🎵 AotW Classics Chris Montez THE MORE I SEE YOU SP-4115

What is your favorite track?

  • The More I See You

    Votes: 5 29.4%
  • Fly Me To The Moon

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • The Shadow Of Your Smile

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The Very Thought Of You

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • One Note Samba

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • There Will Never Be Another You

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • Call Me

    Votes: 5 29.4%
  • Day By Day

    Votes: 3 17.6%
  • How High The Moon

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • Hey Baby

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • You, I Love You

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Little White Lies

    Votes: 1 5.9%

  • Total voters
    17

Harry

Charter A&M Corner Member
Staff member
Site Admin
Chris Montez
THE MORE I SEE YOU/CALL ME

A&M SP-4115

sp4115.jpg


Previously available on CD from Japan

Tracks:

Side One
1.*The More I See You (Warren-Gordon) 2:45
2. Fly Me To The Moon (Bart Howard) 2:47
3. The Shadow Of Your Smile (Mandel-Webster) 2:21
4. The Very Thought Of You (Ray Nobel) 2:05
5. One Note Samba (Jobim-Mendonca) 2:07
6. There Will Never Be Another You (Warren-Gordon) 2:51

Side Two
1.*Call Me (Tony Hatch) 2:38
2. Day By Day (Cahn-Stordahl-Weston) 2:16
3. How High The Moon (Hamilton-Lewis) 1:48
4.*Hey Baby (Cobb-Channel) 2:42
5. You, I Love You (Chris Montez) 2:07
6. Little White Lies (W. Donaldson) 2:02

*ARRANGED BY HERB ALPERT

PRODUCED BY *HERB ALPERT & TOMMY LiPUMA
ENGINEERED BY LARRY LEVINE, GOLD STAR
COVER PHOTO BY FRED POORE
ALBUM DESIGNED BY PETER WHORF GRAPHICS


Liner Notes:

Dear Aunt Myrtle:

They love Chris Montez like a son down at Herbie's place on Sunset Strip. Well, he's so damn decent, you know; so very agreeable and just a nice young guy.

Herbie (Alpert--he has a Grammy factory) and Jerry Moss don't sign people they don't like. That's why A & M is sort of a family label, as well as being rich and all that. So here's Chris Montez, like anyone's favorite child, grinning and polite and shy, making hit records as well as being nice.

Some kids have all the luck...

I first saw the boy on a Beatle tour in Europe, about three hundred years ago and he was good even then. Then I heard this melodious girl's voice singing a pretty song named "Call Me" and thought the jockey said "Miss Montez" and I said to myself -- like you do when you're alone -- "I didn't know she was still around," not having seen her since those old movies with Jon Hall.

Of course, it turns out to be Chris Montez, and we all know he's a male, but still it gives he-man disc jockeys something to laugh about even if they do lacquer their hair.

Also, "Call Me" was a hit and that's a help.

Chris Montez is a very good performer. He has charm, a great sense of music and he started early enough to learn the trade in the middle years of rock 'n' roll when he, in line with everyone else, was recording numbers like: "She's My Rocking Baby."

Now, with many tours, several hits (remember "Let's Dance," a million seller and British silver disc winner?), a London Palladium appearance and substantial song-writing experience behind him, he has made a very delightful album for these light, bright evenings.

We hope you enjoy it.

Derek Taylor
 
The thing that made Chris Montez lps enjoyable was the arrangements. Chris hardly had an ideal voice, but with great arrangements, I think my mailman could make a good album. I always wondered if any members of Baja or TJB played on the Montez records? I'll vote for DAY BY DAY (yeah, the piano IS great). There are 4 other excellent tunes here... THE MORE I SEE YOU, THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER YOU, THE VERY THOUGHT OF YOU and CALL ME. A pretty good first lp for Chris Montez.
 
I always thought had Richie Valens lived he would've made this kind of an album...

It's a good, sort of MOR-type of Pop and of course hard to choose between the two titles this album is under ("The More I See You", "Call Me") which were receiving a lot of airplay to the most current day that Oldies Radio had been playing Chris Montez (And doesn't anymore; wonder why?)...

I picked "There Will Never Be Another You", though Chris does a fairly decent job with "One Note Samba", "Fly Me To The Moon" (which a group The Snadpipers would later do, and in Spanish, Chris' native tongue) and the silhouette-y "The Shadow Of Your Smile" and an almost hiccup-y interpretation of "How High The Moon", (Well, would be nice if it really was) while Bruce Channel's "Hey, Baby" is also worthy of being a hit by Montez with Herb's production and backing, like on all the songs here perfectly framing around his voice...

And it helps that this outing, along with a few non-LP singles, "Go Head On" and "You Can Hurt The One You Love" was not destined to be a one-shot; Chris became ever-lasting...!



Dave
 
According to Steve S. in the coincidental other thread this past week:

According to session notes, it was recorded on 2/10/66, The More I See You featured Herb Alpert on trumpet, Chuck Berghofer on bass, Pete Jolly on piano, John Pisano on guitar, Nick Ceroli on drums and Julius Wechter on marimba (vibes). Also recorded in that session was Hey, Baby.

It's funny how that thread came up just days before this thread was due.

Harry
 
Montez+Jpn+CD1.jpg

POCM-1951 Japanese CD back cover on booklet.

Montez+Jpn+CD.jpg

POCM-1951 Japanese CD.

Montez+8524.jpg

A&M 8524-S The More I See You b/w There Will Never Be Another You Forget Me Nots re-issue 45.

Montez+8576.jpg

A&M 8576-S Call Me b/w Because Of You Forget Me Nots re-issue 45.

Recording Session Notes:

9/22/65 - Gold Star Recording Studios - Call Me - Herb Alpert, Nick Ceroli - drums, John Pisano - guitar, Julius Wechter - marimba, Pete Jolly - piano, Donald Peake - guitar, Chuck Berghofer - bass.

2/10/66 - Gold Star Recording Studios - The More I See You, Hey, Baby - Herb Alpert - trumpet, Nick Ceroli - drums, John Pisano - guitar, Julius Wechter - marimba, Pete Jolly - piano, Chuck Berghofer - bass.

No further info for this album.
 
Chris' recording of "The More I See You" has the dubious distinction of appearing in the movie FRANTIC with Harrison Ford.

There's a scene where Harrison Ford and Emanuelle Seigner go into a club and this song is playing. The young lady mentions that she can't stand the old fogey music!

Harry
 
I've recently needle-dropped my copy of Chris' first album, THE MORE I SEE YOU / CALL ME, and as sometimes happens, Windows Media Player reached out to an Internet database to fill in the details and provide a picture. This is the picture it came up with:

upload_2018-7-21_16-0-29.png

Notice that it doesn't contain the title of "Call Me" underneath "The More I See You", nor is that title included in the list of album songs. My copy contains the "Call Me" title, but is also stereo - this one pictured is a mono version (LP 115). Was it normal for the mono version of this title to not have "Call Me" on its cover?

Discogs lists two different LP 115s, bit only has pictures of one, and that includes "Call Me".

Meanwhile, why is the song "Call Me" in fake stereo? Was it a mono single added to the album after some pressings? Enquiring minds want to know!
 
I'm listening to my Chris Montez CD "Call Me The A&M years" and I notice Call me on that is in fake stereo too now like You Harry I'm Wondering the same thing the only copy of "The More I see you" I could get was mono and it's been needledropped to CD and it sounds great so looks like something is up I don't remember ever seeing a copy of this LP without call me listed on the cover so this might be a rare collectable there if it exists
 
I don't trust those databases to have correct cover art--I've got about 55,000+ tracks on my sever and I'd say with at least a third of the albums, maybe closer to half, the cover art had to be corrected or improved. That cover above looks like something a CD reissue would have had in some country.

Even with album data (title, tracks, year, artist/band name, etc.), I'm always having to change what is downloaded, and that includes misspellings, capitalization (some are too lazy to use the shift key :rolleyes: ), incorrect data (some use the year a reissue was released, vs. the original recording date), even wrong tracks listed. Most of these are mostly correct but often need a little massaging to be up to my standards. With artist/band names, especially, it creates too many entries in music players if one is listed as Huey Lewis, Huey Lewis & The News and Huey Lewis and The News, for instance--that makes one artist show up as three separate ones. (I cheat on a few...I mean, seriously, do I need to really care if it's Herb Alpert' Tijuana Brass or Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass? No.)

The databases are all pretty sloppy. The freedb used to be the absolute worst; I don't even know (or care) if it exists anymore, as I stopped using it 10 years ago. MP3Tag can use Discogs--it gets close enough to minimize or even eliminate the extra work I have to do. Not perfect but eh, what am I going to do? Even Gracenote isn't perfect, and they are a very pricey pay-to-play database service. Some music players pull from AllMusic (under license), and some of their data is as flawed as their reviews.

So yeah, no. Don't chase a dead horse on this one.
 
Wasn't planning to do much chasing, I just wondered if there was perhaps an early version of the album that didn't have "Call Me" on it, and then it perhaps was added after being a hit single, hence the mono recording turned into fake stereo. That kind of stuff was pretty common back then.
 
"Call Me" was on the album originally. It was actually recorded at RCA, not Gold Star or Sunset Sound, and Bruce Botnick at Sunset mixed these for the mono and stereo albums. Rather than try to leave an odd stereo mix for "Call Me" on the stereo album, Botnick used the mono mix in fake stereo.
 
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I'm pretty sure you can hear Herb doing some background vocals on "The More I See You" (during the la-las).
You can clearly hear Herb saying "Yeah Chris!" on "Call Me" in the channel with the hand clapping in the DCC version (which is the only stereo version of the track--Herb was coaching Chris on the vocals).
 
"Call Me" was on the album originally. It was actually recorded at RCA, not Gold Star or Sunset Sound, and Bruce Botnick at Sunset mixed these for the mono and stereo albums. Rather than try to leave an odd stereo mix for "Call Me" on the stereo album, Botnick used the mono mix in fake stereo.
That pretty much answers it sadly Fake stereo was a huge Fad back then.
 
That pretty much answers it sadly Fake stereo was a huge Fad back then.
For the stereo album, Botnick likely had the choice to leave it in mono, create fake stereo, or try to recreate the mix in stereo. Parts of the recording (like the crowd and glass clinking noises) were "flown in" when the original mono mix was made, and weren't on the multitrack in other words, as those were a product of the recording as done at RCA. (Bruce also had to liven up the RCA recording as it was dull and lifeless as recorded.) That is why these noises do not appear on the DCC version.

Can't do a sample on YouTube due to copyright. If I can do it another way, I'll post it here. The DCC released All-Time Greatest Hits included new mixes for the A&M tracks since the mono and stereo LP mixes were discarded or lost at the time, and the only stereo version existing was the tape sent to the record club (which I guess had added reverb).
 
Chris' recording of "The More I See You" has the dubious distinction of appearing in the movie FRANTIC with Harrison Ford.

There's a scene where Harrison Ford and Emanuelle Seigner go into a club and this song is playing. The young lady mentions that she can't stand the old fogey music!

Harry
OLD FOGEY MUSIC??? Seriously! Who is that young whippersnapper Calling Old ???? LOL. By the way Thanks for reopening this thread as this album is one of my treasured favorites and I'm glad I got to participate and give my input
 
I like this LP from beginning to end. "The More I See You" and "Call Me" would be my two top tracks. A nice listen anytime. And in general, I love every Chris Montez A&M LP that got issued, and the 45 RPM singles too.
 
I recently added my neeedledrop CD of this Chris montez classic to my laptop Megamix via the ripper/ burner and lo and behold the cover art and the song titles appeared right away I didn't have to type in any info And that is quite a rarity for CD neeedledrop from vinyl
 
I'm pretty sure you can hear Herb doing some background vocals on "The More I See You" (during the la-las).
Herb is all over Chris' background vocals. A&M knew what they were doing with Chris Montez. More of "Let's Dance" wouldn't have made him as big an attraction as he became at A&M. After a couple of albums, though, they needed a change up, and what followed was, to me, pretty much the same. That's why his career flamed out.
 
He did release a few albums post-A&M (two for CBS, one for A&M International) but I don't think they had the following of his earlier records.

I'm looking forward to eventually seeing this:

 
Chris Montez
THE MORE I SEE YOU/CALL ME

A&M SP-4115

sp4115.jpg


Previously available on CD from Japan

Tracks:

Side One
1.*The More I See You (Warren-Gordon) 2:45
2. Fly Me To The Moon (Bart Howard) 2:47
3. The Shadow Of Your Smile (Mandel-Webster) 2:21
4. The Very Thought Of You (Ray Nobel) 2:05
5. One Note Samba (Jobim-Mendonca) 2:07
6. There Will Never Be Another You (Warren-Gordon) 2:51

Side Two
1.*Call Me (Tony Hatch) 2:38
2. Day By Day (Cahn-Stordahl-Weston) 2:16
3. How High The Moon (Hamilton-Lewis) 1:48
4.*Hey Baby (Cobb-Channel) 2:42
5. You, I Love You (Chris Montez) 2:07
6. Little White Lies (W. Donaldson) 2:02

*ARRANGED BY HERB ALPERT

PRODUCED BY *HERB ALPERT & TOMMY LiPUMA
ENGINEERED BY LARRY LEVINE, GOLD STAR
COVER PHOTO BY FRED POORE
ALBUM DESIGNED BY PETER WHORF GRAPHICS


Liner Notes:

Dear Aunt Myrtle:

They love Chris Montez like a son down at Herbie's place on Sunset Strip. Well, he's so damn decent, you know; so very agreeable and just a nice young guy.

Herbie (Alpert--he has a Grammy factory) and Jerry Moss don't sign people they don't like. That's why A & M is sort of a family label, as well as being rich and all that. So here's Chris Montez, like anyone's favorite child, grinning and polite and shy, making hit records as well as being nice.

Some kids have all the luck...

I first saw the boy on a Beatle tour in Europe, about three hundred years ago and he was good even then. Then I heard this melodious girl's voice singing a pretty song named "Call Me" and thought the jockey said "Miss Montez" and I said to myself -- like you do when you're alone -- "I didn't know she was still around," not having seen her since those old movies with Jon Hall.

Of course, it turns out to be Chris Montez, and we all know he's a male, but still it gives he-man disc jockeys something to laugh about even if they do lacquer their hair.

Also, "Call Me" was a hit and that's a help.

Chris Montez is a very good performer. He has charm, a great sense of music and he started early enough to learn the trade in the middle years of rock 'n' roll when he, in line with everyone else, was recording numbers like: "She's My Rocking Baby."

Now, with many tours, several hits (remember "Let's Dance," a million seller and British silver disc winner?), a London Palladium appearance and substantial song-writing experience behind him, he has made a very delightful album for these light, bright evenings.

We hope you enjoy it.

Derek Taylor
I hear several Chris Montez songs on an AM station here in Norfolk VA now and then. "The More I See You" is the most commonly played followed by "Time After Time" and occasionally "Call Me." His song "Let's Dance also shows up.
 
Yep. Those are the ones that generally show up if a Chris Montez song is going to be played.
 
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