Fill Your Head with Rock | ||||
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Compilation album by Various Artists | ||||
Released | 1970 | |||
Genre | Rock | |||
Label | CBS Records SPR 39/40 | |||
Producer | Various | |||
Series chronology | ||||
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Fill Your Head with Rock (1970) was the third release in the successful CBS Records Rock Machine UK budget sampler album series. It broke new ground, by extending the format to a double album, and also featured more UK artists than previous samplers.
Compiler David Howell (later Managing Director of Pete Waterman's PWL label) stated that while the earlier samplers were merely aimed at promoting specific full-price releases, this record was part of a major push to establish the label as "the top label in contemporary music" in the UK, and also to establish the market for double albums. [1]
For once a sampler album cover showed the featured artists, and even provided a key for identification. Laura Nyro can be seen at the top left, Taj Mahal next to her, and Al Kooper & Leonard Cohen at the top right. Four of the artists are not shown: Moondog, Amory Kane, Black Widow and Skin Alley. The front cover features Jerry Goodman of The Flock.
The included eight-page booklet featured brief descriptions of the artists, their images, and photographs of the relevant albums. [10] It also included publicity for other CBS Records artists as well as those on related labels such as Dandelion - Principal Edwards Magic Theatre, Beau, Bridget St John, Mike Hart & Siren; Direction - The Chambers Brothers & Taj Mahal; and Straight - Captain Beefheart, Alice Cooper, Judy Henske and Jerry Yester, Tim Buckley, & The GTOs.
In Australia, it was pressed and released with unaltered artwork and tracklisting.
In France, the album, retitled Superb Super Pop Session N°2 with different artwork, reached No. 10 in the album chart. [11]
In Spain and Latin America, the title was translated as Llena Tu Cabeza de Rock. It was listed No. 5 in the Hits of the World chart. [12]
Finnish label Finnlevy promoted the record heavily, leading to a "virtual sellout" of a Johnny Winter performance at the Kulttuuritalo. [13]
In South Africa, The Gramophone Co. gave the record "massive" promotion, including booking an unprecedented weeklong exposure on the top teenage programme "The Radio Record Club" on Springbok Radio. [14]
Jennifer Jean Warnes is an American singer and songwriter. She has performed as a vocalist on a number of film soundtracks. She has won two Grammy Awards, in 1983 for the Joe Cocker duet "Up Where We Belong" and in 1987 for the Bill Medley duet "(I've Had) The Time of My Life". Warnes also collaborated closely with Leonard Cohen.
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the American Graphophone Company, the successor to the Volta Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the recorded sound business, and the second major company to produce records. From 1961 to 1991, its recordings were released outside North America under the name CBS Records to avoid confusion with EMI's Columbia Graphophone Company. Columbia is one of Sony Music's four flagship record labels, alongside former longtime rival RCA Records, as well as Arista Records and Epic Records.
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Louis Thomas Hardin, known professionally as Moondog, was an American composer, musician, performer, music theoretician, poet and inventor of musical instruments. Largely self-taught as a composer, his prolific work widely drew inspiration from jazz, classical, Native American music which he had become familiar with as a child, and Latin American music. His strongly rhythmic, contrapuntal pieces and arrangements later influenced composers of minimal music, in particular American composers Steve Reich and Philip Glass.
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Henry St. Claire Fredericks Jr., better known by his stage name Taj Mahal, is an American blues musician. He plays the guitar, piano, banjo, harmonica, and many other instruments, often incorporating elements of world music into his work. Mahal has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his more than 50-year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa, India, Hawaii, and the South Pacific.
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John Simon is an American music producer, composer, writer and performer. Recognized as one of the top record producers in the United States during the late 1960s and the 1970s, Simon produced numerous classic albums that continue to sell more than 50 years later, including the Band’s Music from Big Pink, The Band, and The Last Waltz, Cheap Thrills by Big Brother & the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin, Songs of Leonard Cohen by Leonard Cohen, and Child Is Father to the Man by Blood, Sweat & Tears.
Fred Catero was an American record producer and engineer. Catero was originally from New York City, where he worked for CBS Records/Columbia, recording artists such as Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears. Invited by producer Roy Halee, Catero moved in the 1960s to San Francisco to work for Columbia Records there. In San Francisco, Catero worked on albums by Bob Dylan, Al Kooper, Tower of Power and Santana, many of these under producer David Rubinson at the Automatt. He also produced and engineered recordings with Aaron Copland, Janis Joplin, Linda Ronstadt and Mel Tormé. He also worked for the Automatt Studios, recording musicians such as Herbie Hancock and Santana.
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Pat McLaughlin is a singer-songwriter based in Nashville, Tennessee.
Fillmore: The Last Days is a live album, recorded at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, California from June 29 to July 4, 1971. It contains performances by 14 different bands, mostly from the San Francisco Bay Area, including Santana, the Grateful Dead, Hot Tuna, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and the New Riders of the Purple Sage. It was released by Columbia Records in June 1972 as a three-disc LP. It was re-released by Epic Records in 1991 as a two-disc CD.
A sampler or promotional compilation is a type of compilation album generally offered at a reduced price to showcase an artist or a selection of artists signed to a particular record label. The format became popular in the late 1960s as record labels sought to promote artists whose works were primarily available in album rather than single format, and therefore had little opportunity to gain exposure through singles-dominated radio airplay. Most samplers showcased already-released material, so that as they sampled artists they also sampled the albums from which their tracks were drawn. The term 'album sampler' is also used in cases where an album is distributed among multiple records in case of, for example, vinyl where the maximum play time is less than the length of the full album. In these cases, album sampler titles may be added to each vinyl.
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