MARTY WILDE: He’s very nice, really

Title: Bad Boy/Showcase

Label: HooDoo

Three years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing English rock’n’roll pioneer,  Marty Wilde (in fact, I must post the interview on this site, sometime). I quizzed him about the accepted UK perception that this country disappointed in terms of producing quality early rock’n’roll performers and songs and the presentation of the same via the media.

Interestingly, Wilde was more than bullish in how the America received these much derided UK artists, “I think that we surprised them. There may have been a sneer early on but that changed. We were learning and they realised that. When I went across to America when the single, Bad Boy, was a hit, I did the Dick Clark TV show. It was their biggest show at the time but it was awful. It was amateur compared to us. Taking the biggest stars to one side, a lot of the US singers were no better than we were. We had some good instrumentalists too. It took time for our guys to get up to speed, yes but the likes of Hank Marvin, for example, learnt fast.”

You can hear that Bad Boy single here, within the original 1960 album along with another 1960 release, Showcase. The one tweak is that the duplicate take of Bad Boy on Showcase has been removed. Instead, apart from benefitting from remastering, the package adds seven bonus tracks. Yes, there is some contemporary inherent compression surrounding the arrangements but the remastering aids instrumental separation as well as clarity in terms of the backing instruments.

Also look out for The Gerry Goffin & Carole King Songbook (SoulJam, part of the Hoodoo stable), remastered and with 30 tracks; Conway Twitty’s Rock House (Hoodoo), his 1956-962 recordings, 30 hard-edged tracks and Sam Cooke’s Win Your Love For Me (SoulJam), his complete A and B-sides from 1956-1962 over 60 tracks and The Ventures’ Collection from 1960-1962.