SENTIMENTAL 70s PART 2 : TRIBUTES TO THE
CARPENTERS PLUS THE ORCHESTRAS OF ARTHUR FIEDLER, PAUL MAURIAT AND FRANCK
POURCEL
The 1970s was characterized by a huge
amount of melodic and wistful songwriting that made huge careers for singers of
popular song. More than that, a huge cache of the pop songs of that decade
captured emotion and heartbreak unlike any other. This round of reviews tips
the hat to The Carpenters while also acknowledging the genius of Paul Williams
and Roger Nichols, Neil Diamond, Leon Russell, Linda Creed and Thom Bell, and
the unusual pairing of Barbra Streisand and Paul Williams as well. To round off
the sentimentality, we will also dip into two remasters of ‘semi-disco’ albums
by Paul Mauriat and Franck Pourcel. As I was composing this, I could not help
noticing that Manuel and the Music of the Mountains, and probably along with
Mantovani and Bert Kaempfert, defiantly maintained their trademark 1960s style
of lush instrumentation without electric guitars, organs and synthesizers. I
start this review with a snapshot of 1991’s Compact Disc release of Manuel’s
LATIN ROMANCE on the EMI Studio Two Label juxtaposed alongside Franck Pourcel’s
radical artwork cover of 1978’s AMOUR DANSE ET VIOLIN NO.51 LP on CD featuring
the themes from ‘Star Wars’, ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ and the
evergreen love song from ‘Saturday Night Fever’ – ‘How Deep is Your Love’ by
the Bee Gees. 1978 was a golden year for 70s era pop since it demonstrated a
preview of the electronic instrumentation that was set to dominate the next
decade’s pop parade. So between the lush strings and light Latin tempos of
Manuel and the shiny new sounds of Franck Pourcel from the late 1970s, we begin
a journey into the next set of ‘Sentimental 70s’ easy listening instrumentals.
Although the songs of the Carpenters
have been covered by just about every instrumental act in the 1970s, I
highlight a 2005 production by the Japanese guitar duo, SUPER NATURAL. The
familiar Carpenters’ songs have their quiet sentimentality amplified in these
arrangements. Not all Carpenters or easy listening fans will like this one
though. It veers very close to the ‘New Age’ genre of instrumental music. But
listen to how ‘Top of the World’ gets a Bluegrass soulful vibe, you will instinctively
know Karen and Richard Carpenter would have approved of it. In their hit-making
days, the duo were also experimenting with musical styles. Even ‘Close to You’
and ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ become soundtrack worthy if used for any number of
TV romantic dramas in the hands of SUPER NATURAL. The ambience of candlelight
and an imaginary calm lake likewise takes one far away from the cares of the
day on ‘I Need to be in Love’, ‘I Won’t
Last a Day’, ‘Hurting Each Other’ and of course ‘Close to You’.
Not to be forgotten, or better still, waiting to be
rediscovered, is the CARPENTERS SONGBOOK LP released by Arthur Fiedler and the
Boston Pops Orchestra in 1975. Fiedler had a special relationship going with
the brother and sister team of Richard and Karen. This culminated in the
sensational 1974 concert in Boston where the duo performed live with the
orchestra. This concert has been preserved visually by a number of Carpenters
fans on YouTube. The sound quality however leaves much to be desired. Reviewed
here is a Deutschgrammaphon exclusive release for the Japanese market.
This remastered LP on CD is anything but poor in sound quality
given its Japanese-German technical collaboration on remastering. Richard
Carpenter’s fondness for arranging for piano and strings is given a symphonic
tribute by Fiedler, who arranged – as far as I can tell – the entire LP. The contrast with guitar arrangements in the
preceding album could not be greater. Trombones, flugelhorns, strings and harp
substituted for Karen’s and Richard’s voices quite naturally. One does not feel
their vocals missing at all. Listen to ‘Superstar’, ‘Top of the World’, ‘We’ve
Only Just Begun’ and ‘For All We Know’ for sheer symphonic thrill. This album
is nothing short of simulating a movie soundtrack for a Carpenters’ movie.
Fiedler follows Richard Carpenter’s arrangements closely but adds in string
passages and trombone flourishes where appropriate.
Fiedler has also made his mark on 1970s Easy Listening with two
albums titled GREATEST HITS OF THE 70s VOLUMES 1 AND 2. These LPs have been
meticulously remastered into hybrid SACD format by Dutton Vocalion. Delving
deeper into the pop scene c.1970-5, Fiedler carefully curated a lineup of tunes
that lent themselves to marching band and typical ‘pops arrangements’ with
plenty of brass, strings and loud percussion. Think of songs that could be
transformed into Parade ground favourites or closing music for the end of a
film and you’ll appreciate Arthur Fiedler’s style. Paul Simon’s ‘Me and Julio
Down by the Schoolyard’, Neil Diamond’s ‘Play Me’, Barry White’s ‘Love’s Theme’,
‘Leave me Alone’, ‘Joy to the World’, ‘Song Sung Blue’, and ‘Popcorn’ were
suitably dramatic in their brassy sound, loud passages, and percussion while
‘Rose Garden’, ‘Help Me Make it Through the Night’, ‘The Way We Were’, ‘The
First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ and ‘One Less Bell to Answer’ softened the
selections with subtle variety. Then again, because Fiedler was wielding the
baton in a large symphony hall, the strings can occasionally sound way softer
than necessary for listening at home. At this point, one wishes the recording
engineers for Fiedler could have taken a leaf from the French masters of easy
listening and amplified the strings where necessary on the final recording mix.
That said, the two volumes of Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops still makes
for a lavish tribute to the songwriting of the 1970s.
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The French orchestras of Paul Mauriat and Franck Pourcel have in
their own inimitable ways left creative marks on the 1970s hit parade –
especially the disco numbers and big ballads, and more. 1978’s PAUL MAURIAT –
PLAYS SUPER STARS featured the following line-up of instrumental pop:
|
A1
|
Nobody
Does It Better
|
|
A2
|
When
I Need You
|
|
A3
|
Knowing
Me Knowing You
|
|
A4
|
Evergreen
- Love Theme From 'A Star Is Born'
|
|
A5
|
Don't
Go Breaking My Heart
|
|
A6
|
There's
A Kind Of Hush
|
|
A7
|
Sunny
|
|
B1
|
C'est
La Vie
|
|
B2
|
If
You Leave Me Now
|
|
B3
|
I
Feel Love
|
|
B4
|
Another
Star
|
|
B5
|
Could
It Be Magic
|
|
B6
|
We're
All Alone
|
|
B7
|
Piano
Star
|
Mauriat demonstrated his late 1970s genius on this one, with a
funky introduction on the James Bond film theme ‘Nobody Does it Better’ and
arraying trumpets to sing the main notes while the strings race to substitute
for them in the midsections. Mauriat’s classic employment of harpsichord on
tunes like ‘Evergreen’, ‘There’s a Kind of Hush’, ‘When I Need You’, ‘Don’t Go
Breaking my Heart’, and ‘Knowing Me Knowing You’ evoke continuity with his late
1960s and early 1970s output. But this time, Mauriat does not let one
instrument sing the main melody, he varies the lead from everything to trumpet,
harpsichord, strings, oboe and synthesizer. The ABBA hit ‘Knowing Me…’ is
memorably transformed into a fast-paced semi-disco ballad far away from the pop
group’s original version. There are also familiar straightforward ballad
terrain on numbers like ‘We’re All Alone’, ‘If You Leave Me Now’, ‘Could it be
Magic’, and ‘C’est la Vie’ where the maestro showcases how his arrangements
bring out a new dimension to musical romance by slowing down the tempos by just
a little, adding solo oboe and trumpet, and short unforgettable female
choruses. The more traditional disco-esque numbers like ‘I Feel Love’ and
‘Another Star’ are left mostly intact in their original arrangements. This was
after all the bonanza years of 1977-8 pop memorabilia!
There was plenty to go around for exciting material to be
transformed orchestrally in and around 1978. Franck Pourcel’s cover for the
1978 LP AMOUR DANSE ET VIOLIN NO.51 tried obviously to capture the exoticism and adventure
inspired by the ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ sci-fi
films. At the same time, he was experimenting with large choral accompaniment
to some spectacular love themes in those years. His unnamed chorus of male and
female voices hewed closer to the Geoff Love Singers than Ray Conniff’s edgier
tones around this time. The ‘Star Wars’ signature theme was given an ethereal
slow tempo bubble-sounding synthesizer introduction evocative of floating in
outer space, instead of trying to recall the hyperspeed of X-Wing fighters and
Tie Fighters battling it out in the black vastness of a galaxy far far away!
This is ‘Star Wars’ brought down to earth’s schmaltzy fashion runway with
Pourcel’s trumpets and strings. Similarly, the ‘Close Encounters’ theme was
layered with Pourcel’s special touch of replacing the synthesized chords of the
five-point scale signature chorus with trumpets and the addition of female
voices imitating the effects of space age exotica in recurring parts of the
melody.
The soft feminine touch threads itself through ‘How Deep is Your
Love’ where Pourcel’s string arrangements, spiced lightly with synthesizer,
draw you into comfy lounge territory rather than the disco hall or the seaside
speedboat featured in the Bee Gees’ original video for the song. Pourcel’s
dramatic transformation of the rest of the album feature the nifty use of the
chorus alternately on the remaining tracks. The Latin standard ‘Amor Amor’ gets
a complete disco remake with strings, a pulsating disco beat and the
irresistible chorus duetting with the strings. I never liked Paul McCartney’s
original ‘Mull of Kintyre’ but this version goes somewhere into Gospel and
Broadway territory with the chorus singing the right verses in the middle of
the song. ‘Tarentelle’ and ‘Ti Amo’ become unforgettable – and very classy –
European love songs sung appropriately in French and Italian in their
midsections. Pourcel closes this 1978 show piece with the piano ballade ‘Girl
of Skade’ but not before giving his fans another helping of disco on ‘Easy
Come, Easy Go’. There is so much more of
Pourcel’s captivating late 70s styling in the rest of the albums remastered in
the 4CD mini LP set distributed in 2021 labelled COFFRET 2021 – do check them
out!
ALAN
January 2024
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