Adding Backing Posthumously

Alan Brookes · From: Brummy living in Southern California

Years after Hank Williams died, someone added strings to some of his numbers and came up with the LP "Hank Williams and Strings." At the time, I was a bit taken aback, my thoughts being that it was not what Hank would have wanted. After Buddy Holly died they overdubbed backing onto a lot of unfinished recordings, and, as they ran out of material they took demo recordings never intended to be made public and added backing, even to the extent of looping round one verse and making it two. At various times they added the Crickets, the Picks, and the Fireballs, so that in some cases there are four different versions of the same recording available.

What do you think about that ? Is it acceptible to take someone else's work and add to it ? If I took one of Hank Williams's numbers where he just sings and strums the guitar and added a whole band to it, would that be okay ?

Do you know of any other artists that this has happened to ?

Ransom Beers · Posted 24 Apr 2010 9:20 am

The way things are in Nashville now they don't care about anything but $$$$$$$$,if it sells the hell with tradition & originality.Its all about the $$$$$!!!Is it wrong,I think so but I don't own the rights to it so..................

David Beckner · From: Kentucky, USA

It is what our Fore Fathers in this industry poured their heats and souls into . IF IT AINT BROKE DONT FIX IT.
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Dave Hopping · From: Aurora, Colorado

John Lennon comes to mind,and I think those shows with Elvis Presley onscreen and his band playing live are probably of that ilk.To me,it's a little synthetic (musical photoshop,maybe?),but that is an artistic opinion rather than a business judgement.

John Steele (deceased) · From: Renfrew, Ontario, Canada

One of the more infamous and controversial examples of this practice occurred when Kenny G. saw fit to smear his saccharine fluff all over one of Louis Armstrong's recordings (What A Wonderful World).
I think alot of people also found the "duets with the dead" concept, exemplified by Hank Jr. singing with his late father, and Natalie Cole singing with Nat, kinda creepy.

- John

p.s. The Best Comment Award goes to Sir Richard Thompson, who referred to Kenny G's efforts as a "digitally fused abortion" and wrote:

"A meeting of great minds, how nice,
Like Einstein, and Sporty Spice. "

Ken Lang · From: Simi Valley, Ca

I think it's interesting, as long as the real stuff is still available. I think jr. probably had some emotion when he sang with his dad. Now jr. jr. forget it. He couldn't fit the words in amongst all the cussin.
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Tony Prior · From: Charlotte NC

I guess it's ok to add anything but that doesn't mean we have to like it ! Hank Sr. with strings, that's kinda like the Carpenters Greatest Hits thru Marshall Stacks... Whoa!

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Barry Blackwood · Posted 25 Apr 2010 6:20 am

It's the George Lucas Syndrome. At some point, you have to stop tampering, no matter how much money's at stake .... Oh Well

David Collins · From: Madison, North Carolina, USA

Bent Romnes · From: London,Ontario, Canada

I enjoy it when posthumous duets are made. What can be nicer than your favorite singer(s) being united. Especially those who both are passed away, for instance, my all time favorite singer Jim Reeves when he was paired with Patsy Cline. This effort was neither creepy nor was it an abortive attempt. It pleased me to no end as it did millions of others.
I remember marveling over the modern technology of the day, being able to accomplish such a feat.

Sir Thompson's remark about - - abortion is not a "best comment" in my estimation...just one man's in-poor - taste opinion.

Neither does it have anything to do with things being broke that needs fixing.

If another quality pairing of two late singers were done, I would welcome them, especially another Reeves/Cline effort Smile

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Barry Blackwood · Posted 25 Apr 2010 6:33 am

Bent, here's one you might enjoy, even though one of the singers is still alive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtMnwZKOtwA

Bent Romnes · From: London,Ontario, Canada

Thanks Barry.
The singers were good, the dubbing was done quite nicely. I resented the canned applause however.
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Alan Brookes · From: Brummy living in Southern California

When someone wants to appear with his Dad, like Hank Jr. and Natalie Cole, I can understand it. Nat used to bring his daughter onstage with him and would have been proud of her tribute to him. And Hank Jr's. tribute where he comes onto the stage with his dad brings tears to your eyes.

I don't like it when they create advertisements using clips of deceased people, who may not approve of the product that's being promoted. Not that anyone's going to bother with anything from me, but if I thought a clip of me was going to be used after my death to promote detergent I would come back and haunt them. Laughing

Barry Blackwood · Posted 25 Apr 2010 10:02 am

Dave Hopping · From: Aurora, Colorado

Illusion is as illusion does-you never know what you're gonna get....Upon thinking a little more,I'm really a little surprised they haven't taken the technology further.It'd seem as though with having hundreds of hours of at least some artists' singing and playing available to digitize,some computer geek down in his mom's basement might even now be putting together parts from Leon McAuliffe,Les Paul,Dave Brubeck,Frankie Laine,The Chordettes,Janis Joplin,Jaco Pastorius and Gene Krupa with Myron Floren on accordion and the Lawrence Welk string and horn sections to produce a groundbreaking version of:

"Walk This Way" Devil

Dave Hopping · From: Aurora, Colorado

Or:
"Ted Nugent-Ray Price's Greatest Hits"

Bryan Daste · From: Portland, Oregon, USA

Well, that's an interesting question. I'm actually in the middle of just such a project now. Our lead singer and main songwriter died last September from cancer partway through the recording of a double album. The band has, through donations and playing fundraiser shows, carried on recording the album in his honor. We had finished vocal tracks for 5 of the 20 songs, and for the rest we used his scratch vocal tracks if they were good enough. Some of the songs we will sing ourselves; we're actually "auditioning" within the band to see who will sing what. In this case I don't feel that there's any question to the appropriateness; we are trying to see this project through the way we think he would have wanted it, and the music is too good not to be heard, IMO. If anyone's interested, we've posted 6 songs so far at http://www.scotlandbarr.com.

Alan Brookes · From: Brummy living in Southern California

Computer analysis of sound recordings is getting so advanced now that it's only a matter of time before they will be able to come out with a vocal from someone who has been dead for years based on sampling his voice.

Eddie Cunningham · From: Massachusetts, USA

Back in the late 50s or early 60s when pedal steel was getting popular some label came out with old "Hanks" songs over dubbing Jerry B. and Don H. non-pedal sounds with a pedal steel. I don't know who the player was but it sure bothered me to hear those great original sounds blotted out with mechanical pedal sounds !! On "I'm so lonesome I could cry" you could still hear Jerrys Rick. sustained break sound as the pedal player tried to cover it !!! I have wondered what the pedal players thoughts were as he covered over Dons and Jerrys great backup and breaks ??? Not good !!! IMHO !!! Eddie "C"

Barry Blackwood · Posted 26 Apr 2010 12:33 pm

I agree, Eddie - let the originals R.I.P.!

Joachim Kettner · From: Germany

I have a record by Lefty Frizzell that was released in '83, eight years after his death. It's obvious that the musicians (incl. Tom Brumley) and everyone else involved, put a lot of care and effort in it. I don't know how well it sold, but I can imagine their reasons for making the album were not for making a lot of money, more like a tribute to the man.

Bent Romnes · From: London,Ontario, Canada

Dave Mudgett · From: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee

OMG - Celine Dion doing a posthumous duet with Elvis? To my tastes, that clip rivals in tackiness the Kenny G debacle of crapping up Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World", which incidentally has made him a reviled object in the jazz world, which I doubt was his intent. However I'll admit that a late-period Elvis recording is nowhere near as important as the Satchmo cut, which is one of the highlights of 20th Century popular music to a lot of people. Just glad this wasn't on one of the classic early Elvis recordings - that would probably give me nightmares.

Of course, all of this depends on context and personal taste, but with rare exceptions, my sensibilities tell me that overdubbing classic recordings is just tacky. I have always thought the father-son/daughter pairings are sort of fair game, I can understand someone wanting to do this with the father that died before they could actually realize something like this in-person. I also doubt most people would think anything bad about finishing a project on which a main character died in the middle, although even that can turn out badly if it's not handled well - the best known example I know is in the film world - "Plan 9 From Outer Space", which is so bad it's funny after being 'completed' after Bela Lugosi died in the middle. To me, the acid test on any of this is whether there is a reasonable continuum of artistic intent and quality in the production.

But to me, in most cases, overdubbing a classic old recording has the same relation to 'real music' as karaoke. I guess if you like it, fine, but you can't stop me from really objecting to - IMHO - crapping up classic old recordings with commercially-oriented overdubs designed to make them more palatable to modern audiences. I'm sure you'll be shocked to know that I absolutely despise colorizing or pan/scanning classic B&W films. There was an artistic intent in this old stuff, and I don't think just anybody has a 'right' to mess with that. Call me old-school.

Also suffice to say that I don't think Richard Thompson's comment was in poor taste. If the people doing these productions have a 'right' to do them, the rest of us certainly have a 'right' to criticize the practice. At least in the US, that right to criticism is explicitly protected by a long history of legal precedent and court decisions, not to mention that it's simply fair play. Every sword has two edges - people have a right to do what they think works artistically and/or commercially, but everyone else has a right to think and say whatever they want about it, within reasonable bounds.

Just another opinion.

Barry Blackwood · Posted 27 Apr 2010 6:33 am

Mark Carlisle · From: Springville CA

http://www.jazzoasis.com/methenyonkennyg.htm

For those of you that may not recall the Pat/Kenny G battle a few years ago. Pat sure didn't hold back-in this case I agreed with him. My understaning is that they made up later though.