Big Daddy Meanwhile...Back In The States (LP)

(Rhino Records) 14 titres - originally sealed 'Rhino' LP album from 1985

From the liner notes:

Big Daddy's initial 1983 Rhino Records album immediately grabbed the American public's fancy. Claiming to have been captured by Communist revolutionaries while on a USO tour of Southeast Asia in 1959, the group was allegedly held as prisoners for 24 years.
During this time they never heard any rock 'n' roll music. Consequently, both of Big Daddy's LP's consist of current hits recorcorded in the musical styles of the 1950's, the only music the band knows how to play.

Intrigued by this great human interest story, "59 Minutes" has completed a feature on the group's comeback. However, enough astonishing facts were discovered to cause the story to be titled: ''Big Daddy: The Truth or a Cruel Hoax?" A routine check of the band members' backgrounds uncovered their graduation pictures in a 1969 high school yearbook, 10 years after the alleged capture! Big Daddy claimed the photos were doctored as part of a CIA scheme to make it seem as if the bond was not really missing. Government agents then introduced five women, each of whom claimed she married a band member during the 1970's, and showed marriage certificates as proof.

The band riot only denied knowing these ladies, but produced blueprints of a CIA "cloning" labceatory in Langley, Virginia. The fact that the alleged blueprints were drawn on napkins using crayons and marks-a-lot did not seem to damper the band's insistence that they were victims of a heinous government plot to discredit them. At a Rhino Records press conference, reporters were introduced to three "Laotions" who testified that, as former POW camp com-manders, they fondly remembered Big Daddy's capture, imprisonment and subsequent torture.

Reporters questioned the integrity of the witnesses when they learned the "Laotions" were employed as gardeners for key Rhino Records executives. Is the Big Daddy saga the most amazing news story of the decade, or a ruthless PR man's shallow scam to exploit the sympathies of an unsuspecting public? Join reporters Ed Brinkley, Morey Cronkite and Mike Huntley in the most controversial "59 Minutes" segment ever aired.