Waking Up Alone - Paul Williams

[Harry]

This song was running through my brain today, so I dug it out to play it. As most know, the song was originally part of his 1971 album, JUST AN OLD FASHIONED LOVE SONG (SP-4327). My old favorite radio station played "Waking Up Alone" quite a bit back then. 1971 was a ripe time for Paul Williams songs and they were all over the radio. From what I can determine, "Waking Up Alone" was Paul Williams' biggest hit record of his own (A&M 1325-S).

So big in fact that he did it twice. I think the powers that were at A&M must have convinced him a few years later to give the song another shot. Sure, it had gotten some airplay, and got somewhere in the middle of the charts (never making the top 40), but I think it was thought that the song could in fact be a big hit single.

As a result, when a compilation of Paul Williams material was put together at A&M in 1977, there was a new re-recording of the song with a totally different feel. The original is a gentle song, wistfully looking at what could have been. It builds a little in intensity as it's ending with a sax competing with Paul at the fade, but overall, it remains a gentle ballad.

The 1977 re-record was issued as a single (A&M 1961-S) and on the compilation album CLASSICS (A&M SP-4701). I was initially aghast at what I heard when I put that record on thinking it would be the original ballad. This one's hard-driving and up-tempo, quite a different feel. But today, I've sort of come to terms with the re-record as a record in its own right and quite enjoy it.

What do you think?

Original version:


Harry

 

[Harry]

Re-recorded version:



Harry

 

[jfiedler17]

The re-recording is admittedly a really radical departure from the original, but I do like it myself. They're both excellent versions - and equally commercial, too, so it's a shame neither version really did much on the charts. The original version might be slightly superior, I'd agree, but while the re-recording is certainly out of character for him, no doubt - I'm not sure I can think of any other song in his own recorded output off the top of my head that's anywhere near as hard-driving or uptempo - as a guy who never really gravitated at first towards what few records of Williams' I had been exposed to up to that point (though I've always admired his work as a songwriter), I stumbled upon this one in a box of 8-tracks I picked up at a flea market, and it was actually this very re-recording that finally shook up my perceptions of him as a recording artist and made me go, "Wow, okay, his own music actually has more punch and energy to it than I used to give him credit for ..." and made me give his catalog a deeper look. I think both versions rank among his finest moments as a performer. Either way, it's an excellent piece of songwriting, no question.

 

[Dave]

I didn't care for the new one on Paul Williams' Classics, which I think was listed as "New, Re-Recorded Version", thereby warning me, it would be shockingly different from the original... --And from the jarring rhythm & syn-drums, I was right!

But the original 1971 version sounds very "Singer-Songwriter-Songy", given that Paul Williams' melodies had always been quoted as being "lifted from advertising"... That would then be as time wore on, in a word, described as "Lame"...

And somehow to keep early-'70's MOR Top-40 Radio Formats as listener friendly as possible, little wonder that DJ's pushed this version, given that Williams' stuff he'd originally written had been otherwise sung in more interpretive versions by Three Dog Night and The Carpenters...

Still, I prefer the early version--as it does scream early'70's... However, given the quickly out-dated approach, it should equally no surprise, that the up-dated model of 1978, was to also suit later '70's Pop Radio Stations' Demands...

So, summed up, altogether, in what's easily toted as simply a "Quiet, But Determined Policy", suitably defining what was zeitgeist in both, the beginning and the end of the decade...


-- Dave

 

[JMK]

If that keyboard part on the remake had been played on a Wurlitzer Electric Piano (I had one, years before I got my first Rhodes!!), it could have been a Supertramp tune.