Find Me A Golden Street - question

[Arpeggio]

Excellent work Bill! The instrumental version was definitely recorded on a 1958 LP. I should think that the 1960 copyright coincides with the sheet music when the lyrics were added. Norman Petty may have experimented with religious words privately with cleargy or friends at his local church. Ever the businessman too though, why not have a more commercial, romantic version (lyrically) available too? The actual copy you show must presumably date from very late 1961 or early 1962 -as The Shadows are featured on the cover & "The Shadows" LP wasn't released until September, 1961.

Bests...Rob

[GoldenStreet]

Yes, Rob, the sheet music UK copyright date by Petford Music is 1961, which of course corresponds with the Shads great recording. There is probably something out there somewhere about Mr Gill (possibly a pseudonym, I wonder), although I haven't actually attemped any research in that context.

Bill

[Arpeggio]

Thanks Bill. Very interesting. Very little (virtually nothing!) about Andrew Gill on the Internet! He appears to have written lyrics for the ultra obscure "The Girl And The River" (copy held in the US Library Of Congress) -but that's all I could find!!!

Bests....Rob

[JimN]

Excellent work Bill! ... The actual copy you show must presumably date from very late 1961 or early 1962 -as The Shadows are featured on the cover & "The Shadows" LP wasn't released until September, 1961.
Bests...Rob

A 1962 publication date is also supported by the price (2s/6d). The standard price for a single song piano/chords/vocal line piece of music was still only 2s/0d as late as the publication of Man Of Mystery by Feldman in 1961 (with The Shadows pictured on the front).

Sheet music took until about 1970 to increase in price to as much as 5s/0d.

JN

[GoldenStreet]

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Continuing the discussion relating to the cost of sheet music during early 60s period, this copy of "The Stranger" (issued as double A-side with "Man Of Mystery", autumn 1960) was priced at 3s 0d, including as it does separate parts for guitar and guitar solo with piano accompaniment, which probably accounts for the higher cost at the time. There's no publication date indicated for the printed copy itself, but the picture with Bruce in 'the' sweater suggests it was issued at some point in 1961.

It seems there wasn't any exact pricing consistency then, as such, as the music copy I have of "Dance On", published in 1962, retailed at 2s 6d.

By the way, there are no lyrics included this time!

Bill

[JimN]

I believe it was originally a Crickets tune (whether instrumental or vocal I don't know). To think the Shads were slated in later years for covering tunes. Their version of Find Me a Golden Street is a classic, and it's a cover!
J

You have a point, Justin, but to be accurate, any "slating" in later years (especially from my direction) was not for the mere recording of songs already recorded by other artistes. It was rather for the recording of utter rubbish simply on the basis that it had been a hit for someone else, without any regard to whether it might be suitable for translation into an instrumental.

Thinking specifically of Find Me A Golden Street, and as it's the song under discussion, it's as well to remind ourselves that the first Shadows LP from 1961 actually had eight so-called "cover versions" out of its fourteen tracks. Only Nivram, See You In My Drums, Stand Up And Say That, Gonzales, Theme From A Filleted Pla(i)ce and Big Boy can be claimed as originals. The rest were what have come to be erroneously known as cover versions. But the arrangements suited the Shadows' style, which is more than you can say for much of the material recorded in the 1980s.

If you need examples, just think of You Win Again, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You, Heaven Is A Place On Earth, When The Going Gets Tough and One Moment In Time. Six items of absolute musical dross without a single redeeming feature, made worse by the fact that they were found on just one album. Many fans feel fully entitled to distinguish those recordings from the clever arrangements of non-originals to be found on the Shadows' 1960s albums.

JN

[NB, and this is a complete sub-topic: A "cover version" was originally the term for a recording (or a live performance) made to cash in on predicted success of a song. I'll give you a couple of good examples: in the early sixties, both Bobby's Girl by Susan Maughan and When My Little Girl Is Smiling by Jimmy Justice were genuine cover versions, and in the UK, they each eclipsed the USA originals by Marcie Blaine and The Drifters respectively. So much so that most people in the UK have never heard the USA originals. The term also encompassed a sub-industry of recordings made by sessioneers to take advantage of successful recordings after the fact, made quickly and sold cheaply (eg, Embassy label two-song singles at 12.5p, or Cannon label EPs at 50p with six re-recorded "hits". The meaning of the term has now become distorted and perverted; a recording of an established song is not actually a cover version unless it is aimed at the same market as the original as a straight and temporary cash-in. Thus, for instance, The Shads' version of In The Mood is their version of a Glenn Miller Orchestra tune, but it is not in any meaningful sense a cover version. The term seems nowadays to have become something of an epithet of abuse, with "covers band" created as term of quasi-contempt, despite the fact that on the basis on which it used, it logically also applies to the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Berlin State.

[Arpeggio]

If you need examples, just think of You Win Again, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You, Heaven Is A Place On Earth, When The Going Gets Tough and One Moment In Time. Six items of absolute musical dross without a single redeeming feature, made worse by the fact that they were found on just one album. Many fans feel fully entitled to distinguish those recordings from the clever arrangements of non-originals to be found on the Shadows' 1960s albums.

Couldn't agree more Jim! Which is why (& I could add more tracks to that list), even though it was very successful in chart / sales terms, "Steppin' To The Shadows" was (IMHO) one of their worst ever albums. But, but.......saved by the brilliance of "Stack - It" and the simply wonderful "Mountains Of The Moon" - which I rate as one of the Shads' finest ever latter day originals. Nice 'treatise' on Cover Versions too. But, language usage and meaning is constantly evolving. So you are correct on both counts in your neat summary. But, in 2012, the vast majority of the general population have come to accept that a 'cover version' is indeed any artist / group's recording / interpretation of any song / item of music previously recorded / performed by someone else - whether we like it or not. But I hear what you're saying.

Bests....Rob

[cockroach]

Perhaps semantically, it would be better to differentiate between the two by saying 'cover version' (e.g the Shads own arrangement of say, In The Mood) or copy version (e.g Susan Maughm's Bobby's Girl- which whilst based very closely on the original, is better in my opinion than the US original...)

Many UK bands covered US r'n'b material in the '60's, but in many cases they did their own versions which I found were often very different from the US originals when I eventually heard those original versions, sometimes years after...whereas other covers shamelessly copied the originals note for note etc!

I agree that these days 'cover band' is almost an insult, but in my opinion, I'd rather play covers if I couldn't write anything that was of a reasonable standard.

I think a lot of folk feel that what they play is only valid if it is their own original material.

Unfortunately, I think the likes of original songwriters from Lennon/McCartney,to Dylan to Burt Bacharach, or for that matter Marvin /Welch, are either very rare or non-existent these days!

[JimN]

Perhaps semantically, it would be better to differentiate between the two by saying 'cover version' (e.g the Shads own arrangement of say, In The Mood) or copy version (e.g Susan Maughm's Bobby's Girl- which whilst based very closely on the original, is better in my opinion than the US original...)

I still believe that the correct meaning of "cover" is overlooked. It does not mean playing Apache at a Shadows club. It means issuing a quick copy recording to try to cash in. In the 1850s (er... make that the 1950s), it wasn't even uncommon for the same song to be in the charts in three different versions (this before the industry had ceased to regard a new pop song as the property of everyone - including the vocalists with numerous Palais bands up and down the country).

I have both versions of Bobby's Girl and I'm inclined to agree with you that the UK version is better than the original. Similar things can be said about The Beatles' Twist And Shout and the Swinging Blue Jeans' Hippy Hippy Shake. Both records are era-defining tour-de-force performances (though I am sure that the SBJ's record features at least one session-man), whereas the Isley Brothers and Chan Romero originals are, by comparison, rather ho-hum (and no wonder they weren't hits in their own right). I've said this before but it's worth repeating: Medley/Russell (composers of Twist And Shout) and Chan Romero (writer of Hippy Hippy Shake) ought to raise the occasional toast of economic thanks in the general direction of Liverpool, because all three are (or perhaps were) undoubtedly richer than they would have been without The Beatles and the SBJs.

JN

[anniv 63]

Jim regarding the Swinging Blue Jeans Hippy Hippy Shake I did ask a well
known session guitarist a few years back, if he had been on it.
He replied no but did some other titles with them which he couldnt remember.
I wont name him as he isnt officially mentioned in dispatches but lets just
say he was handy with a De Armond pedal!!

Mike