365 Days #283 - Unknown Band (mp3s)

There was a store in Bristol, Tenn. that closed down a couple of years ago. It was primarily a book store, but it also sold such things as old records, old stereos. and reel-to-reel tapes. The material here comes from a couple of those reels that I bought.

I don't know the name of this group, and there's no listing of songs - I have to go by what's being played and sung in order to tell you what the songs are. Yes, folks - We're going into "Dante's Cover-Version Inferno" again.

This rock band is apparently from the NE Tenn./SW Va. area, and these reels seem to have been recorded in the late-60's.

The 1st reel consists of instrumentals recorded directly to tape. The 2nd reel is filled with songs not only played, but sung by the group. The songs on the 2nd reel were dubbed onto the tape - and not very well. I had to do some filtering-and-maximizing to get these close to listenable.

Whoever these guys are, and whatever they're doing nowadays - Here's to ya!

MP3:
Reel 1
Walk - Don't Run (2:02)
A Taste of Honey (2:13)
Wipeout (4:34)
Comin' Home (1:10)

Reel 2
Good Thing (2:04)
Happy Together (1:54)
Steppin' Stone (2:34)
Red Rubber Ball (4:04)
  (Unlike The Cyrkle, These guys throw in an instrumental break!)
Louise (2:24)
Blistered (3:45)
Color My World (3:40)
Kicks (4:20)
"Time ... to turn the tape ... overrr." (:07)
  (Proof that the musical material is a bad dub.
  This guy records directly onto the tape to make this announcement.)
Wipeout (3:46)
Walk - Don't Run (1:50)
Comin' Home (3:44)
  (These guys really get jammin', then the song gets rudely cut off.)

Various
Cherish (3:40)
Love Me Not Tomorrow (2:51)
The Shadow Of Your Smile (3:47)
Poor Side of Town (4:14)
Softly As I Leave You (4:11)
  (The rest of the songs have varying cases of "bass overbleed".
  I tried to cut the volume in these spots on the sound files.)

Images: Jack Fives, Shamrock

- Contributed by: Sammy Reed

Comments

A great request for a great site : 1.ALAN SONDHEIM-T'OTHER LITTLE TUNE (ESP/ZYX-1968). 2. ALAN WATTS-THIS IS IT (1962).
Thanks for everything, ALEX.

[folksnake]

Great stuff! Sadly, it reminds me of the reels I have my basement.

By the way--that's "A Taste of Honey", not "The Lonely Bull". The Herb Alpert stuff can sort of blur, it's true...

[Sammy Reed]

I'm trying to take some steps to get that song title corrected. Sorry about that.

[xopher.tm]

The "The Lonely Bull" (A Taste of Honey) link is now 404.

[Sammy Reed]

Everything's fixed now. Thanks, Otis!

[snarfdude]

curious as to the specific reels...are as they are pictured? or different? pro recordings? they sound it, maybe 15ips 2 track 10.5 inch reels? though the noisy ones definitely sound like dubs

[Sammy Reed]

The reels were a couple of store-bought 7-in. reels, recorded at 7 1/2 IPS. The second one had the brand name of Shamrock (which indicates: not even Irish), but the first reel's box is more interesting to me. The brand name is Jack Fives, and the box has a drawing of playing cards that are a jack and 4 5's. I think I'm gonna scan these boxes and see if they can't be put here instead of that 10-in. reel picture, which I didn't put here at all.

[Sammy Reed]

Thanks to Otis for putting my Jack Fives reel box here!

[snarfdude]

shamrock was a very common brand for consumer use in the late 60's into the 70's so not overly surprising, but the jack fives is new to me. For 7.5 ips speed, likely on a 1/4 track consumer deck, the quality is impressive. The hissier reel still is reasonable quality given that context. Being from a radio background, I have more then a few hundred tapes and have rescued about a 1/2 dozen pro machines from the dumpster, they're obsolete in today's radio control room, usually a console and a mic and a computer but still good to have when you have a lot of tapes to play. most of my tapes are 2 track.

[Rusty Wilkerson]

Red Rubber Ball was first recorded by the band named Red Rubber Band out of Nashville, Tennessee in the late 60's