Marmalade - Talking in Your Sleep - Non-Album Tracks (1972-1977)

Over the past few months, I've been posting albums of what I consider all the good songs you should hear from the British band Marmalade. At the time, they were considered a pop band only known for their singles, and that's pretty much still true today. However, in my opinion, they had enough good songs for five albums of their studio material, plus two more albums of BBC sessions. This is the last of the compiled albums of studio material.

Although this deals with the years 1972 to 1977, all but the last three songs are from 1972. That was their last year of significant commercial success. Things started to go south for them in late 1971, when Junior Campbell left the band. He and Dean Ford were the band's two lead vocalists, and they cowrote most of their original material. Campbell had some minor hits in 1972 with a solo career before commercially fading away. I've included one of his solo songs, "Hallelujah Freedom," here. "Radancer," The first song here, was also a Top Ten hit in Britain. But after that, they had a string of singles that rarely made the charts at all.

Times were changing in the early 1970s, and their Hollies style of music was falling out of favor. Their record company dropped them in 1972, and band members started to change with increasing frequency. By the end of 1973, Dean Ford was the only remaining original member, and he left in 1975. At that point, the band broke up. However, it turned out it wasn't quite done. Graham Knight and Alan Whitehead had been the bassist and drummer for the band since the beginning, respectively, but both had left by 1973. With the band done, they took the band's name and restarted the band with new members. 

It seemed they were about as uncool and washed up as could be, but they surprised everyone by having one final Top Ten hit in Britain in 1976 with "Falling Apart at the Seams." Then, in 1977, they were the first to release the song "Talking in Your Sleep." It bombed for them. But six months later, Crystal Gayle did a version of it, and had a big hit with it in the US and Britain, including hitting number one on the US country chart. These last two songs don't fit well with the rest of the band's music either in terms of personnel or in terms of musical style, since they're both more slick and generic than their other stuff. But I've included both of them since they're a part of the band's musical history.

After that, the band kept going, and is still going as I write this in May 2022, but strictly as an oldies act, with even more personnel changes. So my interest in the band ends with the end of this album.

This album is 52 minutes long.

01 Radancer (Marmalade)
02 Just One Woman (Marmalade)
03 Jody (Marmalade)
04 Mr. Heartbreaker (Marmalade)
05 Hallelujah Freedom (Junior Campbell)
06 Stay with Me (Marmalade)
07 Middle of a Night (Marmalade)
08 Out of a Dark Night (Marmalade)
09 Sunset Regret (Marmalade)
10 [Your Wish Is In] The Wishing Well (Marmalade)
11 Falling Apart at the Seams (Marmalade)
12 Talking in Your Sleep (Marmalade)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264360/Marmld_1972-1977_TalknginYourSleep_atse.zip.html

It's very hard to find good color photos of Marmalade at all, much less from the latter part of their career. I found one that I've used here that's supposed from "circa 1973," but I don't know anything more than that, including which band members are in it.