Collectors of PF rarities know that On The Road appeared on the Partridge Family’s first album, along with a handful of other songs, without David Cassidy’s voice. Vocal arranger and singer Tom Bahler once said in an interview that there were half a dozen early songs that Cassidy wasn’t included on. The original vision for the Partridge band had been a choral sound more like the Cowsills, so when David was eventually hired as the lead singer (weeks after he was hired as an actor) producer Wes Farrell already had a few songs completed. Rather than go back and add David to the mix he decided to just use them as they were. David simply lip-synced to Ron Hicklin’s voice when those songs were played on an episode. On The Road appeared on both the album and the TV episode without David’s voice.
But in this case, it turns out that there actually WAS a rare early demo of Cassidy singing On The Road which we managed to acquire a vinyl copy of. Because the quality of the record was so poor it was not usable as such, and it required a full spectrum analysis and a number of unconventional recording tools to clean up the distortion, separate David’s voice and create multiple tracks for remixing. After some trial and error we were able to blend David’s voice with the album version - and in the process turn it from mono into a full stereo song. (On The Road was the only track on the first album recorded in mono.)
This was one of the earliest songs David sang for the Partridge Family, weeks before the show even premiered. It remains a mystery why they never used this version. Though his vocal part is sparse I think you’ll agree, David shined from the very beginning. So for the first time in many years here is a clean, stereo recording of David Cassidy singing On The Road.
27 июл 2024