SOUNDS SPECTACULAR [1975]

Are these Sounds truly Spectacular?  
We'll find out after the jump.

This time around, we have Sounds Spectacular from 1975. It's a very decent album featuring not only 3 Pop #1s but also 5 other songs that topped their respective charts.  The oldest song is from 1971 while the two newest songs cracked the Top 40 in March 1975.  "Get Dancin'" carried over from Out Of Sight.  (Wish we knew a more precise release date for these K-Tel albums.  It would be nice to know if the songs had peaked before, during or after the album's release.  Most likely it was before.)  With only one track missing the Top 40, Sounds Spectacular races up third place in the rankings. HERC's two favorite singles from this album, both of which are significantly longer on their respective albums, are pictured below:

Thanks to some newly gleaned intel about this classic compilation, HERC is proud to present a slightly different chart below.  For the first time on this site, we can plainly see how much songs were edited down in terms of time in the first two columns below.  (The single times are taken from Joel Whitburn's Pop Annual book and the K-Tel times were contributed by several fans of this site.)  The songs that were more than 10 seconds shorter than their original 45 edits are in red.  Cumulative running times are given at the bottom of each column.  Rounding up, we can see that playing the 45 of each of the twenty songs would take 68 minutes while listening to both sides of the Sounds Spectacular album would take 54 minutes. Twelve of the twenty songs were edited down a total of 14 minutes!

		Sounds Spectacular [1975]		K-tel Scale:		27.40
				Top 40 chart peaks
single edit	K-Tel edit			Pop	R&B	DISCO	AC
0:02:55	0:02:53	Never Can Say Goodbye	Gloria Gaynor	9	34	1	11
0:03:05	0:03:02	Free Ride	Edgar Winter Group	14
0:03:12	0:03:18	Fire	Ohio Players	1	1	10
0:03:56	0:02:33	Roll On Down The Highway	Bachman-Turner Overdrive	14
0:05:01	0:02:55	Radar Love	Golden Earring	13
0:03:30	0:02:20	Come And Get Your Love	Redbone	5
0:03:20	0:02:21	Up In A Puff Of Smoke	Polly Brown	16			29
0:03:20	0:03:20	Butter Boy	Fanny	29
0:03:33	0:02:00	Sugar Baby Love	Rubettes	37
0:03:09	0:02:44	Do It ('Til Your Satisfied)	B.T. Express	2	1	8
0:03:25	0:03:26	My Eyes Adored You	Frankie Valli	1			2
0:03:50	0:02:40	Shame, Shame, Shame	Shirley & Company	12	1	1
0:03:56	0:02:08	Get Dancin'	Disco Tex & The Sex-o-lettes	10	32	3
0:02:40	0:02:36	Nothing From Nothing	Billy Preston	1	8		15
0:03:15	0:03:15	Doraville	Atlanta Rhythm Section	35
0:03:04	0:01:57	The South's Gonna Do It	Charlie Daniels Band	29
0:03:15	0:02:20	It's Impossible	New Birth		12
0:03:23	0:02:35	Be Thankful For What You Got	William DeVaughn	4	1		31
0:03:31	0:03:04	Just Don't Want To Be Lonely	Main Ingredient	10	8
0:02:32	0:02:26	My Maria	B.W. Stevenson	9			1
1:07:52	0:53:53

In addition to having entirely different cover art, the Canadian version of Sounds Spectacular has an entirely different track listing - all 20 songs were swapped out. What's interesting to note is that 9 of the 20 songs had already appeared on the U.S. version of the Out Of Sight album.  A tenth song also appears on Fantastic on both the U.S. and CAN versions.  Seven songs failed to make the Top 40 and the majority of the ones that did failed to crossover onto any of the other charts resulting in the lowest score yet on the K-Tel Scale.

HERC was familiar with all but one song on this album (the one above) and it is a doozy. He's gone back and listened to it again and again.  Very trippy, very hippie.  He likes it. Apparently it came out in 1974/1975 and spent (at least) three weeks on Canada's RPM Adult Contemporary Charts but failed to crossover anywhere else.  Barry Greenfield is the artist using just his surname this time out.  Wisely, Barry has chosen to make his first two albums available through Spotify.  On his first album, he worked with several top notch studio and jazz musicians but he is the only one credited on his second, self-titled disc from which "Canada Sky" is taken.

Sounds Spectacular [1975]		K-tel Scale:		15.80
		Top 40 chart peaks
		Pop	R&B	COU	AC
Kung Fu Fighting	Carl Douglas	1	1
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet	Bachman-Turner Overdrive	1
I've Got The Music In Me	The Kiki Dee Band	12
Tonight	Rubettes
Rock And Roll (I Gave You The Best Years Of My Life)	Terry Jacks
I Wouldn't Want To Lose Your Love	April Wine
After The Goldrush	Prelude	22			11
Dancing With Your Lady	Michael Argue
Fire, Baby I'm On Fire	Andy Kim	28
Beach Baby	First Class	4			38
Crocodile Rock	Elton John	1			11
Fly Away	Wednesday
The Black-Eyed Boys	Paper Lace
Kings Of The Party	Brownsville Station	31
Touch Me	Fancy	19
Heavy Fallin' Out	The Stylistics		4
Canada Sky	Greenfield
Straight Shootin' Woman	Steppenwolf	29
Willie And The Hand Jive	Eric Clapton	26
Hang On In There Baby	Johnny Bristol	8	2

In an interesting move, K-Tel used similar artwork for the U.K. edition of Sounds Spectacular but chose to feature 20 World Wide Hits Produced by Phil Spector.  Most of these were chart hits but how would the album do on the K-Tel Scale?  Really, really well, actually.

Sounds Spectacular [1975]		K-tel Scale:		28.15
		Top 40 chart peaks
		Pop	R&B
Baby I Love You	The Ronettes	24	6
He's A Rebel	The Crystals	1	2
Pretty Little Angel Eyes	Curtis Lee	7
Zip A Dee Doo Dah	Bob B. Soxx And The Blue Jeans	8	7
I Love How You Love Me	The Paris Sisters	5
Ebb Tide	The Righteous Brothers	5	13
Then He Kissed Me	The Crystals	6	8
Every Breath I Take	Gene Pitney
Walking In The Rain	The Ronettes	23	3
Unchained Melody	The Righteous Brothers	4	6
You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling	The Righteous Brothers	1	2
Spanish Harlem	Ben E. King	10	15
To Know Him Is To Love Him	The Teddy Bears	1	10
Wait Till My Bobby Gets Home	Darlene Love	26
Uptown	The Crystals	13	18
Just Once In My Life	The Righteous Brothers	9	26
Not Too Young To Get Married	Bob B. Soxx And The Blue Jeans
Under The Moon Of Love	Curtis Lee
Be My Baby	The Ronettes	2	4
Da Doo Ron Ron	The Crystals	3	5

Despite three songs missing the Top 40, an incredible 14 of the remaining 17 songs crossed over to the R&B Charts and this album of "oldies" scored higher than the U.S. version. HERC has decided not to list this one in the official rankings as it "does not feature the contemporary hits of the day" and is "top-loaded with proven hits" whatever that means. This ruling turned out to be harder than he thought as he counts at least four of the songs on this album to be among his favorites of all time, including one in his personal Top 20, Gene Pitney's "Every Breath I Take".   He fell in love with it the first time he heard it in 1991 on a Time-Life disc and has been infatuated with it ever since.  Sadly, it peaked at #42 in 1961 and contributed zero points to the album's score.