It's New To Me: Island in the Sky by the Tuneful Trolley (1969)

"Jack Slayeth the Giant, and Delivereth a Knight and his Lady" by Richard Doyle from Edward Dalziel's The Story of Jack and the Giants, 1851

The 1969 album Island in the Sky by six Long Island teens called the Tuneful Trolley is not really a lost classic or neglected masterpiece. But it's a really good pop album with a great story behind it, and that can be almost as good. The kids in the Tuneful Trolley were originally called the Mark of Quality, and despite all being under eighteen, they were competent songwriters and performers. They played their songs at shows around Long Island, and before long Sandy Yaguda of Jay and the Americans discovered them and signed them to his band's label. He took the band under his wing, helping them to flesh out their compositions and encouraging them to change their name to the Tuneful Trolley. The band resisted the name change (not hard to see why) but they eventually went along, and Yaguda agreed to produce their debut album. Sneaking into the Brill Building after hours to use the recording facilities, the kids in the Tuneful Trolley ended up having access to some great resources and musicians. As a result, these inexperienced teenagers were able to produce a mature-sounding album of baroque pop tunes with horns, oboes, piano, and excellent harmony vocals.

Island in the Sky opens with "The Tuneful Trolley Theme", a fairly good fanfare piece with cool backing vocals and percussion, but you can almost hear the band cringing at the corny-sounding band name imposed on them. Most of the band's compositions are Beatles-Beach-Boys hybrids with titles like "Sunny Days", Lovely Day", and "I Got You Around". They try for more ambitious psych-pop with "Lady (with the Tangerine Blouse)" and "Written Charter", with both songs featuring fuzz guitar and awkwardly spliced-on intros, like an amateur-hour Sgt. Pepper's. The album has some goofy numbers like "M.A.C.K." and two songs about pie for some reason, but the album's highlight is "Hello Love", the only non-original composition found on the record. It has a nice Association vibe to it and an excellent verse-chorus dynamic and horn break that stands out on an album of excellent songs.

For some reason, the album was not promoted by the record company in spite of the connection to Jay and the Americans, and the Tuneful Trolley went back to high school and everyday life. The reason for their lack of success is an elephant in the room that is not addressed anywhere in the extensive liner notes of the Island in the Sky reissue. I get the impression that the Tuneful Trolley may have been seen as "too ethnic" for commercial viability in 1969 - with names like Bordonaro, Ciccarello, and Riolo, these Long Island kids were pretty Italian. Unlike the guys in Jay and the Americans (who changed their real names - Kirschenbaum, Rosenberg, and Yaguda - to ones more suitable for musicians), the kids in the Tuneful Trolley were not self-conscious about who they were. You can see this from their promo photos as well.

Whatever the reason, it's unfortunate that Island in the Sky never reached a broader audience. Now, thanks to the Now Sounds re-release of the record, though, you can hear these talented teenage psych-poppers and wonder how they would have matured on subsequent albums if things had turned out differently for them.

"Written Charter" by the Tuneful Trolley