The Guess Who - It's My Pride - Non-Album Tracks (1965-1966)

Two days ago, I posted a new Jefferson Airplane stray tracks album, because I discovered I had enough material to split an album of their earliest stuff into two albums. Today, I'm doing the exact same thing with the Guess Who. A couple of years ago, I posted one album, which I called "This Time Long Ago," that included all their best songs from their start in 1965 to 1968. I recently discovered there are more good earlier songs than I'd thought. So I'm keeping "This Time Long Ago," but I've removed some songs from it and added others, so it only deals with the years 1967 and 1968. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-guess-who-this-time-long-ago.html

That leaves this album to deal with the years 1965 and 1966. In those years, the Guess Who put out three studio albums. I think I overlooked this time period for a couple reasons. For one thing, the band had a different lead singer for most of that time, Chad Allan. For their third album, "It's Time," released in early 1966, they had a new band member, Burton Cummings. Allan still sang most of the songs on that album, but Cummings sang a few. I think Cummings is a superior singer, and I associate the sound of the Guess Who with his voice and songwriting. 

To add to that, the band wasn't even known  as the Guess Who for most of this time. They went through several names, including "Chad Allan and the Reflections" and "Chad Allan and the Expressions." But from their hit 1965 single "Shakin' All Over," their record company simultaneously marketed them as "The Guess Who?", hoping to boost sales by creating intrigue that they might be a famous band working under a different name. The name finally stuck permanently for their third album, and the question mark at the end was ditched. Anyway, all that name confusion furthered my feeling that they weren't the "real" Guess Who, which didn't happen until Burton Cummings was in charge, Chad Allan was gone, and they'd finally settled on their famous name.

But I was wrong. The truth is, this band had a lot of worthy songs in their early phase, definitely enough for a solid album cherry picking their best songs. Yeah, most of them have Chad Allan on lead vocals, but he was a pretty good singer and in these early recordings sometimes it's hard to tell his voice apart from Cummings' voice. But more importantly, they were a talented band that already was showing a lot of songwriting talent. If you like their later stuff, you shouldn't overlook this phase. They were operating more as a garage band with a heavy Beatles influence, but I love good garage band music, and you can't go wrong with a heavy Beatles influence.

The Guess Who had a huge hit in 1965 with a cover of "Shakin' All Over." It went to number one in Canada, and even hit the Top Twenty in the US, which was very rare for a Canadian band at the time. So that's here, of course. But eight out of the 14 songs are from their third album "It's Time." Their songwriting improved a lot by then, and Burton Cummings sings about half of those songs.

Speaking of Cummings, he was in a different Canadian band, the Deverons, just prior to joining the Guess Who. That band put out a couple of singles with Cummings as lead vocalist. I've included two of those songs here, "She's Your Lover" and "Blue Is the Night." They sound exactly like Guess Who songs. In fact, the Guess Who played "Blue Is the Night" in concert often in 1966. "She's Your Lover" was a Cummings original, the first put on record. Another song here, "Seven Long Years," is another Cummings original that was first done by the Deverons. By the way, that song sounds exactly like the songs the Animals were doing at the time, but it's so good that the Animals should have covered it.

This album is only 37 minutes long, but that's in line with the lengths of albums at the time. I called it "It's My Pride" because I consider that the best song here. It's too bad it was only a B-side, because it should have been a big hit. The songs are in rough chronological order with the exception of the last one, which I thought made for a good closer.

01 Shakin' All Over (Guess Who)
02 I'd Rather Be Alone (Guess Who)
03 Hey Ho [What You Do to Me] (Guess Who)
04 Use Your Imagination (Guess Who)
05 She's Your Lover (Deverons with Burton Cummings)
06 You Know He Did (Guess Who)
07 Believe Me (Guess Who)
08 Clock on the Wall (Guess Who)
09 It's My Pride (Guess Who)
10 Seven Long Years (Guess Who)
11 Gonna Search (Guess Who)
12 Don't Act So Bad (Guess Who)
13 And She's Mine (Guess Who)
14 Blue Is the Night (Deverons with Burton Cummings)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119096/TGuessW_1965-1966_ItMyPride_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used the only decent color photo of the band from their early years that I could find. I think it was included in an archival album of those years, but I forget which one. In any case, all the versions I found of this had a reddish tint on it. I used Photoshop to get rid of that. I think it looks much better now (and is more accurate, since they didn't live in a red haze!).

For the text, I used the same exact font that was used for the band name on their first two albums. I also included the question mark in the name, since that's what those albums did too. I also mimicked those albums by including the record company logo.