There's a slab of four in the middle of the CD, I'm Living Good, Ride My Trouble And Blues Away, Happiness and You Had Your Choice that is absolutely sublime.
When I compared the tape to the record I found it was actually identical, but so much clearer and what an uptempo, uptown production to come outta Memphis!īut the Ovations were particularly revered for the beauty of their harmonies and Louis Williams' exquisite lead vocals on the ballads that were so appropriately chosen for and by them. The sound was often so clear on some of them that for example on They Say, I would have sworn there was added instrumentation. I'd forgotten how fine the original Goldwax 45s were too, admittedly hearing them from the original masters gave me a more impressive re-introduction to them, but Qualifications, I've Gotta Go and Rockin' Chair won me over for the second time since I first shelled out for them. Other big bonuses were the added brass and strings on I Miss You Baby a great Detroit-sounding recording that had only ever sneaked out onto a Japanese CD prior to this improved release. But the set-backs were more than outweighed by the discovery of songs like Let's Stick Together which shows the group at its very best and would have made a great single.
Then there was a basic version of a Sound Of Memphis label recording that we couldn't use, a totally different mix of the first single, Pretty Little Angel and the discovery that one of the singles, Dance Party, was appreciably slower than all the masters we had. Also the Goldwax tapes have a habit of throwing up weird alternate takes and rogue recordings trying to sneak onto the CD.įirstly there were a couple of nice demos that turned out to have been written for the Ovations (one was by George Jackson), not sung by them. What a pleasure it was to be forced to listen to every available Goldwax recording we have on the Ovations! When the project was delegated to me, I wasn't too sure how it would go, as I only knew half a dozen of their recordings in any depth.
0 kommentar(er)
