__________________________________________________________
__________ __________
__________ __________
__________ S P E C T R O P O P __________
__________ __________
__________________________________________________________
Volume #0330 October 11, 1999
__________________________________________________________
Exploring Uncharted Patterns of Sound
Subject: Obscure GG releases
Received: 10/10/99 8:36 pm
From: Sheila Burgel, pxxxxxrport.net
To: Spectropop List, spectxxxxxities.com
Hello everyone! For the new issue of "Cha Cha Charming"
I'm looking to dedicate a section to obscure girl group
records- where I review the records, give some background
information, state it's availability on a CD reissue, show
photos etc, etc.
But the major problem with doing an article like this is
finding the background information and photos!! So I've
come to all of you at Spectropop with a plea for help!
I've listed the artists and records that will be featured
in this article. If any of you have background info
(artist & label)/ photos/ anything (!!) please could you
email me!
Thanks very much,
Sheila B.
p.s. For the girl group fans, ALL of the records below are
essential!
The Knick Knacks: Without you (Columbia)
Marie Applebee: Down by the sea (End of Summer) (Jubilee)
Bonnie and the Denims: Time Will Tell (LLP)
Vicki Hill: Give him Up (Congress)
The Cannon Sisters: I'm sorry I went (Valiant)
Loretta: My heart tells me to believe (Valiant)
Lornettes: Down the block and up to heaven (Gallio)
Joy and the Sorrows: On and On (MGM)
Lollipops: Gee whiz (Smash)
Marie Antoinette: He's my dream boy (Providence)
--------------------[ archived by Spectropop ]--------------------
Subject: Re: Diane Renay
Received: 10/07/99 12:58 am
From: Diane renay, CEIIxxxxxcom
To: spectxxxxxe.com
Dear John:
Thank you for putting all those photos on display. In
1996 People Magazine contacted me and I agreed to allow
them to do this article for the "Where Are They Now"
segment of that issue.
The photos were taken during various performances around
the country, during the time when "NAVY BLUE" was at the
top of the charts.
The Supremes and I did a three day show for Dick Clark at
Steel Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I shared a
dressing room with the girls, and it was very close
quarters!
The picture of the Rolling Stones and me was taken at a
party after the last performance of a show held at the
"Teen Fair" in Texas. This was the Stones' first time
performing in the US. I even rode in a limousine to greet
them at the airport when they first arrived in the US to
do this show and start their promotional tour of the US.
Bobby Rydell and I appeared together for one week at a huge
park in New York. Peter and Gordon were also in the show.
We all stayed in the same hotel right outside of the park.
It was lots of fun!
The pictures of Jan & Dean as well as Johnny Tillotson
were also taken at the same Dick Clark show at Steel Pier
in Atlantic City.
The picture I took with Tony Bennett was taken in Las
Vegas at Caesar's Palace in 1966. I was vacationing there
with my parents and was taken backstage to be introduced
to him.
Sincerely: Diane Renay <[:>)
--------------------[ archived by Spectropop ]--------------------
Subject: What's going on over there?
Received: 10/10/99 8:36 pm
From: Pekka Johansson, pexxxxxlynx.com
To: Spectropop List, spectxxxxxities.com
Hi everyone on the list,
I've been on the Spectropop list for a few weeks now, and
I really appreciate the discussions. For me as a Swede
it's fun also to see the remarks on Hep Stars - in my view
they really don't qualify as a great pop group of the 60's.
OK, there are three exceptions, all written by Benny: "
Sunny Girl", "Wedding" and "Consolation". The rest is
mainly bad covers of even worse songs...
I realize that the gg collection "Girls will be girls" on
Sequel has been released in the US recently. GO AND GET IT
! Much better than the two "Where the girls are" volumes
on Ace. "Did you ever love a guy" by a obscure group
called The Emeralds is worth the price of the CD itself.
Now to the real point of this mail. Between October 14 and
November 29 I'll be travelling around the States, visiting
what I consider to be places of musical importance, ie
Chicago, Detroit, NY, Memphis, New Orleans, LA, SF and so
on. I will be travelling on a Greyhound pass, and will
therefore be able to go almost anywhere. If you, dear
people on the list, knows about any happenings (concerts,
fairs, dancing) related to early 60's pop, especially girl
groups, I would be extremely glad if you could mail me on
the address above.
Take care,
Pekka Johansson, Stockholm, Sweden
--------------------[ archived by Spectropop ]--------------------
Subject: How loud? Pretty loud.
Received: 10/10/99 8:36 pm
From: Carol Kaye, caroxxxxxhlink.net
To: Spectropop List, spectxxxxxities.com
Hi Tobias.
>How much of that famous Wall Of Sound could you, as a
>musician sitting in the recording room, hear? You
>obviously all had to focus on your individual parts. I
>read somewhere that Brian sometimes added echo, reverb,
>compression and such things while you guys were playing.
>Did Spector do that too, or was all that stuff added after
>the session musicians had left the building? I guess what
>I'm asking is how much the producers did themselves
>without interacting with the musicians.
At first, when we recorded for Phil, we didn't wear
earphones, which was the style of the day. There were very
few baffles set up either (temporary walls padded to
isolate sounds), and of course we kept the volumes down
low on our amps.
The problem back then was the leakage of the drums, so
naturally, there were always baffles around the drummer,
and he muted his drums too (putting masking tape also
across the cymbals, blankets inside the bass drum,
hankerchiefs rolled up and taped on tom-toms, usually
their wallet -- no they weren't 'fat' then -- on the snare
drums, this was all for *sound*, not for real quieting of
drums, the set of drums recorded better that way).
Percussionists were usually next to the drums off to one
corner.
But Phil *always* played back his takes on, first, little
tiny speakers, the size of car-speakers. He wanted to make
sure his records played well on the radio for people in
their cars, and then he'd BLAST the booth with his
playbacks as loud as he could with volume and echo.....
we'd all have ringing ears from listening to his takes in
the booth, whew.
Then as we recorded for Phil more and more, he got the
idea to have us all wear earphones, as he started to put
more and more baffles up to isolate the guitars and
keyboards as well. Mac Rabbenec would sometimes play the
organ kind of loud (he'd get his own baffle), and the
acoustic keyboards wouldn't stand a chance then, so they
were isolated as well as the percussionists and drums even
more. And the individual guitar players as well, as you see
in pictures on my website.
Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer, the drummers Phil used,
graduated to making their own paddings to put on their
drums, and the bass drum all of a sudden shrunk, and they
had special paddings for those heads too, and they still
taped their cymbals.
And we were using earphones then, and yes, there were many
problems. At first, they couldn't be individually adjusted
("I can't hear myself", "I can't hear the guitars" "can't
hear the bass" etc.), there was no echo put on at first.
Then when the individual adjustments on earphones came in
within a week or so, Phil was quick to put some echo in
the earphones.
There was so much echo in the earphones on the "You've
Lost That Lovin' Feeling" date, that no-one was playing
well together. Hence my story of bearing down on the
acoustic Epiphone Emperor guitar (Phil loved that box),
and grinding away with rhythmic 8th-notes trying to
congeal the rhythm together....
It seemed to work, and Phil heard me playing hard, and put
a double-time echo on me only, which made my rhythm come
out to 16th notes, very subtle but it's there and we sort
of settled in for a nice groove (think Ray Pohlman the
bassist and Earl Palmer the drummer both asked Phil for
"less echo" too, so they could play better together) and
then the real take happened for the Righteous Bros., who
were there singing but probably were added on later for
the real vocal -- it cost 2x the am't to track in those
days and Phil also watched the money meter.
Anyway, that date I do remember, because I remember the
problems of the rhythm section, and we all knew this song
was going to be a biggie hit, the tune was tremendously
good, and the Righteous Bros. were knocking our blocks off
with the way they were singing.....we never heard white
singers sing like that before.
So by that year, yes, Phil was using echo in our earphones
practically all the time, but to varying degrees as to how
much we would complain about it...if there's too much echo
in our phones, the beat is not well-defined, and we
couldn't groove then, plus it would throw us off a little
bit.
So he kept the echo volume down quite a bit in our
earphones upon request, depended upon could we stand it or
not. But you sure heard it in the booth. Phil loved echo
which we understood, it was his trademark sound.
>Also (and this was discussed about six months ago but
>I've lost that digest), how *loud* were these sessions,
>particularly with Spector? Obviously, his music sounds the
>best if you crank your stereo up to 11, and what you get is
>an enormous, almost angry, wall of noise. Were his sessions
>louder (decibel-wise) than other producers'?
YOU BET! He was the loudest! No-one even came close. Brian
Wilson yes, sometimes he would add echo when we'd record,
but usually not - he'd put it on later. But at least Brian
kept the play-back levels decently "normal", never really
loud and he never did what Phil did:
play it back on a "car-speaker" at all, that was a
criteria of Phil's, that his hits sounded great on
car-speaker-sized speakers on the radio.
With Brian, usually no, he didn't have us work recording "
with echo" and as to the amount of Phil's recordings
actually "recorded with echo", common sense said he didn't
too much (you'd have to ask Larry Levine, he'd have the
correct answers on this)....you always add echo *later*,
that was the custom.
It's a bear to record with echo, as you can't take it off
later, so I'm assuming he played everything back "with
echo", but kept adding it on and/or taking it off
temporarily in the booth.
Phil loved the sound of the Gold Star echo, which I
understand speaking to other recording engineers was sort
of a "dirty-sounding echo", I don't know, just repeating
what they said...
I have the utmost respect and admiration for the genius of
Dave Gold who masterminded the system there at Gold Star,
everyone in Hollywood did and does also...he's a great guy
btw, so is Stan Ross, his partner and first engineer for
Phil for awhile.
The Gold Star echo ran right through the women's rest room
-- if I took a break and they were playing it back, they'd
ask me not to flush the toilet....
Producers were sort of "alone" in the booth, trying all
sorts of things, especially Phil and Brian. We'd hear all
kinds of wild things in our earphones as they'd try this
or that to the music. Really had nothing to do with us,
but we usually heard all the experimentation.
Sometimes the studio musicians would sit and wait 10-20
min. at a time and instead of listening to all what they
were doing in the booth, we'd take our earphones off and
kibbitz in the room during that time, always waiting for
them to get done with experimenting and we'd go on then.
Your time is not your own, but sometimes there was time to
take a quick hike to the bathroom, but usually you waited
right there in the studio throughout any experimenatation
with sounds Phil would do.
So to answer your question, yes, Phil would normally
record with echo in our phones, but the am't varied with
how much we'd complain. And I suspect it wasn't the same
echo, maybe it was, but I doubt it - he probably added it
on again later when mastering.
Or maybe cut with some slight echo and add more on later,
that makes sense too. Phil loved echo, no doubt about it.
Brian worked a different way. Phil was a showman, he'd
always love to have an audience in the booth -- he'd get
off on everyone being awed at his producing, including us
studio musicians....we had a great admiration for him and
he knew it, he respected us too, altho' he'd sometimes
playfully pick on someone, sometimes a little too hard.
Brian would sometimes have his wife and sister-in-law in
the booth, but that's it. He loved to work alone with
Chuck Britz at his side to assist if he needed it,
sometimes, but he loved to toy around with everything
himself.
There were a few moments of that, then we'd go for a take,
then change the music, then he'd toy around with sounds, or
come out in the studio and play a differnent feel he wanted
us to try, things like that.
Phil had some music charts (arrangements or chord charts
are called "charts"), and this got more complex as the
years rolled by, written arrangements.
We'd add to these charts mainly our ideas and he'd yea or
nay them, or a few times would give us his ideas of how
the parts should be interpreted.
Brian wanted only his ideas, but sometimes would listen to
others, especially Hal Blaine who got to play what he
wanted to play. Sometimes the guitar players too, but
Brian was more in charge speaking as a composer/arranger
there. Phil depended upon arranger Jack Nitzsche and input
from the musicians a lot more altho' he had some definite
good musical ideas sometimes too.
As did Sonny Bono a little later, altho' Sonny got some
great arrangements from Harold Batiste, whose ideas were
revolutionary.....he's a totally underated arranger, his
ideas saved many a plain tune that Sonny and Cher wanted
to do. But we still "donated" our lines and licks within
the parameters of Harold's terrific arrangements.
I don't remember Sonny recording with echo however. And
FYI, I've always thought that Sonny was a totally
underrated producer too, he was great in the booth, almost
as great as Phil and Brian. Hope this answers your
questions.
Carol Kaye http://www.carolkaye.com/
http://www.experience.org
PS. I do explain all this about Phil's use of echo on one
of the video segments showing each week at this Experience
Music website.
--------------------[ archived by Spectropop ]--------------------
Subject: PS. from CK
Received: 10/10/99 8:36 pm
From: Carol Kaye, caroxxxxxhlink.net
To: Spectropop List, spectxxxxxities.com
About the Phil Spector sessions, I only mentioned Jack
Nitzsche, but I think someone mentioned that Perry Botkin
also did some arranging for Phil....I worked a lot for
Perry at Gold Star for various projects, but my memory is
kind of stuck on Jack being Phil's arranger.
So excuse me if I didn't mention Perry, he's one of my
favorite people too, we have lunch together from time to
time.
Best, Carol Kaye
http://www.carolkaye.com/ http://www.experience.org
--------------------[ archived by Spectropop ]--------------------
Subject: Re: Rare Phil
Received: 10/10/99 8:36 pm
From: Pacific Ocean Bluto, wuxxxxxet.se
To: Spectropop List, spectxxxxxities.com
Wow, Francesc, thanks for the info!
>YOU'VE LOST THAT LOVIN' FEELIN'
>takes 38-39
>
>RIVER DEEP, MOUNTAIN HIGH
>takes 1-8 Entire session
Interesting. So Spector spent 39 (or more) takes on YLTLF
but needed only *eight* for a satisfactory version of RDMH!
Speaking of many takes, Carol Kaye, did you play on "
California Girls"? I have a *take 44* (yes, 44!) on tape.
Do you know if that was the final one or if Brian
continued with even more takes?
On another, but sort of related note, I bought a Walker
Brothers compilation today titled "After The Lights Go Out".
All great Spector-ish stuff of course, although Scott
Walker's theatrical voice gets on my nerves after too many
songs in a row. It's too goth :)
T.
--------------------[ archived by Spectropop ]--------------------
Subject: Re: I Can Hear Music & Rare Phil
Received: 10/10/99 8:36 pm
From: Billy G. Spradlin, bgsprxxxxxhlink.net
To: Spectropop List, spectxxxxxities.com
>Billy G wrote:
>>why wasn't "I Can Hear Music" on the box?
>
>Because the only issued recording by the Ronettes was not
>produced by Phil Spector, but Jeff Barry and the ABKCO
>recordings are only Phil Spector productions. I have never
>heard whether Phil produced a version of I Can Her Music,
>but probably not.
Thanks for clearing that up. I have the song on tape and I
have noticed that the production wasn't as "dense" sounding
as Phil's other great productions for the Ronettes. Even
the Beach Boys 1969 cover (produced by Carl Wilson) sounds
fuller than Jeff Barry's production. It makes me wonder how
successful the record would have been if Phil had produced
it with a bigger production and a more upbeat tempo.
>CHICO'S GIRL
>take 1
>take 2- vocal take stereo
>take 2- vocal take mono
Is this the same song that "The Girls" released on Capitol
in 65-66,
produced by Steve Douglas?
Billy G. Spradlin
29 Rim Road
Kilgore, Texas 75662
Email: bgsprxxxxxhlink.net
Homepage: http://home.earthlink.net/~bgspradlin/
--------------------[ archived by Spectropop ]--------------------
Subject: Re: Rare Phil
Received: 10/10/99 8:36 pm
From: chuck, chxxxxxo.com
To: Spectropop List, spectxxxxxities.com
Hello Francesc
This is just too wonderful what you have.
What an amazing post on an amazing list.
Easy listening in the Big Easy
Chuck
Francesc Sole, xxxxx.es wrote:
> To: Spectropop, spectxxxxxities.com
>
> Tobias asked for the availability of Phil bootlegs. A
> couple of years ago I was lucky enough to find some
> wonderful rare tapes of Phil working in the studio, called
> "The Spector Anthology".
>
> This stuff ranks up right there with the incredible
> Beatles or Beach Boys Unsurpassed Masters series
--------------------[ archived by Spectropop ]--------------------
Subject: "Snowbug" (new High Llamas album)
Received: 10/10/99 8:36 pm
From: Pacific Ocean Bluto, wuxxxxxet.se
To: Spectropop List, spectxxxxxities.com
I listened to a promo of the new High Llamas album
"Snowbug" today, and it's fantastic! Those of you who were
turned off by the bleeping and blooping on "Cold & Bouncy",
will *love* "Snowbug". It's a return to The Song, which
wasn't always there on "C&B". I never understood what Sean
O'Hagan meant with all the Brazilian influences because I
couldn't hear them - it's almost like he started citing
Brazilian stuff for the sake of people stop comparing the
Llamas to the Beach Boys! - but "Snowbug" is the album
that finally delivers those comparisons. It is definitely
a High Llamas record - a cross between "Hawaii" and "Santa
Barbara" maybe, but sounding quite a lot like Milton
Nascimento's "Courage" (thank you, Larry :)). I don't
think it should in any way be compared to the Beach Boys,
but if it has to, it's to "Friends" and not "Pet Sounds".
But "Snowbug" couldn't have been recorded in another year
than 1998. The arrangements are of course just as lovely
as always, with strings, harpsichords, steel drums, flutes
and much more!
Sorry for those of you who read this post on several lists.
--------------------[ archived by Spectropop ]--------------------
End
Spectropop text contents & copy; copyright Spectropop unless
stated otherwise.
All rights in and to the contents of these documents, including each element embodied therein, is subject to copyright
protection under international copyright law. Any use, reuse, reproduction and/or adaptation without written permission of the owners is a violation of copyright law and is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved.
