THE CAPES OF GOOD HOPE, "LADY MARGARET" C/W "SHADES," ROUND 1001 (REL. 9/1966)

Posts of 1960s music garner far more attention here than 1950s material. Despite my efforts to show the versatility, passion and creativity of 1950s vernacular music, I see it’s a hard sell. Those with a willful blind eye to that era of music have less rich lives, and I feel for them. But I hope in time they, too, will realize their misconceptions about that decade’s music, and understand that the roots of so many important styles came to first flower then, and that the music continues to reward and entertain the listener.

For the next few days, we’ll explore 1960s music, and I hope it will draw more attention, as this blog is reaching a depressing minimum of readers. I know there are bigger fish to fry, so to speak, and that this is low on most people’s list of importance. So be it. On that note, let’s meet The Capes of Good Hope.

What first attracted me to this record was its label design. It’s a diabolical bit of clever typography—one that must have been a time-consuming effort for the paste-up artist. That unbroken spiral of type had to be assembled by hand, one letter at a time. Those letters were repositioned countless times (with some sworn oaths from the assembler) before they parsed just right.

Then color separations, made by hand, took a bit less time but still involved levels of work that are long vanished in the digital age. I admire the craftsmanship such a design required, and this dollar-bin single was worth the acquisition, even if the music was dull or dumb.

To my delight, it was neither. This group hailed from Chicago, and were the first artists signed by Round, a Cleveland label that had four releases before it folded. I can’t find much information on this group, but they seem to have developed a local following and had as put-together an image as a rock band could muster mid-decade. Members Dick Toops and Joel Cory had a good ear for current sounds and the two sides of this single are a Zelig-esque tour of 1966 pop.

“Lady Margaret” is a classic piece of what we now call pop-psych, with an opening that evokes a handful of British Invasion-era pop hits, including “For Your Love” by The Yardbirds. Its Eastern musical elements are filtered through a hard pop lens. We’re fortunate it was recorded in the Midwest; in Los Angeles, the band would have been pushed aside for studio players—the Wrecking Crew that makes every LA recording of the mid-1960s sound alike.

This pastiche of styles works well because the real band is behind them. It’s said that Chuck Mangione, later a pop hitmaker with “Feel So Good,” was arranger/producer for this label. There’s a lot going on here, and though the results don’t live up to the creative vibe of the record label, they’re of interest. The single did just well enough to warrant a follow-up later in 1966.

"Real pretty" and "far-out."

“Shades” was the intended A-side. Here we’re more in the territory of Bob Lind’s “Elusive Butterfly” with a touch of The Critters’ “Mr. Dieingly Sad.” The piano introduction is more compelling than the strings that somewhat smother this layered, multi-theme-and-tempo piece of pop Impressionism.

The performance would be much improved without those strings; they’re mixed too high and loom over the vocals. There’s a lot going on in the lyrics, and it’s difficult to focus on them as the band intended. I’m sure this was a nice payday for members of the Cleveland Symphony, but the song would be much better without their blanket of musical smog.

This was the best of the group’s two singles. “Winters Children,” the follow-up, also suffers from the too-heavy strings business. And that was it for The Capes of Good Hope. They’re among dozens of American rock groups who got this far up the musical food-chain—a lot of work on its own—to find there was no room at the top; all the seats were taken and a velvet rope separated them from stardom.

Tomorrow: Nashville proto-garage band The Vendors, with 1963-edition fuzz guitar, sing a pair of songs by Sun Records alumnus Robert S. Riley on a one-off M-G-M single.