This is a little off the beaten track, but may be of some interest to A&M fans.
When Bruce Kimmel was here, we spent some time at PDX's version of Amoeba, looking at used CD and BDs. I picked up an advance promo of "I Feel You" as well as two old Lounge compilations on Capitol. When I got home and played the lounge CDs, I instantly was struck by two tracks--one that sounded "almost" like Walter Wanderley's "Summer Samba" and another that sounded "almost" like Burt's own version of "The Look of Love" off of "Reach Out." In looking at the credits, they were both supposedly by Billy May, and it struck me that they had come from an old Time Life record series from the mid-1970's called "As You Remember Them."
After the huge success of Time-Life's "The Swing Era," which was comprised of newly recorded stereo versions of old swing era hits (along with licensed stereo sides by Glen Gray and Billy May himself), Time Life decided to branch out and do a whole easy listening set, which turned out to be "As You Remember Them." This was a probably gratuitous set, as it included many relatively recent "recreations" from well into the stereo era.
A&M is very well represented on this set, and not to good advantage, unfortunately. While May's instrumental recreations are at least passable, unfortunately this set also included three Brasil '66 recreations featuring a mother-daughter duo subbing for Lani-Janis/Lani-Karen, who sounded atrocious. Even the instrumental backings on the B66 recreations were subpar. The Rhodes on "Fool on the Hill" is completely ridiculous, and I won't even go into the travesty that is "Pretty World."
Anyhoo, just out of curiosity's sake, to revisit this "gem" from my childhood, I just got a mint complete set on eBay (for a whopping $50 for 24 nicely boxed albums in 8 volumes), and I had forgotten one thing about the set: the first volume came with a huge illustrated softcover book which includes a whole section on Herb, including lots of photographs. There's another large section on Burt. That alone might be interesting to some avid collector. There's a mini history of A&M as well as then-recent interviews. Each set also comes with its own booklet which includes interviews with such A&M artists as Herb, Sergio and Burt, as well as tangential figures like the Bergmans.
When Bruce Kimmel was here, we spent some time at PDX's version of Amoeba, looking at used CD and BDs. I picked up an advance promo of "I Feel You" as well as two old Lounge compilations on Capitol. When I got home and played the lounge CDs, I instantly was struck by two tracks--one that sounded "almost" like Walter Wanderley's "Summer Samba" and another that sounded "almost" like Burt's own version of "The Look of Love" off of "Reach Out." In looking at the credits, they were both supposedly by Billy May, and it struck me that they had come from an old Time Life record series from the mid-1970's called "As You Remember Them."
After the huge success of Time-Life's "The Swing Era," which was comprised of newly recorded stereo versions of old swing era hits (along with licensed stereo sides by Glen Gray and Billy May himself), Time Life decided to branch out and do a whole easy listening set, which turned out to be "As You Remember Them." This was a probably gratuitous set, as it included many relatively recent "recreations" from well into the stereo era.
A&M is very well represented on this set, and not to good advantage, unfortunately. While May's instrumental recreations are at least passable, unfortunately this set also included three Brasil '66 recreations featuring a mother-daughter duo subbing for Lani-Janis/Lani-Karen, who sounded atrocious. Even the instrumental backings on the B66 recreations were subpar. The Rhodes on "Fool on the Hill" is completely ridiculous, and I won't even go into the travesty that is "Pretty World."
Anyhoo, just out of curiosity's sake, to revisit this "gem" from my childhood, I just got a mint complete set on eBay (for a whopping $50 for 24 nicely boxed albums in 8 volumes), and I had forgotten one thing about the set: the first volume came with a huge illustrated softcover book which includes a whole section on Herb, including lots of photographs. There's another large section on Burt. That alone might be interesting to some avid collector. There's a mini history of A&M as well as then-recent interviews. Each set also comes with its own booklet which includes interviews with such A&M artists as Herb, Sergio and Burt, as well as tangential figures like the Bergmans.
