NORMA TANEGA "WALKIN' MY CAT NAMED DOG"

Now, here’s a cult classic album long overdue for a vinyl reissue! Norma Tanega was discovered while singing to Catskill summer campers by producer Herb Bernstein, who brought her to Four Seasons songwriter Bob Crewe. Crewe signed her to his New Voice label, and success was instantaneous: the title song to Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog went to #22 on the charts. But, despite the album’s folk-pop trappings, Norma Tanega was not an artist destined to stay at the top of the charts for long; her voice was unconventional, and her songs were too idiosyncratic, not sticking to typical song structure or even meter (for example, “No Stranger Am I” is set to a 5/4 time signature). In fact, Tanega’s songs were so unusual that she had to hire session musicians to play them on the North American tour she took to support the album instead of her erstwhile back-up band The Outsiders! Upon returning, she then embarked on a British tour that was to change her life forever; there she met Dusty Springfield, a