George Harrison Dark Horse Remasters

[Harry]

This week has seen the re-release of the albums from George Harrison's Dark Horse years. Included in this bunch of course is THIRTY THREE & 1/3, which includes the tune, "Learning How To Love You", which in the album credits is "dedicated to Herbie Alpert."

The new CD has some extended notes about the songs taken from George Harrison's I, Me, Mine. Here's the part referring to "Learning How To Love You" which I thought would be interesting to us A&M'ers:

LEARNING HOW TO LOVE YOU was for Herb Alpert. He was in the studio in Los Angeles doing a new album and asked me if I'd write him a song. He looks good and although he doesn't often sing his voice is very nice. For my money, the best thing he ever did was the Burt Bacharach song This Guy's In Love With You, so I thought I'd try and write a vocal, something with that sort of mood, but I ended up recording it for myself.

Harry
NP: "Learning How To Love You", George Harrison

 

[Mr Bill]

And all this time we thought that dedication was in response the A&M/DarkHorse lawsuit and related stuff. Interesting...

--Mr Bill

 

[W.B.]

Given the delay in the original release of 33 1/3, it would appear Mr. Harrison's writing "Learning How To Love You" may have preceded the A&M / Dark Horse lawsuits, timeline-wise, thus the dedication to Mr. Alpert may sound plausible.

He also seemed to have a soft spot for the pop side of music to an extent, given his cover of the old Hoagy Carmichael tune "Hong Kong Blues" (from the Bogart/Bacall movie To Have And Have Not) on his 1981 Somewhere In England LP.