Cherry Red Records In The Beginning… (Rod McKuen Narrates His Poetry & Sings)

• In 1972, the jacket copy of And To Each Season proclaimed, “Rod McKuen is both the best-selling poet in history and the best-selling author in this country (America)”.
• Certainly the statistics behind Rod McKuen’s career and work are astonishing. He recorded over two hundred albums and was the recipient of 63 gold and platinum records worldwide. His three-dozen books of poetry were published in eleven languages, sold 65 million copies and made him the most widely read poet of his time. The songs he has written and composed have accounted for the sale of over 100 million records for such diverse artists as Madonna, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, Chet Baker, Andy Williams, The Kingston Trio, Percy Faith, Herb Alpert, Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark, Johnny Mathis and Frank Sinatra.
• In 1969, Sinatra commissioned an entire album of original McKuen songs and the result was the highly successful and much acclaimed A Man Alone. It produced two hit singles for the singer. McKuen’s music exploded in popularity during this period when he posted nine hit records on the Billboard chart. These included six collaborations with the arranger Anita Kerr and The San Sebastian Strings a sequence which began with the much admired The Sea, The Earth, The Sky trilogy.
• McKuen met Jacques Brel in Paris in the early sixties and began a long friendship. His adaptation of Brel’s ‘Ne Me Quitte Pas,’ as ‘If You Go Away,’ became universal in popularity, and his adaptation of ‘Le Moribund,’ as ‘Seasons In The Sun,’ – which in 1974, a whole decade after the Kingston Trio first recorded Rod’s translation – became a number 1 hit for Canadian Terry Jacks. Terry’s sentimental reading is one of only a handful of single records with certified worldwide sales of more than ten million copies.
• Rod McKuen’s compositions, ‘Jean,’ for the film. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and ‘A Boy Named Charlie Brown,’ the title track of the Peanuts film, were both nominated for Academy Awards.
• In the Beginning is an anthology drawn from the first six years of Rod McKuen’s recording career from 1956.
• It comprises selections from such historic long-players as Songs For A Lazy Afternoon, Anywhere I Wander, Alone After Dark and A Stranger In Town; from the beatnik concept album, the Yellow Unicorn, from 1958s controversial Time of Desire, which features Rod reading amorous prose over an angular jazz tinged backing. The edition is completed by songs from two early rock ‘n’ roll exploitation film soundtracks on which McKuen collaborated with Henry Mancini, namely, Rock, Pretty Baby and Summer Love.