![]() Paradise portrays Raymonde as a composer with remarkable range, one who treated the stars and the nobodies, the cheeky novelties and the heartfelt ballads, with equal insight and consideration. When Ian “Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll” Dury wanted to evoke that heyday on 1980’s “Superman’s Big Sister,” he hired Raymonde to write the string arrangements, creating a song that mashes pop, punk, and novelty into three strident minutes. ![]() Taken together, his catalog forms an eccentric, not exactly representative but still incredibly enjoyable, history of a sophisticated era in British pop. During that time, he worked with major artists at the height of their careers (Billy Fury, the Walker Brothers), future stars ( David Bowie, Tom Jones), and many musicians who never achieved celebrity. A product of big bands in the ’40s and jazz combos in the ’50s, Raymonde started working with eccentric producer Joe Meek in the early ’60s, signing on as an in-house producer for Decca Records later in the decade. Ivor Raymonde was a figure of no small significance in the 1960s UK pop scene, but because he worked mostly behind the scenes, his name is not especially well known. Simon isn’t inflating his father’s importance with Paradise. “In those days it seemed from all the documentation he was the sort of guy who’d turn his hand to anything, he was happy to get paid, happy to be a session musician, happy to do an arrangement if asked and didn’t turn down work,” Simon recently told the Yorkshire Post. He even sings on one track, the dusky pop number “Mylene,” which appeared on the soundtrack to the forgotten 1959 sex romp Upstairs and Downstairs. The task was complicated by the fact that Ivor was a hired gun, working any number of jobs: writing songs, scouting talent, producing sessions, devising and conducting string and orchestra arrangements. Simon has described the project as a labor of love: It’s taken him years of diligent research to reconstruct his father’s sprawling catalog, which starts in the late 1940s and ends in the 1980s. But hopefully the release of Paradise: The Sound of Ivor Raymonde-by Bella Union, a label run by Ivor’s son Simon Raymonde, of Cocteau Twins-will change that. His more bizarre compositions include "Men Will Deceive You" for the actress Honor Blackman "Humpity Dumpity", a ridiculous twist song for Gene Vincent and "Grotty" for Ivor Raymonde and his Orchestra.Springfield is likely the only name many readers will recognize in that story (although some Brits may remember Vaughan). ![]() He had songs recorded by the Karl Denver Trio and Matt Monro and reached the American performers Eydie Gorme and Jimmy Gilmer. Hawker wrote songs for many female artists of the 1960s including Susan Maughan, Jackie Trent, Glenda Collins, Julie Rogers, Maureen Evans and Shapiro's cousin, Susan Singer, although in all cases without chart success. Springfield recorded another of their songs, "Your Hurtin' Kinda Love" (1965), an excellent ballad which only scraped into the Top 40. They wrote the plaintive ballad "I Wish I'd Never Loved You" for the third single, but Springfield favoured the Bacharach and David song "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself". The same team wrote the follow-up "Stay Awhile", which was the closest anyone in Britain had come to copying Phil Spector's Wall of Sound.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |