The Corps of Apple Records II Quiz | Record Labels

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1. This keyboardist-singer was the only "outsider" to receive label credit on a Beatles single. George Harrison co-produced two albums for him on Apple, on which Harrison and Eric Clapton played guitar and Keith Richards played bass, and he had a minor hit with "That's the Way God Planned It." Who was he?

Answer: Billy Preston

When the Beatles decided that the album "Get Back" (which became "Let It Be") would be recorded live in the studio, they added Preston on keyboards to enable them to get the same sound that they had been getting with either Paul McCartney or John Lennon adding a keyboard track.

The single "Get Back" b/w "Don't Let Me Down" was credited to "The Beatles with Billy Preston." Preston had four U.S. top five hits after leaving Apple, including "Will It Go Round in Circles?" and "Nothing from Nothing," which both reached number one.

2. This English Apple band had two of its first three singles, "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" and "Hi Hi Hi," banned by the BBC, and then became much more successful in the U.S. (with six number one singles, including two on Apple, and five number one albums, including two on Apple) than in the U.K. (with one number one single, not on Apple, and two number one albums, including one on Apple). What band was it?

Answer: Wings

At its core, Wings was made up of just Paul and Linda McCartney and former Moody Blues frontman Denny Laine, although it also had three different lead guitarists (Hugh McCullough, Jimmy McCulloch and Laurence Juber) and four different drummers (Denny Seiwall, Geoff Britton, Joe English and Steve Holley). Wings' six U.S. number one singles included two Apple singles, "My Love" and "Band on the Run"; three Capitol singles, "Listen to What the Man Said," "Silly Love Songs" and "With a Little Luck"; and one Columbia single, "Coming Up" (Live at Glasgow).

In the U.K., Wings' only number one single was the bagpipe-driven "Mull of Kintyre", which didn't even chart in the U.S. Wings' number one albums in the U.S. included two on Apple, "Red Rose Speedway" and "Band on the Run" (also number one in the U.K.), and three on Capitol, "Venus and Mars" (also number one in the U.K.), "Wings at the Speed of Sound" and "Wings Over America".

3. This carefree French-speaking Cajun band wound up on Apple Records for one single in 1972 when a high school sophomore, who had just joined the band, sent a copy of the band's newest single, "Saturday Nite Special", to Apple, after which Apple purchased the rights to it. What was the name of the band, which still performs Cajun music today?

Answer: Sundown Playboys

15-year-old accordionist Pat Savant joined the Sundown Playboys in 1971 after the death of Lionel Cormier, the band's 58-year-old founder and leader, from a heart attack. When tiny Swallow Records released Savant's initial recordings with the band as a single, Savant sent a copy to Apple Records' A&R office ... and got a contract offer two weeks later. "Saturday Nite Special" (a "Cajun" French-language original, unrelated to the later Lynyrd Skynyrd song) was a novelty hit for Apple in Europe but went virtually unheard in the U.S. outside of Louisiana.

4. This American soul/pop artist is best known for her composition "Just One Look," but she also recorded a soul and gospel-influenced album on Apple, most of which she produced herself, which featured George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Stephen Stills, Peter Frampton and Leon Russell (among others) and included the singles "Ain't That Cute" and "Jacob's Ladder." Who was she?

Answer: Doris Troy

Despite the U.S. top-ten success of "Just One Look" in 1963, Atlantic Records dropped Doris Troy just a year later, in part because she preferred to write her own material. When "Just One Look" became a huge U.K. hit in a cover version by the Hollies in 1965, she decided to move to England.

She eventually met her old friend Billy Preston there when he was working with the Beatles, and he brought her to Apple's attention. Harrison and everyone involved with the Apple album thought that it would finally bring Doris Troy some long-overdue recognition ... but Apple's haphazard promotion for the album prevented that from happening.

5. Whose Apple album "Dark Horse" featured one of the strangest versions of the Everly Brothers' hit "Bye Bye Love" ever recorded, as it was done with the involvement of his ex-wife Patti and his best friend Eric, who was living with (and later married) Patti?

Answer: George Harrison

At the time of Patti Boyd's split from George Harrison, George was having a torrid affair with Ringo Starr's soon-to-be-ex wife Maureen, but the George-Patti-Eric Clapton triangle (immortalized by the Derek and the Dominoes album "Layla") and George's subsequent recording of "Bye Bye Love" with their help still draw most of the attention after all these years. Both Patti and Eric released autobiographies in 2008 discussing their relationships with George and each other.

6. This sitar superstar principally worked as a classical musician and as a film composer until the late 1960s, when he became the only Apple artist to appear at both the Monterey Pop Festival in 1968 and the Woodstock Festival in 1969. He later inspired the "Concert for Bangladesh". Who was he?

Answer: Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar released two albums on Apple: "Raga", the soundtrack to a movie about his life, and "In Concert 1972", a two-disk live recording with Ali Akbar Khan. He also appeared in the "Concert for Bangladesh", and Apple packaged his song "Joi Bangla" as a single (Apple 37), although, not surprisingly, all of these recordings failed to find a Western audience.

7. This U.K. band was the most successful act on Apple Records that did not contain at least one former member of the Beatles, with four top-ten singles in the U.S. However, their last U.S. hit single, "Baby Blue" (produced by Todd Rundgren), was never even released in the U.K., even though a catalog number (Apple 42) had been assigned to it. No wonder the band mocked themselves with the title and cover art of their final Apple album, "Ass." Which band was it?

Answer: Badfinger

Badfinger, who were still known as The Iveys when their first two singles ("Maybe Tomorrow" and "Dear Angie") were released on Apple Records, had four top-ten U.S. hits produced by four different producers: Rundgren, George Harrison ("Day After Day"), Paul McCartney ("Come And Get It"), and Mal Evans ("No Matter What"). Singer/guitarist Pete Ham and singer/bassist Tom Evans also wrote the worldwide number one hit "Without You" (produced by Geoff Emerick in Badfinger's original version, which was not released as a single); Nilsson and Mariah Carey had the hits.

However, seven different producers (also including Tony Visconti and Chris Thomas) worked on their four albums for Apple, which might be a reason why the group didn't become as successful as the members expected to be after so many major hits.

It is unclear whether the title "Ass", picked by Evans, referred to the band's foolishness in believing in Apple or in leaving Apple. Tragically, shortly after leaving Apple, Ham committed suicide, followed eight and a half years later by Evans.

8. This band released one live album on Apple, recorded at the Toronto Rock & Roll Revival in September 1969. The album featured versions of such oldies as "Blue Suede Shoes", "Money" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy", as well as five originals, all written by the group's two lead singers (including "Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)"). One of the lead singers came on stage inside a bag. The entire concert was later released as part of a movie entitled "Sweet Toronto." Who was the band?

Answer: Plastic Ono Band

John Lennon and Yoko Ono had been invited to attend the Toronto festival after recording the hit single "Give Peace a Chance" in Montreal. For the occasion, Lennon put together a "supergroup" of himself on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Yoko on vocals, Eric Clapton on lead guitar, Klaus Voorman on bass and Alan White on drums, which he called the Plastic Ono Band -- the same band name that he had used for the single. The band started its set with the three oldies named above plus three Lennon songs, "Yer Blues," "Cold Turkey" and "Give Peace a Chance," which were rough but very well received by the crowd, even though Lennon forgot some of the lyrics and Yoko, after emerging from her bag, sang bizarre backing vocals on "Cold Turkey". Unfortunately, Lennon then turned the mike over to Yoko, who "sang" two avant-garde originals to an increasingly hostile crowd for 20 minutes.

The Plastic Ono Band's album of this concert, entitled "Live Peace in Toronto 1969," went gold in the U.S. and Canada, solely on the strength of the Lennon side. However, "Sweet Toronto" flopped, largely because it ended with the 20 minutes of Yoko's songs. Lennon continued to use the name "Plastic Ono Band" to refer to the backing musicians on his and Yoko's albums, but this was the only album credited to just the Plastic Ono Band. Later, the second disc of the Lennon/Ono album "Some Time in New York City" would also be a live album, with side one performed by the Plastic Ono Band at a 1969 UNICEF benefit and side two perfomed along with the Mothers of Invention and credited to the "Plastic Ono Mothers".

9. This husband-wife duo recorded an album for Elektra Records ... which they then sold to Apple for release as SAPCOR 7. Test pressings of the album were made by Apple under the title "The Original [duo name]". Elektra immediately sued Apple and was awarded rights to the album, which it retitled "Accept No Substitutes." The album was promptly issued in the U.K. using the Apple master disks and even Apple labels on the first pressing. After this fiasco, the duo toured with guitarists Eric Clapton, Dave Mason and George Harrison (as "L'Angelo Misterioso"), all of whom appeared on their next album. Which husband-wife duo was it?

Answer: Delaney and Bonnie

The Apple label pressings of "The Original Delaney and Bonnie" album are among the most valuable Apple rarities ... and must have given those lucky initial purchasers of the U.K. album quite a thrill when they found an Apple album inside the Elektra cover. Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett's next album, "On Tour featuring Eric Clapton," was released on Clapton's U.S. label (Atco Records) and was their most successful release.

Their backing band at the time also included Leon Russell, Carl Radle, Bobby Whitlock and Jim Gordon, who later ended up joining Harrison, Mason and Clapton on Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" sessions, Clapton's first solo album (produced by Delaney), and the original Derek & the Dominoes single ("Tell the Truth", produced by Phil Spector).

10. The Apple single "Govinda" is played every morning at all International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) temples in the world, as the devotees congregate before the devotional period known as "kirtana." It was the follow-up single to the "Hare Krishna Mantra", both of which featured George Harrison as producer and backing musician. Both singles were moderate U.K. hits. To whom were these singles credited?

Answer: The Radha Krishna Temple (London)

Disciples at the Radha Krishna Temple (London) performed on the singles and subsequent Apple album "The Radha Krsna Temple", with backing musicians including Paul & Linda McCartney and Ginger Baker. Swami Prabhupada, the founder of ISKCON, believed that Harrison's songs for ISKCON would bring worldwide acceptance to the Hare Krishna movement and his version of Hinduism.

A reissue of the Apple album is currently available through ISKCON.

Source: Author AyatollahK

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor agony before going online.
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The Corps of Apple Records II Trivia Quiz

Apple Records was founded by the Beatles in 1968 as the recording division of Apple Corps, Ltd. From then until its "end" in 1976, the label made a worldwide impact. This quiz is the second of three quizzes about the label.

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