Lost gems of THE SIXTIES

Kingsley Abbot turns up some hidden nuggets from the golden decade

The explosion of music that happened in the 60s record industry helped make record collecting a really serious hobby. After the thrills of the first rock’n’roll 50s era, the 60s brought us a mass of collectable genres that catered to every taste: neo doo wop, beat, girl groups, blue beat, surf, harmony, folk rock, sunshine pop, psychedelia and country rock all found places in our hearts. One of the central joys of collecting though, is turning up the unfairly (and even fairly) neglected oddities and could-have-beens; each genre had its fair share of great records that never made it as big as they deserved.

A new book by RC contributor Kingley Abbott, 500 Lost Gems Of The 60s is a glorious trawl through these rare and lesser-known goodies, written in the knowledge that it could well be perfectly possible to duplicate the book with 500 different choices; such was the awesome quality of the output of record companies in the 60s.

The book includes entries on The Ad-Libs (both US and UK varieties), The Contrasts, The Roadsters, The Shirelles, Neo Maya, The Detroit Spinners, The Chiffons, The Spokesmen and even the wonderfully named William Truckaway amongst its hundreds of choices.

As a short taster, we now present an eclectic choice of twenty particularly juicy entries from the book, all UK single A or B-side releases …

by Kingsley Abbot
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