Listen: Twine Time / Alvin Cash & The Crawlers
Twine

St. Louis born raised Alvin Cash and his brothers attended the very same high school as both Luther Ingram and Tina Turner. How great that must have been.

Moving to Chicago, they performed primarily as a dance act and were eventually signed by Andre Williams to One-der-ful Record’s Mar-V-Lus imprint, and who knows why they needed an imprint but big props on both label names.

Alvin Cash & The Crawlers captured what I wanted to believe was street soul circa 1965. Despite the low rent sound of ‘Twine Time’, it became a pretty big hit during the winter of that year, reaching #4 on the BILLBOARD RnB chart and a justice after all #14 on the Hot 100.

Listen: Alvin’s Boo-Ga-Loo / Alvin Cash & The Registers
AlvinCashBooGaLoo.mp3

After ‘Twine Time’, and two more singles, the act changed their name to Alvin Cash & The Registers. In reality, only Alvin was left, his brothers, the dancers, having dropped out. So the touring band lineup became The Registers.

The third single as Alvin Cash & The Registers, ‘Alvin’s Boo-Ga-Loo’, although a rather small success (#42 RnB, #74 Pop), tirelessly self promoted Alvin and latched to that week’s flavor when it came to dances. Despite losing his two brothers as part of the act, the whole dance angle always remained.

Took a while, but finally the footage from SHINDIG has been posted:

Listen: The Free Electric Band / Albert Hammond AlbertHammondFreeElectric.mp3

Ok, so Albert Hammond made his real mark as a songwriter, credits including The Hollies, Aswad, Blue Mink, The Fortunes, Tina Turner at best. Many of his biggest earners were of the more gack inducing mainstream nuisance types. Songs you could neither stand nor avoid during their reign.

That’s ok, there’s room for everybody I suppose. And given his one international hit, ‘The Free Electric Band’, all is pretty much forgiven.

I think I may actually recall every song I heard on UK radio in ’73. I was that focused on it. Couldn’t get enough. Radio 1 was my non stop soundtrack. Back then, pop music would end at midnight on the BBC or it would have been 24/7.

There were a handful of singles that peaked in the mid teens, like Junior Campbell’s ‘Sweet Illusion’, and this was one (#19) as well. Even better. A nice slow grinder of a climb insured a load of airplay.

Early moog sounds always caught the UK’s ear. Maybe that’s why this worked over there instead of his US smash ‘It Never Rains in Southern California’.