The First UK A-side release of 'Close To You'

[Martin Johnson]

I've always assumed that it was the Carpenters who were the first to release 'Close To You' as the A-side of a single. The three earlier recorded versions that I knew of were either a B-side (Richard Chamberlain) or LP tracks (Dionne and Dusty). However, listening to BBC Radio 2's Sounds of the 60s last Saturday morning it was revealed that the English actress Adrienne Posta released 'They Long to be Close To You' in the UK as an A-side in 1966. It's pretty close in feel to Dusty's version which came out a year later which considering that Ivor Raymonde was the arranger for both shouldn't come as a surprise. Sadly, no Youtube video yet for the Adrienne Posta record so below is a link to the whole SOTS show. It's featured 49 minutes into the programme if you want to scroll along. This particular edition of the show was the usual mixture of the sublime ('It's Raining' - Irma Thomas, 'Chills and Fever' - Ronnie Love, 'Image' - Alan Haven, 'Poor Side of Town' - Johnny Rivers, 'Rock and Roll Woman' - Buffalo Springfield), and the ridiculous ('When you Come to the End of a Lollipop' - Max Bygraves). It's available to listen to until next Saturday morning:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nt2zn

[pljms]

I also heard the show and was somewhat taken aback when the record was introduced as I'd never heard of it before. For those of us of a certain age Adrienne Posta is fondly remembered for playing archetypal 60s 'dolly birds' in scores of TV shows and in several movies including 'To Sir With Love'. I didn't know that she cut records as well and her version of 'Close To You' isn't half bad. There's no mention of it in Serene Dominic's Burt Bacharach: Song by Song book so it must be pretty rare. As for Sounds of the 60s, I never miss it and athough certain artists seem to be featured every week (Beach Boys, Roy Orbison) it's the near perfect mix of hits and rarities.

[Martin Johnson]

Yes pljms, "near perfect" sums up the show well. As for Bacharach songs featured on the show week by week they do tend to veer towards the less obvious and often the downright obscure. Off the top of my head I can think of at least three Bacharach songs that I heard for the first time on the show over the years, the most recent example being Gloria Lynn's 'You Don't have to be a Tower of Strength', months before it was included in the 'Long Ago Last Summer: Burt Bacharach 1959-61' compilation. See below:

[Jim Dixon]

Apologies for resurrecting an ancient thread, but Adrienne Posta's 1966 U.K. recording of "Close to You" did eventually turn up on Youtube, and it's worth a listen.



Possibly more interesting, or just interesting in a different way, is the B-side, Posta's recording of the Dionne Warwick album cut "How Can I Hurt You?"


"How Can I Hurt You" seems an unlikely candidate for a B-side, as it's a tricky song (Posta handles the twists and turns pretty well for someone who didn't have much of a recording career) and, as Serene Dominic pointed out, the song sounds more like something from the musical theater than a Top 40 radio tune.

[blueonblue]

Jim, thank you for the clip, Adrienne handles the song really well.

It reminds me of something Dionne once said to Bacharach... "Burt, why don't you write something simple ?"

'blue'

[pljms]

'Close To You' is such a great song that it was bound to be a hit for someone eventually and the only surprising thing was that it took as long as seven years after it was written for that to happen. Here's a very different take on the song from 1972 by The Dells which was arranged and produced by Charles Stepney.

[Jim Dixon]

Here's a very different take on the song from 1972 by The Dells which was arranged and produced by Charles Stepney.

I love how The Dells titled the album "Sing Dionne Warwicke's Greatest Hits". I guess they figured Burt was getting enough publicity in 1972 from all those TV specials and concerts, and their audience cared more about Dionne than Burt anyway. It's an interesting album that curiously isn't easy to find in North America, though if you live in Japan you can buy a download today.

I came across Charles Stepney recently when looking up cover versions of "Do You Know the Way to San Jose". He produced Ramsey Lewis' 1968 recording that happened to have future Earth Wind and Fire genius Maurice White on drums. Bassist Cleveland Eaton caught my ear more than White, and is credited with providing arrangements on the album, but it's unclear which tunes he arranged. Eaton's mid-1970s funk albums became favorites with the crate-digging set, from what I gather online.

The Dells "more is more" arrangement reminded of the "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" arrangement by Four Tops. I really like the balance the Four Tops get between "Bacharach land" and "Soul Train land" in this recording.

[pljms]

The only version of 'Raindrops' that has ever worked for me is by BJ Thomas and when the lead singer of The Four Tops Levi Stubbs sings the line, "So I just did me some talking to the sun and I said I didn't like the way THEY got things done", it suggests to me that perhaps his heart wasn't really in the song.

I once owned a copy of The Dells' Dionne Warwick album and I don't remember playing it more than a few times as I found Charles Stepney's arrangements to be too radically different from the originals to be no more than interesting at best and irritating at worst. In fact their version of 'Close To You' was one of the more listenable of the tracks and another was 'Wives And Lovers', perhaps because the arrangement wasn't too radical a departure from the original.

[Jim Dixon]

...when the lead singer of The Four Tops Levi Stubbs sings the line, "So I just did me some talking to the sun and I said I didn't like the way THEY got things done", it suggests to me that perhaps his heart wasn't really in the song.

That's funny, I was taking a walk yesterday listening to a playlist with the Little Anthony & The Imperials "Walk on By", when I noticed a subtle lyric alternation:
"I just can't get over losing you,
And so if I feel broken in two"

(Hal David was right on the money with "seem" rather than "feel", as the former is from the perspective of the ex viewing the song narrator, and "broken and blue" is much fresher than "broken in two")

And I was thinking "how much of a lyric can an artist change and I not want to metaphorically rip the needle off the record?

When Dusty Springfield (who I'm a big fan of) opens up "Long After Tonight Is All Over" with the incoherent
"Tonight will be for the first time
I have learned what my lips are for"

...it basically ruins the song for me! (Maybe because it's so glaring right at the beginning of the song, and because the lines make no sense together?)

For Little Anthony and "Walk on By", it's a distraction, but I keep going.

Anyway, arrangements like the Four Tops "Raindrops" are kind of tightrope acts, and even the ones I like, I like because I find them amusing more than moving. Jimmy Ruffin's soul hipster take on "This Guy's in Love with You" amuses me, while Isaac Hayes doing much the same thing on several Bacharach covers often seems so cartoonish that I don't want to hear them very often (and his singing can't touch someone like Ruffin).

[pljms]

From my recollection I'd say that "broken in two" has replaced "broken and blue" on numerous recordings of 'Walk On By' and the only thing to say in its defence is that it sounds a lot more elegant than "broken in pieces", which came courtesy of The Stranglers on their 1978 UK hit version at the height of Punk.

[blueonblue]

Broken and "blue" has a nice ring to it.

'blue'