Vanilla Fudge

Heavy starts here. There was nothing, even in 1967, like the 10-ton shock of this Long Island quartet’s cover of the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” with the lava-flow sustain of Mark Stein’s Hammond organ and Carmine Appice’s rapid-cannon-fire drum fills. That hit treatment became, as these four CDs show, a blueprint for almost everything the group played. But the Fudge combined their flashy melodrama with great taste in songwriters (the Zombies, Donovan, Lee Hazlewood) and bar-band brawn, the last in full effect on the two discs of live recordings from 1969 at the Fillmore West.