Corny and trite as hell, but I still dig this groovy and mellow obscurity from '67. By the way, I have all 225 volumes of Jeffrey Glenn's Lost Jukebox series.
Aw, man, I'm envious! You're probably familiar with this one then, "Anabel" by the Seagulls (the B-Side of their Kinks cover "Death Of A Clown". The Seagulls - Anabel
More 5th Dimension from their exquisite Magic Garden LP. Billy Davis Jr. shines as always. Love the note he hits at 1:49,
"Love Can Make You Happy" - Mercy. Amazing how some songs just act like a wormhole to certain places and times. I hear this, and its the summer of 1969 and I'm 8 years old in North Jersey. The Mets were making their run, Apollo 11 was on the moon and this song was everywhere . A real guilty pleasure. Who knows what happened to the artists.
Yeah, fantastic record and very mellow! The version BrutandCharisma shared upstream is a re-recording that appears on the LP "Love Can Make You Happy" issued on the Warner Bros. label. The original hit recording was released as a single by a small Florida label called "Sundi Records". When the record spring up the charts, Warner Bros. Records wanted to sign Mercy on, but Sundi Records wouldn't relinquish the rights to the original hit recording. Here's where it gets really sordid. Sundi Records released their own version of the LP using the original hit version of "Love Can Make You Happy" by the group Mercy, and used an imposter band for the rest of the LP tracks. Yes, the Sundi LP, apart from the original hit song, is horrible!
I've loved that song for years and years.. I should find more songs by them. If anyone knows any great ones, I (and others) would appreciate it!
I'm not well versed in The Moment's ouevre but I can give you a little background. Sylvia created the group and at some point, all the original members were replaced by three guys who eventually morphed into Ray, Goodman & Brown. The only other single I bought by them was one of their last under that name - Look At Me (I'm In Love).
Wow, I never knew the whole back story on this. I've been a huge fan of this song ever since it came out when I was 12, and I bought the Sundi 45 in 1973, and the Warner Bros. LP in the eighties...I didn't realize there was a Sundi LP. Based on your post, I probably am not missing much!
Wow. That's a really cool backstory. From back in the days where 45 rpm Top 40 hit singles were everything, and unless you were the Beatles or the Stones, nobody cared much about albums. So many "one hit wonder" stories from back then.
I'm a big fan of the Moments, they're a fantastic vocal group. Here's their first hit, a superb song called "Not On The Outside".
Mercy had to re-record their hit for WB and continued to do other songs for a real album. They had a secondary release that got some airplay with a cover of a song called "Forever", which also fits this thread:
On the subject of “Mercy”, Sundi Records also held onto the B-side of “Love Can Make You Happy”. WARNING!… NOT MELLOW!
Another group that had several "mellow" hits was the Sunshine Company...obviously one of my favorite groups since I have all three of their albums and two "best of" CDs! Their best known song is "Back On the Street Again" from 1967.
They also had a competing song on the chart in '67 called Happy. I preferred the mellower take by the Blades Of Grass.
Happy got most of the airplay up here. Back on the Street Again didn't do much. It came out second. I never heard the Blades of Grass version of Happy until a few years ago. I think both are excellent!
Alone At Last - Neil Sedaka 1978. Why wasn't this a smash? Maybe he should have released this in 1980 when soft rock was staging a comeback after the disco implosion.