Music Biz Monday: New Recordings with Original Parts

by | Aug 13, 2018 | Commentary & Observations, History, Music Business, Music Tech

In 1990, Hank Williams, Jr., won a Grammy award for Best Country Vocal Collaboration for “There’s A Tear In My Beer,” an award he shared with his father, Hank Williams, Sr. The video for the song, in which father and son perform the song together, also won Video of the Year from the Country Music Association. The only odd part is that the senior Williams had been dead for 30 years when the song was recorded. His son would take a recording of his father singing the song with just a guitar and vocals and had his band fill in the rest of the song, creating a virtual duet using existing material.

This would be topped a year later, when Natalie Cole would would perform a virtual duet with her deceased father, Nat King Cole, on his signature tune, “Unforgettable.” Whereas Williams simply added to an existing recording and edited it here and there, Cole had her father’s original vocal digitally extracted from the original master and dropped into a new musical recording. The result was a classic and highly-regarded performance.

Since then, having older vocal recording inserted into new productions has become more common. It’s even been used in southern gospel, most notably when Wayne Haun produced Greater Vision’s Quartets album that included vocal performances from JD Sumner, Brock Speer, and George Younce, who at the time were either deceased or unable to record new vocals. Haun would use this trick to greater effect with one of Younce’s later solo recordings; the vocals were extracted and Haun produced all new music tracks, while Ernie Haase & Signature Sound provided all-new backing vocals, creating a new album several years after Younce’s passing.

The most recent project to take this approach is Where No One Stands Alone, a “new” release from Elvis Presley that takes his existing vocals and drops them into all new musical arrangements. And while there is a duet between Elvis and his daugther, Lisa Marie Presley, it’s only part of a 14-song project that doesn’t just re-recording existing arrangements, but painstakingly creates new ones. For example, “I’ve Got Confidence” gets an extended bridge where Elvis’ vocals are manipulated into new notes and phrases non-existent in the original. Much of the editing is fairly seamless, but there are points where it’s more noticeable than others.

(Side note: SG fans will be excited to note that, aside from the Stamps and the Imperials, former Legacy Five tenor Gus Gaches served as a vocal arranger for the project’s choir, which also included Terry Franklin.)

With this kind of technology, imagine what could be done with some of SG’s vast catalog of countless artists. What artists would you like to hear with updated musical arrangements (mainly artists who are no longer with us, or at the very least, are incapable of recording new versions themselves)?

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Kyle Boreing

Kyle Boreing

Kyle has been writing for MusicScribe since 2008. He is a musician, producer, arranger, and occasional quartet singer, who pays way too much attention to recordings. He is an alumni of Stamps-Baxter School of Music and has shared the stage with many different artists. He also really likes movies that are "so bad they're good." Visit his website at kyleboreing.com, or follow him on Twitter @kyleboreing.

5 Comments

  1. Annette Wilson

    Terry Franklin,Michael English and Mark Lowry are one of my all time favorite Gaither Vocal Band combinations. Good to see Terry on this project;has one of the purest Southern Gospel tenor voices. #SouthernClassics

    Reply
  2. nber

    I’ve heard Big Jim Waits was an excellent bass singer. I am not that familiar with him except for a couple of youtube videos. I would love to hear some of his bass singing added to the type of recording you are speaking of here.

    Reply
  3. David Bruce Murray

    It’s my understanding the JD and Donnie Sumner used to record a lot of stuff in Donnie’s studio just for fun. I would love to hear JD’s voice on new recordings with good modern arrangements.

    With that much raw material of such a distinctive and unique voice, it would be outstanding to hear a “vocaloid” made using Sumner’s voice as the source. (A “vocaloid” is a piece of software that will sing that will sing whatever words, notes, and rhythms are input, creating convincing performances without an actual singer present.)

    Reply
  4. Samuel

    What would be great is maybe a compilation of older Cathedrals songs with George and Glen’s vocals extracted and added to new studio arrangements with Mark, Gerald, Danny, Scott, and Ernie adding new vocals. Or even if they had some unreleased material.

    Reply
  5. Dean Hughes

    I would love to hear Dottie Rambo with new music.

    Reply

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