Don't Let It Die: The Very Best Of

One of the more unlikely hit-makers in pop history, Hurricane Smith was a middle-aged engineer with a reedy, nasal voice who had made his only previous claim to fame by odd-jobbing around Abbey Road long enough to earn a spot engineering for the Beatles prior to Revolver, then building on his resume by producing Pink Floyd's first two albums as well as the Pretty Things' landmark S.F. Sorrow. True to his lack of form, his recordings of 1972-1973 revealed an artist more in love with pop crooners than British beat groups, although his songs were well-illustrated tableaux of English life with contemporary art rock productions (needless to say, they were also engineered very well). An eccentric, Smith's songs didn't sound commercial enough to really hit, nor were his songs or performances striking enough to make him a cult favorite. He endures as a pop footnote; think of John Howard or Brian Protheroe with an affinity for the early age of falsetto crooners (Rudy Vallee and Al Bowlly). ~ John Bush