Peter and Sophia - Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren

Peter and Sophia

Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren

Parlophone  PMC 1131

1960

I first heard the song "Goodness Gracious Me!" when some joker on KXLU played it.  Even though the song is racist and inane, it stuck in my head and led me to purchase this record although I was certain it would be awful.  I was largely correct about that but I have no regrets.  Sophia Loren was my first movie star crush as a child and I'm still fond of her.  I also was a big fan of Peter Sellers as a child, but that has not lasted.  I find him tedious and annoying now.  The record was produced by the great George Martin probably one of the least distinguished albums in his discography.  He had a long association with Sellers producing his comedy records in the 1950s.  The album is a mix of music and comedy bits.  I like Loren's two solo numbers which are the beguiling and silly "Zoo Be Zoo Be Zoo" and Rodgers and Hart's "To Keep My Love Alive" which chronicles the various ways that a woman murders her many husbands.  Loren is not a strong singer but her voice is pleasant and warm.  I find her engaging.  I think her best performance comes in Leslie Bricusse's "I Fell in Love with an Englishman" in which she breathily croons and then speaks of her love for the title character who is voiced by Sellers as an upper class twit in one of his typically exaggerated caricatures.  There are three more duets with Sellers and Loren which I find simultaneously appealing and annoying.  The best is easily "Goodness Gracious Me!" which describes an Indian doctor fending off an amorous patient's advances.  George Martin commissioned the song for inclusion in the film "The Millionairess" which has a similar plot.  It was rejected but a photograph from the film was still used for the cover of this album.  Sellers' caricature of an Indian is blatantly racist and unfunny but Loren's ardent wooing of him is genuinely sexy.  The song is mercilessly catchy and whenever I hear it, it sticks in my head for awhile.  It was a hit in England and inspired a follow-up "Bangers and Mash" in which Sellers portrays a Cockney who marries an Italian woman during World War II and finds himself missing English food because his wife only serves him Italian food.  It is as stupid as it sounds.  Sellers can't resist showing off, adopting an American accent for the middle section and then an Italian accent for the final verse.  I can barely stand his clowning but Loren is charming.  The final duet is the swinging "Fare Thee Well" which Sellers starts singing in his normal voice which is too weak for the demands of the song.  Of course Sellers being Sellers that does not last long as he quickly breaks into his bag of accents to muck up the song.  Loren struggles with the song as well which is beyond her skills but unlike Sellers she gamely sticks with it to the end.  Sellers has three musical numbers of his own.  In Gershwin's "Oh! Lady Be Good" he thankfully does not sing.  It is an up-tempo jazz number performed by Ron Goodwin and his orchestra in which Sellers uses his voice to sound like a piccolo although I think he sounds more like a clarinet or a saxophone.  If I am to believe his dumb patter at the end of the song he apparently recorded his voice at a slower speed and then they speeded up the tape for the record.  It sounds like a George Martin type thing to do.  If nothing else the song does cook and it is neither offensive nor tedious unlike most of Sellers' other tracks.  He poorly impersonates an old timey crooner for "Ukelele Lady" which dates back to 1925.  He is accompanied by the faux 1920's jazz band "The Temperance Seven" who later had a hit with "You're Driving Me Crazy."  The song is tiresome and pointless to me.  The worst of the three is "Grandpa's Grave" in which Sellers portrays a cockney singer named Eugene Squills regaling the audience with a ditty about moving grandpa's grave to the sewer.  It is moronic but still better than Sellers' comedy bits which comprise the rest of the album.  I find them all painful and unfunny.  In "'Smith'" he portrays a pompous thespian describing his latest play in mind-numbing detail.  "Setting Fire to the Policeman" finds him nostalgically recalling his favorite childhood prank of setting policemen on fire.  "Why Worry?" employs a man in the street interview approach to allow Sellers to show off a variety of English accents as he trivializes the arms race and the nuclear bomb.  The worst track is easily "Africa Today" in which Sellers portrays the savagely racist Brigadier Sir John Hanley-Adamant droning on and on about abusing his African servants.  I know he is mocking him but it is still hard to listen to.  I find it mind-boggling that anyone ever thought this was funny.  If Sophia Loren were not on this record, I would have discarded it long ago.  Her charisma and allure are enough to get me to endure Sellers' contributions.  I could just record her bits and listen to them without Sellers, but I have to admit that terrible though they may, I do find Sellers' tracks fascinating in their awfulness.  I can't recommend this record, but if you like Sophia Loren as much as I do you might want to seek it out.

Patty - Patty Duke

Patty
Patty Duke
United Artists Records  UAL 3492
1966

I bought this at the Pasadena Flea Market last year shortly after Duke died.  "The Patty Duke Show" is one of the first TV shows that I remember liking as a child.  I must have watched it in syndication, I would have been too young to appreciate it when it first aired.  I don't remember why I liked it so much, I was probably attracted to the theme of identical twins not to mention obtaining a glimpse into the minds of teenagers.  Anyway since then I've always liked her as an actress and feeling sentimental following her passing, I took a chance on this record which I suspected wouldn't be very good.  If nothing else I'd have another cover of the Beatles' "Yesterday."  I was pleasantly surprised however, I mostly enjoyed it.  The record opens with "The World is Watching Us" by Wally Gold and Joe Brooks (Gold also co-wrote "It's My Party" for Lesley Gore.)  It was the second single off the album but it flopped.  It is not particularly memorable, but I like the dramatic shift in tone and tempo between the chorus and the verses.  The song is over-produced but Duke manages to hold her own with a strong vocal.  "Yesterday" does not stray far from the Beatles' version.  Duke sings with enough yearning and angst to turn the song into a teen melodrama.  "All Through the Day" was written by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern for the 1946 film "Centennial Summer."  The song gets a contemporary arrangement that disguises its age.  I particularly like the Latin-style horn arrangement that gives the song some oomph.  "Whenever She Holds You" was written by Bobby Goldsboro and released by him as a single in 1964 with modest success.  It was the first single released off this album but it did not crack the top 40.  The song is too lethargic and sappy to stand out on the radio, but it is one of the better songs on the album.  "Little Things Mean a Lot" by Edith Lindeman and Carl Stutz is another oldie having been a big hit for Kitty Kallen in 1954.  This song sounds very romantic with Duke's breathy warm vocal.  Side two opens with "One Kiss Away" which has a classic mid-60's pop sound.  It is a bit over-produced but Duke's vocal is full of charm and charisma.  Barry Mann and Larry Kolber's "I Love How You Love Me" had been a massive hit for the Paris Sisters in 1961, one of Phil Spector's first hits as a producer.  Duke was not nearly as good a singer as Priscilla Paris but the song suits her girlish voice extremely well.  Bobby Russell's "Sure Gonna Miss Him" was a hit for Gary Lewis & the Playboys the same year that this album came out.  This is not as punchy as the Lewis version, but I prefer it anyway because I like her voice a lot more than I like his.  Next she covers the Everly Brothers' classic "All I Have to Do Is Dream."  This is the track where Duke's limitations as a vocalist are most evident.  It is also poorly arranged and is the weakest track on the album.  The side concludes with "Nothing But You" which is a histrionic ballad that Duke sings very effectively giving the album an emotional finish.  This album is obviously a crass commercial effort attempting to cash in on Duke's fame as a teen television star.  It is incredibly skimpy, not even thirty minutes long.  It is full of pedestrian music and cover songs.  Duke's vocals are loaded with reverb and fussy arrangements to disguise her vocal limitations.  Despite all this I like the record.  Duke's voice is pleasing to me and expressive.  The songs are mostly slight but combined together they flow and complement each other making for a consistently engaging album.  This is a marginal record that probably will mostly only appeal to Patty Duke fans, but if you have a taste for mainstream pop in the early 1960s, you will find stuff to enjoy here.  Recommended to fans of Little Peggy March and Shelley Fabares.

The Way I Feel - Leonard Nimoy

The Way I Feel
Leonard Nimoy
Dot Records DLP 25883
1968

This may be the worst record that I own.  I would not normally keep a record this bad, but it is so dreadful that it is entertaining, fascinating even, to borrow an expression from Mr. Spock.  The main reason I keep it though is that I used to be a Trekkie and retain a soft spot for the original series even though I hung up my phaser a long time ago.  Spock was my favorite character and I have a lot of respect for Nimoy as an actor, but as a singer, yikes.  It is not that he is a terrible singer or has an awful voice, he just sounds wrong.  He is too uptight to be a pop singer and he lacks the authority to be a crooner.  He is more of a warbler who is frequently overwhelmed by the songs he's been assigned to sing, almost none of which suit him.  Surprisingly for a guy with such a distinguished speaking voice, his singing voice is almost comically weak.  The worst performances are his versions of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" and Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil's poppy "It's Getting Better" (which was later a hit single for Cass Elliot.)  The songs are beyond Nimoy's range and his struggles with them are embarrassing.  I don't even like good versions of Bobby Hebb's "Sunny" so hearing Nimoy's strained version is pure torture for me.  His ludicrous vocal embellishments and his dramatic interpretation of the song remind me of Bill Murray's comedy character Nick the lounge singer.  His performance of Pete Seeger and Lee Hays' "If I Had a Hammer" is just as overblown.  He sounds like a parody of a folk singer and the spoken patriotic finale is nauseating.  David Somerville and Bruce Belland's humorous "The Hitch-Hiker" is the weirdest track.  Nimoy sings the song in a terrible country-style accent that sounds like he is auditioning for "Hee-Haw."  "Here We Go 'Round Again" was written by Paul Evans and Paul Parnes.  Evans wrote some songs for Elvis and this inane song sounds like it would be more fitting for Presley than Nimoy who really struggles with it.  He does much better with Randy Sparks' "Billy Don't Play the Banjo Anymore" which makes less demands on his voice and has a subdued arrangement that is more sympathetic to his limitations.  My favorite track is "I'd Love Making Love to You" by Hollywood songwriter Hod David Schudson.  Nimoy does not sing it well, but his awkwardness is rather endearing and makes the corny lyrics sound more convincing.  My other favorite is his tasteful cover of John Hartford's "Love is Sweeter" which he sings competently and with feeling.  Nimoy wrote two of the tracks.  "Please Don't Try to Change My Mind" (co-written with Don Christopher) is a trite so-long-babe-I-gotta-ramble type song which he sounds comfortable singing.  Nimoy co-wrote "Consilium" with the record's producer Charles R. Grean.  The song is incredibly pretentious as Nimoy solemnly intones advice and philosophical platitudes, but I still find it entertaining because I like Nimoy's speaking voice.  Nimoy similarly speaks rather than sings "Where It's At" by novelty songwriter Cy Coben which addresses the meaning of life.  It is amusing to hear Nimoy seriously orating this hippie nonsense as if he was reciting Shakespeare.  In case you are wondering, according to Nimoy, "love" is where its at.  Groovy.  Although this record is comically inept, it does reveal some evidence that Nimoy might have made a decent record with better arrangements and more appropriate songs.  His voice is not unpleasant, it reminds me at times of Leonard Cohen.  He needed more songs like "Love is Sweeter."  Oh well despite its awfulness it is seldom boring and though I rarely play it, I'm glad I have it.  Recommended to Trekkies who wonder what it would sound like if Mr. Spock impersonated a hippie.