Manfred Mann - Ragamuffin Man - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1969)

Here's the last of my stray tracks albums for Manfred Mann in the 1960s. At least, this ends the second version of the band. That version, lead by lead vocalist Mike d'Abo, broke up in mid-1969. Manfred Mann reformed later that year with two original members, becoming Manfred Mann Chapter 3. Then, a couple of years later, that turned into the Manfred Mann Earth Band. But that's a whole different story.

I'm very happy to be able to present this album, because it's so likely that it would even exist. After the music I put on the last Manfred Mann album in this series - the one I call "Cubist Town" but was mostly made up of their album "Mighty Garvey!" - the band only put out two singles before they broke up. The singles were "Fox on the Run" in late 1968 and "Ragamuffin Man" in early 1969. They were both moderate hits. But how does one turn a mere two singles into a whole album? There are NO other studio recordings from the band in that time frame, at least not that I know of.

The key, it turns out, is the BBC. Manfred Mann performed at the BBC quite a lot. Four of the songs here are the A- and B-sides to the two singles mentioned above. But another eight are from the BBC. And what's great about these is that while a couple are covers of famous songs, like "Fever" and "Abraham, Martin and John," most of them appear to be original songs that would have been totally lost to musical history except for the fact that they happened to have been performed on the BBC once. This is pretty close to being a genuine "lost album."

Why are there so many songs, and good songs, that were never released at the time? I don't know a whole lot about the history of the band, but my guess is that those songs were casualties of the band break-up. Probably, right when they had enough material to go record another album was when the group fell apart. Those songs remained unreleased all the way until 2019, when they were included on a compilation of the band's BBC performances called "Radio Days, Volume 2." 

What's crazy to me is that I saw a list of all the dates Manfred Mann played for the BBC, and at least half of the sessions have disappeared, since there are no known recordings of them. So it's quite possible that there were even more originals and/or interesting covers the band did in this time frame. Ironically, the band was blossoming as a creative force with original songs right as it fell apart.

One person who wrote a good portion of these new song was lead singer Mike d'Abo. And that leads me to the last song on this album. I find it very strange that in the late 1960s, the band got a lot of flak for having hits with cover versions instead of their own material. Yet d'Abo wrote two hits that the band never released at all! The first one is "Handbags and Gladrags," which I put on the 1968 stray tracks album "Up the Junction," since luckily the band played that once for the BBC. Rod Stewart had a hit with it instead.

The other d'Abo song Manfred Mann should have had a hit with is "Build Me Up Buttercup." This was a massive hit in 1968 for the Foundations. It was a number one hit in the US and a number two hit in Britain. Since d'Abo was the lead singer of Manfred Mann at the time, why the heck didn't his own band do the song?! To be honest, I don't know. But my guess is that the band was already starting to split. Band members Manfred Mann (the person, not the band) and Mike Hugg wanted to take the group in a more serious and "progressive" direction. That's exactly what they did with Manfred Mann Chapter Three. "Build Me Up Buttercup" was considered a light and poppy song, and probably was exactly what they were trying to move away from.

Anyway, I don't know of any Manfred Mann version that exists. But d'Abo did a solo version later. I'm not sure when exactly, because it wasn't released until many years later and I couldn't find good specific information. But I think it probably dates from 1970 or 1971. In any case, I've added it to the end as a rough idea of what a Manfred Mann version sung by d'Abo would have sounded like.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 Fox on the Run (Manfred Mann)
02 Too Many People (Manfred Mann)
03 Fever (Manfred Mann)
04 Abraham, Martin and John (Manfred Mann)
05 So Long [Edit] (Manfred Mann)
06 Clair [Edit] (Manfred Mann)
07 Sentimental Sunday [Edit] (Manfred Mann)
08 Orange Peel [Instrumental] (Manfred Mann)
09 Ragamuffin Man (Manfred Mann)
10 A 'B' Side (Manfred Mann)
11 Oh What a Day [Edit] (Manfred Mann)
12 The Last Goodbye [Edit] (Manfred Mann)
13 Build Me Up Buttercup (Mike D'Abo)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696637/MANFRDMNN1968c-1969_RgamffinMn_atse.zip.html

The album cover is based on the cover for the "Ragamuffin Man" single. Unfortunately, back in those days, singles covers often looked worse than album covers, because they sometimes were quickly and cheaply thrown together. That was the case for this one, in my opinion. So I used that cover, but I tried to jazz it up a bit. I removed the record company logo, which had been prominently placed in the upper right corner, and caused the band name to be smaller to fit everything in. With the logo moved to the bottom left corner, I was able to stretch the band name all the way across the album. Also, the one color was an awful shade of green. I changed that into a mixture of green and blue, to create a slight psychedelic feel that fit the time period.