Adventures into the Unknown

One hallmark of Telarc was the willingness to take chances. Their ventures into jazz and blues were wildly successful, but they also released albums in other genres. At the time these albums were released, record stores filed recordings by genre, and it was difficult for a label to get space in a new aisle.¹ Music journalism worked the same way, with most publications working within well-defined musical areas. Due to this reality, some of these efforts fared better than others:

California Project (1985 – CD 85501)

This album of Beach Boys covers by the band Papa Doo Run Run was the first Telarc release to be recorded in a traditional recording studio. The record sold well, peaking at #22 on the Billboard Top Compact Disc charts.² The band subsequently recorded nine albums on other labels, and has toured as recently as 2017. Telarc engineer Michael Bishop often used the first track, “I Get Around,” to check the performance of the control room speakers while setting up for a session.

Two Gentlemen Folk (1987 – CD 84401)

Folk singer and banjoist Bill Crofut teamed up with classical baritone Benjamin Luxon in 1987 for a set of concerts at Jacob’s Pillow in 1987. Telarc was on hand to record it, and filmmaker Bill Cosell filmed it for a PBS special.³ While it didn’t sell enough to make the Billboard charts, this disc can still be heard here on Apple Music.

Several artists on this project appeared on later Telarc releases; Luxon recorded Britten’s War Requiem on Telarc with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Robert Shaw (CD-80157), Crofut and trombonist Chris Brubeck collaborated with soprano Frederica von Stade on Across Your Dreams (CD-80467), and Brubeck also appeared on later Telarc projects featuring his father, jazz piano master Dave Brubeck.

Liza Minnelli at Carnegie Hall (1987 – CD 85502)

In 1987, Liza Minnelli was booked to perform an historic three-week run at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Her manager, Eliot Weisman, approached Telarc to document this event, and the Telarc team captured six of the seventeen sold-out performances. Jack Renner discussed the planning and execution of this recording in an article for db Magazine in 1988.⁴ The entire time Renner was mixing the show to a stereo recorder, rather than the industry custom of recording each microphone to a separate track and mixing it later. This recording spent seven weeks on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart, peaking at #156.⁵ This was the only time Telarc recorded at Carnegie Hall. 

Ileana (1989 – CD 85506)

In 1989, Telarc released the eponymous debut (and only) album by Latin singer Ileana Holland, known professionally as “Ileana”. Though the blog Island of Deserted Pop Stars calls it “surprisingly funky” and “definitely worthy of attention,” it never gained significant sales traction. Telarc producer Bob Woods told me, “We just didn’t know how to market a record like that.”⁶ You can check it out on Apple Music and other streaming services, and Ileana is still active, performing and creating vocal arrangements for the ever-popular TV show American Idol.

1. This is covered eloquently in Kalefa Sanneh’s Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres (Penguin Press, 2021). ↩︎
2. “Top Compact Discs,” Billboard, August 3, 1985, p.23 ↩︎
3. Cosell discusses this film and others in this interview. ↩︎
4. “Recording Liza Minnelli: The Challenge,” db Magazine, June 1988, pp. 56-58 ↩︎
5. “Top Pop Albums,” Billboard, December 26, 1987 ↩︎
6. Bob Woods, conversation with author, date unknown. ↩︎