Mary Hopkin - Temma Harbour - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1970)

Currently, I'm focusing most of my efforts with this blog on posting BBC material. But in some cases, as with Mary Hopkin here, I feel it makes sense to post stray tracks albums first, then the BBC stuff. So here's the first of several.

Hopkin has had a strange music career. In 1968, at just the age of eighteen, she appeared in a talent show broadcast on British TV. Word of her performance got to Paul McCartney, and he hooked her up with an obscure and recently written song that he'd heard performed in a night club called "Those Were the Days." It was a global smash, going on to sell at least eight million copies. 

She was very successful for a couple of years, but she withdrew from the pop music scene around 1972. Probably, she was overwhelmed by such success at a young age. She's continued to record and release music since then (and is still going at the age of 71 as I write this in 2022), but with a way lower profile. She's only rarely released music (although a lot more came out decades after they were recorded), and has almost never appeared on TV or played concerts. 

During her popular heyday, she only released two albums, "Post Card" in 1969 and "Earth Song/Ocean Song" in 1971. But she easily could have released two more, dropping stray tracks all over the place. For instance, with the exception of "Those Were the Days," she tended to not put the songs on her singles on her albums. This album has four A-sides and two B-sides, including the big hits "Goodbye" (written by Paul McCartney) and "Temma Harbour." 

Hopkin comes from Wales. Before she was discovered by McCartney, she made two obscure EPs in which all of the songs were sung in Welsh. I listened to them, and I think they're mainly for people who understand Welsh. Nearly all the songs are versions of famous songs, like Guantanamera and Somethin' Stupid. So I've only included one song from those EPs, which is a cover of a more obscure song from the 1950s.

Four more songs here are officially released. Two of them are from an obscure movie soundtrack. The remaining five unreleased songs generally come from live performances from TV or concerts. But one oddity is "Somewhere Along the Morning." This song is a bit under a minute long. That's because it was used for a Coca Cola commercial. But unlike most commercials, there's no plug for the product whatsoever; it's just a nice, though short, song.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Gwrandewch Ar Y Moroedd [Listen to the Ocean] (Mary Hopkin)
02 Somewhere Along the Morning (Mary Hopkin)
03 Morning of My Life (Mary Hopkin)
04 Turn, Turn. Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Mary Hopkin)
05 Goodbye (Mary Hopkin)
06 Sparrow (Mary Hopkin)
07 Que Sera, Sera [Whatever Will Be, Will Be] (Mary Hopkin)
08 Fields of St. Etienne (Mary Hopkin)
09 Lontano Dagli Occhi (Mary Hopkin)
10 Where's Jack (Mary Hopkin)
11 Last Moments (Mary Hopkin)
12 Plaisir d'Amour (Mary Hopkin)
13 Both Sides Now (Mary Hopkin)
14 In My Life (Mary Hopkin)
15 Temma Harbour (Mary Hopkin)
16 Night in the City (Mary Hopkin)
17 Yesterday (Mary Hopkin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15121689/MaryHop_1968-1970_TemmaHarbr_atse.zip.html

The album cover is based on a cover for the Temma Harbor single. However, I rearranged things so the picture in the middle could be made much larger. She was signed to Apple Records, and I thought the record company logo added period charm. So I kept it, but moved it to a corner and shrank it so it wouldn't get in the way of the picture.