GOLD RUSH 79 [1979]

Here at The K-Tel Kollection warehouse and showroom, we pride ourselves on accurate information although it should come as no surprise that every album featured thus far may not reside on the K-Tel shelf on the Vinyl Wall.  When HERC started writing them up, he had 47 albums in the Kollection.  A supporter of the kause donated two pristine albums to the Kollection back in April and then in September HERC found a few more gently loved K-tel albums at a small shop just off the Vegas Strip.  Within the last month, more than a dozen albums were donated by that original donor, pushing the entire Kollection up near seventy in total, not counting a few duplicate copies.  Today's album is part of that most recent generous gift but before we get to that, a couple of shout-outs to a kouple of HERC's fellow K-Tel Komrades:

• Since the beginning of October, YouTube poster (and HERC fave) Billboard Top Hits 1980 has been pulling from his K-tel and other similar hit collection stash in storage and ripping/posting them in all of their click popping glory.  HERC has counted nearly half a dozen of these posts that have been forcibly taken down, sometime within a couple of hours of posting, by complaining rights holders. Because of this, HERC advises you to subscribe to his channel and check it often.
• Next week will be the one year anniversary of one of HERC's mandatory weekly listens.  Adrian Qitana is the man behind Show N K-Tel, a weekly radio show where he plays "a different K-Tel Records compilation from the 70s & 80s from the top of the A-side to the bottom of the B-side".  The rips are extremely clean, probably the best vinyl rips HERC has ever heard and he wouldn't be surprised one bit to hear Brother Adrian admit that they are modern day recreations.

Gold Rush 79 is the ninth double album featured here on K-Tel Kollection.  Three of the previous eight are among the Top 10 albums based on their K-Tel Scale scores.  Will Gold Rush 79 break into that select group?  Based on the tracklist, HERC thinks that is a definite possibility.  Like the previous double album sets, Gold Rush 79 serves as sort of a round up of songs that were featured on preceding K-Tel albums.  Many of the twenty-four songs on the album remain favorites of HERC's so before he runs the album through the K-Tel Scale, he's going to share a few videos of his favorite songs from the album.

Gold Rush 79 [1979]		K-tel Scale:				32.92
		Billboard Top 40s
		Pop	R&B	Disco	AC	CB	WLS
Heart of Glass	Blondie	1				1	2
Shake It	Ian Matthews	13			21	10	17
Right Down The Line	Gerry Rafferty	12			1	8	19
Every Time I Think Of You	The Babys	13				8	20
Love Takes Time	Orleans	11			13	12
Love Is In The Air	John Paul Young	7			1	13	15
Time Passages	Al Stewart	7			1	9	16
Baker Street	Gerry Rafferty	2			4	1	4
Reminiscing	Little River Band	3			10	3	6
Sharing The Night Together	Dr. Hook	6				4	14
Jack And Jill	Raydio	8	5			6	3
Hot Child In The City	Nick Gilder	1				1	1
Knock on Wood	Amii Stewart	1	6	5		1	1
Shake Your Groove Thing	Peaches & Herb	5	4	2		5	4
You And I	Rick James and the Stone City Band	13	1	3		15	13
Get Off	Foxy	9	1	18		17	6
An Everlasting Love	Andy Gibb	5			8	5	11
Disco Nights (Rock Freak)	GQ	12	1	3		11	14
Don't Cry Out Loud	Melissa Manchester	10			9	10	13
I've Got Love On My Mind	Natalie Cole	5	1			5	14
Sentimental Lady	Bob Welch	8			10	4	8
Prisoner Of Your Love	Player	27				30
Strange Way	Firefall	11			24	11	26
Every 1's A Winner	Hot Chocolate	6	7			7	20

A good score, good enough to make #8 in the Top 10.  High points: no zero scoring tracks, all but one of the twenty-four are Top 13, sixteen are Top 10 with three of those Pop chart toppers plus an additional three Adult Contemporary #1s and four R&B #1's

As they usually did with their double albums, K-Tel quickly released each of the records separately as Volume One and Volume Two, with the former sporting the original album's blue coloring on the cover and the latter given a red background on the cover.  In case you were wondering,  HERC did run each volume through the K-Tel Scale on it's own: Vol. One (mostly soft pop and AC) scored a 32.58 and Vol. Two (mostly disco with an AC streak) scored a 30.73.

The 8-track tape version of Gold Rush 79 was released as a two tape set with the titles altered slightly as Volume 1 and Volume 2.  Also, the tagline above the title was not altered from the original "24 of The Year's Best Original Hits & Stars " as it had been on the separate vinyl versions.  K-Tel's solution to the oversight was to white out the "24 of" part as seen in the image below.

HERC's research did not turn up a cassette or Canadian version of Gold Rush 79 but he did turn up DJ DiscoCat Purrfection Remixes of just a few songs from Gold Rush 79. Click on the yellow song titles in the above K-Tel Scale chart to hear them.

Next up on The Kollection is 1980's The Rock Album.  Sadly, the record should prove to be one of the lowest rated albums yet featured on the K-Tel Scale.  Yet it is one of HERC's favorites and it has a heck of a story.