Today, the Foundations are known as a two-hit wonder, if they're remembered at all. Their 1967 single "Baby, Now that I’ve Found You" was a number one hit in Britain, and a number 11 hit in the US. Their 1968 single "Build Me Up Buttercup" was a top three hit in both the US and Britain. They had four more hits in Britain, including a top ten one with "In the Bad, Bad Old Days (Before You Loved Me)", but it seems most everything they did but those two songs has been forgotten.
The Foundations were a multi-ethnic British soul band that filled an interesting musical need. In the mid- to late 1960s, the British public fell in love with the "Motown sound." But that was based in Detroit in the US. There were very few British musical acts that could convincingly perform this type of music, due to the different ethic and cultural histories of the two countries. But the Foundations nailed that sound exactly, while mostly performing new songs they wrote, or were written for them, instead of doing all Motown covers.
Here's their Wikipedia entry for more info about them:
A portion of the British public continued to love the Motown sound long, long after that type of music stopped being made in the US, in what became known as the "Northern Soul" genre. So the Foundations could have kept going successfully. But the band had all kinds of personnel and management problems after hitting the big time, including losing their lead singer. They broke up entirely in 1970.
All the performances here are unreleased. Due the band's obscurity these days, it seems nobody has ever collected their BBC recordings before, so I had to go to the BBC transcription reels and extract each of the songs. The sound quality is generally very good on those reels, but some here are better than others.
BBC DJ Brian Matthew really outdid himself on these recordings. He's the most notorious DJ when it comes to talking over stars and ends of songs. For this album, he talked over every single song, except for the one that didn't come from the BBC. As usual, I wiped his voice using the X-Minus audio editing program.
The one song that doesn't come from the BBC is the "Jerkin' the Dog - Funky Broadway" medley. (Man, the "Jerkin' the Dog" title could definitely be taken the wrong way these days!) That comes from the French TV show "Bouton Rouge." They played two other songs on that show, but I didn't include them here because they were also done for the BBC.
This album is 37 minutes long. If you enjoy the Motown sound but aren't familiar with this band, I think you'll like this.
01 Baby, Now that I’ve Found You [Edit] (Foundations)
02 Things Get Better [Edit] (Foundations)
03 Harlem Shuffle [Edit] (Foundations)
04 A Whole New Thing [Edit] (Foundations)
05 Back on My Feet Again [Edit] (Foundations)
06 It's Alright [Edit] (Foundations)
07 Jerkin' the Dog - Funky Broadway (Foundations)
08 Build Me Up Buttercup [Edit] (Foundations)
09 In the Bad, Bad Old Days [Before You Loved Me] [Edit] (Foundations)
10 Any Old Time [You're Lonely and Sad] [Edit] (Foundations)
11 Waiting on the Shores of Nowhere [Edit] (Foundations)
12 Baby I Couldn't See [Edit] (Foundations)
13 Help Me [Edit] (Foundations)
https://www.upload.ee/files/15218614/TFounds_1967-1969_BBSessions_atse.zip.html
Not surprisingly, there aren't a lot of good color photos of this band. I don't know where this is from or which band members are in it. I adjusted the colors, since they seemed a bit off.
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