Blue Gold

Al Manfredi, born to a musical family of Italian immigrants in the small SoCal beach town of San Clemente, found regional success with his garage rock band Lost & Found while he was still a teenager. The tragic deaths of two of the band’s members in the late 60s shook Manfredi to his core, and he gave up on the band scene completely, retreating to his family’s music store, and working on music in private, multi-tracking demos of growing prowess on primitive recording equipment.

The series was revived as "AM Gold" in 1995, with a different cover design (early volumes had an artist's drawing of a pocket transistor radio, with later volumes bearing a "gold record" with the year or era spotlighted emblazoned over the top). The first 20 volumes were re-titled issues of volumes from the former "Super Hits" series with identical track lineups, while new volumes covering the mid- and late-1970s (including individual volumes for each of the years 1974-1979) were included.