Specially flown in for us - a sessions gorilla on vox humana

Some carefully curated creations from the Major's capacious cabinet of curiosities for you. All with one thing in common - the human voice - but all very, very different indeed.

 

Young Scott - old Scott

First up, an album that I stumbled upon in my (then) local library's LP section many years ago. Nowadays what Scott Johnson did on this album is very easy to do - courtesy of digital sampling technology - but back then, in 1982, it was far trickier. He made recordings of speech into tape loops which were then dubbed onto a second tape machine in order to replicate the repeated passages in linear form, so that multitracking could proceed. Not only that, but Johnson perceived pitch and melodies in the spoken passages and then transcribed them into guitar parts. So, by making various loops out of one brief spoken passage such as this...

You know who's in New York?
You remember that guy... J-John somebody?
He was a-- he was sort of a--...

...Johnson was able to create rhythms and melodies from just one voice and his guitar. 

Dig those matching stage clothes...no...wait...

Next, something most people will have heard before, but not quite like this. This is Motown's finest, The Temptations, but with only the vocals and no backing. It's amazing how much there was going on which often just got buried in the finished mixes. You can really hear the various harmony parts and how much the Temps owed to the earlier a cappella vocal style. Interestingly, some of the psych-period tracks are more a cappella'ish than the earlier classics. "Runaway Child, Running Wild" is particularly fine when the instrumentation is stripped away - there's a lot going on here! The earlier "My Girl" is stand out, too, with some vocals in the chorus that trail off into subdued melisma in a way that's virtually impossible to hear on the full version.

 

Petra sells out!

Thirdly, some vocalese from Petra Haden - one of the late jazz bassist Charlie Haden's triplet daughters. She was given an eight-channel multi-track cassette recorder by a musician friend and it had a cassette of the Who's "The Who Sell Out" in it. She went on to use the gift to make an a cappella version of that album, multi-tracking all instrumental parts using her voice, as well as, of course, the vocal parts. When it works, it does so very well. "Silas Stingy" and "Tattoo" are particularly successful as their original mock baroque touches translate very well into vocal harmonies and counterpoint. Fortunately, there's a naive charm to Haden's voice which rescues some of the weaker covers, such as  "Relax" and "I Can See For Miles" although they still sound a bit like someone vocalising guitar lines while playing "air guitar" in front of their bedroom mirror.

 

They are what they is

Finally, some rather more conventional a cappella - courtesy of the Persuasions, who cover a variety of Zappa songs from various stages in the composer's career. The group really enters into the spirit of the music, with little humorous asides sometimes peeping through the flawless vocals. There are even some "Sheik Yerbouti" and "Lumpy Gravy" style interludes, complete with snorks and "piano people". Given Zappa's musical pedigree and influences, it's not surprising that the a cappella treatment works very well on the earlier songs, but it's also extremely effective on some of the later material - "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing" sounds as if it could have been written specially for this album. "Tears Began to Fall", of course, is an ideal a cappella group's number. A couple of instrumental guest spots from Zappa alumni aren't strictly a cappella, but as Frank himself would say, "What the hey?"

Somebody will be along shortly to dish out the load down link for these four vocal delights, although a qualifying question will be involved.