Cliff Bennett - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1966-1967

Here's the second of four albums of Cliff Bennett at the BBC.

As I mentioned with Volume 1, Bennett may not be well known in the US - I'm American, and I'd never heard of him until recently - but he was a soul star in Britain. He'd had a few hits during the time period covered for Volume 1. Then, during the time period of this album, he had a lucky break due to having Brian Epstein as his manager, who also managed the Beatles. Thanks to that, he was able to hear an early version of the Beatles song "Got to Get You into My Life" before it came out on the album "Revolver" in 1966. The Beatles didn't release it as a single, but Bennett did, and it was the biggest hit of his career, going all the way to Number 6 in Britain.

Not surprisingly, he did a version of that for the BBC. That song was a Beatles homage to the soulful Motown sound. Many of the other songs here are in a similar vein. He was into other soul sounds as well. In particular, he seems to have been influenced by the duo Sam and Dave, covering three songs made famous by them ("Hold On, I'm Coming," "You Don't Know like I Know," and "I Take What I Want").

As with Volume 1, all the performances here are officially unreleased. The sound quality is excellent throughout, since everything is sourced from pristine BBC reels. The songs with "[Edit]" in their names had BBC DJs talking over some of the music, but I used audio editing software to wipe the talking and keep the underlying music.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Need Your Loving Tonight [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
02 You Can't Love Em All (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
03 Whole Lotta Woman [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
04 See Saw [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
05 Ain't Love Good, Ain't Love Proud (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
06 Close the Door (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
07 Stop Her on Sight [S. O. S.] [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
08 Hold On, I'm Coming (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
09 See See Rider [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
10 Stop, Look and Listen (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
11 Got to Get You into My Life (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
12 Barefootin' (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
13 Never Knew Lovin' Could Be So Doggone Good (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
14 It's a Wonder (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
15 You Don't Know like I Know [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
16 Ease Me Baby [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
17 I Take What I Want [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
18 I'll Take Good Care of You (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15226552/CliffBen_1966-1967_BBSessionsVolum2_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from 1966. It was in black and white, but I used the program Palette to colorize it.