Numero Group needed a hook to hang their most recent random collection of rare recordings and decided on a spy film soundtrack.
Here's the scoop from Numero HQ...
The opening act of Louis Wayne Moody’s mid-century spy caper trilogy, 1962’s Call Me Old Fashioned put a tail on Agent Cara Seaworth’s debut undercover operation, fresh out of the Eastern Star Spy Academy for Young Ladies. Her assignment: to pose as songbird and nest, one thrush-like performance at a time, deep under the skin of widower Jack “Frenchy” Hammerli, proprietor of Jack’s Riverside Inn supper club. Her quarry: both an unblemished 1822 American Half Eagle piece—gone AWOL since the Academy’s turbulent Reconstruction-era founding—and Jack’s own beating heart. When the mobbed-up Sauk City, Wisconsin, night spot proves a tough coin to flip, Seaworth’s estranged father and celebrated numismatist “The Man” gets called up to the Not-So-Big Leagues. Will Cara pinch the minted MacGuffin and cooly cash in on a couple dozen missed birthdays, or wind up feeding walleye at the bottom of Mud Lake?
Struck for circulation after 63 years in hock within the Lou-Mood Pictures vault, this previously unissued soundtrack traffics in the high-tone timbre and highball-sipping swoon of pop’s post-war years. Muddling together sugar-lipped divas, barrel-aged big bands, and “zoo be zoo be zoo” zest, with a Latin jazz Luxardo for garnish, Call Me Old Fashioned is a 40-minute stereo-sonic adventure for the 7 & 7 spy-fi fanatic. You can get a copy of Call Me Old Fashioned LP via Bandcamp right hereor try the Numero Group site overhere.
Call Me Old Fashioned
1. Pony Sherrell - Don't Do Anything Til You've Heard From Me
2. Margo Guryan - More Understanding Than a Man
3. Charleen Houston - Just Like a Fool
4. Dolores White - Lovers Paradise
5. Charlene Knight - If My Dreams Come True
6. Darla Hood - Un Momento Mas
7. Manny Lopez - Terra Bella (Que Bonita Es Mi Tierra)
Better 4 years late than never, Sub Pop just released Like Someone I Know, a multi-artist reimagining of the late Margo Guryan's fab Take A Picture album.
Here's the scoop...
Most of our stories about cult musicians who make an album or two and then seem to vanish are framed by grief, despair, and frayed ambition. Not so with Margo Guryan, an ardent jazz anomaly who disdained pop music until hearing “God Only Knows” in 1966, opening a window onto the wonders that form could contain.
Only two years later, she released her own set of little pop symphonies, Take a Picture, to great praise and expectation. But, having already divorced the hard-gigging valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, she declined to tour or even talk about it all that much, content even if her reticence meant Take a Picture was soon consigned to discount racks and cutout bins. She wrote and recorded for years to come, even collaborating with Neil Diamond’s band, but mostly she seemed satisfied by her relatively private life.
As befits music so stunning and subtle, Guryan, who died in 2021, has enjoyed several renaissances during the last six decades. And now, it’s happening again: Soon after her near-whispered and lovelorn hymn “Why Do I Cry” made her a TikTok star in 2021, the same year she passed, Numero Group launched a reissue campaign, resulting in the acclaimed 2024 set, Words and Music. And now, a dozen artists—none of whom were born when Take a Picture was made, most of whom weren’t even born for a crucial early reissue by Franklin Castle—have reinterpreted and reimagined that entire album (plus one bonus track) for Like Someone I Know: A Celebration of Margo Guryan. Empress Of, Margo Price, Clairo, June McDoom: They all affirm Guryan’s sharpness as a songwriter and the brilliance of an album that has far outstripped whatever promotional cycle Guryan rejected so long ago.
Guryan was born to a sprawling family in Far Rockaway, when the place was still mostly framed by trees. While a composition student at Boston University, Guryan stumbled into a gig playing piano between Miles Davis Quintet sets, signed a songwriting deal with Atlantic Records, and botched a session with Nesuhi Ertegun. But she wasn’t looking to be a singing star. In 1959, she headed to the Lenox School of Jazz in the Berkshires to write for Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry, earn the attention of instructor Max Roach, and find a longtime mentor and friend in Gunther Schuller. She became an accomplished lyricist, writing not only for Coleman and Nancy Harrow but also for Harry Belafonte and Gary MacFarland.
But it was that subsequent encounter with the Beach Boys that opened the trap door for Guryan to Take a Picture and scores of other super songs, many of which appear on Words and Music. Take a Picture is a sophisticated survey of mid-20s romance and indecision, from the flirty romp of “Sunday Morning” and falling-for-you affirmation “Can You Tell” to the desperate helplessness of “What Can I Give You.” Her perpetually soft voice, audacious songcraft, and complete candor: Guryan, in 1968 and beyond, was making daring music, no matter how gently those sounds seemed to move.
With a portion of proceeds being donated to providing and advocating for affordable reproductive health services, Like Someone I Know reinforces the strength of Guryan’s songs by allowing a dozen different artists to take them for trips of their own. The core always remains, unwavering. McDoom stretches static and harmony beneath “Thoughts,” as if they’re spinning on a dub plate beneath her arcing vocals. Rahill lets “Sun” unfurl over harmonium drone and entrancing percussive ticks, digging into Guryan’s interest in the surreal. Frankie Cosmos and Good Morning take a country shuffle through “Take a Picture,” entwined vocals falling over the rhythmic skips with perfect romantic relish. Over the last few decades, it has become increasingly clear just how good Guryan was, how sturdy her songs have been amid varying tides of taste. Like Someone I Know offers absolute validation, a testament to the enduring relevance and brilliance of Guryan's work.
Get a copy of the new tribute album Like Someone I Know: A Celebration of Margo Guryan and check out a few tracks via Bandcamp right here. Watch the animated video for Empress Of's version of the title track along with audio clips of TOPS doing "Sunday Morning" and Margo Price's version of "California Shake" after the tracklisting.
Like Someone I Know: A Celebration of Margo Guryan
1. TOPS - Sunday Morning 2:26
2. Rahill - Sun 3:34
3. Clairo - Love Songs 2:58
4. June McDoom - Thoughts 2:54
5. MUNYA and Kainalu - Don't Go Away 2:20
6. Frankie Cosmos and Good Morning - Take a Picture 3:02
Numero Group's career-spanning Margo Guryan 3LP box boasts 46 tracks with 16 unissued songs. Listen to "Moon Ride"
Here's the scoop from Numero Group HQ...
We've been teasing out new discoveries and unreleased Margo Guryan tracks for the last year or so and now it's time to let the cat out of the bag. We're beyond stoked to present Margo Guryan's Words And Music 3xLP Boxset.
Witness to revolutions in jazz and pop, Margo Guryan earned her place in the songwriting pantheon and then some. That she was largely unknown for decades is not the stuff of crushed dreams, but a result of her own choices and priorities. From humble beginnings to the peaks of her 1968 baroque pop masterpiece Take a Picture and the collected Demos to the recent viral ubiquity of “Why Do I Cry”, Words and Music captures the entirety of Guryan’s career, featuring 16 previously unreleased recordings and a 32-page booklet telling the whole story.
Guryan released just one album in her heyday: 1968’s Take A Picture. But, as Margo was disinterested in performing, touring, and promoting the work, the album went barely noticed at the time. Nevertheless, by the 1990s, the record had become a highly sought after cult favorite. Then, a new generation of listeners came to learn about her work when Take A Picture was reissued in 2000, followed shortly thereafter by the collected 27 Demos, supervised by Margo herself, an incredible compilation of unearthed alternate takes and new-to-the-public songs. Guryan’s life in the intervening years remained filled with music; she became a music teacher, kept writing songs, and cultivated friendships with a growing circle of acolytes.
Her early tunes were recorded by bebop pioneer Dizzy Gillespie, bossa nova icon Astrud Gilberto, the famed South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba, and folk hero Harry Belafonte. Jazz singers Anita O'Day and Carmen McRae all released takes on her material, as did pop singer Claudine Longet and folk-rock icon Mama Cass Elliot. "Sunday Morning," Margo's biggest hit, was first popularized by soft-rockers Spanky & Our Gang, followed by recordings from torch singer Julie London and country royalty Glen Campbell and Bobbie Gentry. In 1967, Billboard called Margo "one of the most sought-after writing talents in the music business."
Born in 1937 in New York City, Guryan began learning piano at age six before eventually enrolling at Boston University to study music. She spent much of her early career immersed in the jazz world, including working for Impulse! founder Creed Taylor, writing for jazz artists, and attending Lenox School of Jazz in Western Massachusetts, where she worked in an ensemble alongside fellow students Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. Her peers were, at that very moment, exploding the consciousness of jazz. Margo, a then-recent graduate in composition, had once been told that the highest mode of education is perception. So she mostly lingered and listened. It was at Lenox where Margo became friends with her teacher, Max Roach, who in 1961 even asked Margo to pen the liner notes for his first Impulse! album.
The story of Margo Guryan is one of a woman who dug deep from an early age and was never afraid to change. With her keen feel for tone, phrasings, tension, presence, and lyrics that cut, her name today is synonymous with sophisticated songcraft and inimitable 1960s cool.Her ingenuity and technique set her in the tradition of chamber-pop icons like Brian Wilson and Burt Bacharach while the bittersweet candor in her depictions of womanhood suggest a middleground between Carole King's pop-factory and singer-songwriter eras. But the understated rigor of Margo's artistic voice is all her own.
You can pre-order the Margo Guryan "Words and Music" 3LP box directly from Numero Group right here. Early bird mail-order copies via the Numerogroup.com site will be on exclusive "Sunday Morning Sun" colour vinyl including bonus Chopsticks Variation 10" vinyl limited to 500 copies. Listen to "Moon Ride" below.
Ever wonder what SCTV's Gerry Todd would do with his own 30-minute variety show? It might look a bit like Rachel Lichtman's retro-fabulous Musique.
Over the last few months, future media mogul Rachel Lichtman has been working on a music-oriented plank of her brilliant Network 77 platform which she just launched as Musique.
Drawing on the inspiration of both 70s TV variety shows and the commercial advertising spots which accompanied them, Musique presents swank period-perfect video clips for contemporary artists like Ted Leo, Juliana Hatfield, Joe Pernice, Eszter Balint and Liam Hayes – with cameos by Aimee Mann and Luther Russell – all gorgeously styled and every bit as sun-bleached and shag-carpeted plush as you would hope. The crazy rare vintage clip of Margo Guryan fits in seamlessly.
Musique seems like a godsend to independent and reissue labels looking for an appropriate outlet to reach culturally-sussed folks of a certain generation and everyone else right now who could use a tuneful, colour-saturated reverie to escape the shut-in doldrums of our shared pandemic predicament.
Now if only some visionary executive at Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, HBO, Apple TV Plus or even say, PBS had the sense to see the enormous potential Musique offers... well, in the meantime, just watch the pilot episode of Musique right here.
Evidently, Rachel has quite a bit of great stuff which didn't make it into the pilot. So if you enjoyed the first episode of Musique and would like to help fund a second – Rachel bankrolled the whole shebang herself – you can make a donation through Network77.com (there’s a donate tab in the navigation). You'd think this would be something that that the shrewd operators behind labels like Light In The Attic, Numero Group, Omnivore, Sundazed, Vampi Soul, Ace Records, BBE, Drag City, Anthology Recordings, Cherry Red, Dust-To-Digital, Tompkins Square, Third Man, etcwould be happy to support.
