Product Description:
Daisy Records and Tiger Records were labels founded by the producing/songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
Includes every track issued by Daisy and Tiger, plus three previously unissued alternate versions.
All tracks are digitally remastered from the original master tapes.
Liner Note Author: Randy Poe.
Recording information: 1962-1964.
Arrangers: Joe Craig Jones; Garry Sherman; Teacho Wiltshire; Alan Lorber; Mike Stoller; Artie Butler; Bert Keyes.
From late 1962 to mid-1964, the great rock & roll songwriting and production team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller released almost a dozen singles on their Daisy and Tiger labels. Only one of those singles, Alvin Robinson's "Something You Got," was a hit (and only a moderate one at that), though the experience of running Daisy and Tiger helped lay the foundation for the far better-known label Leiber & Stoller subsequently founded, Red Bird. This 25-track CD collects both sides of all 11 Daisy and Tiger 45s, adding three previously unreleased alternate takes (one of them being a different version of "Something You Got"). The mixture of soul, R&B, pop, and girl group sounds that would characterize the Red Bird label are well in evidence on much of this material. The difference is that the songs and performers generally aren't as outstanding, with some notable exceptions. Bessie Banks' "Go Now," covered for a big hit in 1965 by the Moody Blues, is a superb classic soul-pop ballad, Cathy Saint's "Big Bad World"/"Mr. Heartbreak" is good uptown girl group-style music, and Dee Dee Warwick's interpretation of the Van McCoy composition "Standing By" is a great wrenching and dramatic slowie. Otherwise the songs are only passable, though they do include some obscure Jeff Barry-Ellie Greenwich compositions, as well as Leiber & Stoller's peculiar "Bossa Nova, Baby," done by Tippie & the Clovers. The instrumentals by Bob Moore & the Temps are generic raw blues-rockers, but collectors might want to note the presence of guitarist Roy Buchanan (who co-wrote both sides of their Daisy single) on those two tracks. ~ Richie Unterberger
