I borrowed gaye and other stories from my Dad and I think it is a brillant cd.
Does anyone else know any other albums I can buy from him?
All his songs are now released by Cherry Red Records but I don't know what album to buy next. Does anyone have any Clifford T Ward albums that they cam recommend to me?

There is a Clifford T Ward fanclub I know - everyone should join and remember what a genius he is.

Brillant singer, song writer and a poet.


RIP<br><br>Post edited by: jk2006, at: 2006/02/17 20:03

Clifford was part of a an almost now dead breed of singer-songwrters in the seventies.
If you have have a copy of &quot;Gaye&quot;, you probably have his best work, you are probably better off , looking at Cat Stevens, or Gilbert O`Sullivans back catalogue to get a similar , and self personal songwriter feel.
Failing that , stick with James Blunt, as he has a similar honesty.

cheers martin I can I also learned to play gaye on guitar and don partridge.

Have to disagree with you Martin, Clifford made many fantastic LPs over a long period, before MS struck him down and prevented him working as he wanted to do.&quot;Gaye&quot; was his biggest commercial success but is nowhere near his best work as he wasn't a commercial singles artist.Tracks like &quot;The best is yet to come &quot;,&quot;Carrie&quot; &quot;Sometime next year&quot;, &quot;Wherewithal&quot; and &quot;Up in the world&quot; are all classics amongst a huge back catalogue of brilliant songs over a 20 year period.All of those titles are still radio 2 playlisted.He still has a very large following and a dedicated website, which is probably the one you mention at www.cliffordtward.info/

Of the cherry red CDs go for almost any of them.You might be better going to his website first as buying from them will mean funds go more directly to his widow and family who are not in great financial standing after his 15+ years of suffering MS and needing to be cared for.CDwise,The Anthology gives you a larger selection over a longer period of time and &quot;Both of us&quot; is probably his most melodic CD from the 80s.With any of his songs, you won't drift far from a similar formula of poetry and melody.

Cat Stevens is fantastic too I have to agree there and well worth investigating, but Gilbert O Sullivan seems so one dimensional to me, very twee and I fail to understand why he was so successful for a few years in the early-mid 70s.His songs seem like they were written by Victoria Wood Perhaps it's because I just don't like his voice! Record sales were very high in the period he was successful so he must have had something.I love the old &quot;Pan's People&quot; clip from &quot;Top of the pops&quot; where they all have a labrador to control for Gilbert's &quot;Get down&quot; song.

I'd also recommend Justin Haywards 70s LPs which have been put back out onto CD especially the work with fellow Moody, John Lodge.

I`d forgotten about &quot;Carrie&quot;, I quite like that one. My favourite Justin Hayward song was on a late Moody Blues album and was called &quot;I Know Your Out there Somewhere&quot;, but I dont like the rest of the record much.The main thread we seem to have hit on here is that all of the above mentioned writers sang/sing and write like lonely people, which certainly in the case of Cat Stevens was not so, I dont know enough about the others to comment.
Nick Drake also fits this category, and all his albums are excellent.
My dog on stage , is sadly not has behaved as Gilberts, and I have now stopped taking her there!

Cheers Mike; basically any song that Clifford T Ward made is brilliant so I just pick one at random but The Anthology sounds cool.

I know about Cat Stevens. I was a fan since I was 11. He was the man that made me pick up a guitar for the first time. I own 3 albums and the song that inspired me was Moonshadow.

Nick Drake as well; I know about him and I'm glad that his name is spreading around a bit now and he is big in the USA which is cool and I own 4 albums by him.

Gilbert O Sullivan? never heard of him.

Justin Hayward clearly underrated.<br><br>Post edited by: jk2006, at: 2006/02/18 08:23

andrew wrote:


Gilbert O Sullivan? never heard of him.



You'll either love him or hate him.

Re: Cliff's anthology. You'll get some of his earlier recordings with the band &quot;Simon's Secrets&quot; on there. The production from 1967 stands out with the usual Eddie Tre-Vett effect, though 1966-69 were years when many fantastic pop singles flopped chartwise.(didn't they JK!) It isn't until the Dandelion label days (1972) that you see and hear Cliff as he is recognised. The songwriting was very obvious even back in 1967 and put to quirky pop music.

Very interesting what Martin says about the &quot;lonely people&quot; thing.I'm not sure about you two, but I've been pretty much music obsessed since I was a kid (born 1977) and discovering stuff from the past was something I wanted to do.I was born in Co.Donegal ,lived there 8 years and then spent the next 10 on Barra in the Outer Hebrides, so the chances to physically get the music weren't high!
My mum's old records are to blame. She worked at the radio station from 64 until 75 and they threw out anything non commercial,and being Scottish, she took them all home! There were lots of JK records there as well , the 60s ones mostly , well before the novelty hits,when he displayed a vocal range similar to Al Stewart and a Dylanesque style of writing. (I am referring to Bob Dylan and not the spaced out rabbit on The Magic Roundabout!).
Now you're going to ask me who Al Stewart is:) His best song , in my opinion , is one of his earliest &quot;The Elf&quot;.Rather like Bowie's &quot;Laughing gnome&quot; but less childish. You'll hear him occasionally on Radio 2 and the ignoramuses will assume it's the latest Neil Tennant offering.

Many singer songwriters rarely strayed from their own familiar formula, which is probably why success dried up, without any reprise in many cases.It was obviously necessary to bring some fun into it by the 70s.What turns a brilliant lyricist into someone who writes &quot;What's 'e like mavis? 'e's a real tasty geezer&quot; at the same time as a beautifully melodic version of Pachelbel's Canon ? Diversity was clearly needed.

I'd be interested to know how others got into the type of music they like? Especially if it pre-dates them.

Thats interesting as I was going to mention Al Stewert as an afterthought!
I was born in `62, and bought my first record in 1971, I went in to buy &quot;Lazy Bones&quot;, by JK, and came out with &quot;Bridget The Midget&quot; by Ray Stevens! Thankfully, our host has corrected this mistake , and sent me an mp3!
My favourite records are still my early Marc Bolan things.
These days, my fave new things are DashBoard Confessional, Bright Eyes and Andy White.

I was born in 1986 and I listened what my Dad used to listen to, but I really got into music when it was my 8th birthday and I got two tapes Best of the Troggs and Best of Jan and Dean.

Since then I listened to old lps , read books, watched Vh1 Classic rock, listen to radio caroline etc.

I've always been into Blues,folk music and rock since very early age about 6.

now I like rock n roll Dion and Belmonts, Eddie Cochran (yet another musician I liked at an early age) Big Bopper, Gene Vincent and more.

I am discovering new bands weekly now due to this website and other references.<br><br>Post edited by: jk2006, at: 2006/02/18 14:36

I haven't heard Bridget the Midget, is that a mercy for which I should be grateful? Did you also buy 'Long haired lover from Liverpool&quot; ? I believe in those days, you went into your record shop, looked at their charts pull out from Music Week and asked for the record by whatever number it was in the charts? What if it wasn't in the charts? Is that how you came home with &quot;Bridget&quot;?
My mother went into our shop in Co.Donegal in 1978 and asked for &quot;that record by those nice black people&quot;. Thankfully the assistant realised she meant Boney M and she didn't come back with an Aswad LP !

Yes those early Marc Bolan records are superb.My (infamous) mother has a couple of Decca demos in amongst her vinyl mountain back home. I'll inherit them one day , though she is intending to live to 104 !

It's great to be able to make your own mind up about what music appeals to you and not just being told what it's ok to like and what isn't. My first &quot;Purchase&quot; was &quot;Obsession&quot; by Animotion which would have been in the summer of 1985. Chart stuff never interested me much even as a kid.I got more tips on what to buy from &quot;No Limits&quot; thanks to JK (yet again).My archiving hobby means I have to constantly delve through old recordings on several labels and occasionally discover something that appeals to me, which I would not otherwise hear.

One more name I would strongly recommend is Gary Benson. He charted just once in 1975 with &quot;Don't throw it all away&quot; but has a singer songwriter repertoire extending from 1965-1977 over several LPs and around 20 singles.I don't think anything of his is on CD sadly.

Bridget The Midget is indeed appalling! Records were a mere(?) 50p in those days , as we had just gone metric, which is quite interesting in a price comparison, as many cd singles/slash vinyl are 99p now!
I was brought up in care, and rarely got to the record shop, but the sweet lady, from Redifussion, would post them in latter years. I remember though, that there used to be this amazing smell of vinyl, and you could flip through piles of it!

He was probably Britain's first ever independent producer and produced some classics - like Telstar by the Tornados (which was the first UK &quot;pop&quot; record ever to top the US charts).

His life was quite extraordinary - and he ended up killing himself (with a shotgun) on the anniversary of Buddy Holly's death.

Little seems to be mentioned about him when you see retrospective books and documentaries though.

Hey MM?
Is there any truth in the rumour that the amzing bass drum sound on the Honeycombs&quot;Come Right Back&quot;, was Mr Meek hitting a bath with a broom handle?All I do know about him for sure, was that they had a dreadful cash flow problem at his company, as they seemed uncertain as to how to collect payments.

The Honeycombs is another group my Dad got me into but it is a bit too poppy for my liking, but the song Have I The Right is cool but the rest I could do without.<br><br>Post edited by: jk2006, at: 2006/02/19 15:52

It could well be! Have heard stranger stories.

Check the Honeycombs version of &quot;Something better beginning&quot; and the frantic B side of their other top 20 hit &quot;That's the way&quot; which is pure freakbeat &quot;Can't get through to you&quot; is the title. I was fortunate enough to interview their vocalist,Dennis Dalziel for a Sanctuary CD and he said Joe Meek used to speed the recordings up and mess around with them to such a degree, it made it impossible for them to duplicate any vocals live. They never received a penny for their work sadly, as was so often the case.Their LP tracks are truly appalling but the singles are all superb. The final one &quot;That loving feeling&quot; is a very different kind of track with superior vocals and production.

The comment of Meek recording anyone he fancied made me laugh. Billie Davis was invited down to a recording session in 1962 but only because Joe, going by the name, thought she was a boy. He also made many fantastic recordings with the woefully neglected Glenda Collins. Her 1966 single &quot;Something I've got to tell you&quot; is an amazing pop record and almost all of her earlier HMV records had Ritchie Blackmore on guitar! Making ditties like &quot;Thou shalt not steal&quot; turn into a ripping guitar backed track!

Fortunately there are several RGM/Joe Meek CDs out now.The records cost far too much to track down.

Try to hear these ones if you can

Cryin' Shames : Please stay. A gorgeous ballad with Charlie Crane's voice echoing a desperate kind of sadness to an old song.

Glenda Collins : Something I've got to tell you

The Buzz : You're holding me down . Frantic freakbeat

Screaming Lord Sutch : Any Meek recording of his is worthwhile from the rock and roll to the ridiculous

Try to avoid the obvious bad singers, who you KNOW must have been easy on the eye. Ricky Wayne, Iain Gregory etc

Even Freddie Starr did a couple of good singles for Joe, which leads me into another story. (Just call me Max!) You know that trick where Freddie pretends his microphone isn't working and just makes a sound every three or four words? Well he did that to Joe once through 15 minutes of recording, completely ruining all the hard work. The band and studio musicians knew what he was up to but poor Joe didn't!
Session drummer and Tornado mainstay, Clem Cattini, recalls several pieces of machinery and recording equipment being smashed up while Joe had his fit about unreliable recordings! Nobody dared tell him the truth!

I've got access to a vast library so if ever I can help you guys hear something, I'm more than happy to do so. Will they tell me off if I post my hotmail e-mail address here? probably yes, so I'd better not but if you add79@hotmail.com to my username, you might just be able to reach me

and I bet Joe fancied them!
He clearly DIDN'T fancy me and behaved like a true gentleman throughout.<br><br>Post edited by: jk2006, at: 2006/02/20 10:31

I must say Andrew, you have created a lovely thread here, well done. I hope you are finding it very informative, and I think everyone sharing their memories on the thread is excellent.
This morning, I am hooked on my vinyl record of &quot;Something In the Air&quot; by Thunderclap Newman and produced by Pete Townsend, who, once again, I have no confirmation of this, allegedly played drums on this track.
Any ideas anyone?<br><br>Post edited by: jk2006, at: 2006/02/20 10:31

music is my life and I always loved music. I got many lps that were given to me for a birthday 2 years ago. I'm trying to find information on the Cryin Shames. I noticed that they have done Honeycombs covers because the song titles are the same. A song for clifford T ward fans, a song for you, Everything that glitters isn't gold, beautiful acoustic playing.<br><br>Post edited by: jk2006, at: 2006/02/20 11:07

Cryin' Shames made just three singles for Decca, and a belated single for York in 1973.They were also the last official group to play at the famous cavern club in Liverpool.
&quot;Please stay&quot; was a minor hit in 1966, unusual for Joe Meek in those days. The other 2 45s are very different. &quot;Nobody waved goodbye&quot; is rather uninteresting and bland but the other 45 ,credited to &quot;Paul and Ritchie and the Cryin' Shames&quot; was September in the rain b/w Come on back. This one's a different story. Pure freakbeat version of the old classic on Side A, the B side is one of the most exhilarating British records of the mid to late 60s, a riot of manic vocals, frenzied guitar and florid organ work.
You'd be able to buy 30 CDs at full retail price at a cheaper cost than the original 45!
Paul was Paul(Charlie) Crane
Ritchie was Richard Routledge

Crane later joined Gary Walker &amp; The Rain and then recorded solo on EMI in the mid 70s as &quot;Leroy Brown&quot;

The site below will tell you most of what you'd want to know and has some great photos

www.picnic.fsnet.co.uk/cryin.htm

Charlie Crane was running a pub in Cambridgeshire up until his death a couple of years ago.