Various Artists - My World Fell Down; The John Carter Story Box Set 4CD's [@320]

 

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Review by Tim Sendra

During the 1960s and early '70s, John Carter was one of the most prolific songwriters and performers on the pop scene. Starting in the early '60s, he switched between writer and artist, having huge hits on both sides of the fence. My World Fell Down: The John Carter Story is four discs' worth of singles, album tracks, demos, and rarities that tops the other collections of Carter's work by doing a deep dive on the whole of his career. Sequenced chronologically, the box set captures his sound as it moved from the Everly Brothers-influenced style of his early work through to classic British Invasion, psych-pop, bubblegum, and AM radio fodder.

On the first disc, peppy singles by Carter-Lewis & the Southerners are paired with a selection of the demos he and writer partner Ken Lewis cut during the early to mid-'60s, highlighted by a run through "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat?," which was the duo's first big hit. There are also tracks from the Ivy League, a Brill Building pop-inspired group that featured Carter's aching falsetto and spawned the classic "Funny How Love Can Be," a couple of songs from Carter's mid-'60s proto-freakbeat songwriting collective the Ministry of Sound, and more demos from later in the '60s, including "Am I Losing You," which later became a very Beach Boys-sounding single for the Flowerpot Men.

Disc two kicks off with tracks from the Flowerpot Men, another Carter-led group who leaned into Baroque soft psych-pop and hit with "Let's Go to San Francisco." Further excursions into the vault turn up demos for Herman's Hermits ("Sunshine Girl") and Mary Hopkin ("Knock Knock Who's There"), as well as a wealth of tracks that explore dramatic psychedelia ("The Cooks of Cake and Kindness"), melancholy sunshine pop ("She Won't Show Up Tonight"), and in one of the most surprising moments here, thickly jangling, darkly political country-folk that sounds like a dead ringer for late-'60s Byrds ("Blow Away").

Disc three exhumes a batch of demos that alternate between singer/songwriter introspection and jaunty bubblegum. It also runs through all the different one-off bands Carter minted and discarded in the search for an elusive chart hit. Under names like the Carlew Choir, the Running Jumping Standing Still Band, the Haystack, Fat Man's Music Festival, and Stamford Bridge, he cranked out songs that were sometimes derivative or leaning toward novelty, but always well-written and joyous.

Disc four details Carter's efforts in the '70s with the first half a long list of one-offs that tried boogie rock, bubblegum, and updated pop with limited commercial returns. Once his wife, Gillian, started writing with him they got a hit right away under the name Kincade with 1973's jangling glam ballad "Dreams Are Ten a Penny." They scored again the following year as the First Class with the ridiculously buoyant "Beach Baby." More tracks from both of those projects round out the collection on a high note. Carter's story is one well worth telling, and Grapefruit does a wonderful job of getting it all down and getting it right.

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