So here's an album of BBC studio sessions by the Ivy League. You may not have heard of this band, especially if you're American. They only had two Top Ten hits in Britain ("Funny How Love Can Be" and "Tossing and Turning"), and didn't come close to a hit in the U.S. They weren't together very long either.
But there's more to this band than meets the eye. They were the first success for the songwriting duo of John Carter and Ken Lewis, who would go on to write many hits in the 1960s and 1970s. They generally wrote most of the Ivy League material, including their hits. Also, adding in the third band member, Perry Ford, they really honed their vocal harmony skills. They were in high demand as studio musicians for their backing vocals, singing on dozens of hits in Britain, starting with "I Can't Explain" by the Who.
I have no doubt they would have had much greater success, except Carter and Lewis quickly lost interest in being in a band, and soon devoted most of their attention to producing and songwriting for others, starting with the big 1967 hits "Let's Go to San Francisco" by the Flower Pot Men and "Winchester Cathedral" by the New Vaudeville Band. Carter left in 1966 and Lewis left in 1967. However, Carter and Lewis continued to write songs and produce well into 1967. Ford continued with new members, but to little attention, finally disbanding the band in 1975.
Here's their Wikipedia page if you want to know more:
The Ivy League (band) - Wikipedia
The music here generally has the typical "British Invasion" sound of the times, but with a heavy emphasis on their three-part harmonies. There also is an obvious Beach Boys influence, so it's fitting that this starts with a Beach Boys cover. I'd guess close to the songs here are covers. It's strange to me that they didn't do more of their own songs that they wrote for others, since Carter and Lewis wrote many hits for others during this time, such as "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat" by the Herman's Hermits and "Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James" by Manfred Mann. But I plan on posting a Carter and Lewis album in my Covered songwriting series that will include all of those and more. At least they did include their own version of "My World Fell Down," which was a hit by the band Sagittarius.
All the performances here are officially unreleased. As you'd expect from the time period, many of the songs had BBC DJs talking over the music. I used the UVR5 program to wipe out that talking while keeping the underlying music. Those are the songs with "[Edit]" in their titles. I also didn't include a few songs that they performed twice for the BBC, but I think there were only three of those.
This album is an hour and three minutes long.
01 Don't Worry Baby [Edit] (Ivy League)
02 When Day Is Done (Ivy League)
03 The 'In' Crowd [Edit] (Ivy League)
04 Funny How Love Can Be (Ivy League)
05 Almost Grown [Edit] (Ivy League)
06 Do Ya Wanna Dance [Edit] (Ivy League)
07 Havin' a Party [Edit] (Ivy League)
08 That's Why I'm Crying (Ivy League)
09 Graduation Day (Ivy League)
10 Tossing and Turning (Ivy League)
11 Lonely Room (Ivy League)
12 I Could Make You Fall in Love [Edit] (Ivy League)
13 Our Love Is Slipping Away (Ivy League)
14 One Day [Edit] (Ivy League)
15 The Glory of Love (Ivy League)
16 Wait a Minute [Edit] (Ivy League)
17 I'm In Love Again (Ivy League)
18 Running Round in Circles (Ivy League)
19 Arriverderci Baby [Edit] (Ivy League)
20 You Are My Sunshine (Ivy League)
21 Rain, Rain Go Away (Ivy League)
22 Get Out of My Life Woman [Edit] (Ivy League)
23 Barbara Ann [Edit] (Ivy League)
24 Willow Tree (Ivy League)
25 My World Fell Down (Ivy League)
26 Four and Twenty Hours (Ivy League)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/PHg155T4
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/en/w4I8xYBQd5AKGeL/file
The cover photo is just about the only good color photo I've found of the Ivy League. Even then, it had a kind of murky or hazy problem that I couldn't fix in Photoshop. I ran it through the Krea AI program and the result looks much better.
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