Carolyn Crawford Vs. Jean Carn

[Guest mel brat]

Back in 2000 (I think!) I was fortunate enough to meet with the wonderfully vivacious Carolyn Crawford following her show with Bobby Taylor, at The Q Club in Birmingham. During the conversation, she happened to mention that there were several unreleased PIR tracks on her, copies of which she had on tape! I could hardly believe my ears when two of the songs she mentioned were on the first Jean Carn album!

Question: It occurred to me that Carolyn would likely have had an album out on PIR had she not left the company, and that (perhaps) Jean Carn's album - one of my all-time favourites - would have sounded very different indeed had not those particular songs been included! Does anyone know any more of this, or has anyone heard Carolyn's versions? (She was unaware of Jean Carn's recordings of the songs in question, and I didn't want to press the subject too much!)

Edited January 20, 2007 by mel brat

[Guest TONY ROUNCE]

Back in 2000 (I think!) I was fortunate enough to meet with the wonderfully vivacious Carolyn Crawford following her show with Bobby Taylor, at The Q Club in Birmingham. During the conversation, she happened to mention that there were several unreleased PIR tracks on her, copies of which she had on tape! I could hardly believe my ears when two of the songs she mentioned were on the first Jean Carn album!

Question: It occurred to me that Carolyn would likely have had an album out on PIR had she not left the company, and that (perhaps) Jean Carn's album - one of my all-time favourites - would have sounded very different indeed had not those particular songs been included! Does anyone know any more of this, or has anyone heard Carolyn's versions? (She was unaware of Jean Carn's recordings of the songs in question, and I didn't want to press the subject too much!)

When I was at Westside and we did the deal to reissue PIR albums on CD, someone at PIR's "Head Office" produced a list of unissued recordings that we 'might' be able to issue, as an 'incentive to negotiations'. Once the deal was done we were told that Kenneth Gamble felt that these should stay in the can as they were not 'artisitcally representative' of the catalogue. Which was a pisser, as they were quite high up on the list of reasons why we did the deal in the first place...

From memory - and it's been a long time since I saw the list - there are about 5-6 unreleased Carolyn Crawford PIR masters. I can't tell you what the titles were, as it's been 10 years since I saw the list and I was only allowed to look at it briefly and not to make copies. Truthfully I hadn't even noticed that two were Jean Carn songs. But I do remember that, with Carolyn's three PIR singles, there would have been just about enough to make a 12 track album.

She may well have recorded more sides than this, but the list only contained tracks that were supposedly finished masters so if she did, they would have been maybe rough demos with guide vocals or something like that...

TONE