Thought you all would get a chuckle outta this, the K-tel "Tape Selector":





and the K-tel "Record Selector":





Operators are standing by, ho ho ho...

Man I wanted those...

I miss the days of K-tel's 20 Super Hits/ 20 Original Artists. These albums were my mainstay's back in the early 70's.

Did your albums include the entire song? It seemed that the couple that I had featured versions that had been edited down to shorter versions.

They automatically stop flipping when they get to the spot you took your record or tape from. That's rocket science there, baby!

They would include the single edit not the full album track.

I had this one.

I loved the game.
"it's a hit...it's a hit...it's a hit"

Is K-tel still around? I have a world music compilation CD from 1993 that was on their label, and I was surprised back then to see that they were still going. I can't say that I've seen any of their product recently, though. I guess the Now series is the closest thing these days to those old K-tel collections.

I seem to recall that some of them even clipped the single versions. I don't know this for sure, and sadly, I don't have any of my own K-Tel LPs from back in the day with me anymore to check. But I remember noting to myself that they were fitting an album's worth of songs on each side and that many of the songs were of a suspiciously uniform length, something ridiculous even by 70s AM radio standards, like 2:10.

That's what I was thinking. Seems like some of the songs fading out before the final verse or two.

...and don't forget the squeezing together of the record grooves to fit all the songs. A guarantee of the worst sound quality possible!

Love the pronounciation of "rek-kord".

I think you're right. I never actually owned any of those albums but I remember hearing one and being put off by all the edits, several which were shorter than even the single versions. I guess they were over this by the time they did the world music compilation I mentioned above, as one of the tracks on it is in the eight minute range.

I read Tommy James's recent autobiography a couple months ago, and it shed a little ugly light on what a sleazy operation K-Tel was under Morris Levy (who also ran Roulette and was Tommy James's long-time mentor/manager). It was completely at odds with all my wholesome Midwestern memories of those K-Tel comps - but those savage edits and blatant disregard for sound quality start to make sense in that context.

Love it !

Thanks