Magic Colors: The Lost Album with Bonus Tracks 1967-1969

An impressive 19 hits on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 rank Lesley Gore as second only to Brenda Lee as America's top-selling solo female recording star of the 1963-1967 timeframe.

Those chart records exist on a plethora of CDs, but not on this one, which kicks off with the 10 tracks scheduled for her lost Magic Colors album and concludes with 15 others, all recorded between 1967 and 1969. Lesley's releases were no less excellent than her earlier work, yet somehow these were overlooked by the masses.

Most of the titles intended for the Magic Colors LP were recorded in Hollywood with first-call session luminaries such as Hal Blaine, Larry Knechtel, Lyle Ritz, Jim Horn, Al Casey, Jay Migliori, Carol Kaye, Tommy Tedesco and Ray Pohlman, the nucleus of the celebrated Wrecking Crew, as they were known within the business. When its would-be title song was issued as a single, the label carried a line heralding the album, but Mercury nixed its release after the 45's failure to chart.

With material from some of the USA's top songwriters of the day including Mann & Weil, Bonner & Gordon and Sedaka & Greenfield plus production and orchestrations by maestros Bob Crewe, Jack Nitzsche, Gamble & Huff, Steve Douglas, Herb Bernstein, Paul Leka and Thom Bell, Magic Colors is no greatest hits collection. It just sounds like one.

Compilation and notes by Mick Patrick.