Sunday, January 29, 2023

Ray Ellis: Big Hits for Swingers (Atco 33-187; 1966). Or, When radio station stickers obliterate the liner notes.

 




For all my swingin' blog visitors: Big Hits for Swingers by Ray Ellis, a fun 1966 LP which managed to make its way from the music library of WTVN, 610 AM, Columbus OH, to my local St. Vincent de Paul thrift.  WTVN began operation in 1922 and is now known as "News Radio 610 WTVN."  And WTVN must have been playing adult-pop LP tracks in 1966.  And a monaural promo LP was the sensible type to send to an AM station.

I could classify this as easy listening, since a few tracks definitely qualify as such, but I'm going to put this in the category of big band-ized rock and roll.  I regard "big band-ized" r&r as an actual genre, and one which lasted for a good five or more years, and often in the realm of record-club boxed sets.  Imo, it deserves to be regarded as a movement unto itself, and of course it was all about presenting current pop and r&r songs in a style (or styles) familiar to those who grew up with Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, and Freddy Martin.  There is a Boomer tendency to make fun of any r&r presented outside of its original context, but not only do I see no harm in that sort of thing, I regard it as a tribute to 1960s r&r songwriting--to the adaptability of the songs.  But it has to be said, and the sooner the better, that I Got You Babe is an epic misfire, at least here.  Had it been arranged for comic effect (with its labored, thudding phrases), that would be another story, but  maybe Sonny Bono's song simply can't function outside of its original presentation.  And I'm tempted to not put Bono on a par with Leiber-Stoller, Burt Bacharach, Carole King, or John and Paul.  Not that Sonny would have cared about my opinion, but...

Meanwhile, what on earth is Wait Till We're Sixty-Five doing here?  I mean, the Stones, the Beatles, Roger Miller, the McCoys, and...On a Clear Day You Can See Forever??  I guess there's logic in that thread--if one is hopelessly stoned.

One of WTVN's DJs (see writing on back jacket) gave I Feel Fine a double "No," crossing out the title, to boot (to emphasize the two "No"s).  Whereas I think the track works surprisingly well in Ellis' treatment.  Unlike Babe, it swings.  The other written notes are a little mysterious: "Med Down (Builds)," for example.  Medium downtempo would be my guess, with a gradual tempo buildup, maybe.  "Med," "Down," "Med Down."  Oh, and "Med Up."  I wonder what this DJ didn't like about I Feel Fine?  The song itself?  The treatment?  We'll never know.

Maybe another DJ felt rebellious and played the track, anyway.

A little inconsistent in style, but I think this collection mostly fits very nicely into the big band-ized r&r category, and, as I said before, I think that counts as a real-life pop genre, though a genre likely regarded as too trivial to merit a heading.  Hey, it's part of the history of 1960s popular music, so it deserves to be documented.  Back in February, 2021, I described a group of '60s big band-ized r&r songs as "discotheque selections in the style of Enoch Light on Command and Si Zentner on RCA."  I guess I had yet to come up with "big band-ized."  Something tells me my label won't catch on, though it works for me.  

Don't forget to swing to these.  Or at least listen to these in a swinging mode.  In the long run, swinging is more attitude than action.  


DOWNLOAD: Big Hits for Swingers--Ray Ellis (Atco 33-187; 1966)


King of the Road

Yesterday

Hang on Sloopy

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

I Feel Fine

Ferry Cross the Mersey

I'll Never Be Lonely Again

Flight to Mexico

Portrait of Jan

1-2-3

I Got You Babe

Wait Till We're Sixty-Five



Lee


11 comments:

Bryan said...

Hey Lee,
Thanks for posting this.
On the Internet Archive, you can locate a nice, not perfect, copy of the liner notes. Maybe you could add this to your download file?
The versions on the Discogs pages are either not the same, or seem not as nice.

Ernie said...

I seem to recall Ray Ellis doing this sort of thing a lot, and for a variety of labels. It's what the labels wanted, so it's what he gave them.

musicman1979 said...

YAY! best known for his work on Billie Holliday's classic "Lady In Satin" album, Ellis is best-known for his work accompanying acts such as Connie Francis, Lena Horne, and The Four Lads. This is going to be a good one! The last record I listened to from him, his contribution to RCA's "Our Man In" series, Our Man On Broadway, was goood, yet it was straight in the pocket of Easy Listening. This is from later in the decade of the '60's, so hopefully the arrangements will be more swingin' with a light go-go touch. Great find! Always enjoy looking for radio station record library discards in my thrift vinyl hunting.

musicman1979 said...

This is a GREAT album! I am pretty certain that it is Phil Bodner playing the flute of "When We're 65." "Portrait of Jan" is the one track that sounds as if it is the most commmercial radio-sounding of the lot--it sounds like a lot of the Arnold Goland Arrangements for Margaret Whiting for London Records around this time. The "King of the Road" arrangement is a real clash of styles--we have Herb Alpert-style trumpet, Billy May-style slurping saxophones and a kicking Big Band in the style of Si Zentner. Good unique twist on "I Feel Fine" one of my favorite early Beatles tunes. "Ferry Cross The Mersey" is probably the one cut on this that sounds most like conventional Easy Listening, yet it is still really good. With the exception of the fuzz guitar and the fuzz-drenched electric guitar and the rowdy saxophone, "Satisfaction" pretty much sounds like how Harry James and his Orchestra would have done it if they had covered it for Dot Records, his label at the time. "Hang On Sloopy" is really good, as is "Yesterday", yet another excellent Easy Listening cover of this certified Beatles classic. I did find copies of this album on E-Bay, and I plan to reprint them here when I have the time. Great find! Thanks for sharing.


PS: Another good one in the same vein is Mel Davis The Big Ones of '66 on RCA Camden, his only LP for the label. And it would also be fun if you put up some rack-job discotheque albums like International A-Go-Go Discotheque by the (probably non-existent) Busby Lewis International Discotheque Orchestra on Diplomat Records. The last Twist record you posted was okay, but not great in my opinion.

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Thanks for your detailed comments. I'll answer as soon as I feel awake, and as soon as my current migraine has lifted! I think that my current lethargy and head pain are a result of our wonky weather. We are not getting anything close to the full force of winter, but we ARE having a constant spring-to-winter-and-back, and clearly my allergies are not coping very well. Nevertheless, I'm thankful that the snowfalls have been light. Later!

Timmy said...

Great stuff! Many thanx............

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Timmy,

My pleasure! I was very pleased with this one.

musicman1979,

Thanks for the background on Ellis--I knew he was a big name, but I didn't take the time to read up on him. Totally agree about "Ferry" as the most "EZ" of the bunch, along with "Yesterday," and "I Feel Fine" is my pick for the best of the bunch. Another great version is coming to this blog in the person of the great Johnny Arthey. Arthey superbly straddles the line between r&r and mood music in a way few other arrangers could have managed. As with Ellis' tracks, there is a sense of big band PLUS easy listening/mood. I'll see if I have that Diplomat LP--it sounds familiar. I think it was one of those tossed-together things with (as you suggest) a fabricated main credit. I have a wonderful Johnny Douglas discotheque LP on RCA Camden, but the "content providers" at Apple and Amazon scooped it up--likely, after BMG decided to leave it to the wolves. I doubt that most streaming services have any more right to much of their material than you or I--it's just that the current copyright act works in their favor and not the bloggers'. What else is new?

musicman1979 said...

I think I may be familar with the Johnny Arthey record you are talking about here. If it's "Instrumental Performances of the Same Exciting Vocal Versions", I had that record in my collection for a while before I purged it for some of the records that I REALLY wanted to add to my collection. I think I liked it, yet I don't think it made much of an impact on me as I hoped. He also did the instrumentation for a '70's Girl Group remake of a Ronettes tune from a group called The Seashells, "The Best Part of Breakin' Up", which did bubble under the Hot 100 in early 1973 and is actually better than the Ronettes original in my opinion.

I know that Ray Ellis also did arrangements for former Drifter Clyde McPhatter's brief period at MGM and also Jimmy Dean's first Pop hit on Columbia in 1958, "Deep Blue Sea" and former Steve Allen singer Jennie Smith's first Columbia single ("My First Mistake") and her lone Columbia and RCA LP's--I only have the 45 from her, yet I double-checked the LP info on E-Bay.

musicman1979 said...

Checking on E-Bay, it looks like the Johnny Douglas LP you are talking about in your last post here is Dance Party Discotheque--I looked up his entries on E-Bay right now.

Lee Hartsfeld said...

That's the one! And I would have loved to rip it, but the streaming services are featuring it. Crud.

Jim said...

I keep meaning to tell you that I enjoyed this download so much I went and sought out the stereo version as well. Your audio is cleaner, but I've always been a fan of the wide-separation of mid-century stereo recordings.It's so much fun to run them through modern surround systems.