[78-L] A "Goons" 78...?!

[David Lennick]

It's all rather confusing really....

The first Sellers LP was called The Best of Sellers and was a ten-inch 
Parlophone mono disc. Imported copies were widely available in Canada. In 1959 
came "Songs for Swinging Sellers", which as far as I know was also only mono on 
Parlophone but which was obviously recorded in stereo, since (a) it was 
reissued in stereo later as EMI NTS 136 and (b) parts of it and the ten-inch 
Parlophone were cobbled together to form the first American release, Angel (S) 
35884, also titled "The best of Sellers".

The ten-incher was reissued as a twelve-incher, still in mono, as Starline MRS 
5157. So I guess parts of it did exist in stereo, since they were on the Angel 
LP, but maybe not all of it..? The CD (in the box set) has all those tracks inb 
mono, but "Balham", "Party Political Speech" and "I'm So Ashamed" are very 
definitely in stereo on the Angel LP.

"Peter and Sophia" appeared on Parlophone and Angel, but one track was dropped 
for the American release, "Africa Today".

dl

Royal Pemberton wrote:
> Funny thing (NPI), Capitol's release of THE BEST OF SELLERS on LP was not on
> Capitol but on Angel, and my copy (stereo) has the Parlophone matrix numbers
> for each side (YEX.17 and YEX.18)!  (Perhaps 'I'm so ashamed' was on a 78
> someplace....)
> 
> On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 10:39 AM, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>wrote:
> 
>> agp wrote:
>>> At 03:36 03/10/2009, DL wrote:
>>>> Interesting, in that THE GOONS as such were recording for Decca in
>>>> 1956-57 but
>>>> the various members were recording for other labels. I've had these two
>> sides
>>>> on lp (Dark Side Of The Goon) for years but never seen the original
>>>> labels and
>>>> didn't know about the "Goons Disc" designation.
>>> I don't know exactly how or why the Goons migrated from Decca to
>>> Parlophone (and then eventually to BBC Records for programme
>>> compilations), but one can only imagine that the solo efforts of
>>> Peter Sellers and his relationship with George Martin had a lot to do
>>> with it. Perhaps this would be one of the grey-area releases where
>>> negociations where underway to move to the EMI family, and they
>>> couldn't credit the record the 'The Goons' as such. Legally though
>>> the designation GOON DISC (note that GOON is singular) could be used
>>> to sway the audience in as much as only one Goon was credited even
>>> though all were present and uncredited. I could also be speaking rubbish!
>>>
>>> The Goons last charted in the UK singles chart in September 1956 with
>>> Bloodnock's Rock n Roll Call b/w The Ying Tong Song on Decca F.10780
>>> and made it number 3. Actually, I fib a little there as a 45 rpm
>>> reissue in 1973  charted at #9 in July (Decca F.13414) with The Ying
>>> Tong Song on the top side.
>>>
>>> I put the count at 4 discs (singles) on Decca and 1 on Parlophone.
>>>
>>> T
>>>
>> There's also a much later Decca 45 in 1979, containing Rhymes and The
>> Raspberry
>> Song. Spike Milligan made a few more sides for Parlophone under his own
>> name,
>> Harry Secombe recorded separately for HMV and Philips, and Peter Sellers
>> began
>> recording with George Martin in 1958.
>>
>> dl
>>
>