A Quick one For Sanity

Keith Reid supposedly produces Denny Cordell

Len Wainwright writes to BtP:
I have a single on Deram by Beverley - who later became Beverley Martyn (John Martyn's wife) - entitled Museum. The song was written by Donovan and was also recorded by Herman's Hermits.

It was produced by Denny Cordell and released in 1967 on DM137; on the 'B' side is an instrumental by 'The Denny Cordell Tea Time Ensemble' entitled A Quick One For Sanity produced by Keith Reid and Mia Cordell for New Breed Productions. There's a brief mp3 extract here.

Has anyone got any more information on this record and how Keith came to produce it? In fact has anyone else even heard of it, or am I the only one in the universe to have skipped to this particular 'light fandango'?

BtP adds:
A Quick One for Sanity itself is a disappointingly poppy thing, not a Reidy type of tune at all, but the sort of thing that would accompany a party sequence in a 1967 film or some sort other sort of Carnaby caper.

It has horns playing an appetising-enough riff, but it's repeated extremely frequently and with very few chord-changes; and the Hammond squeaks and squalls convincingly but not in a melodic fashion.

It is surely a case of Denny Cordell making extra use of the session players he had booked for the 'A' side, and getting a composing credit into the bargain. The 'A' side seems to be using up bits left over from There is a Mountain and from Mellow Yellow ... Frans Steensma advises us that Donovan wrote it for Herman's Hermits. 

There's a page about this record at the Deram Records website, from which the scan above is borrowed, by kind permission of Brian Poust: you can hear the whole record there as well.

Matthew Fisher advises us that ...

1. Keith and Mia had absolutely nothing to do with it
2. It was an unused backing-track
3. The organ was played by Graham Bond

"I'm not too clear on who else was on the record, but I wouldn't be surprised if Ginger Baker played the drums."

And Frans Steensma observes that ...

It was released in July 1967, when Procol was very hot, so everything with the name Keith Reid on it was highly interesting (remember that Michel Polnareff thought so)

And Nick Rossi, from San Francisco, adds ...

Thanks for all of the great information on Denny Cordell's A Quick One For Sanity - although I would have to disagree with your assessment of the disc.

For the record, this is the same tune as Graham Bond's It's Not Goodbye which the Graham Bond Organization recorded in 1966, but did not release until 1970. The Bond version does have a lead vocal, by the way.

A more likely candidate for the drummer on this disc would be Jon Hiseman, who was in Bond's group at the time – Ginger Baker had ceased working with Bond in early 1966.

Keith Reid's page at BtP