Category: Music

Petula Clark – 1948

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JAN07/walkingbackwards.flv 400 300]

As promised, here is the start of a Petula Clark video retrospective. This brief scene is from 1948, with Pet at 15 in Here Come the Huggetts, the first in a series about the fictional Huggetts family.

Pet was England’s “Singing Sweetheart,” and she seems here to be a cross between Shirley Temple and Judy Garland. She carries it off, but having sifted through more than 30 video clips of Petula, it seems she had to be quite a chameleon to keep her career moving. I would conjecture the real Petula didn’t show herself until she was closing in on 40.

Contemplating Petula

Petula in PinkWhen I was a kid, Petula Clark songs were special. The records had a characteristic sound that was somehow European, but less obviously so than Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger,” which was produced by George Martin. I suppose the psychoacoustic effect of Petula Clark could have have been due to Tony Hatch’s production values, but at the center of it all was Petula, who was attractive to a wide audience, from pre-teens to their grandparents.

Petula Clark, who has had one of the most interesting careers of any singer, was something of a counterpoint to Julie Andrews. Clark and Andrews met in the 1940’s, and while both excelled in acting and singing, Andrews later specialized in musicals while Pet was a singer of Pop tunes.

Back in 1967 an audio essay by Canadian pianist Glenn Gould on the CBC included a segment on Petula Clark. Gould is more than a bit pretentious, but nevertheless this is worth hearing if for no other reason than it’s a critical consideration of Pet from her heyday on the charts, by a professional Classical musician.

[audio:http://ubu.wfmu.org/sound/gould_glenn/Gould-Glenn_The-Search-for-Petula-Clark_1967.mp3|titles=Glenn Gould: The Search for Petula Clark]

Every so often I’ll be posting more video clips of the fascinating Petula Clark, picking up where I started with this scene from one of her first movies, I Know Where I’m Going! by Powell and Pressburger.

All You Need Is “Love”

Sgt. Pepper

Perhaps you’ve heard about the recent Beatles CD, Love. It’s a wild remix — a mash-up, if you will — of later Beatles recordings. The song “Help!” is in there, as is some of the Revolver album, but mostly it was taken from “Sgt. Pepper” to “Abbey Road.”

My buddy Dennis gave me a copy of Love for Christmas and, much to my surprise, I really like it! Except for the art, which is total rubbish as the British would say. If nothing else the sound is stunning, and highlights how badly the Beatles’ catalog needs to be remastered.

NPR has given “Love” lots of coverage, including a frank interview with Sir George Martin that’s at this link. Although I can’t stand NPR’s Bob Boilen imitating Scott Simon’s annoying laugh, I agree 100% with his comments about the release. Boilen’s 30-minute interview with George Martin’s son Giles Martin can be heard here. I’ve extracted three minutes of the interview and put them on the audio player. Martin discusses “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite.”

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/BeatlesLove.mp3]

Sgt. Pepper Mix

As familiar as the stereo mix of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band is, the fact is the Beatles had nothing to do with it! Their input went exclusively into the monaural mix. EMI recording engineer John Lush, who assisted Geoff Emerick on the stereo mix, says “The only real version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band is the mono version. George Martin, Geoff and I did the stereo in a few days, just the three of us, without a Beatle in sight.” (Source: The Beatles Recording Sessions, by Mark Lewisohn)

Here’s “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” from the original 1967 mono LP release of Sgt. Pepper, purchased by my sister Leslie the week, if not the day, of its release. Don’t expect sonic excellence — American Beatles records had notoriously poor sound quality — but do expect the song to not be just the stereo version made mono.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/Kite.mp3]

Edit: That old record sounds so bad I equalized it to give it some life.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/KiteEqualized.mp3]

The Monostones

Rolling Stones

My twin sister commented in the Stones Sell Out post that she hadn’t heard “Tell Me” in 40 years. So I’ll play the piece of plastic she listened to 40 years ago, “Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass).”

The record belonged to our sister Liz, and it somehow — ahem! — ended up in my collection. But that’s good! Because I sealed it in an LP bag and that hasn’t been opened in 25 years. Until now. The scan above was made from the interior booklet of pictures, but it isn’t completely original, as I cut in the photo of Brian Jones. A third shot of Keith was just too redundantly redundant.

The LP is in mono, and that’s also a good thing, because when the song appeared on the “More Hot Rocks (Big Hits & Phased Cookies)” LP collection, it was in (boo!) re-channeled mono, aka fake stereo.

I’ll give you “Tell Me” two times, to take advantage of a nifty feature of the embedded audio player. If you open one, the other pauses. This will make it possible to click back and forth for instant comparison.

The first transfer was made with the LP just as it was, coming out of the long-sealed bag.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/TellMeTake1.mp3]

This second transfer was done after I had cleaned the record using a Nitty Gritty machine.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/TellMeTake2.mp3]

Hear any difference? Perhaps not. It depends on your speakers. The machine can’t repair groove damage, of which there’s plenty, but I bet it got out the residue left behind from the cigarettes that Liz was puffing her room! 😉

Edit: I tried a little equalization on this. The spectrum analyzer says this looks better. Let’s see if it sounds better.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/TellMe.mp3]

The Who Stones Sell Out

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JAN07/TheRollingStones.flv 400 260]

Here is a bizarre, but essential, 1964 appearance by the Rolling Stones on, of all things, The Red Skelton Show. Too bad they lip-synched, instead of performing live. How young they were!

Despite the bad boy image the Stones projected, they had in fact already gone commercial. In 1963 they produced a jingle for Rice Krispies.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/RollingKrispies.mp3]

One of the songs in the video is Bobby Womack’s “It’s All Over Now.” I’ve always been knocked out by that record. Here it is, taken from a 1982 British LP I’ve played dozens of times that still sounds fantastic.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/ItsAllOverNow.mp3]