1967-The Changing Technology in Music-Part 3


(Back sooner then expected so folks don't believe this is the Ish/Prince stroll through memory lane thread)

One of the biggest developments in music recording during the 1960's was the growth of multitrack technology. 2-track recording began in the mid-40s. It was the ability to record via two signals onto tape and keep them in sync while being able to manipulate either track (example:volume). 3-track recording became the norm in the 1950's .Backing instruments were used for 2 tracks and a third, overdubbed track was used for the vocalist. 

The next important development was 4-track recording. The advent of this improved system gave recording engineers and musicians vastly greater flexibility for recording and overdubbing, and 4-track was the studio standard for most of the later 1960s. Many of the most famous recordings by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were recorded on 4-track, and the engineers at London's Abbey Road Studios became particularly adept at a technique called "reduction mixes" in the UK and "bouncing down" in the United States, in which several tracks were recorded onto one 4-track machine and then mixed together and transferred (bounced down) to one track of a second 4-track machine. In this way, it was possible to record literally dozens of separate tracks and combine them into finished recordings of great complexity.



All of the Beatles classic mid-1960s recordings, including the albums Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, were recorded in this way. There were limitations, however, because of the build-up of noise during the bouncing-down process, and the Abbey Road engineers are still famed for their ability to create dense multitrack recordings while keeping background noise to a minimum.

In addition to this technology advancement, there was a change in attitude within the record companies. The best recording studios, the ones with the best acoustics, were booked well in advance and held for classical music recordings or for the "Prestige" artists such as Sinatra. Teen pop music had to make do with B-list studios or had to rush with very little time for recording in the better studios. But money talks, and the tremendous sales coming from the teen market Post-Beatles had the companies rethink on how they used their resources while also giving Rock bands ammunition for demanding better studio conditions.

You can easily hear the difference in pop music's recorded quality from the early 60's and that thin, tin-like sound versus the end of the decades fuller, richer audio. It didn't happen all at once. It occurred at different times with different companies. But 1967 was certainly a year were that change was steamrolling

Let Me Please Introduce Myself

Song Titles With The Artist's Name

That was the show of choice for my mother in the kitchen every morning.

And Henry Gladstone with the news...

Aretha Franklin has announced her upcoming album will be the final studio recording of her career. Her discography currently consists of 41 studio albums and 6 live CDs. She has been recording for 56 years and is ranked first among female vocalists with the most Billboard chart hits during the rock era (1955–2016) with a total of 89. Accomplished pianist as well as songwriter for much of her material, she will continue to do occasional live work, no more than 1 concert per month.

Truly a living icon, and truly the Queen of Soul

Some Canadian music from 1967:

The Staccatos were later and better known as The Five Man Electrical Band. Younger listeners may know two of their biggest hits (Signs and I'm a Stranger Here) from successful cover versions done in the 80s or 90s by an American band I forget the name of. In 1967 they had a Canadian hit with this song:

Don't really care for either of those, to be honest. That's no reflection on Aretha Franklin but rather on my general distaste for the whole 80s sound that was so prevalent on the radio that decade - even the instrumental intros rub me the wrong way, especially the George Michael duet. I can appreciate Aretha's and Annie Lennox's and George Michael's (under-rated vocalist, I think, even though I didn't like much of his material) singing on these tracks in a clinical way but the arrangements and the songs themselves don't connect with me at all, even though I like the idea behind the Annie Lennox duet.

I remember years ago reading that Aretha Franklin was Freddie Mercury's favourite singer, that visitors to his house would often hear her music playing on his sound system, and that Somebody to Love was partially meant to be a tribute to her. Makes me wish that they had done a duet or that she would cover the song some time.

To bring further dissension to this previously harmonious thread, I must bring you the painful news that I love The Seekers' Georgy Girl and, perhaps even worse, I am a big Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck fan - I think of them as a pair because I remember when I was a young fellow it was a burning question amongst my mother and my aunt and their crowd and also my older female cousins which of the two was more attractive. I think it's a category error to think of them as rivals to the Stones or whoever: they were more the successors to Tin Pan Alley crooners like Dean Martin or Sinatra. Engelbert in particular had some beautifully melodic ballads. I can listen to his greatest hits over and over all day, when I'm in the mood. Looking up his discography, I see that he had two huge hits in 1967, Please Release Me and The Last Waltz: I prefer the latter, but Please Release Me is notable to me as one of three songs I recall my mother citing as her favourite song at various times (the other two were Al Martino's Blue Spanish Eyes and, yes, you guessed it, Green Green Grass of Home!)

Seriously, I think you guys should give this stuff a closer listen. I just played the Tom Jones video, first time I had listened to it for a long time, and it struck me that it's very much in the style of Ray Charles's Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, with the backing vocalists and that lovely country & western style piano - I wonder who was in his band at the time? Yes, Tom Jones is much more the slick show-biz crooner as opposed to Ray Charles, but that doesn't really bother me - the other thing I'd compare it to is some of Dean Martin's 60s stuff when he started doing a bit of country (yes I am also a big Dean Martin fan).

Getting back to The Seekers, I love that song, Judith Durham's voice, her whole look, the way she moved and held herself on the stage. Yes, it's totally uncool and out of sync with what was happening in pop culture at large, but so what? Culture, even pop culture, should be - and was at the time - broad enough to encompass more than one uniform style or attitude, however much it might appeal to us. I love that someone like Frank Sinatra (though I'm not a particular fan) could still have huge hits in the 60s, alongside the Beatles and the Stones.

I was only 5 years old for most of 1967, but Georgy Girl holds a lot of nostalgia for me: I think I've mentioned this before, but one of the early childhood memories that stands out is my parents coming home from the movies and telling us about what they'd seen, and one of the first ones I can remember hearing about in this way was Georgy Girl. I still haven't watched the movie myself yet - maybe I'm afraid to spoil the memory. The horns are too upfront on that Ed Sullivan Show performance, though, spoils the effect of the song a bit.