Sampler Daze: WB/Reprise Loss Leaders, Part 6

If you are listening to any of the music we’re putting up to sample along with this series, you may have noticed a few ticks and pops.  This is comin’ straight from the vintage vinyl from 36-odd years ago, so thanks for your patience.  The songs from Appetizers, the first WB/Reprise sampler from 1973 might have a little more surface noise because when I had that record in my senior year of high school, I played the heck out of it.  It’s the favorite of many people we’ve heard from, and it is no wonder why.

Kicking off with Little Feat’s “Dixie Chicken,” Appetizers belies its title by getting straight to the main course.  This one rocks pretty much from start to finish – from the Faces with “Borstal Boys,” to Deep Purple, the Paul Butterfield Band’s blues, the Beach Boys and Foghat, it’s a meaty portion.

In the last installment we made reference to something on the horizon and offered David Bowie and Roxy Music as clues – you may well have thought “glam rock.”  And certainly Warner Bros. was right out in front on that one: they had the band T. Rex on their label.  Led by the diminutive Marc Bolan, the group started as a folk-rock four piece in the late 1960s and by 1970 T. Rex was down to a duo when they hit in the U.K. with “Ride A White Swan.”  Another single, “Hot Love,” was a hit and Bolan expanded the band into a foursome to tour – although instead of playing to his old hippie audience, their teenage kids showed up instead.  T. Rex’s next album plugged in the guitars and went straight to the top: Electric Warrior, from 1971, and the hits “Bang A Gong (Get It On)” and “Jeepster” made the Rexsters big stars on both sides of the pond.  By the time T. Rex placed “Born To Boogie” on 1973’s Appetizers, glam rock was already starting to fade.  “20th Century Boy” from late ’73, was T. Rex’s final big hit and the group disintegrated.  Bolan, who played in Ike & Tina Turner’s band and made a cameo appearance on Ringo Starr’s classic Ringo album, died in an auto accident in 1977.

Also rockin’ Appetizers was the all-girl group Fanny.  Led by June Millington and her sister Jean, the four-piece band signed with Warner Bros. in 1969 and by 1973 they’d released five albums.  Fanny had a hit with “Charity Ball” in 1971 and “Butter Boy,” which climbed into the Top 40 in 1975.  You think the Go-Gos or the Bangles were the first all-girl rock groups?  Nah – Fanny was one of the first (they were the second, actually) all-female bands to sign to a major label.  Fanny broke up around 1975 after a few personnel adjustments; today they occasionally regroup for an oldies show.

Later in 1973, All Singing, All Talking, All Rocking came in the mail – this one had some novelty with audio clips from classic Warner Bros. movies of the past and near-present, including Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Casablanca.  What was really coming down the pike to stay for a while was not glam rock, which turned to be a flash in the pan, but hard rock.  Warner’s already had some heavy dudes signed to its stable: Foghat, Deep Purple, and this band called Uriah Heep.  The British rockers were led back in the day by annoying vocalist David Byron, and had a great instrumentalist in keyboardist Ken Hensley.  Sometimes referred to as the Beach Boys of heavy metal, Uriah Heep managed to scrape out a few hits including 1972’s “Easy Livin’.”  Hensley’s gone now and Byron died in the mid-1970s, but Uriah Heep soldiers on in the 21st century.

The Section, a group of L.A. session heavyweights, weighs in with “Bullet Train, Jethro Tull takes it “Inside” and 60s dudes the Sopwith Camel emerge, sitars intact, with “Dancin’ Wizard.”  Another heavy dude, Robin Trower, shows up on All Singing … with his “Twice Removed From Yesterday,” while the singer/songwriters are represented by Peter Yarrow and Tim Buckley, who is listed as performing his “Sally Go ‘Round The Roses,” a 1963 hit by the all-girl vocal group the Jaynetts.  “Sally” was not really written by Tim Buckley – actually it was penned by a record label owner, possibly an A&R guy and somebody’s wife, none of whom were named Tim Buckley.  Anyhoo, the guy who produced the original record, Abner Spector, is now listed as the songwriter on the Jaynetts’ hit. Buckley’s version adds some new lyrics and spins it in a weird direction (a “homosexual context”?).   A difficult, hard-to-pin-down artist, Buckley nevertheless died in 1975.

MP3: “Borstal Boys” by the Faces (from Appetizers)

MP3: “Born To Boogie” by T. Rex (from Appetizers)

MP3: “Dancin’ Wizard” by the Sopwith Camel (from Appetizers)

MP3: “Is It My Name?” by Todd Rundgren (from Appetizers)

MP3: “All Mine” by Fanny (from Appetizers)

MP3: “Licks Off Of Records” by Martin Mull (from Appetizers)

MP3: “Bugs Bunny & Barbra Streisand from
What’s Up Doc/Seven Stars” by Uriah Heep (from All Talking …)

MP3: “Twice Removed From Yesterday” by Robin Trower (from All Talking …)

MP3: “Bullet Train” by the Section (from All Talking …)

MP3: “Sally Go ‘Round The Roses” by Tim Buckley/followed by Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Dooley Wilson from Casablanca (from All Talking …)

Inside the WB/Reprise Loss Leaders at Dustbury.com

30 Days Out’s series on the WB/Reprise Loss Leaders