🎵 AotW AOTW: Paul Williams - CLASSICS (SP-4701)

[LPJim]

Paul Williams
CLASSICS
A&M SP-4701

TRACKS:

Evergreen (Love Theme from 'A Star is Born')
I Won't Last a Day Without You
Loneliness
Old Fashioned Love Song
Rainy Days & Mondays

That's Enough For Me
Waking Up Alone
We've Only Just Begun
With One More Look at You
You & Me Against the World
Correct album order:

Side One:
Waking Up Alone (newly recorded version)
You And Me Against The World
We've Only Just Begun
Loneliness
Evergreen

Side Two:
An Old Fashioned Love Song
With One More Look At You
That's Enough For Me
Rainy Days And Mondays
I Won't Last A Day Without You





JB

 

[Mike Blakesley]

Isn't this the album where some of the songs were re-recorded?

I always enjoyed Paul W.'s recordings of his uptempo songs more than his ballads. "Out in the Country," "Life Goes On," "Old Fashioned Love Song," "Sunday," "California Roses," and "Where Do We Go From Here" were all excellent. Other artists did much better work on his ballads, IMHO. Therefore, this album was not exactly classic in my book.

 

[Harry]

My copy of this has the track listing as follows:

Side One:
Waking Up Alone (newly recorded version)
You And Me Against The World
We've Only Just Begun
Loneliness
Evergreen

Side Two:
An Old Fashioned Love Song
With One More Look At You
That's Enough For Me
Rainy Days And Mondays
I Won't Last A Day Without You

I think the only thing re-recorded was "Waking Up Alone" which on this album features a hard-driving beat on the song, as opposed to the soft guitar on the original.

My copy is a white-label promo.

Harry

 

[Mr Bill]

Just added the image and text formatting...

I'll check the song sequence on my copy when I get home (I believe I own a white label promo as well).

--Mr Bill

 

[Steven J. Gross]

I am a huge Paul Williams fan. What a great artist he is!

 

[Dave]

Too predictable a set, but basically all that can be expected, from someone known better as a songwriter, of whom only his first two or three albums would really be best-recommended, altogether...

Only worthy items may be the re-recording of "Waking Up Alone", though the drum-machine added makes you wish how, other than a curio, it had gotten left alone and "With One More Look At You", culled from the same sessions; which I believe "Evergreen (Love Theme From A STAR IS BORN)", may have been, too...



Dave

 

[Mr Bill]

Well, in searching for my copy I found my LPs had been jumbled up during my absence to Japan and I could not find it to check the sequencing.*

My favorite Williams efforts are his A&M LPs Just An Old-Fashioned Love Song and his soundtrack for Phantom of the Paradise (which has inspried many "Beef" LP cover spoofs in Steve Hoffman's site). It could be argued Williams rode to fame on Carpenters' coattails, but I think his talents would have brought him to the top even if RC hadn't recorded any of his tunes...

--Mr Bill
*for those of you wondering how that's possible that I haven't perused my LP collection since before I went to Japan, please understand I haven't had a working turntable in about 17 years... soon after I married Mrs Bill, my turntable broke and I never had the $ to get a new one. For Christmas one year not too long ago, my wife (with Neil's assistance)ordered one off eBay, but the hook that holds the cartridge in place was broken so I am still without a turntable (which, quite frankly, sucks ass)

 

[A&Mguyfromwayback]

It could be argued Williams rode to fame on Carpenters' coattails, but I think his talents would have brought him to the top even if RC hadn't recorded any of his tunes...

As a songwriter for other artists , that's kind of the point - you WANT to ride to fame on someone's coattails.....

 

[Mike Blakesley]

Yeah - I always kind of figured Paul's records were as much "professional demos" as anything.

I do think it was a mistake for him to record the tunes the Carpenters did after they had hits with them....probably sold a few more records for him, but his versions pale next to theirs of course.

 

[Harry]

Something or other led me to this CLASSICS album today. The copy I have of the LP is one that came from the radio station. It's a promo with a hole in the jacket and a white label.

What fooled me is that the cover has a yellowish sticker affixed to the upper left with a red Flair pen writing on it. And I now remember where this one came from. I only worked at two different jobs in radio, bit that last and longest job had my company buying up more radio stations, so in addition to the long-held soft AC that I worked at for years, there was our AM nostalgia station, then we acquired WMMR, a legendary rocker in the market, and then we converted a classical music station to a rock-adult format that morphed through several formats including smooth jazz.

So as these stations went through their record libraries, cleaning things out, I was often lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce on the pile. The station that had the big labels on the upper left was WMMR. All of the records I grabbed from their pile had usually the first three letter of the act's last name or group name, so they could be filed properly in the library. This one has a big WIL there, for Williams, but what never occurred to me when I grabbed it, was - what the heck was this record doing in a hard rock station's library anyway?

And, playing it today, I found that the LP inside the somewhat marred cover, is in fact, a mint piece of vinyl, still in its original innersleeve, probably untouched by anyone, ever, until I pulled it out today. This LP was dead quiet, which is a good thing for this album with a lot of soft passages. So I made a nice needledrop of the songs adding them to my digital library. I'll write it out to a CD tomorrow.

Looking back at the start of this thread, I think I've figured out that LPJim, when he started the thread, must have grabbed the track list from the Both Sides Now website, since they list tracks in alphabetical order when they didn't have the actual albums. The order that I posted was the standard track list for all LPs. There were a couple of tape releases with somewhat jumbled order, but not alphabetical as listed in that original post.

I've come to REALLY like the new up-tempo version of "Waking Up Alone" that was re-recorded for this album, and yet I still love the original too. Nice to have both.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

If I was to create my own personal "best of Paul Williams" it would vary quite a bit from what's on that album. However I'm sure a lot of it was picked based on the fame of the titles, rather than whether it's really Paul's best work.

My favorite album of his is Life Goes On, and while I do like his 'heartfelt' balladry, I tend to like his uptempo songs a lot, especially the ones on that album. I tend not to like the some of ballads that were made more famous by other artists, especially the Carpenters, since there is no topping those versions.

Waking Up Alone
That's Enough for Me
The Lady is Waiting
The Family of Man
She Sings For Free
Out in the Country
Life Goes On
Park Avenue
That Lucky Old Sun
My Love and I
Where Do I Go From Here

 

[Nemily]

Something or other led me to this CLASSICS album today. The copy I have of the LP is one that came from the radio station. It's a promo with a hole in the jacket and a white label.

What fooled me is that the cover has a yellowish sticker affixed to the upper left with a red Flair pen writing on it. And I now remember where this one came from. I only worked at two different jobs in radio, bit that last and longest job had my company buying up more radio stations, so in addition to the long-held soft AC that I worked at for years, there was our AM nostalgia station, then we acquired WMMR, a legendary rocker in the market, and then we converted a classical music station to a rock-adult format that morphed through several formats including smooth jazz.

So as these stations went through their record libraries, cleaning things out, I was often lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce on the pile. The station that had the big labels on the upper left was WMMR. All of the records I grabbed from their pile had usually the first three letter of the act's last name or group name, so they could be filed properly in the library. This one has a big WIL there, for Williams, but what never occurred to me when I grabbed it, was - what the heck was this record doing in a hard rock station's library anyway?

@Harry Your rummaging through LPs story at 93.3 WMMR fascinates me. WMMR is the rock station of my generation

I got to thinking about the Williams connection to WMMR. Although his most famous association has got to be Carpenters, a couple of his songs ended up being released in the rock genre by Three Dog Night (AOFLS, Out In The Country and The Family of Man).

Then a long shot guess is he wrote two love songs that were completely enveloped by the rock themed second make of A Star is Born in 1976. They are With One More Look At You and Evergreen. So maybe one of these two reasons is why MMR had the LP (yet never played it).

One of my favorite Paul Williams vocals is not on this LP, is Traveling Boy. I like the way he sings it (although now I am wondering how a cover of this song didn’t make my Art Garfunkel playlist). The two vocals I love by Paul that are on this LP are With One More Look At You and An Old Fashioned Love Song. The latter, of course Three Dog Night made it their own, but there is something vaudeville-esque about Williams' arrangement that I can’t help but enjoy.

 

[Harry]

Here's the rare mono mix of the lead track from CLASSICS, "Waking Up Alone", taken from the promotional 45.