 2:50
6. You Let A Love Burn Out (Randy Steirling) 2:10

Recorded and Remixed in San Francisco: Columbia Recording Studio
Recording and Remix Engineer: Hank McGill
Photograph: Dennis Hodgson
Notes: George Yanok
Graphics: The Dirigiblewerke/San Francisco
Produced for Trident Productions: Frank Werber
 
Note: I only own the Collectors Choice two-fer. There were no composer credits given, and the liner notes reprinting is just too darned small.

If anyone cares to fill in these details from an LP source, great! I'll append the information into the main post.

Harry
 
I like the We Five. I read that they're somewhere between the New Christy Minstrels and The Byrds -- that's quite a musical canyon to traverse. (The former, at their least impressive, being nothing more than a white bread collegiate glee club; while the latter, at their finest, were the pre-eminent progressive West coast rock band, circa 1965-66.)

The LP sounds dated for 1967 and I have a hunch it was most likely recorded in 1966. Song selection, sequencing, and overall mood is very similar to the debute offering (including getting a gander at Bev's legs). The Collector's Choice offering Harry noted is a convenient way to acquire this + the debute.

Good group. Too bad A&M didn't focus on more contemporary pop/rock combos during 1965-67.
 
Pretty much a rehash of the first album... Little difference in sound except that the production sounds a bit more developed and that they vocally sound a slight more mature...

Yes, a wee bit dated, (That seems right; this must be from 1966 and somehow might have suffered a delay in being released) but these folky folks and their music have aged pretty well...

There is also a non-LP single released after this album, a B-Side to their terrific take on "Somewhere" (from WEST SIDE STORY), "There Stands The Door', which could stand inclusion on the Collectors Choice reissue of this album and their debut from 1965...

"High Flying Bird" composed and recorded by Billy Ed Wheeler (who's "Maggie (I Wish We'd Never Met)" had been covered by Bobby Goldsboro) would be a contemporary Folk-Rock standard for the likes of Richie Havens, Judy Henske and Carolyn Hester... "The First Time" also gets witnessed in transition from Folk to Rock, originally written by Ewan MacColl, and besides sung by We Five, it was covered by Kingston Trio and made its way to Roberta Flack, in 1970... "The Inch Worm" sounds a lot less didactic than The Sandpipers version, which means by these guys & gal, they make "learning numbers--or learning arithmetic--sound a lot more fun"...! "Our Day Will Come" sounds good in this "blueprint" format, later covered by Ruby The Romantics and leading to versions by Chris Montez, Roger Nichols & The Small Circle Of Friends and even The Carpenters and Frankie Vali in a more rich Rock vein... "Make Someone Happy" became a cake commercial ("Bake someone happy") and certainly almost met commercial expectations here, too... And "What's Going On", written by group member Michael Stewart, seems out-reaching and well-projected, among also being as equally introspective and reserved... "Five Will Get You Ten" seems like a self-play on themselves, "Poet" written by Michael Stewart's brother John, of the Kingston Trio who would later gain fame as a recording artist, just suffers from being too short, and "Let's Get Together" would be seen in a metamorphosis changing from being a Folk tune to suddenly in versions by other groups, such as The Youngbloods, who had a monster hit with it, to being a quinessential Rock song, actually written by Dino Valente a/k/a Chet Powers (his real name) future member of Quicksilver Messenger Service...

But, I preferably think melodically and lyrically "You Let A Love Burn Out" gets my nomination as top-pick... It seems as prophetically titled and poetically sung, as a song called "Kind'a Wasted Without You" by "the group who's album came right after this one" would follow, picking up on the lingo and jargon of these joyful days of the '60's and the feel-good (or feel groovy) happy sounds...



Dave
 
Dave said:
Pretty much a rehash of the first album... Little difference in sound except that the production sounds a bit more developed and that they vocally sound a slight more mature...Yes, a wee bit dated, (That seems right; this must be from 1966 and somehow might have suffered a delay in being released)...
Dave, in the CD release to the Kingston Trio's Final LP, Children Of The Morning ['66], John Stewart wrote that while his group was recording their final LP the We Five were recording as well -- suggesting that these '66 sessions may have been included on their 2nd and final LP.

Oh yeah, a noteworthy difference between the 1st and 2nd LPs is the absence of banjo. Personally, I like this instrument fine, but instruments like banjo and accordion -- particularly in the hands of teenagers playing the "new" pop music -- were the death knell of un-coolness in 1966.
 
JO said:
Dave, in the CD release to the Kingston Trio's Final LP, Children Of The Morning ['66], John Stewart wrote that while his group was recording their final LP the We Five were recording as well -- suggesting that these '66 sessions may have been included on their 2nd and final LP.

A-ha...! I have had that album on which the liner notes openly state that a We Five session took place that day in the studio before that band moved their equipment--"amplifiers and things they amplify"--out of to make way for the Kingston Trio session coming in...

And yes, the album sounds as though only a few songs were actually done in '68, the year when the group broke up, while the rest were probably sitting in the vault for a couple of years... And I have had that CD, Bonus Tracks and all, as well...

Yes, as the liner notes also state when the engineer Frank Werber turns on the red flood lights as Kingston Trio records "Norwegian Wood"--"...Isn't it good, Norwegian Wood..." :badteeth:

JO said:
Oh yeah, a noteworthy difference between the 1st and 2nd LPs is the absence of banjo. Personally, I like this instrument fine, but instruments like banjo and accordion -- particularly in the hands of teenagers playing the "new" pop music -- were the death knell of un-coolness in 1966.


i believe it, but by the '70's that sort'a stuff made it into Country Rock... Although some of it played by session players who had their names beside "Banjo" or "Accordion" in the '60's, keeping their names relevant, although the artists they worked for strictly used their "talents" for novel purposes and the instance where they wanted to experiment with a "folky" sound, but in most cases wouldn't touch (or play--someone else can!) either with a ten-foot pole...! :goofygrin:



Dave
 
Haven't been here in quite a while, recovering from some very nasty health issues, but you know, better late than nevah...:)

Chiming in because, although I already had both stock mono and stereo pressings of this Lp, found a mono DJ WLP promo recently, with the labels reversed relative to the sides (!), a first that I can recall for any promo Lp I've ever bought. That kinda thing is usually caught before being sent to stations (for obvious reasons), but well, what can ya do! Nice. clean pressing, all the same.

A question: why did it take so long for the 5's second album to come out? After the initial success of the first hit and Lp, and "Let's Get Together," why didn't this come out in 1966? And why do a few of the tracks from Broadway musicals sound like Sandpipers clones? Which might have been Ok for the Sandpipers, be if ever there was a group poised to be true 'folk-rock' We Five seemed to me to be the one. Something went wrong, and several later 45's were very good, and made me wonder, later, what derailed them.


:ed:
 
Hey Ed. Good to have you back. You ask a good question, but I haven't a clue.

Harry
 
Hiya, Harry! :naugaspinning: Yeah, been a while...I get here and there, off and on, but I'm afraid illness and recuperation are the culprits this time. Been a long haul, but love and music have kept me going. That, and a bad attitude that is essential to survival. As I told a nurse along the way, 'I plan on leading on long and evil life' and whatever I'm told to do to prolong it, I'll do.

I ask about We Five because back in those days, many bands' success or failure wasn't just due to lacking a followup 45. And this group did NOT lack for quality 45's! Not that they could ever hope to match the magic that was/is "You Were on My Mind," but thing is, the logical situation for the band was to get that second album out quickly, 'cause you never know if you're gonna make a third. The '60s are littered with abbreviated or scuttled careers precisely because someone--the band, management, label, whoever--didn't strike hard enough while the proverbial iron was hot. I think that was the case here. MSH did chart, but not too high, and much too late to make any difference, really. And the odds of any of them amounting to anything commercially after the band broke up wasn't likely, either, history just isn't on your side in that regard no matter who you are. For every John Stewart you got Bob Shane and Nick Reynolds, you know? Pop success is usually fleeting, arbitrary and ephemeral; it's gotta be taken when it comes, and then the smart performer rides it out for as long and much as it's worth.

But I babble, as usual...

:ed:
 
We *like* your babbling, Ed. And some of our Classic Album Of The Week threads could use some more input.

Harry
 
Glad you said that, Harry, wish I could get my wife as interested in my prattle as you are, but she's been wading through it way toooooooo long to do anything but nod off as I digress on my latest finds....:D

Will do, I'll check out some AOTW's and see if there's anything to be said about 'em.

:ed:
 
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