David Clayton Thomas & the Shays a Go Go..garage/punk

$

52

1965/Cdn/Roman DRL-101......David Clayton Thomas began as one of the first Toronto "sound" artists to successfully blend his bluesy rock 'n roll style with hard driving white soul sounds. Unlike many of the young Toronto garage groups, David Clayton Thomas always wanted to give the appearance that he was a professional, and instead of opting for Yorkville, he played the nightclubs and strip joints of Toronto's Yonge Street, who housed show bands. Cursed with a love of booze, bad choices and an inflated ego, he often found himself down and out on Toronto's streets. One night having a fabulous back up band, great local recording career and money in his pocket and the next singing for food money on street corners. In the Millbrook reformatory. David Clayton Thomas, had borrowed a guitar from another inmate. He learned how to play fairly well, but mostly, he learned that he could sing, and his voice had a rough and tough sound to it, leading him to r&b and the blues. David was eventually released from Millbrook, near Ottawa and headed for Toronto hoping that he might be able to start some kind of a musical career. He ended up on Yonge Street, the cities center strip housing bars, strip joints, adult night clubs who always had a job for anyone needing to make a quick buck. Thomas frequented Yonge Street, watching southern rock 'n roll transplant Ronnie Hawkins an his young backing band. One afternoon, David was asked to get up and sing a number, which caught the attention of Bigland booking agent, Ron Scribner. Soon, Scribner set up the Shays, an instrumental r&b group to back Thomas live. Scriber had connections to DJ Duff Roman, a DJ at CKEY radio. He hired David Clayton Thomas And The Shays to play his Brave New World after hours club, and to cut cut a record. Roman was able to get the group two releases on the ACTA label...this is a nice original pressing of this rare and great lp, the cover is solid and clean but the edge has some brown ageing as seen in pictures, no splits or delete and it looks very cool!, the vinyl is in shiny VG+ condition, there are some light scuffs/scratches, it plays nice with minor spotty noise/crackle, odd light tick, nothing too serious, a very nice copy here!, please check my auctions for more garage and psych lp's, I also have David Clayton Thomas' 2nd lp for auction now as well!, good luck and thanks for looking!