Get To Know Stinky

This three record set was one of the best purchases of my early teenage years [sez Stinky], and that includes buying nice copies of both The Beatles' Revolver and Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies LPs at a yard sale for fifty cents apiece shortly after I reached double digits.  

It was the early seventies and music was in a terrible state.  The Beatles had broken up and Paul McCartney & Wings’ Venus & Mars and Band On The Run and Ringo’s Goodnight Vienna had landed with me more than Harrison or Lennon’s music.  Disco had reared its ugly head and obscured almost everything else, driving me into a box of 45’s my much older sister had left behind that was full of wonders that included girl groups: The Shirelles, The Cookies, The Dixie Cups, Dionne Warwick, and Annette Funicello.  

In the early 70’s, record labels tended to lose interest in releases that had left the charts, and reissue labels like Rhino were struggling to become a national presence.  I remember paying $10 for a pretty trashed copy of a Best Of The Shirelles LP because it was “collectible” at what may have been the only record store that sold used records in my town — and they didn’t last long fleecing school kids like they did. 

My point is that you really had to seek out oldies.  The popularity of American Graffiti gave me a two record set of great early rock & roll/doo wop, and the sequel stirred in some classics from the 60’s (but wasn’t nearly as good a film).  There were a couple AM oldies stations that played songs that straddled the two soundtracks like Gary Lewis & The Playboys and The Classics IV.  Songs which were about ten years old at the time!

These events, and the fact that each radio station DJ played whatever they wanted back then, made me the shambling musical omnivore I am today.  Even the jukebox at the local burger joint had Ernie’s Rubber Duckie, Johnny Winters’ Frankenstein, and Bloodrock’s D.O.A. on it.  

I was given a 45 of The Tubes’ Don’t Touch Me There that got a lot of spins.  In addition I loved Rod Stewart & The Faces, The Kinks, Tommy James & The Shondells, Nancy Sinatra, The J. Geils Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin, Cream, The Eagles, Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show, Dion & The Belmonts, Dr. Demento, George Thorogood, and Loggins & Messina.  Country was popular where I lived, so I was happily exposed to George & Tammy, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Ray Price, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Conway Twitty.

I was into pretty mainstream stuff when I was a high school upperclassman — until punk & new wave finally reached the desolate location where I lived — and I added The Ramones, The Dead Boys, The Cars, The Pretenders, more Tubes, and Nervous Eaters which I bought at the second used record store in my town around 1980.  One of my more intuitive purchases, which led to my taking a chance on a lot of other artists I’d never heard of before.

But 1980 is musically way ahead of where I began my love affair with THE #1 HITS OF THE 60’s.  When I bought it in 1975, I got $10 a week in allowance — so the $7-$8 I mailed away for the Special TV Offer was a substantial investment, and one of the best I’ve ever made.  THANK YOU, Adam VIII Ltd.  You made my childhood a lot better.  And the concept was as simple as Seuss; nothing but #1 hits! 

I’ve recreated the track listing using digital copies because the three records were in nearly constant rotation first on a child’s turntable, and then on my first all-in-one sound system with an 8-Track player!  I probably listened to all three records once a week for a couple years.  Although I still have my treasured copy, no one would want to listen to that.  

While the cover art isn’t going to make Hipgnosis sweat, it has a simple charm, and they put some thought into the track order.  And unlike K-Tel and Ronco — the dominant forces in compilations at the time — the tracks were as fat as a regular album so they played good and loud, and none of the songs faded out to make them fit.  And it featured 40 original hits by the original artists.  Since then, I’ve accidentally bought K-Tel cassettes in person that were re-recordings by one or more of the original band members. So this collection is dear to me not only because of its surprising quality and value, but because it offered me an oasis in a desert of disco (which, I’m glad to say, I now appreciate).