Well, dear readers, how can it be Friday when it was just Monday? And how can we be heading into the last of April? I tell you, this week flew by, like a gazelle shooting pool. In any case, here we are on a Friday and Friday shall be my day, a flying high day, not a wonder why day, not a sit and cry day, it will be a time is nigh day and perhaps even a peanut butter pie day. What am I, Ogden Nash all of a sudden? Didn’t Ogden Nash do that sort of thing? Or am I misremembering what Ogden Nash did? Perhaps today will be an Ogden Nash day, let’s throw a bash day, a make some cash day, a wear a sash day, a broad and brash day, a watching MASH day – really, someone stop me right this minute or I’ll have to rhyme the entire notes and we can’t have that, now can we? Last night, I was, for various reasons (well one reason, actually) listening to Unsung Musicals, and album I recorded back in 1993 (I think). I hadn’t heard it in years and I must say hearing it again was really quite delightful. It sounds surprisingly good, the band is terrific, and those singers – they were a generation of unique and interesting voices, the kind that are disappearing and being replaced by Broadway power belters and voices that are too similar-sounding. As I listened, I remembered how much fun it was to put the album together, from choosing the songs, to choosing the singers (it was my first time with several of them), to working with the very gifted musical director, Tom Fay, to Larry Moore’s wonderful orchestrations, to Niki Harris’s fantastic choreography and taps on the first track (Smile), to the exuberant version of Sherry (it’s what prompted me to pull out the CD – I’d just heard the studio cast album with Nathan Lane and Carol Burnett doing that song, and it just really seemed a little dull to me and I wanted to see how ours fared in comparison and in my opinion there is no comparison – Baranski and Freeman hit it out of the park). It was the CD that introduced Guy Haines to the world and the story of that is quite amusingly amusing.
A singer I’d known for quite some time and who’d already appeared on one of my albums, brought the song Her Laughter In My Life to me, wanting to sing it. I heard the song, loved it, and we gave it a very simple arrangement – just piano, guitar, and cello, bass, and some percussion, I think. It’s a beautiful Maltby and Shire song with a very simple sentiment. I told the singer that that was the way I was going to go with the arrangement and told him to start thinking about doing the song very simply with no showing off. Come the day of the session – we do take one – the singer belts it out to the second balcony. I go in and tell him it’s a simple song with a simple and beautiful sentiment and to just do it as simply as possible. He tells me he understands. Take two – same as take one. I go in and tell him even simpler – like just sing the song and let the song do the work. Take three – same as takes one and two. I go in and tell him to imagine he’s singing this to the love of his life and she’s face to face with him. Take four – too big, too loud, too bombastic. I go in and tell him that if he sang like that to someone who was face to face with him that the someone would knock him to the ground. Take five, six, seven, eight, and nine – too big, too loud, too bombastic. However, I felt we’d gone about as fer as we could go and I wrapped the session, telling the singer that I thought we had enough to comp a vocal together.
The singer called my at midnight (I was flying back to LA the next morning), begging me to leave the tape in New York for a few more hours (it was going to be Fed Exed to LA at noon) – he totally understood what I’d been trying to get him to do, and he wanted to do one more take so he could get it right. I told him the tape had to go out by three, but that if he could book an hour in the studio to go for it. He did, he did what turned out to be five more takes (for a total of fourteen, the most I’ve ever done with any singer – by far). Came the mix. I hear the five new takes – they’re the same as the other nine takes, despite the fact that he told me he’d nailed it. I then spend two hours comping the vocal from the fourteen tracks – using one line from one take, a word from another, a syllable from another, another line from another, and on and on. I finally finish and we play back the comped vocal. And it’s too big, too loud, too bombastic and not good. I call the singer and tell him I’ve worked as hard as I can but that neither he nor I will be happy if I put the performance on the album. He’s disappointed, of course, but he knows it’s my decision. At that point, I had to decide whether to just omit the song entirely or have another singer do it. I didn’t want to omit the song entirely, and there was only one singer I knew that I could count on to come into the studio on a moment’s notice and do the song – and that was my close personal friend Guy Haines, who’d actually never sung on an album before, as he was a rabid tennis player. Amazingly, Guy was there instantly and did his vocal – two takes and done. I comped the two takes and we saved the song, because Guy doesn’t know how to sing too big, too loud, or too bombastic. And that is how Guy Haines was born as a recording artist.
The other story I love from that session was doing the mix of Disneyland. In those days, Vinnie and I had a funky relationship because I was inarticulate and he was used to doing what he did, and I was constantly saying things like “You’re subverting the sound” “Why are you pushing those buttons and turning those knobs, turn THESE buttons and THESE knobs” “I don’t like the sound” and all that kind of stuff. We were still finding “our” sound. All the other mixes had gone very well and I finally felt we were on our way to smoother roads, mix-wise. And then came Disneyland. Normally, he’d spend a couple of hours getting a mix up and ready for me to listen to. In those early days, I was always in the room during that, and always opening my big trap, which I learned not to do. I learned to give him his two hours, and then I’d listen to it and finesse from there. Well, it took him about three hours to get a Disneyland mix up, and I kept interrupting him because I just didn’t like what I was hearing. It went on and on. And then, when he finally had the mix, I began to nitpick it, and normally that takes an hour or so – after five hours I was still nitpicking and nitpicking and nitpicking. Finally, after hour six, we had it – it was great, it was perfect, it was just what I wanted. I said that I had to go quickly use the restroom and that when I got back we’d print the mix. I went to the restroom. I was standing there doing my business when the lights went out – just for about four seconds – then they came back on. I got a very bad feeling, finished what I was doing, washed my hands, and came back to the booth. I looked at Vinnie and said, “I hope that what I think just happened didn’t happen.” He said it did happen. There’d been a four-second power outage. The mix was gone. If only we’d printed before I’d gone to the bathroom. Vinnie couldn’t remember the last time he’d “saved.” He called up the mix and began playing it. The faders on the board just sat there, not moving the way they were when we’d finished our final mix. I looked at Vinnie and, pointing at the faders, said, “LOOK AT THEM – THEY’RE SITTING THERE LIKE JEWS AFTER A BIG MEAL.” I was livid. I stormed out of the room and found the woman who ran the studio and screamed at her and accused her of eating a power cable. Thinking back on it, it’s really pretty funny, but at the time it really wasn’t funny at all. My tirade became a thing of legend at the studio. Vinnie got the mix as close to what it had been as he could and even though I knew it wasn’t as good as it had been, we had to move on. Years later, I included Disneyland as a hidden track on Michelle Nicastro’s On My Own CD – and there we got the mix perfect – and it took all of one hour to do because by that time we had what we did down pat.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because it’s Friday and Friday shall be my day, a watching Bridge on the River Kwai day, or a ham on rye day.
I had a wonderful luncheon yesterday with two lovely ladies from MGM Music – one of them is a long-time friend of my friend, Walter Willison, and we had a lot of fun talking about the old days. This lady also used to be Tammy Grimes’ assistant, and that was fun to hear those stories, too. It was a lovelier than lovely two hours. I also got some nice packages in the mail, had some long telephonic calls, and attempted to view the final Kevin and Sean show DVD – which somehow hadn’t transferred correctly – in fact, it was worse than a VHS and I had to have a very strong and long conversation with the editor, who finally figured out what had happened. He’ll make it right today.
Today, I have to do the long jog, as I’ve had two days off and really miss doing it, and then I have some errands and whatnot to do, and then I’ll be picking up some Thai food because Friday is a Thai day, and I’ll be heading down to the Ahmanson Theater to eat said Thai food and then attend the opening night of Ain’t Misbehavin’. I will then attend the opening partay, after which I shall return with a full report.
Tomorrow night, we’re having a Totally Hidden Video reunion at the home of a gal who worked on the show. I haven’t seen some of these people in close to twenty years (can it have been THAT long – yes, it can), and I’m looking forward to it.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do the long jog, do errands and whatnot, and attend an opening night. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player and your DVD/video player? I’ll start – CD, Two For The Seesaw, Salad Days, and a few other soundtracks. DVD, The Big Circus, which I’m almost through watching. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, as we all enjoy our Ogden Nash Friday.