In bursts of enthusiasm to capture the “now” sound, musicians sometimes forget that basic musical beauty lies in the melodic line. Not necessarily in electronic magic, The artistry of Ray Conniff is the listening proof of this.
The view from the “live” side of the microphone as compared to the “listening” side of the microphone at a Conniff recording session is as different as Beethoven is to Bacharach. In the studio, each performer faces that “live” mike and hears only his own sound and that of his immediate neighbor. The “listening” side is the soundproof control booth where everything is heard and balanced for the finished result.
While recording, Ray stands in front of the orchestra and chorus, a headset on that enables him to receive this same complete sound. His practised ear tells him immediately if some one performer is “off-mike.” Each number is rehearsed until it meets with Ray’s standards; then and only then does he call for a “take.” Several of these takes may be required before he feels he has the one that echoes the perfection he demands on his albums.
As a member of the Conniff Singers for many years, our times together have been what “Memories Are Made of . . .” particularly when we have been on tour and have performed in front of a live audience. The stimulus of travelling all day and performing all night may sound exhausting. but it’s the adrenalin that makes for excitement. The feel of a recording studio can never be compared with the feel of an audience, yet in Studio A at CBS Records in Hollywood,. Ray, like Merlin, re-creates the magic, and in so doing brings out the best in us all.
Looking out at “Mr. C. from our raised platforms is looking at a study in concentration. Yet a man whose sense of humor shows itself repeatedly when he laughs with all of us at a sour note in the chorus or a “clinker” in the orchestra. His patience is much in evidence when trouble arises over a difficult musical passages as he Is a man who makes each member feel important to the entire arrangement.
There is no substitute for purity of sound. An audience may have varied musical tastes, but the success of Ray’s music proves that a majority of people the world over prefer his straightforward arrangements. His instinct unfailingly leads him in his selection of songs that never grow old in popularity, a trend that has constantly grown ever since his first album, S’Wonderful.
At that lime. he used only eight singers: four girls singing the same notes as the trumpets and clarinets and four boys following the trombones and saxophones. That was when the now famous “dah-d’dl-ee-yah-dal” was first heard in place of words. The singers actually became instruments, singing orchestral inflections instead of lyrics.
Through the years the chorus has grown to twenty-five singers. the “doo-doos’ and ” wah- dahs,” having been replaced by words. and the original eight-part harmony expanding sometimes to sixteen separate vocal lines. Ray’s creativity never lies dormant It is ever-changing to continually present his own brand of distinctive listening pleasure.
Here is a man who creates a GOOD sound, a TRUE sound, a REAL sound, the Ray Conniff sound.
Rica Owen Moore
Label: CBS 64294 Front cover photograph: Guy Webster
Danny Street was a Scottish singer who recorded under this name during the sixties but found belated fame as an accomplished singer of songs made famous by big stars like Tom Jones, using his talent to mimic their singing styles. He was born Joe Drysdale in 1941, in Stirling and died in 2010. Danny featured on many of the Top Of The Pops series of cover version albums of which many can be seen and enjoyed right here in Cover Heaven. He also released a similar album based on Engelbert Humperdink songs. Of course even Danny’s voice wasn’t enough to guarantee sales which explains the rather large “TOM JONES” on the cover below a very small “Million Copy Sellers Made Famous By”.
Sleeve Notes:
It is not often that you can buy a record of great hits which were all in the Top Ten and all recorded and made famous by one singer in a short space of his career.
We have captured on this record the greatest hits made famous by Tom Jones sung by a different, brilliant singer and orchestrally played in a style which may give you great difficulty in realising that these are not the original recordings by Tom Jones himself and his backing orchestras.
Yet again Music for Pleasure brings you twelve exciting songs on a single album – but these are songs with a difference, twelve outstanding hits made famous by some of the world’s most popular female vocalists, all skill-fully recreated by our studio singers who successfully recapture the atmosphere injected by the original artists.
Vikki Carr waited several years for her first major achievement, ‘It must be him’ and Clodagh Rodgers, no new-comer to the pop scene emerged in 1969 to rise high in our charts with `Come back and shake me’. Clodagh has achieved a great deal in a very short time, and has recently been chosen to represent Britain in the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest.
Lulu, Sandie Shaw and Mary Hopkin have also represented Britain in the same contest, and songs made famous by each of these singing stars are featured on this album. Lulu sang the tide song for the film which starred Sidney Polder and Judy Geeson, To Sir with love,’ in which she also took ik part, that of Barbara Pegg. This song rose to the top of the American charts for Lulu, and Sandie Shaw’s ‘Monsieur Dupont’ proved to be a winner, as did Mary Hopkin’s ‘Termma Harbour’. Shirley Bassey recently scored a tremendous hit with her new and fascinating interpretation of a number penned by George Harrison, ‘Some-thing’, and Dusty Springfield added another song to her long line of successes with ‘Son of a Preacher Man’. With the hit-making team of Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent writing a song for Pet Clark it was a foregone conclusion that ‘Don’t sleep in the subway’ would be a hit for Britain’s immensely popular singer, and Cilia Black rather proved to us all that it’s possible to increase your popularity if you ‘Surround yourself with Sorrow’
The jaunty, country-styled ‘Harper Valley P.T.A.’ soared high in the hit-parade for Jeannie C. Riley, as did ‘I’ll never fall in love again’ for Bobbie Gentry, and ‘Don’t play that song’ followed a similar pattern for the soulful Aretha Franklin.
Let the songs on the record remind you of these tremendous artists, hear them now on this excitingly new Cover Girl album.
Well it sounds like James Last but it’s not actually James Last. In fact it’s another “sounds like” album of which there are several examples here. They usually feature some word or words that indicate it’s not the actual artist you’re listening to. These words include “salutes”, “impressions”, “plays”, “the sound of”, “tribute to” and so on. In this case the fact that this record sounds like James Last is, for us, a very good thing. This is because Mr Last, being assured of his own bearded attractiveness, almost always featured on his record covers whereas the sound-alike records took an altogether different approach – one that fits into the Cover Heaven mould quite comfortably.
Sleeve notes:
Pop, jazz or beat arrangements of the Classics are always controversial, and if these numbers startle you we feel they have gone some way to justify Mark Buchner and the whole James Last sound.
Needless to say, Bach, Handel, Schubert and Tchaikovsky were each the top-pop writers of their day, and here, in James Last style, are their greatest hits. We loved them. So will you.
A top-value collection of some of the greatest songs to be written by BURT BACHARACH If you check back on a Perry Como million-seller called “Magic Moments”, you’ll find that it was written in 1957 by Burt and his partner, lyricist Hal David. Since that time, the two of the have been composing consistently big hit songs, mostly together and well represented here. The Bacharach name has also appeared on certain major film credits – he scored “What’s New Pussycat” and “Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid” – and also headlined a successful Broadway and West End musical “Promises, Promises”. The track listing above will certainly need no introduction as all the titles are proven winners, so just sit back and enjoy a we selection of the Best Of Burt Bacharach.
No experience can match the emotional joys of two people alone. The moments when two become one on the island of love. The quiet hours – the intimate hours when nothing matters in the world outside. Soft light on darkness for this special mood enhanced by unobtrusive music, music that speaks of warmth and intimacy. The velvet rich tones of strings and delicate caress of woodwinds. Maestro Carlini coaxes a sensuous beauty from his orchestra in this special program scored by Aldo Provenzart and Derek Cox. These are moments when only gentle rain is heard on pas-sages of soft erotic rhythm pulsating to a background of violence. These are the sounds of night – heard by two in a see-through mood.
Label; Stereo Gold Award MER 355 Cover Photo: Paul Chave
Andre Kostelanetz plays to a devoted audience that is so large in its scope that it is virtually the entire population. He is the musical spokesman for the melodic majority, which includes everybody who likes a melody. His repertoire is drawn from a larger domain of music – from opera to gospel – than anybody else’s. He’s been doing it better and longer than the rest of the orchestral conductors and his seventh sense of what, among the new music, has lasting appeal and vitality is truly amazing.
There is always a distinguishable rhythmic beat in the Maestro’s renditions. Whatever style he is working in, the basic spirit of that style is brought over to orchestral arrangements that then blend into a generous personal style.
Kostelanetz has been delighting !he American listening ear for a good long time now, but from his first recordings to this one in your hand there is a continuity of basic melodic subtlety and sensitivity that is his hallmark. The music changes, from season to season, year to year, but the Kostelanetz way with voicing and highlighting is consistently present.
What the Maestro does is to take the songs – and particularly the words in them – and sing them with an orchestra. You don’t hear the spoken words, but the diction of their meaning and emotion is always there, in the musics and the effect of their feeling is in some way magically heightened by this approach. It’s Kostelanetz trademark in popular music, and it comes from his thorough mastery of the worlds of opera and classical instrumental music. In this album you will hear the Maestro use a single human voice – in this case soprano – as an instrument in the orchestra. No words are given as lyrics, but we hear the orchestra (including the intermittent voice) announce each song with all its meaning intact, softening everything, taking the hard edge off the sound. It is popular music in its Sunday best, standing tall and smiling.
Andre Kostelanetz can perform this sleight of hand regardless of the source. The song can come from a film, a Broadway show, from the professional songwriters of pop or Rock, or from gospel. Whatever the beat was to begin with, its adaptation under Kostelanetz comes over like the classic statement of the song. The words aren\’t there, but we hear them whispered in the strings, blared in the brasses and whistled in the woodwinds.
To music like this there are no boundaries. It will never be lodged tightly in one cubbyhole or another, under one heading or another. And listening audiences know by now that when they have Kostelanetz\’c2~at the helm, the album is going to be always listenable, always musically articulate, profoundly artistic and right up-to-the-moment.
Here is a selection of 12 top titles from the current charts, Ballads and Pop to please all tastes in popular music. We have tried to get as near to the original sound as possible and our only aim is to give you top value for money with twelve top titles that we know you will enjoy.
A surname like Love is ideal when it comes to selecting interesting and relevant album titles. Hence we have already enjoyed MFP LPs called – Big Love Movie Themes (MFP5221) with a neat double meaning, and “Love With Love” (MFP5246) to say nothing of others. Love-less in title but not in origin, such as – Big Western Movie Themes – (MFP 1328); -Big War Movie Theme, (MFP5171); -Big Concerto Movie Themes (MFP 5261). 5261). – Your Top TV Themes (MFP5272), and – Big Suspense Movie Themes- (MFP50035).
The Love in question is, of course, Geoff Love. One of Britain\’s most distinguished and successful musical directors and arrangers, and certainly one of the most popular with the public and his fellow musicians, with a constantly cheerful and amiable nature as befits his surname. Geoff has worked with and won the unstinted admiration of some of the greatest names of international show business, including Shirley Bassey, Howard Keel, Judy Garland, Paul Robeson, Vera Lynn, Frankie Vaughan and Des O’Connor. As an artist in his own right, Geoff’s albums mentioned above have proved to be amongst the best-selling records in the history of the label.
The latest is Latin With Love, and is destined for the same Popularity. Geoff selected twelve of the perennially favourite melodies from Latin-America or inspired by that colourful sub-continent, and arranged them for an orchestra comprising four trumpets doubling fluegel horns, four trombones, foe woodwind, twelve violins, four violas, four cellos, piano, two guitars, bass doubling bass guitar, one drummer, and three Latin-American percussion. The results are ear-catching and immensely enjoyable.
La Bamba, that lively dance speciality from Vera Cruz in Mexico, provides a suitably bright opener with all sections of the orchestra spotlighted and a growling jungle flute solo. The mellow evocation of that area in New York city known as Spanish Harlem begins with marimba and piano setting the easy pace and a cor anglais solo later. Guantanamera receives an appropriate Afro-Cuban atmosphere with the brass shining over the cha cha cha beat, and Sucu Sucu of Argentine origin gets a sprightly samba treatment here. Another Brazilian tempo in the form of the bossa nova ensues as a second Music for Pleasure Latin music maestro, Duncan Lamont, is featured on tenor-saxophone in The Girl from Ipanema, and the bossa mood is maintained for One Note Samba with fluegel horns prominent.
The second side begins noticeably South Of The Border as Geoff coaxes a Mexican mariachi sound from the trumpet in cha cha cha time, and then we meet the beautiful Maria Elena . portrayed in bolero style by the guitar against a background of muted trombones, followed later by piano, strings, oboe, and a key change into a full ensemble passage. Marimba and trumpets open Spanish Eyes in baion time, with the rest of the orchestra joining in turn, and then comes the famous prototype bossa nova, Desafinado, introduced by woodwind and trombones before the fluegel horns take the theme. The bolero returns with The Breeze And t, showcasing strings and low-pitched woodwind, and the rhythm section contribute the right atmosphere for a rousing climax to the LP with an infectious Brazilian marcha tempo redolent of street parades at carnival time, and the mariachi trumpets tel the Mexican Hat Dance in motion.
Geoff Love has assembled a dozen proven Latin favourites, and presented them with all the verve, vivacity and melodic richness which their background demands. It is impossible to refrain from the obvious remark – you’ll love it!
