The short backstory:
As attentive readers are no doubt aware, I'm a sucker for doo wop. Apparently so were some people at Sony Music -- a couple of rock critics, if memory serves -- who ran, briefly, a low budget label subsidiary called Ambient Sound, which was devoted to doo wop old and and new.
In any event, I was vaguely aware of all this, but for some reason never bothered to listen to the stuff Ambient released when their vinyl crossed my desk at the Magazine Formerly Known as Stereo Review. But then sometime in the late 80s I happened to hear "Morse Code of Love" for the first time on WCBS-FM (our local oldies radio station) while travellling home from a weekend long recording session in Delaware, and practically leapt out of the car in joy at the innocent gorgeousnesss of the song. And when I looked it up and found out that it was a actually a contemporary track, my little heart danced in ways I find difficult to describe.
Since then, I've binge-listened to it every couple of years, and last week I went nuts over it all over again. Hopefully, you guys will have the same reaction to it as I did.
Oh and BTW -- I should add that Manhattan Transfer did a drop dead great cover of it (billed as "Baby Come Back") that is the perfect capper to the saga, especially since it actually charted.
2 comments:
I'd totally forgotten about this, also. Just pulled out my copy of "Everything Old Is New ...Everything New Is Old", the Ambient Sound sampler. Some really great cuts on it – Randy and the Rainbows "In Your Letter" and The Mystics doing the Ramones "Doreeen Is Never Boring". The Capris' doin "Imagine" is pretty much as disappointing as you would expect.
According to the sleeve, all the songs are recorded "Live" with the singers in a isolated storage room and the musicians in a large, unsoundproofed room. All songs played straight through until they get the take they like, no alterations to the final take.
Anyway, going to have to play this again, it's been too many years.
Not a big fan of doo wop myself, but my brother is.
He does a show on http://doowopradio.com/ - an online doo wop station you may find to your liking.
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