In the mid-'60s, veteran saxophonist ran the and labels, which put out a couple dozen or so obscure New York records. Typically, manages to make a CD out of its catalog, the 28 tracks split about half between 1962-1966 singles and previously unissued sides. In fact, much of the unreleased material was sung by unidentified demo singers, and although has identified a few of these with confidence, three cuts are for the time being ascribed to "unknown." Often this kind of thing is something that only die-hard genre specialists can hear in one sitting, but though it'll be those collectors that comprise this disc's listenership, it's better than the average such archival anthology. You have to stare long and hard at the track listing for any of these names to ring bells, though some might recognize two of the "demo singers," (who did the original of covered by for a hit) and (who had a 1965 Top Ten hit with ). , represented by pretty straight tunes, might be better known to latter-day listeners as half of the duo , who had some indie success in the 1990s. The name of pops up too, as the singer and songwriter of a 1964 single credited to . Still, despite the relative anonymity of the other contributors, there's some good period here, sometimes with a feel. sound halfway between on ; sounds a lot like on the original version of which herself covered in 1965; two of 's tracks are pretty accurate imitations; sounds like an early artist on ; and ' is an upfront imitation and rewrite of 's if an enjoyable one. The numerous demos are as a whole considerably inferior to the singles in both production and the quality of the songs, but it's interesting to hear a sparse piano-voice-dominated demo of though the single from which learned the song isn't here, as it came out on a different label. , who do the 1964 single here, by the way, are a different than the group who did the hit though isn't a bad tune all the same. ~ Richie Unterberger