? & The Mysterians "96 Tears"

No it's Rudy not Randy.. typo

I didn't like "96 Tears" quite enough to buy as a current, but loved the follow-up, "I Need Somebody." So I bought the "stereo" 96 Tears LP. The pressing defects and the rechanneling prompted me to return it in exchange for the "I Need Somebody" 45 and a couple of others. A few months later, I bought the "96 Tears" 45, which had already transitioned to the new Cameo label by then (left, below, the one Tom mentioned above.) I was later given the used Cameo copy on the right.




Tom, while I only have the above two variations of "96 Tears," I'll cite a couple examples of the varying copyright dates from another Cameo 45 that followed it by a few months. "Harlem Shuffle" was a big regional hit in the Plains states and the Upper Midwest by The Fabulous Flippers, a Lawrence, Kansas group that constantly toured the entire region. "Harlem Shuffle," like "96 Tears," was a regional master picked up by Cameo. And it, too, produced a confusing variety of label and sonic variations. The four copies I have are all different in some way or another.

There were two versions of "Harlem Shuffle:" A pseudo-"live" version that was the airplay hit, and a studio version that was an entirely different recording. Pictured below are two promo variations of the "live" version. The Monarch pressing on the left bears a "Copyright 1960" notation, with no mention of Parkway. The song title is on the top, with the group name at the bottom. The more-typical Cameo pressing on the right has the title and artist positions swapped, and has "Copyright 1963 Cameo-Parkway Records, Inc." at the bottom. Both of these "live" versions show "Harlem Shuffle" as the B-side, with C-439-B in the dead wax.



The copy on the left below looks similar to the one on the right above, but "Harlem Shuffle" is now the A-side on the label, and the publishers have flip-flopped. This is the studio version, as is the Columbia-pressed stock copy on the right below... which still has "Shuffle" listed as the B-side. Both of these copies carry the 1963 copyright date, and both show C-439-B-2R in the dead wax.



So it looks like the "96 Tears" fiasco was not an isolated case. I agree with Bill's statement that Cameo wasn't very well-run after the label's 1965 sale. Couple that cluelessness with product being farmed out to several different pressing plants, and the result is chaos (and discussion board fodder 40-plus years later.) :)

Hykker, there were at least a few more to come. This period was toward the end of the red label's run, so it is entirely possible that the print stock of white labels for the promos may have been depleted by that point, assuming that the logos were pre-printed. But the promo-on-stock-label practice continued even with the redesigned 1967 logo. Some of the Lucky Elevens also fell during this period.

While the Seger single below gives a preview of things to come, the Gingold record takes more than a giant step backwards (ditto for its B-side, "I've Got The Rudy Vallee Blues.") Exactly what were they smokin' in the A & R office? Love the "(we think)" disclaimer.