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“This is
where my career in music was launched. My family was living in Hawaii
because my dad, a career soldier, was stationed at Schofield
Barracks. My next door neighbor got me an auditon with a local record
label in Honolulu. I made my first record in 1962 when I was 18 years old
during my senior year at Leilehua High School. The record label called me
“LANE CASSARO” back then. I had a radio hit on the islands with “HICKORY
DICKORY DOCK”. Both sides of that record are on the CD. This CD consists
of the songs that I probably would have chosen to record for an actual
record album if I had gotten that far. The record company had
suggested that I write songs for a potential followup, and maybe an album
in the near future. Besides those songs, there is a TV appearance,
also some live performances with my group “SANDY AND THE ETHEREALS”, and a
great jam session with Rob "Swifty Albright” and super lead guitarist,
Bill Bartlett, back when he was still playing rockabilly guitar! The
fidelity is a bit patchy in spots, but these 31 songs are some
of my earliest recordings. They're all included to document my
earliest beginnings as a singer/ songwriter. " |
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"When
I returned to Cleveland, Ohio from Hawaii in 1963, my best pal, Bob
Scherl, and I started a record label, INTEGRITY RECORDS. We only had two
releases before Bob got drafted, which put an end to the releases. But, we
had started out with really big plans, and we wrote and recorded a lot of
good stuff. The band on most of the studio tracks were members of "Tom
King and the Starfires". A few months after our last session together they
put out their own single," Time Won't Let Me", and changed their
name to "The Outsiders". I wasn't surprised they were a hit; they were the
best band in town when we worked with them. In hindsight, this is probably
some of the best work I ever did in the studio. I was lean, mean,
21, and on top of the rocket! Everyone predicted I'd be a star. But after
Bob got drafted, I wasn't sure what to do. There are 30 tracks on
the CD." |
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"After Bob got drafted, I had
to make new plans. I took some of the songs I'd written and went to New
York City to try to pitch them to Gene Pitney. And while I was at
Bell Studios remixing "PRETTY GIRL YOU'RE LYING", Hy Weiss of OLD TOWN
RECORDS walked in smoking a big cigar and sat in the corner and watched.
After awhile he said, "That sounds like a hit." Hy and I talked for
a while and soon we cut a deal and he put it out on his label. Wouldn't
you know it, the throwaway "b" side, "MAKE BELIEVE" got great
reviews in all of the music trade papers. But the "British Invasion"
was going full steam ahead, and it soon blew most of us Americans out of
the water, and off the radio - including my "Spotlight Pick of the Week"
from CASHBOX Magazine. The CD starts off with those two sides. Somehow Bob
Scherl got lucky, because the army stationed him right
here in Cleveland. At the end of his work shift we were able to work on
music again, and we started producing other artists. Some of it was
pretty wild, a bit more British sounding. Kind of Pre-PUNK ya know?
At first Bob and I thought the English music was kind of silly and
pretentious, so we did most of it with our tongues firmly planted in
our cheeks, as you might be able to tell from listening to the
pre-production demos. The MISSING LYNX got a deal with DYNO TONE records
because of the demos we did with them. And the HUMAN BEINZ did one of the
songs on their hit album. Carl Maduri did one of our compositions,
"BLUE LIGHTS" with Sherry Starlyn, long before he was having hits
with Wild Cherry and Maureen McGovern There are a lot of good studio
tracks and and rockin' demos; 30 songs in all." |
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