The Breakaways were the premier providers of female backing vocals for mid-'60s British pop, working closely with Tony Hatch backing his stable of singers as well as with most of the big names like Burt Bacharach, Dusty Springfield, Lulu, Jackie DeShannon, Joe Meek, Shel Talmy, and Andrew Loog Oldham. It might be easier to list who they didn't work with! They were the U.K. equivalent of the Blossoms or the Sweet Inspirations in the U.S. Like those bands, the Breakaways attempted to make it as artists in their own right but never made much of an impact. On this collection there are a handful of excellent singles released under the Breakaways name, but the majority of the disc features them as backup singers to artists like Jackie Trent, Petula Clark, Jimmy Justice, and Tony Jackson. The closest thing the group had to a hit was the stomping "That's How It Goes," which marries their brash unison vocals to a Wall of Sound production and a glorious hook.

The Spencer Davis Group were one of several excellent British R+B bands of the sixties. Best remembered in Britain for Keep on running (one of the best songs of the sixties, regardless of genre), by the time they started to make an impression in America, they were on the verge of losing their key man, Steve Winwood…

Emy Jackson (エミー・ジャクソン) was born in Essex, England as Emy Eaton. As a teenager in Yokohama she still couldn’t read Japanese well, but her ability to speak both English and Japanese fluently landed her a job as a youth DJ for the Good Hit Parade on Radio Kanto. In her notes to the excellent compilation Nippon Girls: Japanese Pop, Beat & Bossa Nova 1966-1970 Sheila Burgel writes: Her DJ career was cut short when her colleague Reiko Yukawa found Jackson singing “You Are My Sunshine” whilst strumming the guitar and sent word to A&R man Akira Izumi at Columbia Records. Akira insisted that Jackson break with the cover-pops tradition and tackle original songs written by Japanese songwriters in her native language of English.

The Searchers were an English Merseybeat group who emerged during the British Invasion of the 1960s along with the Beatles, the Hollies, the Fourmost, the Merseybeats, the Swinging Blue Jeans, and Gerry and the Pacemakers…

It's a long way from the simple and rather forgotten days of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore's early dabbling in English skiffle to belting out some of the most memorable leads and riffs in hard rock. This well-researched collection traces the roots of a young "Man In Black" fingering the fretboard to nothing sounding that spectacularly different from his peers in the beginning to smoking the rest of the pack while fronting the multi-million-selling Deep Purple. Unearthed are four previously unreleased Deep Purple tracks, lost treasures that are worth the price alone, particularly the earliest recorded live version of "Highway Star," still in its infancy before being solidified in the studio on Machine Head.

The Overlanders were a highly underrated group whose history took them from the prime years of the British Invasion into the Summer of Love – their one U.K. hit – a chart-topping British single of the Lennon-McCartney song "Michelle" – usually gets them pegged as a cover band, while their origins as a folk group specializing in harmony vocals often gets them lumped in with Silkie, the Ivy League, and other vocal ensembles. And their being put into Castle Records' sunshine pop series Ripples also gives the group a slightly lighter-weight veneer than they deserve. Their actual sound was a beautifully wrought synthesis of folk-inspired vocals and Merseybeat-style harmonies, rhythms, and instrumentation – they were comparable, in some ways, to the Searchers, with whom (not coincidentally) they shared the same producer, Tony Hatch.

Dr. Ebbett produced the two volume UK singles collection in 2005 and according to the announcement made at the time of its release: It features the A and B sides of every regular issue British 45 rpm record the Beatles releases during their time together. This set is sourced entirely from 7 inch vinyl records – some of them being the original first-issue Parlophone 45s, some from the vinyl boxed set released in the 1970s…

This has 20 tracks from her 1964-68 stint with United Artists, concentrating on the ten or so singles she made during that era, with a few LP cuts, a previously unreleased 1964 version of "As Long As You're Happy" (more famous as done by Sandie Shaw), and a rare Ford Cars promotional single. Jones was an okay but not great singer. These sides, some of them anyway, are most noteworthy for the inventive pop/rock-soul-orchestral production, particularly those by Charles Blackwell, who also handled Francoise Hardy and P.J. Proby during the era. Her 1964 debut single, "It's All Because of You," is stunning and strange for the time with its ghostly echoing percussive rattles, ominous melody, and brilliant orchestration; it's like Cilla Black's "You're My World" with more ambition. Francoise Hardy fans should note that the 1965 cuts "Don't Come Any Closer" and "Just Call and I'll Be There" are the English originals of tunes subsequently covered by Hardy in French (as "Non Ce N'est Pas Un Reve," and "Le Temps Des Souvenirs" respectively).

An R&B band that only played pop to get on the charts, Manfred Mann ranked among the most adept British Invasion acts in both styles. The fact that their range encompassed jazz as well as rhythm & blues, coupled with some elements of their appearance and presentation – co-founder/keyboardist Manfred Mann's bearded, bespectacled presence – also made the Manfreds more of a thinking person's band than a cute, cuddly, outfit like the Beatles, or sexual provocateurs in the manner of the Rolling Stones. Yet, their approach to R&B was as valid as that of the Stones, equally compelling and often more sophisticated. They charted an impressive number of singles from 1964 through 1969, and developed a large, loyal international fandom that lingers to this day.

This extravagant six-CD set documents the astonishing life span of the first pop independent label in the U.K., Immediate Records. Founded in 1965, Immediate flipped, flopped, and staggered its own way, competing against unhip American labels like EMI and Decca until late 1969. The label, and the documentary CD set, showcases in particular the Small Faces, who enjoyed a brief U.K. number one hit, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake. More familiar to American listeners will no doubt be the three-chord sock-hop favorite "Hang on Sloopy" by the McCoys, and a number of covers of familiar American folk-rock hits are present as well. The esoteric collector will appreciate inclusions by such café balladeers as the Poets and Les Fleurs-de-Lis, also signed by Immediate before the advent of the swinging London sound, marked by the Rolling Stones revolution and other mod developers influencing the pants off the tiniest studio cover bands. Immediate also helped sculpt the success of anguished bellower Chris Farlowe, soon to be joined by the similarly throaty vibrato of PP Arnold and, of course, manager/producer Andrew Oldham's best toss of the dice, the Small Faces, whom he ripped away from Decca. By the fourth disc, you are, in fact, in the throes of swinging London, featuring Farlowe's heart-stopping "Yesterday's Papers" and Arnold's "The First Cut Is the Deepest," written by the much-in-demand Cat Stevens. Most of the music is minimal and often out of tune, production at an early-time low, replete with tinny echoes and accidental outtake moments.

Drawn together on one action-packed single CD, Raven presents the very best of Ray Brown and The Whispers. Hits & More 1965-1968 contains all the group's hit singles (As & Bs) plus key album tracks and a rare EP cut, everything that the Whispers fan – indeed every aficionado of Australia's rich heritage of 1960s rock and pop recordings – would want. There was a time circa 1965-1966 that Brown and the Whispers were one of the hottest groups at the forefront of the local music scene. Alongside Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, the Easybeats and Normie Rowe, the group performed regularly in front of thousands of excitable teenagers who danced wildly to the sounds and energy pro-vided by these new pop heroes. It was inevitable that the clean-cut and personable Brown would stand as the equal of Normie and Stevie Wright as a pin-up sensation.

The Zombies EP Collection, from the See for Miles label, contains the British Invasion bands biggest hits from 1964 through 1966, including "Tell Her No," "Time of the Season," and, in both mono and stereo, "She's Not There."…

The Spencer Davis Group is fondly remembered for their late-1960s singles that featured the deep soul vocals of Steve Winwood, then only a teenager. Singles like "Somebody Help Me," "Keep on Running," "Gimme Some Lovin'," and "I'm a Man" were solid R&B rockers, making The Spencer Davis Group one of the most explosive bands in the so-called British Invasion era…

They may have looked like a thrown-together cartoon band with their Revolutionary War outfits and various slapstick gimmicks, but Paul Revere & the Raiders were actually a veteran R&B cover band out of the Northwest, and when fame found them working as a house cover band on the teen television show Where the Action Is in the mid-'60s, they were ready to run with the spotlight, and charted several solid singles like "Steppin' Out," "Just Like Me," "Kicks," "Hungry," "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone," and "Good Thing" that were sharp, well sung and played, and full of a kind of sassy, garage punk attitude that eventually rendered the prop uniforms they wore obsolete.