ADAM BEST "WALL OF SOUND" (1970)

«...the "Wall of Sound" Adam Best created may well prove to be the most significant musical event of the '70s...»

[from the liner notes of "Wall of Sound"]



...well, that is - of course - an overstatement, an hyperbole used to create a strong impression in the people flipping through the vinyls stacked in record shops in those glorious days during the early '70s... But it's undeniable that the mysterious Adam Best - or anyone who has chosen to hide behind that name for some unknown reason - has crafted a little groovy record that can still make a good impression more than forty years later.

So, who was Adam Best? According to Mista Tibbz, «...there is strong suspicions of his relations to Music De Wolfe sound libraries due the similarity in certain library records and this one, but nothing is proved...».

Some people discussing in an Internet forum - here - link Adam Best to Barry Stoller, a composer of Library Music who is better known for the theme he created for "Match of the Day", the popular BBC's football television programme. It seems that Meatball's "Atomic Butterly" features a backing track identical to one of those contained on "Wall of Sound" with different solos over the top... Uhm, I would be quite curious to listen to that record...

Anyway, the only certainty I can offer is that the album liner notes mention veteran composer and director Harold Geller's involvement in the making of the record. Then we have the fact that the original six compositions on "Wall of Sound" - the other six are covers of famous tunes - are signed by Hugh Cortley and a certain Supran. Well, I guess I should write five originals and seven covers since one of the originals seems to be a plagiarism... More on this if you continue to read below.

I wasn't able to find anything relevant about Supran, but Cortley is often associated with Musi Silvio, another Library Music composer. Their tune entitled "Export" (...available here...) is very similar to the material contained on "Wall of Sound"; it is included on the album "New Generation" credited to The Laurence Stephen Orchestra...



Here's a complete transcription of the original liner notes that appear on the back cover of "Wall of Sound":

«Once in a while a person or group of people comes along with a style of music which surpasses anything done before. They are usually self-centred ruthless people - they don't get results unless they are - who know to the letter what they want, and nothing is allowed to stand in their way. Such a man is Adam Best. 24 year old Adam Best studied electronics at college, and music at the Royal Academy. He has been playing guitar, bass and drums on the pop scene for a number of years, but it was not until 14 months ago that he gave up playing in public to concentrate full-time on his own project. He was aided by one Harold Geller, one of London's most successful music directors and publishers, who recognised that his ideas were valid, and encouraged him to begin work on the new sound. Electronic music is not in itself new. People have been making musical sounds with electronics for years, but the great majority of it can hardly be called music, for it lacks - for want of a better word - soul. For the first time a musician entered the field, with the knowledge of electronics and the knowledge and ability of musician. The sound he has manufactured successfully fills the gap between vocal and instrumental music, based on the solid rhythm foundation played by Adam, augmented by section work by electronics. Just over a year ago Adam began work in a North London coal cellar to build by hand the machines he needed to complete his work. The things he required were not commercially manufactured so everything had to be designed and constructed by him. What little spare time was available was spent in discotheques up and down the country listening and learning from the types of music that were popular. The idea was to provide music that was danceable, and at the same time made pleasant listening. This was achieved by many hours of sessions between Harold Geller and Adam Best and many long involved telephone calls at all odd hours of the day and night when one would think of an idea which would immediately have to be put down in sound. They both laughingly refer to their nocturnal sound effects with neighbours thinking that a crime has been committed when they hear the weird noises emanating from their various houses in the still of the night. However, on reflection, they both feel that it was all very worthwhile. How well he succeeded can be gauged from the reactions of Philips Records. On hearing the first tracks played to them by Adam and Harold Geller, they immediately asked that they were given the opportunity to release all forthcoming material. The first complete Album "Wall of Sound" was presented to them in January, and was immediately scheduled for rush-release. Adam's dream had at last proved worthwhile. The first album is just the beginning for Adam; the sound can only get better. There are no limits on the medium, it is as much or as little as he chooses to make it, and the "Wall of Sound" Adam Best created may well prove to be the most significant musical event of the '70s.»

"Wall of Sound" contains the following tracks:

01. Wall of Sound (5:21)
02. I Can't Go On Without You (2:09)
03. I Guess I'll Always Love You (2:46)
04. Twenty Five Miles (3:09)
05. Lana's Past (2:32)
06. Gimme, Gimme Good Lovin' (1:57)
07. I'm a Man (3:06)
08. Walk Away Renée (2:39)
09. High In Grass (3:21)
10. When You're Young and In Love (2:33)
11. You Shouldn't Say (2:36)
12. Spread Out (3:02)

All tracks were remastered from the original vinyl in May 2013 and are available in FLAC lossless format or high-quality 320 Kbps MP3 files. Both formats include complete printable artwork as PDF files. Please have a look at the comments for the download links.



So, let's explore this Funky / Easy Listening little gem... The album opens with the title track; clocking at over five minutes, "Wall of Sound" is the longest number and probably the coolest original composition too: sustained by forceful guitars and a raw rhythm section, keyboards (...Hammonds? Moogs?) are the undisputed leaders here, as on the rest of the record.

"I Can't Go On Without You" is another original composition, a short Easy Listening number with a more polished sound. It is followed by "I Guess I'll Always Love You", a cover of a 1966 Motown hit by The Isley Brothers which was also recorded by The Supremes. The Isleys' version was reissued in the U.K. in 1969 and became a hit there, hence probably the inclusion on this early 1970 album.

In 1968 "Twenty Five Miles" was a huge hit for Edwin Starr, who co-wrote the song along with Johnny Bristol and Harvey Fuqua. This instrumental version begins with a short break and keeps in line with the hectic nature of the original uptempo beat; one of the best tracks on the album.

"Lana's Past" is another original mellow tune written by the Cortley / Supran team that remains in an Easy Listening territory which doesn't add much to the album's recipe... Side One finishes with "Gimme, Gimme Good Lovin'", a cover of a 1969 hit by Crazy Elephant, a short-lived American Bubblegum Pop band.



Side Two opens with a great cover of "I'm a Man", a 1967 Hammond organ-driven Blues Rock single by The Spencer Davis Group written by Steve Winwood and Jimmy Miller. This song was sampled by DJ Format on his album "Music For the Mature B-Boy" in 2003. It is followed by the cover of another tune taken from the immense Motown catalogue: originally made popular by The Left Banke in 1966, "Walk Away Renée" became a hit for the Four Tops in 1968.

"High In Grass" is a track signed by Cortley / Supran which sound very similar - if not a plain plagiarism - to "Cold Sweat" by James Brown... "When You're Young and In Love" was written by Van McCoy and brought to success by Ruby & The Romantics in 1964, and later also by The Marvelettes in 1967; during the '70s it was covered by many other artists.

"You Shouldn't Say" is another high-quality original composition; I'm quite sure that its breakbeat has been sampled and used by someone during the '90s, probably Beck or Imani Coppola, I will investigate and update the post at a later date if I'm successfull.

The album ends with "Spread Out", an average track which doesn't affect the album as a whole: a nice combination of Funk / Soul and Easy Listening with some real standouts!

The only available picture of the mysterious Adam Best...

The following videos offer a preview of the remastered album: enjoy "Wall of Sound", "Twenty Five Miles", "I'm a Man" and "You Shouldn't Say"!

A few more information about "Wall of Sound" and related people is available here:

http://taukojalka.com/mrtibbz/2011/02/05/adam-best-wall-of-sound/

http://www.whosampled.com/sample/view/196954/DJ%20Format-English%20Lesson%20%28Remix%29_Adam%20Best-I%27m%20a%20Man/

http://www.turnipnet.com/mom/haroldgeller.htm

http://www.verygoodplus.co.uk/showthread.php/1411-Barry-stoller

http://www.librarymusicinfo.com/?s=barry+stoller&searchsubmit=

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Barry+Stoller

http://www.discogs.com/Meatball-Atomic-Butterfly/release/1814004

http://www.librarymusicinfo.com/1043/new-generation-dwlp-3160/

If you have any other useful information about Adam Best and "Wall of Sound" - especially corrections and improvements to this post - or if you spot any dead links, please get in touch with me at stereocandies [at] hotmail [dot] com or leave a comment in the box below, thank you!

JOHNNY MATHIS "THE HEART OF A WOMAN" (1974)

Johnny Mathis's adventure with music began with an old $25 upright piano - a piano, so the story goes, so big that in order for his father to get it into the small basement flat on San Francisco's Post Street, it had to be taken apart. It was three in the mormimg, Mr. Mathis later recalled, before he put the last section in place. All the member of the Mathis family had drifted off the bed - all but one: young Johnny, who hung around the new acquisition as if it were magic. Mr. Mathis sat down and played "My Blue Heaven" for Johnny.

"I could see it in his face that he loved music, too." remembered Mr. Mathis. "I taught him that song. He got it in nothing flat, and he put something into it. That's when I felt it - I felt that the sound I heard, if it could be cultivated, maybe a lot of people would love the sound. And that's when I knew I had a job to do."

That was the beginning of Johnny Mathis. He was eight then, and 12 years later, the shy, wiry Johnny consumated his love affair with song. As a teenage idol he earned $ 100.000 a year. At 29, he became a millionarie. Today, at 38 and with 56 albums to his credit, he is a multimillionaire.

His cultivated image as the love song singer remains intact: "I think love chose me. I didn't choose it. It just happened. I don't know why I ended up being the love singer."

Renée Lamarr, Encore magazine, June 1974



One of the last and most popular in a long line of traditional male vocalists who emerged before the rock-dominated 1960s, Johnny Mathis concentrated on romantic readings of jazz and pop standards for the ever-shrinking adult contemporary audience of the '60s and '70s. Though he debuted with a flurry of singles chart activity, Mathis later made it big in the album market, where a dozen of his LPs hit gold or platinum and over 60 made the charts. While he concentrated on theme-oriented albums of show tunes and traditional favorites during the '60s, he began incorporating soft rock by the '70s and remained a popular concert attraction well into the '90s.

[Excerpt from Johnny Mathis bio]

Following "I'm Coming Home", released the previous year and conducted / arranged by legendary Philadelphia producer Thom Bell along with singer-songwriter / lyricist Linda Creed (the album is documented here in all its glory thanks to the usual great mastering work by Funkerman), "The Heart of a Woman" was Johnny Mathis' 57th-or-something album.

"The Heart of a Woman" was released in late November 1974 and was produced by Johnny Bristol, who, after his successful Motown productions both in team with Harvey Fuqua (most notably Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" hit-single) and alone (more singles by Gladys Knight & the Pips, Jermaine Jackson and a U.K. hit-single by The Velvelettes), had made it into his own as a singer (his debut album "Hang On In There Baby" has just been released a few months earlier the same year), and was fast becoming a respected and sought-after songwriter and producer in the American music world.

Accompanied by the above-mentioned  "I'm Coming Home" and "Mathis Is...", released in 1977 and once again produced by Thom Bell, "The Heart of a Woman" may be seen as the central part of an ideal triptych of albums released by Mathis during the 70s whose "soul" sound was still aimed at the adult contemporary market but probably also at a different kind of younger audience.

Here's another excerpt from the article/interview by Renée Lamarr published on the June 1974 issue of Encore magazine:

Johnny possesses to his musical fingertips that indefinable quality called style. Yet celebrated as he is an outstanding pop artist, Black audiences never turned on to him in great numbers. They remained distant from him when he was at the peak of his career. For all his success, Mathis was seen merely as a pretty boy singing love ballads. In the late fifties and early sixties Blacks preferred the rhythm-and-blues sounds of Jackie Wilson, Ray Charles, the Drifters, the Platters. Johnny says, apologetically, "Black people never bought my records in great numbers, but that didn't mean that they didn't hear or like them."

Johnny Mathis does not like discussing civil rights or his "responsibilities as a Black artist". When pressed, he says that he looks forward to the day when those kinds of questions need not be asked. "I don't make judgements based on the color of someone's skin. Either you are intelligent or you are ignorant."

Recently there has been an attempt to interpret the name of Johnny's new hit album, I'm Coming Home - which has attracted Black record lovers - as a statement by Johnny to the Black community. Johnny says, "There is no connection. I didn't write the song, Linda Creed did. And Linda Creed is a little Jewish girl."



"The Heart of a Woman" comes in a nice cover with stunning photographs by Richard Avedon (whose work had already graced other Mathis' releases earlier). The album contains the following tracks:

01. Woman, Woman (3:16)
02. Sail On White Moon (3:12)
03. It's Gone (3:13)
04. House For Sale (3:18)
05. Feel Like Makin' Love (3:40)
06. Memories Don't Leave Like People Do (4:23)
07. Strangers In Dark Corners (3:50)
08. Wendy (3:36)
09. The Heart of a Woman (2:57)
10. The Way We Planned It (3:35)

All tracks were remastered from the original vinyl in November 2011 and are available in FLAC lossless format or high-quality 320 Kbps MP3 files, both formats include completely restored PDF artwork. Please have a look at the comments for the download links.





Four tracks on "The Heart of a Woman" are written or co-written by Johnny Bristol and they probably are the highlights of the album. Most of the songs are arranged by Paul Riser, except a few whose arrangements are credited to H. B. Barnum and James C. Barnett.

"Woman of the world, you're something special, girl. You're not a tool for some damn fool to break, no, no. That, you don't have to take..." So goes the refrain of "Woman, Woman", the opening number written by Johnny Bristol that already appeared as the first track on his debut LP "Hang On In There Baby" a few months earlier. Compared to the original this version is considerably shorter and doesn't offer the complex instrumental intro. This song was also released as a 7" single in some European countries offering "Feel Like Makin' Love" as a tempting B-Side.

"Sail On White Moon" is also penned by Bristol, it was released as the B-side of the domestic version of "The Heart of a Woman" single. According to Discogs, 7" promo copies with a "stereo" version on the A-side and a "mono" version on the B-side also exist. This song was part of Bozz Scaggs' "Slow Dancer", an album produced earlier the same year by Johnny Bristol.

"It's Gone" and "House For Sale" are songs that probably appealed more to the "traditional" Mathis public, the latter was written by Lawrence D. Brown and Oleg Lopatin and was also included on "Soul & Inspiration", an album by the popular music vocal group The 5th Dimension, the same year.

"Feel Like Makin' Love", a rendition of Roberta Flack's hit-single written by Eugene McDaniel, closes the first side of the album. This song was also released as a 7" single in U.K. backed with "The Heart of a Woman" on the B-Side.

"Memories Don't Leave Like People Do" is again a song written by Johnny Bristol, this time in collaboration with John Henry Glover Jr., James A. Dean and Jerry Butler. This tune was used as the opening number on Butler's "Power of Love", produced by Bristol and released in 1973. Bristol had also recorded and released his own version of this track on his debut album in early 1974.

"Strangers In Dark Corners", the last Bristol-penned song that appears on "The Heart of a Woman", had already been included on Tavares' "Check It Out", their debut album produced by Johnny Bristol in late 1973. Bristol will also record and release this tune on "Strangers", his fourth LP, in 1978.

Originally performed by The Impressions on the original soundtrack of "Three The Hard Way", an action blaxploitain movie directed by Gordon Parks Jr. in 1974, "Wendy" is another all-sugary tune performed by Mathis at his best in his usual passionate way.

"The Heart of a Woman", the album title-track deserves a deeper look. Also released as a single in the U.S., the song was created as a singing commercial for Helena Rubinstein’s Courant perfume. Here's the whole story as published in the 23rd November 1974 issue of Billboard:

Mathis Gets Col-Cosmetic Promo

NEW YORK — Columbia Records and Helena Rubinstein, cosmetic manufacturer, are cross-promoting their respective products with separate campaigns backing a new Johnny Mathis release and Courant perfume. The development between the two firms was prompted by a Mathis recording of an original commercial tune for Courant, which was then selected as the "B" side of a new single and the title cut of his "The Heart Of A Woman" LP, now scheduled for release Monday (25). On the Columbia side, the label is inserting a "scratch-and-sniff"’ advertising panel, 3"x3" in size, under the skin wraps of the first 100.000 alburns pressed. The panel pictures Courant products and alerts buyers to a national radio campaign being run by Courant. Beginning Thursday (21), some 60 radio stations. covering the top 15 markets in the U.S., will air seventy 60-second Courant spots per week through Christmas. The spots credit Mathis as a Columbia recording artist and also name the composition he is performing. They will be aired on Thursday, Friday and Saturday of each week. It is also understood that Courant has acquired some 13.000 Mathis singles with special promotional sleeves, and will be distributing them free at its cosmetic counters throughout the U.S. during the holiday buying season.

With "The Way We Planned It" the album comes to its end.


Johnny Mathis, photo by Richard Avedon

The following credits/notes are taken from the back cover of "The Heart of a Woman":

Produced by Johnny Bristol.

Special thanks to Franzel Venable for vocal harmony on "Feel Like Makin' Love".

Musicians:
Henry Wallace Shead - Keyboards
Reginald Burke - Keyboards
Melvin M. Ragin - Guitar
Ray E. Parker Jr. - Guitar
Dennis Coffey - Guitar
Michael Anthony - Guitar
Henry E. Davis - Bass
Edward Greene - Drums
Joe L. Clayton - Percussion
Gene Estes - Percussion

All songs arranged by Paul Riser except "The Way We Planned It" arranged by H. B. Barnum and "Feel Like Makin' Love" and "The Heart of a Woman" arranged by James C. Barnett.

Engineering and mixing by Greg Venable.

Recorded at Larrabee Sound, West Los Angeles, and Devonshire Sound, North Hollywood, California.

Produced by Johnny Bristol for Jon Mat Records, Inc., except "The Way We Planned It" produced by Jerry Fuller for Jon Mat Records, Inc.

Photos by Richard Avedon.

Cover Design by John Berg.


Johnny Mathis, photo by Richard Avedon

This is a review of "The Heart of a Woman" taken from Billboards Top Album Picks published in the 7th December 1974 issue:

For nearly 20 years, Mathis has been one of our premier singers and one of the few who has almost continuously appeared to all generations. Here he uses his patented velvet voice to float through a number of the types of ballads he has always been associated with as well! as some more uptempo things which fall somewhere between soul rockers and his familiar Style. With Johnny Bristol handling the production, we may have the most contemporary commercial LP Mathis has come up with in several years.

Best cuts: "Woman, Woman", "Stranger In Dark Corners", "Memories Don't Leave Like People Do", "The Heart of a Woman", "Feel Like Makin' Love".

Dealers: Mathis catalog generally picks up around Christmas, and display can he helped with fine Avedon cover photo.

And to finish this post, here's a few interesting links about Johnny Mathis and Johnny Bristol:

http://www.themathischronicles.net/

http://www.thejohnnymathisarchives.com/

http://www.soulfulkindamusic.net/jmathis.htm

http://www.funtrivia.com/en/Music/Mathis-Johnny-16607.html

http://hardtofindbeats.blogspot.com/2011/11/coming-up-johnny-mathis-im-coming-home.html

http://www.soulwalking.co.uk/johnny%20bristol.html

http://www.spectropop.com/remembers/JohnnyBobit.htm

http://www.soulfulkindamusic.net/jbristol.htm

http://www.soulmusic.com/jobrfemaands.html

http://hardtofindbeats.blogspot.com/2011/11/johnny-bristol-hang-on-in-there-baby.html

If you have any other useful information about "The Heart of a Woman" - especially corrections and improvements to what I wrote above - or if you spot any dead links, just get in touch with me at stereocandies [at] hotmail [dot] com or leave a comment in the box below, thank you!