Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Various Artists - Covered: Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman, Volume 2: 1962-1968

I just posted the first of three albums I've made that collect the best songs written by Doc Pomus and/or Mort Shuman. I'm posting all three at once, so here's the second one.

Pomus and Shuman worked with each other from about 1958 to 1964. That was the time of their greatest success, when they wrote a series of all-time classics. Like the songwriting team of Leiber and Stoller, their peak era pretty much ended in 1964, because that was the year the Beatles basically took over the musical world. One out of four of all records sold in 1964 were by the Beatles, a truly incredible fact that has never been equaled since.

Suddenly, the "British Invasion" was hot and the older type of music Pomus and Shuman was known for was yesterday's news. The biggest threat posed by the Beatles was that they wrote all their own songs, so they obviously didn't need the likes of Pomus and Shuman. Bob Dylan and others were doing the same.

Pomus and Shuman decided to meet this challenge head on. They actually moved to Britain and began writing songs for British Invasion bands. But their songwriting partnership broke up at this point, because Pomus soon returned to the US and Shuman permanently relocated to Europe. Most of the songs here after 1964 are written by Shuman alone, unless they're versions of earlier songs. Before long, Pomus gave up on songwriting and resorted to running gambling games and royalty checks from his earlier hits to get by. Happily, he would return to songwriting, but that's a topic for the next album in this series.

01 Suspicion (Elvis Presley)
02 Seven Day Weekend (Gary 'U. S.' Bonds)
03 Night Rider (Elvis Presley)
04 She's Not You (Elvis Presley)
05 Sweets for My Sweet (Searchers)
06 Can't Get Used to Losing You (Andy Williams)
07 Troubled Mind (Dion)
08 Here I Go Again (Hollies)
09 Little Children (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
10 Viva Las Vegas (Elvis Presley)
11 Sha-La-La-La-Lee (Small Faces)
12 Go Jimmy Go (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
13 Jackie (Scott Walker)
14 What's It Gonna Be (Dusty Springfield)
15 Mighty Cold (Fleetwood Mac)
16 Machines (Lothar & the Hand People)
17 Stop (Howard Tate)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15260013/CoveredPomusShurm_1962-1968_Volum2_atse.zip.html

As I mentioned for the first album in this series, I had trouble finding any photos of Pomus and Shuman together. The photo I've used here is very similar to the one I used for the first album. Clearly, they were taken at the same time, judging by the clothes they are wearing and the background. If anyone knows of other good photos of them together, please let me know because I don't like using two photos that are so similar to each other. However, I colorized this, and when I did so I changed the colors of their suits and also simplified the background, so hopefully that makes them look different enough.

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