Sandy Salisbury with Curt Boettcher - Sandy (1969)
2005 - Rev-Ola
Sandy Salisbury was a honey-voiced member of sunshine pop guru Curt Boettcher's cast of singers and players responsible for some of the finest pop records of the 1960s. Boettcher and Salisbury met up in Boettcher's group the Ballroom and found that their voices blended together magically. The Ballroom had a brief existence and soon Salisbury and Boettcher formed Millennium. Salisbury wrote songs as well as sang, and along with the other members of Millennium, he did work on Sagitarrius's classic 1967 album Present Tense as well as other Boettcher projects. Millennium released only one album and Salisbury soon recorded a solo record for producer Gary Usher's Tomorrow label. The record was to be called Sandy and featured most of the members of Millennium, but sadly it was never released due to problems at the label. In 2000, it was finally issued by Poptones and instantly became a sunshine pop classic. Also in 2000, Dreamsville released a CD of demos Salisbury recorded in the late '60s for his music publisher. These wonderful songs never saw the light of day at the time because Boettcher told the publisher he wanted them for future projects. These projects never came about because Boettcher lost favor with the music business and pretty much disappeared. So did Salisbury. It is a shame that these two released so little music at the time because there were no finer practitioners of California sunshine pop. In later years Salisbury has reverted to his given name of Graham and has written many well-received children's books. In 2005 Sandy was reissued again by Rev-Ola with the added attraction of 13 bonus tracks, five of which were previously unreleased. (Tim Sendra)
Sandy Salisbury was the shy romantic of the loose group of musician friends who formed the legendary studio combos Sagittarius and the Millennium. He was also the one to eschew drugs entirely, a distinction that could not necessarily be made based on the evidence of this previously unreleased solo album, originally recorded for Together Records in 1968 and unearthed by British label Poptones in 2001. Like the music his bandmates made both solo and collectively, Sandy Salisbury is a heady, trippy, captivating concoction. In fact, of the first series of sensational albums that Poptones cobbled together or excavated from the Sagittarius/Millennium vaults, it is the finest, most complete work of the lot, nearly on a par with even the classic albums officially released by the collective. The album is a showcase for a talent who could sometimes get submerged in the shuffle of the group. Salisbury wrote or co-composed most of the songs in collaboration with various of his Millennium cohorts, and drenches them in one of pop music's most angelic tenors, a voice that is nearly identical in creamy, heavenly grace and elegance to that of Curt Boettcher, who co-produced the album along with future Fleetwood Mac engineer Keith Olsen.
Musically, the album is luminous, hallucinatory, and full of typically cherubic sweetness. The collective's signature romantic fervor surfaces throughout, most characteristically on the lovely ballad "Cecily" and the marimba-and-vibes peppered island groove of "Once I Knew a Little Dog." But while the album has all of the familiar Boettcher hallmarks, the production diverges in some minor but intriguing ways. Cosmetically, songs such as "Cecily" and "The Hills of Vermont" take on an almost country cast (as driven by Red Rhodes' pedal steel), and make the subtle stylistic shift convincingly. More substantially, Sandy Salisbury is unexpectedly muscular, even soulful at times, on songs such as the breathtaking harmonica-led "I Just Don't Know How to Say Goodbye" and the jubilantly kaleidoscopic "Goody Goodbye." The meaty "Spell on Me" is punctuated by waves of brass, a surprising progression that occurs several times on the album, while garage-punk guitar riffs bring the falsetto vocal hook of "Do Unto Others" back down to earth. The album is simply joyous and celebratory, nowhere more than on the bouyant cover of the Beach Boys' "With Me Tonight" (renamed "On and on She Goes"), reputedly aimed at administering a helping of therapy to Brian Wilson to bolster the sense of diminishing artistic self-worth he was experiencing at the time. Salisbury's performance is just as bouyant and accomplished throughout, and if it threatens to burst the album at its seams, it is also what makes this such a satisfyingly unforeseen delight. [In 2005, Sandy was reissued by Rev-Ola and boasted thirteen bonus tracks selected by Salisbury, five of which were previously unreleased.] (Stanton Swihart)
Tracklist:
01 - I Just Don't Know How To Say Goodbye
02 - Spell On Me
03 - The Hills Of Vermont
04 - The Good Ol' Good Times
05 - Come Softly
06 - On And On She Goes (With Me Tonight)
07 - Cecily
08 - Do Unto Others
09 - Once I Knew A Little Dog
10 - Baby Listen
11 - Goody Goodbye
12 - Once I Knew A Little Dog [instrumental]
13 - Spell On Me [#2]
14 - Here Comes That Feeling
15 - A Little Bit Of Love
16 - Love Came To Strawberry Lane
17 - I'll Do The Crying
18 - Love Is A Place
19 - I'm In The Mood For Happy
20 - If Roses Are Blue
21 - Married To The Wind
22 - Measure Of A Man
23 - Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow
24 - The Best Thing
25 - All I Really Have Is A Memory
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