Customer Reviews

You Turn Me On: The Very Best of Ian Whitcomb

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For those who only know Ian as part of the British Invasion from the 1960s, this CD is for you. It contains his two biggest pop novelty hits, "You Turn Me On," and "Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go With Friday On Saturday Night." A fun and upbeat trip into the past.

Ian Timothy Whitcomb, born on July 10, 1941 in Surrey, England, is a multi-talented artist (entertainer, composer, record producer, author and actor) who, along with his group, the Dublin-based Bluesville, are counted among the British Invasion, although they came along about a year after the first 1964 wave of The Beatles, Peter & Gordon, The Animals, Manfred Mann, The Zombies, The Dave Clark Five, Gerry & The Pacemakers, The Kinks, Chad & Jeremy, Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas, The Bachelors, The Searchers and, of course, The Rolling Stones.

Proficient on both the piano (it's been said he could pound the keys like Jerry Lee Lewis) and the very un-R&R-like ukelele (one of his influences was the old British musical hall performer George Formby, along with seemingly disparate entertainers such Elvis Presley, Guy Mitchell, Phil Harris and Johnny Ray!), he earlier led a group calling themselves The Ragtime Suwanee Six, which functioned from 1960 to 1962 and included younger brother Robin on drums.

Later, however, he would front the Dublin-based group Bluesville (lead guitarist Mick Molloy, rhythm guitarist Deke O'Brien, bassist Brian Lynch, saxophonists Peter Adler and Barry Richardson, and drummer Ian McGarry), and in March 1965 they made a break-through of sorts in North America with their rendition of This Sporting Life, although they had tried to become part of the 1964 British Invasion wave with their release late that year of Soho b/w a cover of the 1957 Larry Williams hit, Bony Moronie on the Seattle-based Jerden 735, billed as Ian Whitcomb And Bluesville. It failed to make any charts.

Early in 1965, the same label then released This Sporting Life on Jerden 747 b/w Soho which was picked up part way through distribution by Capitol for release on their Tower subsidiary and it was this release (Tower 120) that made it to # 100 on Billboard's Pop Hot 100, but on the flip they had Fizz, and that, unfortunately, is omitted here. Not exactly an auspicious debut, but that changed in late May/early June when, under the same billing, You Turn Me On (The Turn On song) rose to # 8 Hot 100 on Tower 134 b/w Poor But Honest - also left out of this compilation.

Later that September, billed just as Ian Whitcomb, he had N-E-R-V-O-U-S top out at # 59 on Tower 155 b/w - somewhat prophetically - The End. Because that was indeed the end of his North American Hot 100 hits (and the B-side is also yet another omission from this volume from Varèse-Sarabande). There were, however, other releases into 1966/67 and some of them are included: Good Hard Rock (Tower 192), Lover's Prayer (Tower 212), Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go With Friday On A Saturday Night? (Tower 274) and a # 101 on the Hot 100 Bubble Under charts in 1966, and Groovy Day and its flip, Sally Sails The Sky (Tower 385) in 1967. He would also record for Stateside, United Artists and Warner Brothers without further hits.

An accomplished author, Whitcomb has written books dealing with popular music such as 1972's After The Ball, and in 1998 won a Grammy for his involvement in recreating the music played on the ill-fated ship Titanic for the film of the same name and the packaging for the soundtrack CD "Titanic: Music As Heard On The Fateful Voyage." He was also nominated for writing the accompanying liner notes and, in fact, wrote the notes for this volume, which he co-compiled with Cary F. Mansfield, and which was digitally remastered by Dave Schultz of Digi Prep in Hollywood.

Other musicians who appear on these tracks, as indicated in the liner notes, are Fred Sokolow on the banjo and Dobro, guitarists Fred Carter and James Burton, violinist Johnny Gimble, saxophonist Jim Horn, bassists Arthur Wright and Carol Kaye, and drummers Tom Nichol and Willie Ackerman.

A nice album in terms of his North American hits, but it loses 1 star for the failure to include any of the B-sides.