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Various - AM Gold 1968 (CD, Comp, RE, WEA) (Near Mint (NM or M-))

Various - AM Gold 1968 (CD, Comp, RE, WEA) (Near Mint (NM or M-))

Time Life Music,Warner Special Products

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Media Condition:  Near Mint (NM or M-)
Sleeve Condition: Near Mint (NM or M-)
Country:    US  
Released:  
Genre:       Rock, Funk / Soul, Pop, Folk World & Country
Style:         Soft Rock, Pop Rock, Soul, Rhythm & Blues, Classic Rock, Rock & Roll, Instrumental, Folk Rock, Country
Location:   

Comments:

 

Notes:

Time-Life released this disc as "[r=8860150" (SUD-02) in the [l774983 series in 1990, and as "[r=619390" (AM1-04) in the [l328190 series in 1995.

℗ 1990 Warner Special Products 
© 1990, 1995 Time Life Inc. 

Track durations obtained from software.

Publishing:
Track 1- Delicious Apple Music Corp./Purple Records Distributing Corp./Fun City Music Corp. ASCAP
Track 2- Lowery Music Co., Inc. BMI
Track 3- Nipper Music ASCAP
Track 4- Colgems-EMI Music Inc. ASCAP
Track 5- Takya Music Inc. ASCAP
Track 6- Irving Music, Inc. BMI
Track 7- EMI Blackwood Music Inc. BMI
Track 8. 21- Stone Agate Music BMI
Track 9- Jobete Music Co., Inc. ASCAP
Track 10- Blue Seas Music, Inc./Jac Music Co., Inc. ASCAP
Track 11- PolyGram International Songs ASCAP
Track 12- Screen Gems-EMI Inc. BMI
Track 13- SBK Blackwood Music Inc. BMI
Track 14- Vogue Music c/o Welk Music/Saturday Music/Season Four Music Corp. BMI
Track 15- Cherio Corp. BMI
Track 16- Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp./Unichappell Music Inc. BMI
Track 17- Canopy Music Inc. ASCAP
Track 18- WB Music Corp. ASCAP
Track 19- Words and Music Inc. ASCAP
Track 20- Goodman Group BMI
Track 22- Irving Music, Inc./Cotillion Music, Inc. BMI

Complete liner notes:

By 1968, a vibrant sense of experimentation permeated all aspects of rock and pop. The sheer variety of music on the radio-AM as well as the newly utilized FM-was broader than ever, and some unlikely singles were becoming hits. Surprisingly, this wide-­open scene included even soft pop, or middle-of-the-road music, up to that time the most constricted form of all.

Consider just the top instrumentals. Brazilian pianist Sergio Mendes, who had settled in the United States in the mid-1960s, was a leader of the bossa nova movement, and his records were considered instrumentals even when they used voices. He had legitimate jazz credentials-his sidemen had included bossa nova guitarist Antonio Carlos Jobim and trumpet and flugelhorn player Art Farmer-but his biggest success came when he covered pop hits like The Look of Love, introduced the year before by Dusty Springfield in the James Bond spoof Casino Royale.

Hugh Masekela, the son of a South African sculptor, took up trumpet at the age of 13 after seeing Kirk Douglas in the movie Young Man with a Horn. A veteran of various Johannesburg jazz groups, including one with pianist Dollar Brand, Masekela earned a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London that allowed him to escape apartheid. Then he went to the Manhattan School of Music, where Harry Belafonte found him and began promoting his career. By the mid-1960s, Masekela was married to folk singer Miriam Makeba, a fellow South African expatriate, and running his own production company in Los Angeles. Masekela's jazz-Afropop fusion Grazing In the Grass sold four million worldwide.

The most off-the-wall instrumental of the bunch was Mason Williams' Classical Gas. An Oklahoma folkie, Williams completed a navy hitch and then headed for Los Angeles, where he met Glenn Yarbrough, who was a member of the Limelighters (and later became a solo artist best known for Baby the Rain Must Fall. Yarbrough introduced him to the Smothers Brothers, then playing his club, and Williams became the comedy team's guitarist and writer. (Williams also worked in other media: he wrote and designed books, and one unusual example of his artistic abilities was displayed in the New York Museum of Modern Art.) He was writing for the Smothers Brothers' controversial TV show when he made his recording debut with an LP, The Mason Williams Phonograph Record; its No. 2 single incorporates everything from classical passages to bluegrass breaks, and it won the guitarist three Grammys.

Dionne Warwick's (Theme from) Valley of the Dolls, written by Andre and Dory Previn, was the flip side of I Say a Little Prayer, and together they became her biggest two-sided single ever. But Otis Redding's (Slttin' on) The Dock of the Bay and Marvin Gaye's I Heard It through the Grapevine were the two epochal soul records that year.

Redding wrote the former shortly after his historic performance at the Monterey Pop Festival and a follow-up appearance at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, where he floored the hippies with his raw voice and uninhibited heart. Resting in the morning sun on a houseboat in Sausalito, across the bay from San Francisco, Otis was inspired to create this folk-flavored meditation on his life and travels.

His manager, Phil Walden, was skeptical about its chances, but Stax guitarist Steve Cropper, a frequent Redding collaborator, loved the tune. Cropper helped him polish it up before they cut it in Memphis on December 7, 1967. Three days later, the singer's private plane crashed into an icy Wisconsin lake, killing him and all but one of his band members. Dock of the Bay posthumously became a two-­time Grammy winner and Redding's first No. 1 pop hit.

I Heard It through the Grapevine was cut by three Motown acts before Marvin Gaye. The Isley Brothers' version stayed in the can, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' version wasn't released until around the same time as Gaye's. Gladys Knight and the Pips took it to No. 2 pop (and the top of the soul charts) in 1967.

But when Gaye cut the Barrett Strong-Norman Whitfield song with Whitfield producing, he brought a personal urgency to the session. His seven-year marriage to Motown president Berry Gordy's sister Anna (17 years older than Marvin) was falling apart; each partner was cheating compulsively on the other. Marvin poured all his passion and paranoia into the performance, and he wound up selling four million copies and creating a standard that has entered the Billboard Hot 100 four times since then (by King Curtis, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Roger and the California Raisins).

Gaye's labelmates the Temptations had another Strong-Whitfield gem in I Wish It Would Rain. David Ruffin's unforgettable reading made the song stand out from the Broadway ballads that dominated the Tempts' In a Mellow Mood album. The 5th Dimension was a pop-soul group that made a career out of smooth harmonizing, usually on songs by Jimmy Webb or Laura Nyro, who wrote Stoned Soul Picnic. With A Beautiful Morning, an obvious attempt to recapture the success of its 1967 chart topper Groovin; the nation's leading "blue-eyed" soul band changed its name from the Young Rascals to the Rascals.

Dion and Jose Feliciano were folk-­rock surprises. Dion fled his native Bronx for Miami in 1968 to kick heroin, which had kept his career on hold much of the decade. During that period, he also became a huge blues fan. Dick Holler wrote Abraham, Martin and John as a blues shuffle the day after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. Producer Phil Gernhard and Dion spent nearly three weeks reworking it into this form, which Dion insisted was his form of blues even if everyone else considered it topical folk-pop; the single also marked his return to Laurie, the label where he and the Belmonts had their early hits.

Feliciano was born blind in Puerto Rico, and his family moved to New York's Spanish Harlem when he was a child. He made his first appearances on the Hispanic circuit but quickly moved downtown to Greenwich Village folk clubs. In addition to singing, he played guitar, bass and congas on his remake of the Doors' Light My Fire, which marked his first foray into the pop-rock world.

Spanky and Our Gang (Like to Get to Know You) were Chicago's answer to the Mamas and the Papas; leader Elaine "Spanky" McFarlane even sang the late Mama Cass Elliot's parts in the mid-1980s re-formed version of that group. Merrilee Rush went top 10 with Angel of the Morning after Evie Sands's version failed because Cameo, her label, went out of business two weeks after releasing it in 1966. When Rush began getting some attention in her native Pacific Northwest, songwriter Chip Taylor, who had penned Angel in a 10-minute burst that ended a half-day of false starts, hired his own promo man to make it a nationwide hit.

The Vogues, who were originally the Val-Aires but dressed so sharp that they had to change their name, broke out of their native Pittsburgh by working up two different shows, one for teens and one for parents. Turn Around, Look at Me managed to please both audiences. The members of Classics IV were from Jacksonville, Florida, but their Spooky broke first in Louisville, Kentucky; remnants of the group later evolved into the Atlanta Rhythm Section, purveyors of mid-1970s Southern boogie. Glen Campbell continued his crossover success with the atmospheric Wichita Lineman, one in a series of country place-name songs written for him by Jimmy Webb.

Bobby Goldsboro, a Southerner who had never enjoyed country hits before, had an even bigger crossover with Honey, written by Bobby Russell (Little Green Apples, The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia). After deciding at the last minute to stay home one weekend night, Russell started contemplating how much the tree in his front yard had grown in the last four years, and somehow from that observation he built this ballad about the death of a young bride.

-John Morthland

 

1. The Rascals - A Beautiful Morning 2:34
2. The Classics IV - Spooky 2:51
3. José Feliciano - Light My Fire 3:31
4. Sérgio Mendes & Brasil '66 - The Look Of Love 2:42
5. Spanky & Our Gang - Like To Get To Know You 3:12
6. Mason Williams - Classical Gas 3:05
7. Merrilee & The Turnabouts - Angel Of The Morning 3:12
8. The Temptations - I Wish It Would Rain 2:48
9. Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell - Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing 2:16
10. Dionne Warwick - Do You Know The Way To San Jose 2:55
11. Bobby Goldsboro - Honey 4:00
12. B.J. Thomas - Hooked On A Feeling 2:48
13. The Fifth Dimension - Stoned Soul Picnic 3:26
14. The Lettermen - Goin' Out Of My Head / Can't Take My Eyes Off You 3:06
15. Hugh Masekela - Grazing In The Grass 2:37
16. The Vogues - Turn Around, Look At Me 2:46
17. Glen Campbell - Wichita Lineman 3:02
18. Dionne Warwick - (Theme From) Valley Of The Dolls 3:34
19. Cass Elliot - Dream A Little Dream Of Me 3:14
20. Dion (3) - Abraham, Martin And John 3:19
21. Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through The Grapevine 3:16
22. Otis Redding - (Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay 2:40

 

Barcode and Other Identifiers:

Matrix / Runout [WEA mfg. Olyphant logo] Y18859 10 OPCD 2604-2 07 M1S3
Mastering SID Code ifpi L903
Mould SID Code IFPI 2U8A
Rights Society ASCAP
Rights Society BMI

 

Remastered At Hit And Run Studios
Phonographic Copyright (p) Warner Special Products
Copyright (c) Time Life Inc.
Published By Delicious Apple Music Corp.
Published By Purple Records Dist. Corp
Published By Fun City Music Corp.
Published By Lowery Music Co. Inc.
Published By Nipper Music
Published By Colgems-EMI Music Inc.
Published By Takya Music Inc.
Published By Irving Music, Inc.
Published By EMI Blackwood Music Inc.
Published By Stone Agate Music
Published By Jobete Music Co., Inc.
Published By Blue Seas Music, Inc.
Published By Jac Music Co., Inc.
Published By PolyGram International Songs
Published By Screen Gems-EMI, Inc.
Published By SBK Blackwood Music Inc.
Published By Vogue Music
Published By Welk Music
Published By Saturday Music
Published By Seasons Four Music Corp.
Published By Cherio Corp.
Published By Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp.
Published By Unichappell Music, Inc.
Published By Canopy Music, Inc.
Published By WB Music Corp.
Published By Words & Music, Inc.
Published By The Goodman Group
Published By Cotillion Music, Inc.
Manufactured For Time Life Music
Manufactured By Warner Special Products
Glass Mastered At WEA Mfg. Olyphant
Pressed By WEA Mfg. Olyphant

Data provided by Discogs

In stock

There’s something undeniably magnetic about vintage audio gear. The tactile weight of milled aluminum knobs, the warm glow of dial lamps, and—above all—the rich, analog sound that today’s sterile streaming boxes can’t quite replicate. But time is merciless: capacitors dry out, switches oxidize, and those gorgeous walnut cabinets lose their sheen. That’s where the art (and science) of our vintage audio refurbishment comes in.

Why Vintage Audio Still Matters

In the golden era of hi-fi—roughly the mid-1960s through the early 1980s—companies like Marantz, McIntosh, Pioneer, Sansui, and Technics were engaged in an arms race of build quality. This was before cost-cutting plastics and disposable designs; amplifiers were over-engineered, receivers were works of art, and turntables were precision instruments.

Owning one wasn’t just about sound; it was about status and permanence. These machines were built to last a lifetime—or two. The irony? Decades later, they often do, provided they’re given the care they deserve.

The Philosophy of Refurbishment

Refurbishment is not just about fixing; it’s about preserving authenticity while ensuring reliability. The goal is to keep that lush, analog character alive without compromising safety or sound quality.

Some enthusiasts chase museum-level originality—keeping every factory component in place. Others opt for sympathetic modernization, upgrading parts that never existed in the ’70s to improve performance. Both approaches can be valid; it depends on your vision.

The Turntable Store refurbishing process.. step by step

Step 1: The Initial Encounter

When we first meet a 40-year-old amplifier, we resist the urge to plug it in right away. That dusty Marantz 2270 might look gorgeous, but old electrolytics and brittle insulation can short instantly under full voltage.

Instead:

  • We inspect for corrosion, burnt resistors, and leaking capacitors.
  • We use a Variac (variable transformer) to bring up voltage slowly, reforming capacitors rather than shocking them back to life.
  • We check fuses—not just for continuity but for correct ratings.

Tip: A faint musty smell? That’s often the scent of old phenolic boards, not trouble. But a burnt smell? That’s trouble.


Step 2: Deep Cleaning & Control Detox

Dust is the enemy of good sound, that is why we clean the interior carefully with compressed air and a soft brush.

The real magic comes with switches and potentiometers. Over decades, oxidation builds up, causing scratchy controls and dropouts. A deep contact clean in each pot and switch, followed by vigorous cycling, often restores silky-smooth operation.

Step 3: Electrical Resurrection

This is where science meets art:

  • Capacitors: Electrolytic caps often need some attention. We replace out-of-spec caps with high-quality modern equivalents (Nichicon, Panasonic), avoiding over-capacitance unless the power supply can handle it.
  • Resistors: Carbon comp resistors drift over decades. Measure and replace out-of-spec parts.
  • Transistors: Certain vintage transistors (e.g., 2SC458) are notorious for noise. We do swap defective ones for modern low-noise equivalents.
  • Relays & Lamps: Speaker relays oxidize; replace or clean contacts. Dial lamps? Upgrade to warm LEDs for a factory glow without the heat.


Step 4: Cosmetic Glory

Refinishing the walnut cabinet can transform a unit. We do use real wood oil or Danish oil, not polyurethane. We clean the glass dial carefully; those silkscreened letters are fragile.

Knobs? We polish with metal cleaner, but never use abrasives on anodized aluminum.

Faceplate lettering? We avoid harsh chemicals—just mild soap and a microfiber cloth.


Step 5: Calibration & Sonic Check

After the repair and cleaning, it’s time to dial in the performance:

  • We do adjust bias and DC offset on amplifiers for stable operation.
  • On turntables, we re-lube bearings, replace belts, and check speed accuracy.
  • On Cassette Decks and Reel to Reels, we replace belts ( if needed ), we clean and demagnetize the heads before the alignment process ( a must ! ) 

When done right, the result is astonishing: a sound that breathes—liquid mids, velvet highs, and bass with a tactile presence that modern gear rarely matches.


Our promise for Audiophile-Level Results

  • We Avoid Cheap Parts: That $5 eBay capacitor kit? Hard pass. We use reputable brands.
  • We Don’t Over-Polish: Patina is part of the charm. We aim for “well-loved,” not “plastic surgery.”
  • We Upgrade Discreetly: If we must modernize (like adding gold-plated RCA jacks), we keep it tasteful and reversible.


Why It’s Worth It

The payoff isn’t just sonic—it’s emotional. Restoring a 1970s Marantz or Sansui is like bringing a classic car back to life. Every glowing dial lamp, every smooth rotation of a volume knob, connects you to an era when music mattered enough to build machines like this.

And when you drop the needle on your favorite record and hear that warm, enveloping sound, you’ll know: this wasn’t just a repair. It was a resurrection.

We have a 14-day return policy, which means you have 14 days after receiving your item to request a return. 

To be eligible for a return, your item must be in the same condition that you received it, unworn or unused, with tags, and in its original packaging. You’ll also need the receipt or proof of purchase.

To start a return, you can contact us at theturntablestore@gmail.com. Please note that returns will need to be sent to the following address: 

The Turntable Store
45 Market Square
Manheim PA 17545

If your return is accepted, we’ll send you a return shipping label, as well as instructions on how and where to send your package. Items sent back to us without first requesting a return will not be accepted.

You can always contact us for any return question at theturntablestore@gmail.com.


Damages and issues
Please inspect your order upon reception and contact us immediately if the item is defective, damaged or if you receive the wrong item, so that we can evaluate the issue and make it right.

Exceptions / non-returnable items
Certain types of items cannot be returned, like turntable needles and custom products (such as special orders or personalized items). We also do not accept returns for hazardous materials, flammable liquids, or gases. Please get in touch if you have questions or concerns about your specific item. 

Unfortunately, we cannot accept returns on sale items or gift cards.

Exchanges
The fastest way to ensure you get what you want is to return the item you have, and once the return is accepted, make a separate purchase for the new item.

European Union 14 day cooling off period
Notwithstanding the above, if the merchandise is being shipped into the European Union, you have the right to cancel or return your order within 14 days, for any reason and without a justification. As above, your item must be in the same condition that you received it, unworn or unused, with tags, and in its original packaging. You’ll also need the receipt or proof of purchase.

Refunds
We will notify you once we’ve received and inspected your return, and let you know if the refund was approved or not. If approved, you’ll be automatically refunded on your original payment method within 10 business days. Please remember it can take some time for your bank or credit card company to process and post the refund too.
If more than 15 business days have passed since we’ve approved your return, please contact us at theturntablestore@gmail.com.
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We ensure our customers have the best shopping experience

Fully Serviced

All items are meticulously serviced and restored to meet factory specifications

Well Cared Shipping

We pack with precision and ship in brand new, appropriately sized, boxes.

Information flow

Be in the know with timely notifications on your order, starting from acceptance to tracking numbers, allowing you to stay connected with your purchase