An album of car songs from Capitol; released in 1963. Mitchum sings The Ballad of Thunder Road from Thunder Road (directed by Arthur Ripley, 1958), a movie about running moonshine whisky - a less crass prototype of the kind of movie that Burt Reynolds would later make too many of.
Apart from Mitchum and the Beach Boys, the artists were associated with the LA music scene. Ed Cobb, founder of the Piltdown Men (see http://www.rockabilly.nl/references/messages/piltdown_men.htm), later wrote Tainted Love.
It reached the US top ten, but the story goes that the Beach Boys were pissed because Capitol had released it without informing them. However, its success may have been the spur for Capitol to rush out Little Deuce Coupe, a compilation of (mostly) car songs,four of which were 'old' and the rest were new - in fact, one track, Our Car Club, had been originally released on the Surfer Girl album just 30 days earlier!
Finally, in 1964, perhaps to have a go at Capitol, possibly aware that many fans had bought Shut Down thinking it was a Beach Boys' album, Brian Wilson released Shut Down Vol II, a mix of car songs and romantic numbers - and in the case of Don't Worry Baby, a mix of the two!
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