Ripped By @rcadium @320kbps from cd.
Chris Lucey
Personnel:
ROBERT PARKER JAMES aka CHRIS LUCEY/BOBBY JAMESON hrmnca, vcls A
ALBUM:
1(A) SONGS OF PROTEST AND ANTI-PROTEST (Surrey SS 1027) c1965/6
NB: Mono and stereo versions exist. There were also two different label colors: red and purple, red being the somewhat rarer one and the purple label crediting "Chris Ducey".
Mint copies can fetch upwards to $150-300. (1) also issued in the UK as by Bobby Jameson, but entitled Too Many Mornings. Also issued in Canada, some copies say "Chris Lucey" on cover and labels, some say "Chris Ducey" on cover and labels!
Robert Parker James was born in Tucson, Arizona but took the pseudonym Bob Jameson and was most likely based in California. In the US, this album was released under the alternative pseudonym Chris Lucey, but in the U.K.
it was released as Too Many Mornings as by Bob Jameson. Produced by ex-surfer Marshall Lieb and issued in the U.S.
on the same budget label as The Leaves debut, no info is given on the cover other than the picture of a Byrd look-alike with his mouthharp(*). The album also includes an excellent version of Girl From The East similarly featured on the Leaves album.
The music is laidback folk/rock with echoes of Byrds, Tim Buckley, Steve Noonan and Lovin' Spoonful.
Many of the songs feature charming guitar parts, dreamy arrangements, jazzy even Lee Underwood-ish backing. Some of the highlights are I'll Remember Them and Girl From Vernon Mountain, both of which are excellent introspective pieces. Most of the album is filled with a haunting atmosphere and all the tracks are originals.
Collectors may wish to note that the Mono copies differ considerably to the Stereo ones.
Surrey was a sort-of subsidiary label of VeeJay operated by their West Coast promo team, led by Randy Wood and Steve Clark (the link between BJ and Boettcher). They cut Hoyt Axton and various others on the budding folk-rock club scene in L.
A. According to Axton, he went over to the office one day, and everything was gone, even the desks and chairs!
Jameson's records were promoted by Tony Alamo, who also worked with many other artists and John and Bobby Kennedy.
L.A. musician Denny Bruce recalls: "To introduce Bobby Jameson to the 'industry' Tony Alamo took out a 7-page fold out ad (four color in Billboard) that showed Bobby standing on top of a limo somewhere on the Pacific Coast Highway.
With the ocean in the background, so he was not lit, you just saw this guy with a cowboy hat, with his staff next to the limo: very much like the Village People- wearing the very obvious uniforms of their jobs: chef, nurse, barber, bodyguard, driver, etc. There were at least 10 of them. Tony arranged for Bobby to be the opening act for another new act that had signed to Atlantic and were getting a buzz.
The showcase was to be at lunch time, so with food being served, everyone came. The act was Caesar and Cleo, wearing togas with olive wreaths in their hair. They of course, became Sonny and Cher.
They went on first. Needless to say, when Tony took the mike and had Bobby backlit, behind some see-through screen and was saying "Ladies and gentlemen, here's an act that can act as well as James Dean, sell as many records as the Beatles, on and on, everybody got up and started walking out while a four-track demo was playing, with Bobby is lip-synching to an almost empty house."
NB: (*) This picture, according to Denny Bruce, was actually a photograph of Brian Jones, pictured at a Hollywood club called 'The Action'.
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