Album #2: Baker Knight And The Knightmares

    The "Appears On" tab on Spotify is a strange but extremely useful feature, and it has showed me some crazy collaborations or works I wouldn't have known about otherwise. 

    I saw under Lee Mallory was a Nuggets compilation called Hallucinations, because it has That's the Way it's Gonna Be. For $5 on iTunes, I thought it'd be a neat album to check out, going individually artist by artist. I never got past the first song, because it was so amazing I couldn't be less interested in who was after it. Recently, after writing that line, I have!

    Hallucinations was a 45 put out in 1967 by Baker Knight and The Knightmares. And what a song! The psychedelic lyrics are perfect for a song about a breakup. I don't think sadness is the best emotion to capture in a breakup song, but more the haziness and weird confusing mess that is happening in your brain and also around it, which is perfectly executed in this song.

    Baker Knight was a songwriter and musician who had a long and interesting career, who had songs sung by everyone from Elvis Presley, to Dean Martin, The West Coast Experimental Pop Band, and even Paul McCartney on his Run Devil Run album! I would love to explore his songwriting and solo work on a later date, but this post is just for his band The Knightmares. They put out 3 Doo-Wop singles from 1956-57, with none doing well. Then, in 1967, they come back with Hallucinations. It's flip side I Feel Sick About the Whole Thing isn't even similar to it, sounding like the older work. I do enjoy that song as well.

    I created a compilation of all this band created, and I also designed the album artwork for it, which I am pretty proud of! It all can be downloaded in the link at the bottom. The tracklist is:

Tracks 1-2 are their debut 1956 single. I am not sure which is the A Side and which is the flip.

1 - Bop Boogie to the Blues

2 - Little Heart

Tracks 3-4 are his second 1956 single, banned off the radio for being a non-disclosed Cadillac ad.

3 - I Want My Cadillac Back

4 - I Cried

Tracks 5-6 are his last Doo-Wop single, in 1957.

5 - Love-A, Love-A, Love-A

6 - High School Days

This last single was put out 10 years later in 1967, COMPLETELY different from the early stuff

7 - Hallucinations

8 - I Feel Sick About the Whole Thing

Download Link: Google Drive Zip

(PS the zip has My Mind Goes High by M.C. 2, which is from an acetate on Discogs. I assume that it was to promote the Nuggets compilation cause that's also on there. But the zip incorrectly addresses it to Baker Knight! DO NOT BELIEVE IT)