Chris Montez on itunes

AM Matt

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I just got all 4 Chris Montez A&M albums downloaded on itunes. Problem is is that "Time After Time" is SUPER LOUD & I had to turned it down to 44.0 decibels instead of 38.5 decibels on all the songs. The songs "The Girl From Ipanema" & "Lil' Red Riding Hood" have tape hissing on both songs if you hear it on headphones!! Did anyone else had that problem?? The other 3 sound great which are "The More I See You", "Foolin' Around" & "Watch What Happens". Too bad that Chris Montez call it quits in early 1969 probably because of poor record sales. By the way, the cover girl of "Time After Time" is former actress Erin Gray ("Buck Rodgers In The 25th Century" & "Silver Spoons") who lives in Hawaii doing yoga exercising. Is Chris still on tour or did he retired?? Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
I’ve had the same problem. Although I listen to them on Spotify, the volume is so loud that it distorts.
 
My Chris Montez collection is a hodge-podge of formats.

SP-4115 THE MORE I SEE YOU / CALL ME - I've had this one on LP for ages. Hardly played, it made a great needle-drop.

SP-4120 TIME AFTER TIME - Another that had been in my collection as an LP for years, and again made a great needle-drop.

SP-4128 FOOLIN' AROUND - This I have as a Japanese CD, POCM-1953. Sounds great.

SP-4157 WATCH WHAT HAPPENS - Another Japanese CD, this time from Vivid Sounds VSCD-735

And recently I spotted a Chris Montez GOLD SERIES disc on either eBay or Discogs for not much money, so I ordered it. Someone here had already made my a digital copy of it years ago, but I thought for a few bucks, I could get a real copy. When it arrived, I realized right away that it was a counterfeit, and not as good as the one I got of Herb Alpert's BEYOND. This one doesn't have any logos other than the Compact Disc logo. The fonts are all wrong. It just screams "fake." Fortunately the seller apologized and refunded my money.

I'm not even sure why I wanted it. Probably just because it's a relic of early-year A&M-ness. And I like the Gold Series comps.
 
I was checking on EBay & found out that Chris made 2 more 45 singles for Paramount Records back in 1971. None of those did not charted in Billboard & Chris Montez call it quits until around 1988 or 1989 that I think I saw Chris on TV during the late Wolfman Jack on TNN (The Nashville Network) made an appearance on the oldies show on Saturday nights. Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
If memory serves, Chris also did a fairly rare 80s album for A&M's Latin division, AyM Discos. I've never seen one.
 
Was it “Cartes De Amor” ?
You can download it on Amazon if so. Latin album from 1983.
 
I believe he is currently touring with several other late 50s/ early 60s acts... or was in the last year.

--Mr. Bill
 
At least his music survived the fire and thankfully I have everything Except the Spanish one from the 80s I checked the samples and it's a very contemporary for it's time sound I should buy the download being it's an A&M Spanish album
 
Cartes de Amor is not a bad album at all. It clearly sounds like Chris, albeit, he's lost some of the high end of his vocal range.

--Mr Bill
 
I wonder if it was Chris’s decision to leave A&M, or he was dropped from the label..? Also wondered the same thing about Julius.
 
I spoke too soon. Here’s an excerpt of an interview I found with Chris.

“I thought I was getting lost in the shuffle with A&M. So I decided to leave. I thought, I can get a contract right away. I'll just go in another company and they'll appreciate it. But it didn't work out that way. Not at all.”
 
Doing some more investigating on the AyM Discos album by Chris Montez, it appears that it's officially called CARTAS DE AMOR. Note the two 'a's in the first word. It appears all over the web as "Cartes". I think this is the real artwork, not what Amazon displays.

3356

As our friend Bobberman noted, this sounds just like it belongs right in with all of the other AyM product that I've heard, and I like what I've heard. The album is available for download from Amazon. The problem with the download there (other than it's an mp3) is that the track indexing isn't quite right. Most tracks end with a tiny micro-second of the next track. So as a result, each track after the first starts just a hair upcut.

Undaunted, I placed each track in Audacity, placed the "next" track behind it, carefully located the join points, smoothed the join if necessary, and then separated them properly and wrote them back out. This all seemed familiar from my days with a CD Recorder that had "automatic track indexing". The machine would wait through silence and when it detected sound, it would index to the next track. But as a result, when you listened to an individual track, you'd hear that slight sound from the next track at the end, and the starts would be upcut a bit.

Apparently, the files on Amazon were in fact recorded from an LP themselves. There are some telltale signs, like sibilance distortion in a few spots, but until a real LP shows up somewhere, this will do.
 
Chris Montez Cartas de Amor

Songs
:
• Amor (Montez, Gamini, Anahi)
• Pensando (Montez, Gamini, Anahi)
• Depende de Ti (Montez, Gamini, Anahi)
• Nunca Pense (Montez, Gamini, Anahi)
• Cartas de Amor (Heyman, Young, Anahi)
• Lo Nuestro (Montez, Gamini, Anahi)
• Necesito Saber (Montez, Gamini, Anahi)
• Mi Gran Amor (Montez, Gamini, Anahi)
• Todo es Mejor (Montez, Anahi)
• Sube a Mi Barco (Montez, Anahi)
• Sin Ti (Montez, Gamini, Anahi)

© 1983 AYM Records, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Under Lyrics Attach: All Selection © 1983 Zoraida Music (ASCAP) except “Cartas de Amor” ©1972 Famous Music (ASCAP)
(AYM SP-30003)
 
Too bad Chris was probably not that successful on the Latin imprint. I'm not latin, but honestly the cover art just doesn't look like much to me.

From what I've read....Other AyM Discos albums included Herb Alpert himself released three on the imprint, though two were just his instrumental albums with Spanish titles. His NOCHE DE AMOR was a special case of his BLOW YOUR OWN HORN album with two tracks different from the standard album. Wife Lani Hall released three of these AyM Discos albums in Spanish and were quite well-received in the Latin community. Other artists in the series were Maria Conchita Alonso and Lunna.

I believe Vicki Carr was successful in recording Spanish language albums for the Latin market on Columbia.
 
Well, the title is CARTAS DE AMOR, which translates to LOVE LETTERS, so I can kind-of see what they were going for, but you're right, it's not really very appealing to me as cover art.
 
Too bad Chris was probably not that successful on the Latin imprint. I'm not latin, but honestly the cover art just doesn't look like much to me.

From what I've read....Other AyM Discos albums included Herb Alpert himself released three on the imprint, though two were just his instrumental albums with Spanish titles. His NOCHE DE AMOR was a special case of his BLOW YOUR OWN HORN album with two tracks different from the standard album. Wife Lani Hall released three of these AyM Discos albums in Spanish and were quite well-received in the Latin community. Other artists in the series were Maria Conchita Alonso and Lunna.

I believe Vicki Carr was successful in recording Spanish language albums for the Latin market on Columbia.

Oh, and don't forget probably among the earliest recordings for the Latin market on A&M, The Sandpipers with their SPANISH ALBUM, and later, SECOND SPANISH ALBUM.
 
I hear Chris Montez on AM radio now and then when I am in my car and get bored with the FM. I do not remember him getting much airplay when I was young but I did know of him from the album sleeves for A&M albums that I had bought by Brasil'66 and Herb Alpert(all of which I still have on vinyl). The songs that I hear are the quiet ones and not the uptempo of "Let's Dance" which was the most successful of his singles from what I have read but was not for A&M Records.
 
I just heard Chris's "The More I See You" as bump music on The Michael Berry Show, carried locally in Waco on 1230 AM...

--Mr Bill
 
And Chris returned for one more A&M album in the 80s on the AyM label. I believe Herb was involved on that project, too.
 
And Chris returned for one more A&M album in the 80s on the AyM label. I believe Herb was involved on that project, too.
And a really good one, too. CARTAS DE AMOR was the third catalog number on AyM, SP 30003. Produced by Jose Quintana, associate producer was Bill Cuomo, with Herb Alpert listed as executive producer.

There was a brief time when the digital files for this album were available through Amazon. They've been removed. They were apparently a needledrop from the LP, recorded on a home recorder in automatic mode. That was identifiable when a tiny snippet of the "next" track was included as part of the track that preceded it. The album was remains so hard to find, that I bought the files anyway, and re-edited them into proper track indexing. Our Steve S. provided me with nice scans of his LP. This was the cover:

CARTAS DE AMOR_1.jpgCARTAS DE AMOR_2.jpg

The album fits well with the 80s albums that AyM Records was releasing with that great Jose Quintana production. I'm still looking for a real copy.

The credits on the innersleeve:

CARTAS DE AMOR_Credits.jpg
 
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Sadly I waited too long to get this album Digitally so the search for a clean copy and eventual needledrop continues
 
Moved a few Chris Montez posts to this thread, where they seem to belong. For the curious, I've uploaded the title track of CARTAS DE AMOR to YouTube.

 
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