Listen/Download – Lynn Castle and Last Friday’s Fire – Rose Colored Corner
Greetings all.
The tune I bring you today was a lucky find during a fairly recent, and unexpected bout of digging.
I can’t recall if I mentioned this before, so forgive me if I repeat myself, but a while back I happened upon a really nice stash of 45s at one of the Asbury Lanes garage sales, and when I was done I talked to the guy and discovered that he was connected to an old record store that hadn’t really sold any records of consequence in a long time (at least since the last time I shopped there, some fifteen years or so ago).
I filed this fact away, and when I got a free morning I took a drive over, hoping that I might find a similar bounty.
Unfortunately as soon as I walked through the door and scoped out the vinyl area it was pretty obvious that this wasn’t going to yield similar results, but, record fiend that I am, with time to burn, I figured I’d paw through the racks and see what I might find.
Good thing too, because although the results were not voluminous, they were satisfying and in the case of today’s selection, especially so.
I grabbed the Lynn Castle 45, mainly because it verily screamed ‘mid 60s’, and since it was on Lee Hazlewood’s LHI label, I figured it was worth two bucks to find out whether or not it was cool.
It was (is).
While this may not be a ‘valuable’ 45, it ended up being worth a lot more than two bucks, and a quick listen revealed to me that my instincts about it were correct.
The only hard info I’ve been able to find about Castle is in Mick Brown’s Phil Spector bio ‘Tearing Down the Wall of Sound’, in which Brown recounts that Castle was a popular Sunset Strip hairdresser to the stars (Sonny and Cher, and the Byrds among others) who was apparently stunning, as well as friendly with Lee Hazlewood.
According to a Lee Hazlewood discography the backing band on the single Last Friday’s Fire recorded at least two more 45s for LHI under their own name.
Both sides of this 45 (the flip ‘The Lady Barber’ has been comped) mix folk rock with a vaguely garage/psyche edge. ‘Rose Colored Corner’ the darker (and less fuzzy) of the two sides, and features some nice vibrato guitar and pulsing combo organ. Recorded in 1966, it was produced by Hazlewood.
I’m not going to slip you the old rubber peach and tell you that Castle was a great singer, but she does a fair enough job, and the whole thing sounds as mid-60s Sunset Strip as it looked upon first glance.
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back on Monday.
Peace
Larry
PS Head over to Funky16Corners for both sides of a solid NYC funk 45.
