This Easter Sunday is Prue Bury’s birthday, and for it I’ll be posting a very special photograph of her, taken by a Beatle on the set of A Hard Day’s Night. Prue’s on the right in this photo, age 17, at the Royal School of Ballet in London.
In 1958, Antony Armstrong-Jones, later titled the First Earl of Snowdon, was appointed the court photographer for the Royal Family. That same eventful year, Armstrong-Jones took this portrait of Prue.
Soon afterwards, Prue would meet Mary Quant and Vidal Sassoon, and be a witness to, and a part of, the start of what later came to be known as Swinging London.
I dropped off some friends at the Worcester, Massachusetts airport today, and on the way back home I stopped at Paul Howley’s super-duper store, That’s Entertainment, to spend some of my unexpectedly big tax refund. I was very pleased to see LP copies of Bob Dylan: In Concert, Brandeis University, 1963, so I bought one of those. I was equally inspired when I spotted The Beatles Box of Vision, an item I’ve been tempted to get many times, but had never managed to pull the trigger until today.
Both of my new acquisitions exceeded my expectations, which were high to start with. Dylan’s concert was recorded well, especially considering when it was done, and the LP sounds great. This is Bob Dylan at the height of his early folk period, with his politics freshly awakened by his passionate girlfriend, Suze Rotolo.
Although the Beatles Box of Vision came out with the remastered CD’s in 2009, my idea was to use it to dress up the original CD’s released nearly 25 years ago. Well, that’s what I did, and I’m very pleased with the results. The only problem is, I’m missing a couple of the discs, so now I’ll have to get those or forever be bugged by the empty slots in the sleeves.
One of the more interesting Beatles reissues is Yellow Submarine Songtrack, which is in the picture. This must-have CD offers a generous sampling of tracks that weren’t only remastered, they were remixed. In terms of sheer sound quality, they’re noticeably superior to the 2009 remastered stereo master tapes, and they’re proof that the Beatles catalog will need yet one more release.
In the post right before this one, while discussing the composer Leroy Shield, R. Crumb said that he prefers Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks to the Dutch dance band The Beau Hunks. Let’s do a comparison. First, the Nighthawks…
http://youtu.be/P8y_AglUPR8
… and now the Beau Hunks, with the same three tunes by Leroy Shield.
[audio:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Apr/26+Look+at+Him+Now.mp3,http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Apr/02+Beautiful+Lady.mp3,https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Apr/05+Bells.mp3|titles=The Beau Hunks – Look At Him Now,The Beau Hunks – Beautiful Lady,The Beau Hunks – Bells]
One of the most distinctive female singing voices of the Sixties, right up there with Mary Travers and Linda Ronstadt, belonged to Judith Durham, who is best remembered in America for this song…
… Georgy Girl was the biggest hit for the Seekers, the folk quartet from Australia. Before that, their breakthrough song was I’ll Never Find Another You, written by Dusty Springfield’s brother Tom.
http://youtu.be/lVL-u09z-io
So why is the name of shimmering soprano Judith Durham not better known in the United States? The short answer is, she broke up the act.
Judith went solo, returned to Australia, and got married. She was not in the New Seekers, who sang I’d Like To Buy the World a Coke…
