Teenbeat: the Mama's and the Papa's

It's almost a cliché to say the nineteen-sixties produced some of the most memorable popular music of the modern era and growing in the era afterward I was very much in that shadow cast by it cos if your folks and relations didn't have it, then often it was played on the radio.
One trend  amongst many was the fusion between folk music and the emergent rock in the middle of that decade which you see with the Byrds, Bob Dylan and naturally Simon and Garfunkel.

 

A popular sound often leads to others getting on on the genre and the other essential act you really need to listen to was the Mama's and Papa's who through a career that only spanned from nineteen sixty-five through nineteen sixty-eight, releasing seventeen 45's and five albums.

They comprised of John and Michelle Phillips, Denny Doherty  and Cass Elliot and were signed to Dunhill records in 1965 .

The combination of close harmony singing and relatively sparse instrumentation coupled with the dreamy quality of the songs lyrics is a core reason these productions stand out among many others.

Imagine not hearing such songs as Monday Monday, California Dreamin' that summarized that era, Dedicated To The One I Love, Creeque Alley and Dream A Little Dream Of Me before they made their separate ways? To anyone around it would be unthinkable and even when I was growing up, their records were always played on oldies but goldies shows on the radio which trust me I heard a lot of being ill during my childhood and reliant on the radio to cheer me up, it was was left for me to listen to.

Their have been a number of compilation albums of their music issued over the years as while there's a bit of me that loves the original studio lp jackets, in truth their always was a bit of filler on those albums and like many sixties albums seldom run much beyond a half hour or so making a well compiled compilation a sensible option.

The strength of two thousand and five's Mama's and Papa's Gold  is it offers many of the songs from the individual albums in addition to the hit 45's on two well filled compact discs avoiding the mistake of including solo recordings that featured on the nineteen ninety-one Creeque Alley package so there's a clear focus and it can act as good alternative to a full set of albums.

Best of all, this is an inexpensive double in Universal Musics Chronicles series negating any need to consider single cd sets completely.

Recommended