Michael Fremer

While still with The Jeff Beck Group, Rod Stewart signed as a solo artist with Lou Reizner, an American Mercury Records producer living in the UK at the time, who had his ear to the musical firmament.

A fully realized production conceptually, musically, spiritually and sonically, Dusty in Memphis has rightfully attained legendary status since it was first issued by Atlantic Records as SD 8214 back in 1969. By bringing the British pop star to Memphis, Jerry Wexler figured he could do for Springfield what he managed when he redefined Aretha. Plus the former folky had had her musical life turned around when during a stopover in New York in the early ‘60s on her way to Nashville to record with her group The Springfields she heard The Exciters’ supercharged Lieber/Stoller penned hit “Tell Him.” After that, the powerfully voiced Dusty began covering American pop songs and making her covers the definitive version, though her first hit single was an original written for her: the memorable “I Only Want to Be With You.”

Gene Clark simply didn’t fit in. While a member of The New Christy Minstrels during the early ‘60s, the young mid-westerner heard “She Loves You” on a jukebox and realized his place wasn’t in a folksploitation group. He quit and headed West where he joined up with McGuinn and later Crosby at Doug Weston’s famed Santa Monica Blvd. folk club, The Troubador.

I picked up The Best of Laurie Volume 1 (LES-4003) at a garage sale the other week and it includes “He’s So Fine” by The Chiffons, “A Little Bit O’ Soul” by The Music Explosion, “A Little Bit of Soap” by the Jarmels and “Hushabye” by The Mystics, among other tunes.