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8 March 2015

Elliots Sunshine - 'Cos I'm Lonely/ Is It Too Late


Label: Philips
Year of Release: 1968

It's been awhile since we've had a burst of popsike on this blog, so here's some - and its written by something of a master at that. Caleb Quaye, father of Finley and a prolific session musician in his own right, is probably most admired among psychedelic pop fanatics for the thoroughly peculiar and amazing single "Baby Your Phrasing Is Bad". A pean to the difficulties of achieving a satisfactory relationship with somebody who has poor pronunciation, it wasn't a smash despite achieving some moderate airplay on Radio Scotland - but since appearing on the "Rubble" series of compilation albums, it's rightly earned its place in most "Best British Psychedelic Singles of All Time" polls.

Caleb takes a backseat here and acts as songwriter for Elliots Sunshine, an obscure pop group who only had this single to their name. His effort "'Cos I'm Lonely" sits on the flip, and is considerably less berserk than "Phrasing", content instead to bathe itself in tranquil pseudo-West Coast melodies.

The A-side is an unremarkable ballad which really isn't worth troubling with, but I'm including it here for the sake of completeness.

Very little is known about Elliots Sunshine, but by all rumoured accounts they were a proper gigging group and not a hastily pulled together aggregation of studio musicians. If anyone has any concrete information, it would be great to find out more.

As for Quaye, he eventually became a Christian evangelist and moved to the USA. That's the way it sometimes goes.




5 comments:

Anonymous said...


Thank you very much fot this rare B-side !!!

Greetings Albert

Tulloch said...

Excellent find, many thanks for sharing it Dave!

Denty said...

Caleb Quaye...Guitar
Harry Stoneham...Organ
Dave Hypes...Drums
Les Hurdle...Bass Guitar

Think Caleb is Vocals as well

Robert A O'Neale said...

Unfortunately, your information is partially incorrect.
Players were:-
Doug Ellis - Guitar. Curt Cresswell - Hammond Organ. Mick Wakelin - Bass Guitar. Roy Hoather -
Drums. Bob O'Neale - Vocals. ie:- The Naturals. + the Zak Lawrence Orchestra.
You are correct though that Caleb wrote the B side. As I recall I believe he was also present when we recorded these tracks at Dick James Music recording studio in New Oxford Street London. 1968.
Yours Sincerely,
Bob O'Neale ( Canada )

23 Daves said...

Thanks so much for giving us the personnel of the group, Bob. To the best of my knowledge, that's not widely known.