Indiana Wants Me

Here's a rare radio station DJ copy in red vinyl!

They don't make hit records happen like this anymore. Singer-songwriter R. Dean Taylor already had co-writing credits with Motown including such hits as "Love Child" and "I'm Living In Shame" by the Supremes, "All I Need" by the Temptations, "I'll Turn To Stone" by the Four Tops, and "Just Look What You've Done" by Brenda Holloway. Not a bad start.

In 1970, Taylor recorded his song "Indiana Wants Me" for Motown's new Rare Earth subsidiary label. The song tells of a fugitive on the run who is approaching the end of the line. Taylor felt it could be a hit record, so he went to Motown Vice President, Barney Ayles and asked him if he could put some serious promotion behind this record. Ayles knew it was getting some airplay in Detroit & Ontario and the record was getting positive feedback, so he agreed to hire an independent promotion man, Al Valente, to go out with Taylor on a promo tour to radio stations, large and small, in the Michigan area. Soon enough, more stations began playing the single. "Indiana Wants Me" eventually became a million-seller and climbed to #1 in Canada and #5 on the US charts, making R. Dean Taylor the first white artist in the history of Motown to do so.

A typical K-Tel album

Fast forward to 1992. Chicago based Pravda Records has the notion to produce a tribute album that focused on the K-Tel collections from the 1970's. Those K-Tel records were of notoriously poor quality but were certainly budget-friendly and usually featured loud graphics with a subtle title like "20 Super Fantastic Mega Hit Explosions!!" or something else equally silly. Nonetheless, these records sold like candy to kids with allowance to burn. Pravda's idea was to have a variety of modern indie rock bands update the 70's pop of their youth.

As it is with most tribute albums, this is almost always a hit & miss proposition. There's gonna be some pleasant surprises and there's gonna be a dud or two. That's very much the deal with Pravda's three(!) K-Tel themed releases. There's a few tracks I could feature here (and may do so later), but I happen to really like this one by the sarcastically named Frampton Brothers from beautiful downtown Pittsburgh, Pa. (No relation to the more well-known Peter, I'm certain.) They absolutely attack the song, putting some much needed hair on the arrangement. Doing away with the dated siren & bullhorn effects from Taylor's original, this band replaces them with some smokin' guitar work. It makes a world of difference.

Here's "Indiana Wants Me" by the Frampton Brothers. Turn it up good 'n loud.

The Pravda cd's are long out of print but are still available at Amazon. The Frampton Brothers put out 3 cd's on small indie labels, all of them now defunct. R. Dean Taylor's original version can be found on Volume 3 in Rhino's ginormous Have A Nice Day series. 25 cd's in all, superior mastering throughout, lots of rarities, very highly recommended.