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"1900 Yesterday" song

michael hagerty said:
Yeah, they all did it, but that was more a Conniff thing...and he generally got the best-looking models:

View attachment 9374


I'm sorry----the theme from SHAFT? The black private dick that's the sex machine to all the chicks? The one who's a bad mother....?

I'm sure I'll hate myself for this, but...




I'm astonished. And I do hate myself for posting that.


This was pretty close to the end of the line for the formula for Ray:

View attachment 9375

He made it through disco, but I always wished he'd gotten at least one album in the early new wave era:

RAY CONNIFF AND THE SINGERS
"WHIP IT"
and other great songs of today including:

Brass in Pocket (I'm Special)
Turning Japanese
Tainted Love
Cars
Hungry Like The Wolf
She Blinded Me With Science
88 Lines About 44 Women
Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage
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"Shaft" here is classic out-of-touch people trying to be hip. "A Cowboys Work Is Never Done" seems out of place too, to me, although I've never heard it. And on Ray Conniff's "I Will Survive" album, what's with the title "Little Music Box Dancer"? Isn't it just "Music Box Dancer" which was a re-discovered, and sophisticated, big instrumental hit by Frank Mills... unless it's only about a minute long, then the "Little" would make sense.
 
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Ed Nielson said:
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Percy's Disco re-doing of "Theme From A Summer Place" is, kind of ok. The college radio station received this LP in promo record service. From a few years earlier, the absolute hottest, Percy Faith recording, by far, is Percy's truly rocking instrumental single of Neil Diamond's "Crunchy Granola Suite". We received it in promo copy record service at the radio station. I liked it so much that I bought a copy of it. The guitar and drum are out in full force, and helped by the big band, orchestral sound. Our family used to, occasionally, grade new records on how good they were. My brother and I gave "Crunchy Granola Suite" by Percy Faith and His Orchestra a letter grade of A.
And the B-side, Carole King's "Corazon" is no slouch either.

Frankie Avalon's Disco "Venus" is pretty good. Nicely produced. It's not an embarrassment. It's a good quality Disco updating. I do a 1950s and early 1960s radio show on Sunday evening. Each week, at the first half-hour mark, I play some newer music. It will either be a newer version of a song originally a hit in the 1950s or early 1960s, or a much later recording by a star from that era. I'll remember to play this one sometime.
 
johnbasalla said:
"Shaft" here is classic out-of-touch people trying to be hip. "A Cowboys Work Is Never Done" seems out of place too, to me, although I've never heard it. And on Ray Conniff's "I Will Survive" album, what's with the title "Little Music Box Dancer"? Isn't it just "Music Box Dancer" which was a re-discovered, and sophisticated, big instrumental hit by Frank Mills... unless it's only about a minute long, then the "Little" would make sense.
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The Ray Conniff version is indeed a cover of the Frank Mills hit. With lyrics. Vaguely suggestive lyrics. As in men singing "My little music box dancer that no one can see", as I recall.

(Your secret's safe with us, guys.;))
 
kevtronics said:
He kept doing it well into the 1980s:

MDMtNzAyMy5qcGVn.jpeg


That seems to be his last U.S. album with a pretty model on the cover... 1988.
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Well, if you look at his listing in Discogs, it wasn't a straight throughline---and it's what kept us from getting the "Whip It and other Great Hits of Today" album.

Apparently, "I Will Survive", the album that I said was close to the end of the line of the formula for Ray---was the end of the line of the formula for Ray.

The next album, "The Perfect 10 Classics" was Classical pieces, including Ravel's "Bolero" and inspired by the movie "10" (with Bo Derek).

After that, Ray switched to serving his large Spanish-speaking fanbase in Latin America with a string of seven albums exclusively aimed at that audience, with extremely minimal English. That includes the album of his cover of "99 Red Balloons" that Bongwater posted.

It was enough of a change that Columbia switched his label affiliation to CBS and Discos CBS International. I'm sure they were available here as well.

After that, he came back to Columbia for two final albums. The one you posted was the last, in 1988, and this:


R-10267890-1517193908-8206.jpg

...came out in 1986. The track list was considerably less tone-deaf and out-of-touch than he'd been in the 70s:

Theme From New York, New York3:14
I Just Called To Say I Love You3:16
Separate Lives3:07
Leave A Tender Moment Alone3:20
Say You, Say Me3:40
That's What Friends Are For3:20
Cherish3:14
What's Love Got To Do With It2:42
Hello3:23
Everytime You Go Away

So, we didn't have that string of him trying to transition from disco to new wave that I thought might have been the ultimate disconnect.

After "Always In My Heart", which was heavily Spanish, Ray returned to the international market via CBS and Sony international labels for a few more, then left for smaller labels.
 
michael hagerty said:
The trouble began when Columbia decided (around 1966-67) that its MOR/Easy artists all needed to do covers of Top 40 hits, with maybe one or two new things thrown in.
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I have been listening to the British online-only Serenade Radio and it seems like every MOR or big band artist or orchestra did every MOR or big band song.

On the other hand, there's very little repetition and Nat King Cole can make anything sound good.

And yes, there seems to be a Percy Faith or Ray Conniff version of every song.
 
vchimpanzee said:
I have been listening to the British online-only Serenade Radio and it seems like every MOR or big band artist or orchestra did every MOR or big band song.

On the other hand, there's very little repetition and Nat King Cole can make anything sound good.

And yes, there seems to be a Percy Faith or Ray Conniff version of every song.
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To be fair, the 40s and 50s era of music tended to focus on standards---what we call the Great American Songbook and, yeah, most artists covered most of them.

But when the rock era came, there was more of a search for original material on the part of adult artists who felt that the standards were played out. In a stroke of good fortune for them, Broadway musicals were becoming very popular and the bossa nova trend was just beginning. It was easier for five artists on the same label to release five very different albums. They were also on the lookout for songs that weren't hits by the newer artists. Beatles LP cuts that never became singles were part of the mix.

When Columbia's edict to go with the Top 40 cover formula came down, it resulted in bad covers of the same batch of songs by artists who only made themselves look more out of touch than they were.
 
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Bongwater said:
This was about as rockin' as Percy Faith ever got. And personally, I like this better than the original

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And then the buyer decides, well, maybe the Beatles aren't so bad at all, and listens to the original and.....

This is actually a version of what we immature jocks at KSLY in San Luis Obispo used to do.

After our top 40 shift on the AM, part of our job was to record three newscasts that would run for the next three hours on our beautiful music FM, KUNA.

We had NO idea what song was coming up after the newscasts, but because we knew the audience probably had no clue what they were listening to either, at least once a week, one of us would end the newscast with something like:

"Now, KUNA beautiful music continues with the sounds of Led Zeppelin, his orchestra and chorus and "Whole Lotta Love".

Or "The Deep Purple Orchestra and the soothing sounds of Smoke on the Water".

Just for the fun of imagining some 80-year-old saying "I think I'd like a copy of that" and heading down to the record store in their 10-year-old Plymouth Valiant.
 
Bongwater said:
This was about as rockin' as Percy Faith ever got. And personally, I like this better than the original

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The most rocking that Percy Faith & His Orchestra ever got was his version of "Crunchy Granola Suite". It was released as the A-side of a Columbia Records single in 1973. Electric guitar, pounding drum accompanied by his orchestra playing an upbeat and powerful part. The EZ listening style of vocals is the only thing to remind a listener that this IS Percy Faith. I mentioned this song in a reply to another post in this thread, but since you, specifically, mentioned "rockin'", I thought I'd mention it here.
 
johnbasalla said:
The most rocking that Percy Faith & His Orchestra ever got was his version of "Crunchy Granola Suite". It was released as the A-side of a Columbia Records single in 1973. Electric guitar, pounding drum accompanied by his orchestra playing an upbeat and powerful part. The EZ listening style of vocals is the only thing to remind a listener that this IS Percy Faith. I mentioned this song in a reply to another post in this thread, but since you, specifically, mentioned "rockin'", I thought I'd mention it here.
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Percy, you animal!

You know, if I'd never heard Neil Diamond's original and (especially) the Hot August Nights live version, I might really go for that. And even as it is, it's not bad. The girls could turn the saccharine down below 11, but...
 
The only thing missing from that clip was Myron Floren trying to duplicate the instrumental bridge on his accordion.

And they replaced that bridge with the Carpenters' "Yesterday"? No wonder I hated the Lawrence Welk Show.
 
K.M. Richards said:
The only thing missing from that clip was Myron Floren trying to duplicate the instrumental bridge on his accordion.

And they replaced that bridge with the Carpenters' "Yesterday"? No wonder I hated the Lawrence Welk Show.
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KM: As noted, this was a guest appearance on the Andy Williams show, whose favorite gimmick for musical guests was medleys:

 
K.M. Richards said:
The only thing missing from that clip was Myron Floren trying to duplicate the instrumental bridge on his accordion.

And they replaced that bridge with the Carpenters' "Yesterday"? No wonder I hated the Lawrence Welk Show.
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If it was Lawtence's show, would he even allowed the "cigarette" lyric?
 
How did I miss this thread before today?

I have to admit, some (many? Most??) of the vocal or choral BM covers of Top40 material are, uh, kind of weird? Realizing they're a product of their time, I don't hate them, but I try to avoid the worst examples if I can.

However, there are a couple that I've come across that aren't absolutely horrible.

For example, Ray Conniff Singer's version of the Charlie Rich song "The Most Beautiful Girl" is actually okay (it was the first version of the song I'd ever heard, and I heard it on a WHP aircheck from 1970-something).

And a version of Randy VanWarmer's "Just When I Needed You Most" that sound like the Anita Kerr Singers, but maybe not (finding out the true artists for these custom recordings is hard). That was the first time I'd heard a vocal version, but actually the second time I'd heard it; the first was a cover by Francis Goya).

That said, I find I actually do like most of the purely instrumental stuff, even if some of it can get a bit lame, too.

Is there a Percy Faith or Ray Conniff version of The Doors' "Light My Fire"? That would sure be interesting....

Oh, and I've heard that infamous rendition of "Alone Again (Naturally)", and it indeed sounds very strange sung straight with a smile and a flourish, and I find that the original Gilbert O'Sullivan's version is FAR superior in every way imaginable. He sings it kind of deadpan, but in a way that still manages to convey all the proper imagery and appropriate emotional angst that the bowdlerized versions just can't.

c
 


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