I have a lot of Henry Mancini albums from 68-74 but this was just too syrupy. I can't believe it got so high on the charts.
I guess I like "typical Beatles records" more. The lyrics are funny and you are right about Billy, and compared to the rest of the Get Back sessions, it stands out as a highlight. But it just doesn't do much for me (I don't hate it, just isn't one of my faves). Ballad of John and Yoko I like a tad more, but it's another of the Beatles' songs I'm not overly fond of. Early 1969 was one of their lesser periods I think.
Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey had a lot to do with it. I remember the girls at school were all into these two so you had a perfect storm of teeny-boppers and older adults who liked this sort of thing. Music and the movies have had a symbiotic relationship for decades and this was just the latest incarnation.
I may have been aware of it (the tune), and did see the movie, but it was not the type of music to have any appeal for me at that time. However here I am almost 50 years later and I have a box set, and half a dozen other CDs of Mancini A few years ago I found an LP of Symphonic Soul and was delighted with this track.
I just missed this pop culture wise, I don't think I've even seen the movie in 30 odd years.. I bet I have that on MP3's at least. Henry had a great run in the '70s, my favorite is the Thief Who Came To Dinner soundtrack.
I'm a huge Henry Mancini fan! I grew up with his music in our home. I'm not sure if it was my mother or father who was the bigger fan, but, whatever, I love the music, especially the "Hatari" soundtrack. Today, I have his boxed set, and yes, I know they are remixes, but well-done remixes.
And, RCA brass realized it had to get into soul music. Before 1969, all they really had was Sam Cooke, and he was murdered three years prior. By the early 1970, they had The Friends Of Distinction, The New Birth, The Main Ingredient, and Mother's Finest, to name a few. The label was even at the forefront of disco. Ah, but they still cranked out Elvis Presley material for all it was worth.
I like it, but it's just OK. I do like the lyrical content. I never heard it on the radio. In fact, I never heard the song until the 80s.
Elvis' contract with RCA demanded a really stupid amount of albums per year. That's the reasoning behind all the Camden and Pickwick albums.
Mancini was responsible for some great hits in the '60s. This, however, was not one of them. You never heard this on pop radio when I was growing up in the early '70s, so while it might have sold well to old people and girls who thought Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey were just dreamy, that aura clearly didn't glow very long.
This was also the first number one in RCA's stereo 74-0100 series - the 32nd issue. (The first single, in numerical order, to chart, was The Guess Who's "These Eyes," 74-0102, the third release, which broke out of the gate in a big way - it made them stars in the States; then the eighth catalogue release, The Friends of Distinction's "Grazin' In The Grass," 74-0107.) I.I.N.M., "easy listening" stations drove this one way up. As for Mancini, one of his own movie tunes, "Experiment In Terror," from the 1962 film of the same name with Glenn Ford and Lee Remick, was used for years as the theme for Chicago TV station WGN-TV's (Channel 9) Creature Features movie umbrella. This piece features an instrument that sounds an awful lot like the swardmandal that would later turn up on The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever." But it wasn't just their own three #1's in '69 - RCA also distributed the Calendar (later Kirshner) label which yielded another #1 we'll look at later.
I mentioned in the '68 thread that I was puzzled how this type of music hit #1 in top 40 music.At my advanced age now I don't mind it but I would have thought even back then the top 40 charts would be dominated by more pop(younger )type of music.Must have been close to the last hurrah for this type.
I don't discredit Mancini's talent, but Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet is a total snooze fest. It would be improved just a tad if those horrid choral vocals had been erased.
That was one title. The more prominent was "A Time For Us." Johnny Mathis did a version in that vein. It went nowhere on the Hot 100. Can't say about the Easy Listening charts, someone may know more about that than I . . .
I stated a while ago that Mancini's "Love Theme From Romeo and Juliet" was one that I have never heard on the radio (not once, ever). I only know it from the "History of Rock and Roll" radio show -- and that was one that it took me a couple years to identify even from that. A poster on the last page seemed to echo the same sentiments (at least I'm not the only one). We never had Henry Mancini music in our household. We did have Herb Alpert and the Boston Pops in our household, so it's not like we didn't have any of that kind of music -- we just didn't have Mancini. As far as not really liking "Get Back", in my case I do like it, but there are a lot of Beatles tracks I like more - including almost all of their other #1s (save maybe "The Long and Winding Road"). With the Beatles, there is a very high bar.
We had quite a bit of Mancini around the house. My grandmother must have been a fan, but my uncle bought his stuff too, and he was 20 in '69.
Some radio stations did play this tune "at the time." On one of the websites that have old radio airchecks, one of Charlie Greer's last shows for WABC Musicradio 77 in New York, a few days prior to his summer 1969 departure from the station, featured this number, played just before the :55 news update.
The Jefferson Airplane were an album band. Judging them by their hit singles is like judging the Archies (another RCA act) by their LPs.
There was a book by Marc Taylor called A Touch Of Classic Soul, where he interviewed all these legendary R&B singers from the early seventies. Everybody in the book who recorded for RCA, to a person, complained that the company didn't know how to handle black music.
Oldies radio, once it became a viable format, basically maxed out the more MOR records from the format. Mancini never gets played in these formats, but neither does Englebert Humperdinck, to name one example.