Gerry & The Pacemakers - Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying & Second Album (1964) @ Flac + Movie

Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying & Second Album (1964) 

 Review by William Ruhlmann

Collectables Records' two-fer combines material from two LPs released by Laurie Records in 1964 that constitute most of the early recordings of Gerry & the Pacemakers, the second beat group to come out of Liverpool and join the British Invasion. Like their predecessors, the Beatles, the Pacemakers had their U.K. recordings parceled out differently across the Atlantic; in England, this material made up their 14-track album How Do You Like It? and a bunch of A- and B-sides of singles. In the U.S., Laurie got two 12-track LPs out of it, though two of the same songs ended up on both records. On this compilation, seven of the 12 songs the group placed in the American singles charts are included: "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying," "How Do You Do It?," "I'm the One," "I Like It," "You'll Never Walk Alone," "You're the Reason," and the bonus track, "Girl on a Swing," the Pacemakers' final Top 40 hit from 1966. The album tracks are often similar to the singles, bouncy pop tunes penned by Mitch Murray and the band's lead singer/guitarist, Gerry Marsden, with the rest covers of country, rock, and R&B evergreens. Gerry & the Pacemakers earned their place as Liverpool's second biggest band of the mid-'60s. They were a tight little rock & roll band with an exuberant leader. Marsden's enthusiastic, adenoidal tenor comes across well on the ballads, suggesting his later musical direction and foreshadowing the breakup of the Pacemakers, who ultimately couldn't keep pace with the musical changes of 1966-1967. But that was later. This 1963-1964 material catches the band at its height, and if the absence of hits like "Ferry Across the Mersey" keeps it from being complete, it is nevertheless a well-rounded portrait of one of the better British Invasion bands.

Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying (1964)

 01. Gerry And The Pacemakers - Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying 

 02. Gerry And The Pacemakers - I'm The One 

 03. Gerry And The Pacemakers - Away From You 

 04. Gerry And The Pacemakers - Jambalaya 

 05. Gerry And The Pacemakers - Maybelline 

 06. Gerry And The Pacemakers - You'll Never Walk Alone 

 07. Gerry And The Pacemakers - How Do You Do It 

 08. Gerry And The Pacemakers - You're The Reason 

 09. Gerry And The Pacemakers - Don't You Ever 

 10. Gerry And The Pacemakers - Summertime 

 11. Gerry And The Pacemakers - Slow Down 

 12. Gerry And The Pacemakers - Show Me That You Care 

Second Album (1964) 

 13. Gerry And The Pacemakers - I Like It 

 14. Gerry And The Pacemakers - A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues 

 15. Gerry And The Pacemakers - Where Have You Been 

 16. Gerry And The Pacemakers - Here's Hoping 

 17. Gerry And The Pacemakers - Pretend 

 18. Gerry And The Pacemakers - The Wrong Yo Yo 

 19. Gerry And The Pacemakers - Chills 

 20. Gerry And The Pacemakers - You Can't Fool Me 

 21. Gerry And The Pacemakers - It's Happened To Me 

 22. Gerry And The Pacemakers - It's All Right 

 23. Gerry And The Pacemakers - Girl On A Swing *

*Track 23 originally released as a 45 rpm 

in 1966 as Laurie 3354.

***

Ferry Cross The Mersey 1964 avi

Ferry Cross the Mersey is a 1964 British musical film directed by Jeremy Summers .

After Gerry and the Pacemakers' successful 1964 trip to America, manager Brian Epstein toyed with the idea of creating a film for the band. Tony Warren, creator of the soap opera Coronation Street, was hired as writer; he came up with a plot involving the band and ferryboats. Writer David Franden was hired in his place when Warren proved unable to complete a script despite "downing bottles of whisky".

The movie was filmed over the course of three months under the direction of Jeremy Summers. 

For authenticity, many scenes were shot near the home of Gerry and the Pacemakers' frontman Gerry Marsden. These locations included the Mountwood ferry on the River Mersey, the Albert Dock... The film is one of the more uncommon artifacts of the Mersey scene, shown very rarely on television and never issued on video. It was the first to be shot on location in Liverpool after the city’s emergence into the music mainstream (which had previously seen only Frankie Vaughan, Russ Hamilton, and Billy Fury as stars).

There are some real kitchen sink touches throughout the film, and a lot of what amounts to documentary footage of the original Cavern Club and the Lacarno, showing great performances by local Liverpool groups, all managed by Brian Epstien coincidently, The Fourmost, The Blackwells, Cilla Black, and Earl Royce and the Olympics.

Never released on home video, this film fell into obscurity pretty much right after it's run. Film forms a kind of British Invasion trilogy along with The Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" and The Dave Clark Five's starring vehicle, "Catch Us If You Can". And while "A Hard Day's Night" has gone on to be a celebrated classic, and "Catch Us If You Can" is now being rediscovered as a piece of quality satire, "Ferry Cross The Mersey" has received no such treatment.

But...Perhaps the film is not so good from an artistic point of view and its plot will seem naive to a modern viewer, but I am sure for many of you it will be a nostalgic journey through time, to that starting point of our big lives, which is called Youth... And this is one of its merits.

AVI 687 Mb - ***

MPEG4 4,4 Gb - ***