Dave Berry - BBC Sessions (1965-1967)

I mentioned some weeks back that I'm making it a point of posting the BBC sessions of some less popular 1960s musical acts, since nobody else seems to be doing it and it fits into my larger big BBC project. Tim Rose, Chris Farlowe, and the Ivy League are some recent examples. Here's another one, Dave Berry.

Berry was a star in Britain and some European countries from about 1963 to 1966. He never had success on the charts in the U.S. His biggest hits were "The Crying Game," "Little Things," and "Mama," all featured here. He's also known for the original version of "This Strange Effect," which was written by Ray Davies of the Kinks but not released by the Kinks at the time. It barely scraped into the Top 40 in Britain, but it was a Number One hit in the Netherlands. His star faded suddenly in 1967, when musical tastes drastically shifted with the rise of psychedelic music. So it's not surprising the last BBC session here is from early 1967.

Everything here is officially unreleased. But the sound quality is excellent, since all but one of the songs come from acetates of the "Top of the Pops" BBC radio show, which survived in pristine condition. The one exception to that is "The Crying Game." That's my favorite song sung by Berry (it also was a hit by Boy George in the 1990s), so I was disappointed to see that no BBC session of him singing it survived. So I had to resort to using a version he sang on the TV show "Shindig!" I believe this had live vocals over the instruments from the record. There were a few minor gaps in that recording, but I patched them up with some audio editing. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title.

There are a bunch of other songs with "[Edit]" in their titles too. That's due to the usual problem at the time of BBC DJs talking over the music. (I'm looking at you in particular, DJ Dave Matthew.) As I usually do, I wiped out the talking while keeping the underlying music using the UVR5 audio editing program.

Berry wasn't in the top tier of 1960s artists by any means, but if you like British Invasion music, you should like this. Although these are all BBC versions, I think this also basically works as a "best of" for him.

This album is 52 minutes long.

01 Little Things (Dave Berry)
02 Cadillac (Dave Berry)
03 I've Got a Tiger by the Tail (Dave Berry)
04 The Crying Game [Edit] (Dave Berry)
05 Southern Love (Dave Berry)
06 This Strange Effect (Dave Berry)
07 It Ain't Me, Babe [Edit] (Dave Berry)
08 Roll Over Beethoven (Dave Berry)
09 I'm Gonna Take You There (Dave Berry)
10 Just Don't Know [Edit] (Dave Berry)
11 Now [Edit] (Dave Berry)
12 If You Wait for Love (Dave Berry)
13 Hidden [Edit] (Dave Berry)
14 Mama (Dave Berry)
15 Understand Your Man (Dave Berry)
16 My Heart Skips a Beat [Edit] (Dave Berry)
17 Stranger (Dave Berry)
18 God Bless the Child [Edit] (Dave Berry)
19 It's Gonna Be Fine [Edit] (Dave Berry)
20 Forever (Dave Berry)
21 It's So Easy (Dave Berry)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/9sXYvqdj

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ldDmXhqjicjI6Nl/file

The cover photo is from 1965.