Various Artists - Covered: Neil Diamond, Volume 1: 1964-1970

I've realized lately I have a lot of artists to add to my "Covered" series. I still have some more who started their careers before the 1960s, but I was listening to this one yesterday and feel like posting it now. 

Generally speaking, this series focuses on songwriters who aren't famous for performing their own songs. Neil Diamond doesn't fit this rule. He has had massive success on his own. Yet he also started out as a stereotypical Brill Building professional songwriter for others, much like Gerry Goffin, Carole King, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, and so on. So I've collected two albums of songs that treats Neil Diamond solely as a songwriter, with none of his own performances included. If you like his music career, this may allow you to enjoy his songs in a different way. If you are put off by his slick, show-biz presentation and don't like his records, this may allow you to realize how good many of his songs are anyway.

Neil Diamond (his birth name, by the way) released his first solo single in 1962. But his early solo efforts went nowhere. Instead, he started making his way in the music business as a professional songwriter, working in the Brill Building with the other songwriters mentioned above. He began having success on his own with "Solitary Man" in 1966. That same year, he found huge success as a songwriter when the Monkees covered his song "I'm a Believer," turning it into the biggest selling song of the year. Over the next few years, the songs he did for others went down because he had more and more hits on his own.

When it comes to his music, I much prefer his poppy late 1960s style over his sappy ballads with increasingly predominated in the 1970s and afterwards. I have included some of the best of his slower material, but I often chose cover versions which treated the songs very differently. His songs have often been done in very different ways, with reggae artists in particular often covering his songs.

Some of his biggest early hits aren't included here. That's because I chose covers of them that were done many years later. Those will turn up on Volume 2.

I tried not to include more than one song by the same artist. But I bent that rule in a couple of cases. For instance, the Monkees did such definitive versions of three of his songs that I had to use their versions for all three. I also have included two songs done by Elvis Presley, though only one of them appears on this album.

01 Just Another Guy (Cliff Richard)
02 Sunday and Me (Jay & the Americans)
03 I'm a Believer (Monkees)
04 Love to Love (Thyme)
05 A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You (Monkees)
06 The Boat that I Row (Lulu)
07 Look Out [Here Comes Tomorrow] (Monkees)
08 It Comes and Goes (Melodians)
09 You Got to Me (Gene Pierson)
10 Kentucky Woman (Deep Purple)
11 And the Grass Won't Pay No Mind (Elvis Presley)
12 Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show (Peggy Lee)
13 The Boy with the Green Eyes (Wool)
14 Cherry, Cherry (Jonathan King)
15 Holly Holy (Fabulous Flames)
16 Glory Road (Arthur Alexander)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17180207/COVRDNilDimnd1964-1970Volum1_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6YKB9pay

Normally, I only colorize a photo for an album cover if a good color one doesn't already exist. There are tons of photos of Neil Diamond, obviously. But for this album I wanted a photo of him when he was just starting out. The best photo I could find from that time was in black and white, apparently dating to 1966. So I colorized it. 

I find it amusing to think how this straight-laced looking guy in his three-piece suit would have long hair, open shirts, and lots of Las Vegas glitter and glamour not that many years later. 

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.