Pat Campbell’s album, Just a Quiet Conversation, is everything a bad music enthusiast could hope for. Overwrought narration with folksy, clip-cloppy Country and a good dose of God-bothering on the side. Just a Quiet Conversation would spawn the classic single The Deal, which almost made the UK Top 30 and has the honour of sitting alongside Red Sovine’s Teddy Bear in the Kenny Everette-curated pantheon of bad records.it’s Epic: an absolute masterpiece.
Pat Campbell had been a member of the '50s Irish harmony group The Four Ramblers, together with a young Val Doonican. While Doonican left for solo stardom, the group continued for a short while, releasing one 10” album, The Emerald Isle, and a couple of singles before Pat gravitated to the industry side of the music business, first as a DJ for Radio Luxembourg (he’s there, presenting his own Late, Late Show in 1959) before becoming involved in label management.
After a stint working for Decca, where he oversaw the licensing and release of many of the post-mortem Jim Reeves albums and singles (Reeves label, RCA, was a subsidiary of Decca before setting up their stand-alone UK operation), by 1968 Pat was working for Phil Solomon’s Major-Minor Records, an Irish record label based in north London that licensed a lot of its material from abroad: we’ve already featured such horrors as the Equipe 84single Auschwitz and Freddie “Parrotface” Davies’ Cynthia Crisp. While at Major-Minor, Pat had recorded a couple of vocals for label mate Mike Mercardo, a keyboard player known as 'The Swinging Monk', for his album The Power and The Glory.
The Irish have always had a soft spot for Country & Western music, and one of the artists Major-Minor was interested in was our old friend Red Sovine. Major-Minor do not appear to have released any of Old Red’s albums here in the UK (he was licensed to London for much of this period) although they may have had a hand in promoting some concerts. Pat, it seems, became very enamoured of Red’s storytelling style… which is where the inspiration for Just a Quiet Conversation comes from.
Referencing his regular C&W slot on Radio Luxembourg, the album’s sleeve notes wax lyrically about his credentials: “Pat Campbell was born in Ireland, but it might just as well have been Nashville. He's been there many times and he's welcomed as a friend by the biggest names in the world of country music. On each visit he brings a little piece of Nashville home with him, but also leaves a little of Pat Campbell there in return.” However, Pat’s recitations are more Terry Wogan than truck driving man. Still, The Deal, the first of two singles issued from Just A Quiet Conversation managed to spend five weeks on the UK singles chart, peaking at a respectable number 31 shortly before Christmas 1969. After his brief shot at pop chart immortality, Pat returned to spinning discs for a living, rather than making them himself, eventually working as a DJ for Radio Two, where he presented a show called Country Style.
Sadly, Pat passed away in 2006. His family and friends remember him as a happy man who was always pulling practical jokes. Perhaps Just A Quiet Conversation was one of those. I’m sure he’d appreciate just how much fun people are still having, listening to his album half a century after it was recorded.
Here are a couple of tracks for you: Pat’s cover of Red Sovine’s Giddy Up Go and his hit single, The Deal. If you like this you can find the entire album, plus the two Swinging Monk tracks, at WFMU.
Enjoy!
Download Giddy HERE
Download Deal HERE