Sunday, August 13, 2006

now for some Light relief:

Project 3 presents The Enoch Light Singers:
Dream A Little Dream of Me



from the back cover:
Exciting new winds are blowing through popular music these days. The musical revolution set off by the success of such singing groups as the Beatles, Herman's Hermits and other rock groups has spread out and left its touch on every aspect of contemporary music.

The style and approach originally formulated by small singing groups has been picked up by instrumentalists so that a completely new view of instrumental music has appeared. Musicians playing in dance bands and orchestras, whose concepts had stayed more or less the same since the great days of the big bands, have found a wonderfully freshening excitement in the musical ideas that they hear the small singing groups putting out.

Listening to this development — the progression of influences from the small singing groups to the instrumentalists — Enoch Light perceived at least one direction in which it was leading: The next step, the next progression of influence, would be a large group of singers whose attack and phrasing picked up the drive and intensity of a big band even while it reflected the basic singing styles of the small groups.

That was why he organised and trained the Enoch Light Singers — sixteen superb, well drilled voices, eight girls, eight boys, who phrase and sing in the same way as today's most advanced musicians.

What he undertook was a kind of choral work that had never been attempted before. To get his new group to sing just the way today's musicians play, Light first had them study the musicians' attack on a song very closely. Then he drilled them to phrase in the same way the musicians did, using a fall-off or whatever stylistic devices might occur.

The arrangements of the twelve big hits with which Enoch Light introduces his Singers start from the original small group treatment and are developed through the use of all the elements that have given contemporary music its great popularity. The instrumentation, the styling in both playing and singing, the use of dynamics — all are part of Light's broadened concept.

For Enoch Light, this is one more step in the extraordinarily exploratory direction in which he has always moved. It was Enoch Light who first gave stereo a musical meaning. His records have consistently pointed the way that others have followed, whether he was reaching back into the fun and music of the 20's, popularising the big band cha cha or the bossa nova or the big band discotheque.

With the creation of the Enoch Light Singers, he's still moving with the times - and, as usual, he's out front, pointing the way.

This one's on the Australian Universal Summit Records label.

tracklist
01 I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight
02 I Say A Little Prayer
03 Green Tambourine
04 It Must Be Him
05 Love Is Blue
06 Ode To Billy Joe
07 People Got to Be Free
08 Whoever You Are, I Love You
09 Hello I Love You
10 Dream a Little Dream of Me
11 Harper Valley PTA
12 Lady Willpower

dream on [192kps Undated-196? SRA250 031]

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What a crock of shit. Enoch Light said the Beatles would not last. Well fool you.
I have a version of "Born to be Wild" by the Enoch Light Singers. They sound like they sang it straight off the music sheet with no feeling for the original. Born to be Mild more like it!

5:48 pm, May 11, 2008  

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