The Pacemakers' original releases have suffered from a lack of any real foresight on EMI's part regarding a definitive collection. While the complete Beatles catalogue was made available on CD in 1988 with the release of the 2-CD Past Masters set, Gerry's fans are still forced to sort CD and LP track listings out in their heads if they want a complete run of all of Gerry's original songs. Here I'll try to give you some idea of how to get Gerry's full 1960s works, if you are so inclined.
The US LPs of the Pacemakers are the most complete, containing 55 different songs (c.f. Canada: 46 different songs, 48 if you include the Hits album; UK: 23 different songs). There are 63 studio recordings of Gerry and the Pacemakers originally released between 1963 and 1966, plus four previously unreleased songs issued since 1984 and the four "Live in California" tracks. You will thus be left without the following songs on vinyl if you collect the whole of the US catalogue:
The following track was released as the B-side of You're The Reason (Laurie LR 3313), but not collected on any LP:
The following UK B-sides were never collected on American LPs or singles, but may be found on CD on The Singles Plus and other such collections, or else you can try to track down the original UK singles:
The Following two songs uniquely appeared on the Canadian Capitol Today album, and have never been released anywhere else on vinyl:
The following four tracks were not released until the 1980s and 90s, thus it's hardly fair to fault Laurie for not releasing them:
(All but "Hello Little Girl" were originally released on the 1984 Music For Pleasure collection The Very Best of Gerry and the Pacemakers, which is itself available on LP. "Hello Little Girl" was first dusted off in 1991 for The Definitive Collection, and has to my knowledge only been released on CD. All four songs are collected on the Repertoire CD reissue of Ferry....)
For the four live tracks, one has little choice but to track down the Gerry in California EP, and I wish you luck in doing so!
With the release of the 4 CD You'll Never Walk Alone set, the complete works of Gerry and the Pacemakers can now be had conveniently in one place. True, those seeking completeness will note that, while all of the mono works are included, there stereo tracks from How Do You Like It are entirely missing, as are many from Ferry Cross The Mersey.
For a while around 2000, EMI seemed willing to license the Pacemakers recordings to just about anyone who comes knocking with a proposal for a "Greatest Hits" album on a special markets label. As a result, one very easily grew frustrated trying to figure out exactly what logic (if any) went into the myriad releases on the market.
The original idea seems to have been to follow up The Singles Plus with reissues of the two British albums with bonus tracks to fill the gaps of EP and unreleased-in-Britain material. For whatever reasons, EMI decided not to reissue the albums at first, and licensed them to Repertoire Records of Germany (effectively Europe's answer to Rhino Records). Combining these two CDs with The Singles Plus, one has a very comprehensive collection of Gerry and the Pacemakers recordings, lacking only the following eight tracks:
None of these tracks has, to my knowledge, turned up on any authorised release. It wouldn't surprise me greatly if the source tapes have been misplaced as all of these songs are from the 1966 sessions for the Girl on a Swing/Today North American LPs.
Unfortunately, the logic of this reissue programme has been forgotten. The Singles Plus, with its mid-1980s digital mastering, has long been deleted, and since 1997 EMI has flooded the market with three issues of its own of the UK albums: the mono/stereo issue, the 2on1 issue and the Japanese issue with a different scheme of bonus tracks. The songs unique to North America from 1965 and 1966 have, more or less, fallen off the map on EMI reissues, and the four live tracks have not, to my knowledge, appeared on anything from EMI. There are probably a dozen CD Greatest Hits collections licensed worldwide by EMI (plus a similar number licensed by whoever holds the rights to Gerry's 1980s recordings), with these reissues generally drawing on a pool of about 35 or 40 songs to make similar-but-not-quite-identical track listings.
In addition, this lineup of the band did remakes of the following original Pacemaker songs:
