Original stars! Original songs! Winnipeg businessman’s brainchild crammed all the hits that would fit onto one LP for one low, low price By: David Sanderson Posted: 7:00 PM CST Monday, Nov. 22, 2021

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/11/2021 (1131 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The latest volume of the music compilation series Now That’s What I Call Music! went on sale last week, and like its predecessors, Now That’s What I Call Music! 110 comes with a mixed bag of hits by some of the biggest recording stars on the planet, including Ed Sheeran (Bad Habits), Billie Eilish (Happier than Ever) and the Weeknd (Take My Breath).

The popular franchise has enjoyed sales of close to 150 million units since its inception in November 1983, but who knows if there would have been a single Now…! — never mind 110, or offshoots such as Now That’s What I Call Country — if it hadn’t been for a Winnipeg company that first turned the music world on its ear 55 years ago this month.

In the fall of 1966, Saskatchewan-born entrepreneur Phil Kives, who moved to Winnipeg in 1959 and began hawking frying pans, patty stackers and Veg-O-Matics on television a short while later, came up with the idea of combining a roster of songs by multiple artists onto one long-playing record album. Titled 25 Country Greats, and available for the “low, low price” of $3.49, the 12-incher proved a hit with the record-buying public; so much so that Kives, who died in 2016 at age 87, continued issuing new compilations every few months, well into the 1980s. 

K-tel, the name Kives ultimately chose for the biz (initially, albums were released on the Syndicate Products label), doesn’t release music the way it once did. Rather, the company, which still maintains an office in Winnipeg, focuses mainly on licensing tunes from its 200,000-plus song catalogue for inclusion in advertising spots, motion pictures and television programs.

That said, demand for old, K-tel records, once referred to as the Spotify of their time, still exists. In fact, Ray Giguere, owner of Argy’s Records on St. Mary’s Road, reports it’s generally around this time of year when customers start sniffing around for a serviceable copy of, say, 20 Explosive Hits or 25 Rock Revival Greats.

“Lots of people who are now in their 50s and 60s used to get a new K-tel album every Christmas, so I guess they associate them with the holiday season,” says Giguere, who will celebrate his store’s 40th anniversary in 2022. “Just last week there was an older gentleman in here, looking for a bunch of K-tel records he played to death when he was a kid, six of which I happened to have copies of.”

While most used K-tel records don’t command more than a buck or two, largely owing to their inferior sound quality (in order to fit as many as 12 songs per side, grooves on K-tel records were cut extremely close together, which meant even the slightest blemish would cause the record to skip… to skip… to skip… to skip ) there are a few that are highly sought after.

https://www.youtube.com/user/KtelClassics

”Rap Traxx, which came out in 1989, goes for as much as $50, if you can find it in fairly good condition,” Giguere points out. “Also, anything with Kiss on it. You’ll get these Kiss collectors who are completists, who will pay however much for a copy of something like (K-tel’s) Music Machine, simply because it contains a version of Beth they don’t have already.”

Given this writer grew up listening to his fair share of K-tel albums, and still owns close to 80, we thought we’d toast the 55th anniversary of K-tel’s inaugural release by poking through our own shelves (sorry, our K-tel Record Selector stopped flipping eons ago), to offer readers a taste of what, in our humble opinion, were some of the more essential K-tel platters.

SUPER BAD

The year 1973 was a banner one for Black music artists; Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Eddie Kendricks and Roberta Flack all had No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Hot 100, while War’s The World is a Ghetto was the top-selling album of the year. K-tel acknowledged that achievement with Super Bad, which, according to an Isaac Hayes-lookalike who appeared in a 60-second spot advertising the album, offered, “20 soul-sational sounds by the brothers and sisters who made them great.” Super Bad proved such a success that a sequel, Super Bad Is Back, was released a few months later, followed by the similarly themed Souled Out in 1975.

Key tracks: What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye; Love Rollercoaster, Ohio Players; Brick House, Commodores

TODAY’S SUPER GREATS

What makes the three-record set Today’s Super Greats, also from 1973, particularly super great is that none of the 40 songs on it were edited in any way, in the manner selections normally were, in order to fit as many as possible onto a 20-minute side of music. That includes Derek & the Dominoes’ guitar anthem Layla, which appears here in all its seven-minute-plus glory. As eclectic as all heck, Today’s Super Greats jumps from the pop strains of the Osmonds’ Down by the Lazy River to Daisy a Day, a countryfied hit for Jud Strunk, to the rock-fuelled Maggie May, Rod Stewart’s first No. 1 single. Even Winnipegger Joey Gregorash makes an appearance with Jodie, a hit on both sides of the border in 1971.

Key tracks: Brand New Key, Melanie; Venus, Shocking Blue; Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye, Steam

24 GROOVY GREATS

Ever wonder how Kives & Co. chose which songs went on what album? A partial answer to that question is provided on the back-cover liner notes of one of K-tel’s earliest releases, 24 Groovy Greats. Penned by Kives and his brother Ted, and their cousin Ray, the notes read, in part, “Each ‘expert’ … would select 24 top, all-time hits from his collection, then … after much bickering the list was made. We only hope that our decisions coincide with the rest of the world. Was everybody happy? Heck no, Phil was able to only have eight of his selections.”

Key tracks: The Loco-Motion, Little Eva; Kansas City, Wilbert Harrison; Rescue Me, Fontella Bass

CANADA GOLD

Canadian content rules didn’t apply to K-tel records the way they did to radio broadcasters, where a certain percentage of songs played had to be by Canadian artists. Nonetheless, every new K-tel album, pretty much, boasted a Canuck or three, one of the reasons we grew up exceedingly familiar with the catalogues of the Five Man Electrical Band and the Stampeders, groups that seemingly showed up on one K-tel album after another. Canada Gold, released in 1975, is quintessentially Canadian from start to finish. It includes chart toppers such as Edward Bear’s Last Song and Andy Kim’s Rock Me Gently, but also makes room for lesser-heard gems, among them Winnipeg band Mood Jga Jga’s Turn Around and Shooter’s I Can Dance (Long Tall Glasses), the latter also a hit for British singer Leo Sayer.

Key tracks: In the Mood, Rush; Painted Ladies, Ian Thomas; Big Time Operator, Keith Hampshire

JUKEBOX JIVE

Not every album sleeve comes shaped like a square. The cover of Rod Stewart’s Sing It Again Rod, for example, was shaped like a shot glass, while the accompanying sleeve of Grand Funk Railroad’s E. Pluribus Funk was round, made to look like a coin. Not to be outdone, in 1976 K-tel released Jukebox Jive, the cover of which was die-cut to resemble a Wurlitzer jukebox, in keeping with the American Graffiti-style song selection therein. (That ain’t all: Pinball Rock, which came out a year later, boasts a cover designed to look like the top of a pinball machine.)

Key tracks: Party Doll, Buddy Knox; Diana, Paul Anka; I Fought the Law, Bobby Fuller Four

RAIDERS OF THE POP CHARTS

K-tel licensed the songs it used from various publishing houses, but in 1984, it also licensed the typeface — called Adventure font — employed on the cover of a double album riffing on blockbuster motion picture Raiders of the Lost Ark. Cleverly titled Raiders of the Pop Charts, with lettering exactly matching Raiders… movie posters, was chock full of new wave songs from the early ‘80s (OK, mostly new wave). For some reason, a set boasting the Eurythmics, the Police and Canada’s the Parachute Club also featured country giants Alabama, who close Side 2 of Record 1 with Mountain Music.

Key tracks: Overkill, Men at Work; Puttin’ on the Ritz, Taco; She Blinded Me With Science, Thomas Dolby

K-TEL PRESENTS THE GUESS WHO

Compilation albums were K-tel’s bread and butter, that’s true, but on occasion the company also issued greatest hits packages by a single artist or group. Johnny Cash Special: 20 Original Hits hit store shelves in 1969, while Inspirations, which brought together 20 of Elvis Presley’s best-loved gospel recordings, came out in 1980, three years after the King of Rock of Roll’s death. For our money, K-tel Presents the Guess Who was the best of the bunch. A definitive “best of,” the two-record set also marked the first time this writer ever heard the full version of American Woman, with lead singer Burton Cummings’ slow, drawn-out intro. Previously, we only had a copy of the song on 45, so were completely taken back when we dropped the needle on Side 1, and heard Cummings launch into a spelling lesson ( “Say A, uh, say M, uh, say E…say R… ).

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca