Tina Mason Is Something Wonderful!

It sometimes seems like every interesting record has already been reissued twice, but there are still all-but-unknown gems to be discovered, like the sole LP by southern California soft-pop pixie Tina Mason. An alluring blonde with an appealingly throaty delivery, Mason led the house band at Disneyland, Tina and the Mustangs, in the mid-'60s before being tapped by Dick Clark as the house singer/eye candy for his short-lived TV series Where the Action Is! Despite the bubblegum implications of those associations, Mason's 1967 debut is perched between Burt Bacharach-style orchestral pop and the sort of stylish R&B that later got dubbed Northern Soul due to its eternal popularity in the all-night dance clubs of the northern UK. Producer David Axelrod and arranger H.B. Barnum were comfortable in both of those fields, working with everyone from soul legend Lou Rawls to TV star David McCallum during this period, and their sonic trademarks are all over the LP: elegant orchestration and pillow-soft choral harmonies underpinned by a surprisingly prominent and snappy rhythm section. Mason's blue-eyed-soul delivery fits comfortably in these posh surroundings, most impressively on a sterling version of the Bacharach-David classic "Are You There (With Another Girl)" and an H.B. Barnum original, "What," that aging new wavers will recall from Soft Cell's 1982 synth-pop cover. The excellent reissue by Now Sounds (Cherry Red's soft-pop imprint) adds seven tracks, including some scrappier pre-album 45s like a fine take on the Troggs hit "Any Way That You Want Me."