Manfred Mann - The Mighty Quinn - Rock/Rare/Stereo/1968

$

26

The Mad Platter presents:

An extremely hard to come by collection recently purchased, and listed for your buying pleasure.

Check my other listings for more rarities.

All respectable offers will be reviewed and considered.

Manfred Mann - The Mighty Quinn

Stereo - SR 61168

1968 - 1st US Pressing on Mercury Records.

Issued in the UK as “Mighty Garvey!” with a different track listing.

For fans of: Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Big Brother & The Holding Company, CCR, and Simon & Garfunkel.

This LP is not ultra scarce or rarely seen, but it is a tougher one to find in their catalog.

Once again, this is not a re-pressing, its the first edition pressed on thick quality vinyl.

Vinyl: VG to VG+, numerous light surface marks. I played this from start to finish; not a single skip or jump! There are absolutely no deep marks. Vinyl is not what I’d consider a top collectors copy, but would make a nice addition to your collection until a NM one comes along.

Cover: VG to VG+, just light ring wear on the front and back cover, some coloring missing from the corners, but no splits. 2 deletion punches front cover bottom right. Other than that, it’s just a beautiful cover for being 50 years old!

Labels: Side 1 has a very small piece of red missing, Side 2 looks NM.

This will be shipped in a quality static free inner sleeve & brand new outer sleeve.

I ship media mail, but will send as you like, at your expense. 

Additional insurance is also your responsibility. 

Communicate with me and I will do as you like.

USA buyers only, too many issues shipping overseas.

History on the band and release:

Manfred Mann always used the long-play format to showcase its virtuosity and range of influences away from the world of pop singles. This was evident early in the band's career with albums such as The Five Faces of Manfred Mann, which was a hardcore R&B album, far removed from the pop sensibilities of singles like "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" and "Sha La La." The contrast between this album and their singles output of 1968 is not quite as stark, as the LP contains pop material such as "It's So Easy Falling" and "The Vicar's Daughter." More unorthodox selections include "Cubist Town," "Harry the One-Man Band," and "Country Dancing," which showcase the eclectic side of the group. The album failed to chart in the U.K., which is surprising considering Manfred Mann's popularity in 1968 -- three British Top Ten singles. Perhaps the inclusion of one or two more hits like "Ha Ha Said the Clown" would have attracted more sales. In the U.S., the album was released as The Mighty Quinn and mixed some tracks from this album with older single material. The result is a more balanced affair, with the hits providing a welcome contrast to the more highbrow material. However, the U.K. record business was intent on not duplicating singles on albums - a tradition that became rare in the 1970s.

The group's continued pop success with material by established songwriters such as Dylan and Hazzard made its handlers averse to the risk of releasing self-written singles, a state of affairs that had prevailed ever since the success of "Do Wah Diddy Diddy", even though the group's first hits had been self-composed, at least one example of drummer Mike Hugg's new-found productivity had been seen as potentially chart-worthy and singer Mike d'Abo was able to provide other artists with hits such as "Build Me Up Buttercup" and "Handbags and Gladrags". The resultant pop image did not encourage album sales to "serious" listeners, particularly when trends were turning from baroque pop to hard rock. So, like contemporary releases by The Kinks and The Zombies, Mighty Garvey became a record esteemed more in retrospect than at the time. It was later re-issued in 2003, with bonus tracks.

The group's commercial compromises also led to "self-knocking", and its recordings developed an ironic distance that on Mighty Garvey sometimes invites comparison with The Kinks, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, Frank Zappa or The Bonzo Dog Band. Even on Hugg's intricate and sentimental "Harry the One Man Band" the vocal track finally dissolves into schoolboy mirth and silly noises. The three different versions of d'Abo's song "Happy Families", credited as; (Track 1) Performed by Eddie 'Fingers' Garvey, (Track 6) Performed by Ed Garvey and The Trio and (Track 14) Performed by Edwin O'Garvey and His Showband, are outright parodies of "the pompous big rock band style, the sleazy lounge jazz style, and then the semi-drunk family entertainment "country-shape Christmas" style" that appropriate and poke fun at the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band concept ("Edwin Garvey" being an invented character introduced on the similarly flippant flip side of "Mighty Quinn").

These three parodies and two hit singles take up over a third of a relatively short L.P. and of the remainder, d'Abo's "Country Dancing" and "The Vicar's Daughter" are likewise somewhat arch, besides strengthening an impression of "chameleonism" and lack of sincere direction. "Big Betty" is also non-original, a treatment of Huddie Ledbetter's song "Black Betty" in a manner reminiscent of The Spencer Davis Group's hits, providing the only real point of contact with the band's rhythm and blues past. Yet this still leaves a core of worthwhile, intelligent and melodic songs, also by Hugg and d'Abo apart from "Cubist Town", written by guitarist Tom McGuinness in a one-off collaboration. The group made full use of the new possibilities of multi-tracking, overlaying complex and inventive textures of flutes, keyboards and vibraphones, while the group's backing vocals, originally limited to a tribal unison, began to take on an almost Pet Sounds complexity.