Curious if anyone has made an exhaustive list identifying all the Jerry Cole compositions under various names?

Such as ‘The Big Board’ (from Surfin’ Around by Billy Lazar & the Woody Wagoners) being the same composition as ‘T Roadster’ (from Hot Rod Dance Party)

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Yeah there's a pretty big JC rabbit hole for sure! He's easy to spot if you know how he sounds.Check out Cole's Crown Records' all-instro go-go LPs as well as the mostly instro psychedelic LPs on the Custom label under various pseudonyms - T.Swift & The Elecric Bag, The Projection Co., MacArthur Park and several more....great guitar tracks! I produced and annotated a few Jerry Cole reissue projects for Ace Records including "Hot Rod Twangin'" which also includes many of the hotrod tracks, sans the dreadful vocals. A good overview of the psych material is either "Psychedelic Guitars" on Ace or "Guitar Freakout"- a double LP on Sundazed Music that I also worked on.It includes several of the psychedelic tracks as well as the entire 1968 "Animated Egg" LP which was released by another explo/budget label, Alshire Records, out of Burbank. Of course Cole had three instro LPs on Capitol as well as a few novelty projects including the one you mentioned above. And that's him on several Liberty Records LPs including "Speedboats USA". As you probably know, he recorded with the Beach Boys, Paul Revere, The Byrds and countless others...I'll have to check out the Tommy Roe songs that you mentioned, Roe was a pretty fine guitarist himself!

Last edited: Jan 23, 2024 18:10:38

TheCruelSea wrote:

This is something I have been meaning to do! I went down the Jerry Cole rabbit hole last year and have been totally blown away. At first glance all those cheap Crown albums are pretty hokey and the lyrics aren't too great. At least two songs per album at least have a catchy melody, but what had me listening song after song were his blistering solos! The tension building up to each one is very obvious and you can almost hear how badly he wants to turn loose. Controlled chaos! Of course he recycles quiet a few songs in between albums but sometimes there are little tweaks that keep them interesting.

I am going to try and put together a list or excel sheet this year.

Side note: I am confident he is playing guitar on the last 4 songs of Tommy Roe's "Everybody Likes" album. Almost Grown, I Got a Girl, That'll be the Day and Switchie Witchie

I’ve done some work cataloging them on my website https://surfroute101.wixsite.com/surfroute101
But perhaps I’ll have to dig in this weekend

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All those hot rod/surf records were recorded around the same time - Crown titles and the Billy Lazar LP were definately a little earlier than the major label LPs - somewhere around 1963. Most of those budget label records were never copyrighted and I seriously doubt that "Surfin Around" was, but I can't say for sure. They also recorded all of the Crown LPs at their headquarters on Normandy Ave. in LA....where the art work, the manufacuring and everything else was done, all in house! Bill Lazerus was the recording engineer there and I suspect he also had something to do with "Surfin Around". The track,"Surf Bustin", appears as "Twin Scramblers" from Cycle Psychos LP and "Surf Bustin" is "Pealin Out" from the Hot Rod Alley LP. The Surfin Around tracks are even raunchier than the Crown versions so I think they were probably first. I never got around to asking Cole about that LP but we recorded the "3 Balls of Fire - Live" CD with him, Nokie Edwards and George Tomsco and we did "Twin Scramblers" and "Pealin Out" in 2007 - 42 years after their original release!

3ballsoffire wrote:

All those hot rod/surf records were recorded around the same time - Crown titles and the Billy Lazar LP were definately a little earlier than the major label LPs - somewhere around 1963. Most of those budget label records were never copyrighted and I seriously doubt that "Surfin Around" was, but I can't say for sure. They also recorded all of the Crown LPs at their headquarters on Normandy Ave. in LA....where the art work, the manufacuring and everything else was done, all in house! Bill Lazerus was the recording engineer there and I suspect he also had something to do with "Surfin Around". The track,"Surf Bustin", appears as "Twin Scramblers" from Cycle Psychos LP and "Surf Bustin" is "Pealin Out" from the Hot Rod Alley LP. The Surfin Around tracks are even raunchier than the Crown versions so I think they were probably first. I never got around to asking Cole about that LP but we recorded the "3 Balls of Fire - Live" CD with him, Nokie Edwards and George Tomsco and we did "Twin Scramblers" and "Pealin Out" in 2007 - 42 years after their original release!

That’s amazing to hear! Great info on Bill Lazarus - didn’t even know. It took me forever to find a copy of Surfin Around and when I realized it was Cole, I has a hunch it was recorded first. You’re right, it’s definitely my favorite renditions of those recycled tunes. Also didn’t know the Crown albums predated the major label releases. Very interesting.

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Last edited: Jan 24, 2024 04:39:55

anyone know how I can upload a pdf?

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Last edited: Mar 01, 2024 11:28:12

...or Dropbox or any other file sharing website.

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Oh you did! Thank you!

https://surfguitar101.com/downloads/details/964/

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Okay yes! Here it is in all its glory!!

https://surfguitar101.com/downloads/details/964/

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Last edited: Mar 02, 2024 13:43:15

Link works for me...?

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