Agreed: The single is missing that beautiful tremolo guitar... Something about the jazzy Maj7th chords softly strummed and allowed to ring out in tremolo coupled with the dampened staccato piano notes creates an otherworldly, mellow showcase for Drake's lead melody.
in the early 60s it probably was insane. there were people still alive who could recall the first implementations of early telephones in their communities. must have been truly something to behold the rapid advancement of voice technology in the 20th century.
@@SexyFace even when Peter Frampton made it famous people still were blown away about how his guitar could talk. I mean if I was in the audience this would blow my fucking mind. Also fun fact the older talk boxes were notorious for damaging amplifiers and PA systems all the time so its no wonder that they weren’t used that often
The Backup Singer who looks like Conway Twitty is named Lin Brown and he sang with Sonny James for awhile. Almost swear that one guy on Guitar is the incomparable James Burton.🤔😉🎤🎼🎵🎶🎸B.W.
Expecially when you think about all the people who used this same technique of voice boxes on guitars and keyboards and shit like Rick James: Mary Jane or dire straights: mTV
Agreed! Beautiful song, I love it, and the old talk-box unit is really cool but . . .there is a slight nightmarish veil to the video! ;-) Probably because I watch a lot of mystery/suspense/horror shows and sometimes similar music is used. I'm thinking of that great X-Files episode, one of the best and most shocking/intense with the deformed inbred family that lived in a small town.
It would make a good Twilight Zone episode: a small town turns out for a concert by a country package tour that presents a big, lush, sound, featuring a talking steel guitar, completely without microphones or any sound system. Their hair is perfect and gleaming, and their outfits wrinkle-free. The next morning, news arrives that the entire ensemble died when their plane went down in a remote Saskatchewan lake hours before the show everyone saw.
@@keefmeister77 aliens would think humans naturally sound like that (with the talking guitar), I feel a song like this on the record would throw them off
@@onzah3515 That Singularity song sounds like a generic dubstep song with common vocoder effected vocals... which isn't a bad thing, but I don't think it's comparable to this song from the early 60's. That said, it's AWESOME to be able to enjoy both :)
@@onzah3515 Here's my contribution to an "alien music" playlist though, if you're interested Onzah, haha... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-k-b-OJrRQxA.html&ab_channel=AnimalCollective-Topic
im so glad that's cleared up the confusion i was feeling im glad there is a logical explanation for that guy sticking a plastic pipe in his mouth like that i thought for a minute he would suck up some pepsi cola from that box.
This is the most magnificent thing I’ve ever heard. This man was ahead of his time, too early. This is a blend of beloved oldies mixed in with something that you hear every day, distorted or auto tuned voices. This is gold.
@@maxmalmgren2480 floyd cramer i think, one of the greatest piano players of his generation. look up his songs last date, honey, rebound. YOu will see how amazing he is
This is so utterly beautiful and strange. I love everything about it, the tune, the performances, the filming, the colour, the lot. It looks like David Lynch took some tips from it. Ace.
I remember this from so many years ago. My dad really liked country music and every Saturday night we watched country music on t.v.. i miss him and our family so much.
@@TheWTFMatt There's good and bad in each era. Today there is still amazing music and there are still amazing people doing rad things. Back then there were rad things like this, but you also had Jim Crow and stuff like that. Awful and nasty and beautiful all exist in our era and in that era.
“it may not mean nothing to y’all, but understand nothing was done for me. me and my steel guitar, and it and I are singing forever” - Pete Drake ‘Forever’
The guys in the vocal group are (L to R) Duane West, Lin Bown, Glenn Huggins and Gary Robble. This was probably 1963-64, when they were known as "The Chordsmen" and served as the Grand Ole Opry's house quartet. In August 1964 they joined Sonny James and became "The Southern Gentlemen". Over the next seven years Sonny reeled off 23 straight singles that hit #1 on either the Billboard, Cashbox or Record World country charts (16 in a row on Billboard alone).
On closer examination, that's not Glenn Huggins (bass singer of the Southern Gentlemen) third from the left. It's Ray Walker, bass singer of the Jordanaires. Ray was close to The Gents at the time. This may be shortly after they joined Sonny James, as Glenn did not tour with Sonny until sometime later.
I agree with the time line. All the guy are wearing the proto-punk ducktails. This hairstyle gave way to the Beatles and longer hair, combed or uncombed. :)
Pete Drake was playing pedal steel on George Harrison's album "All Things Must Pass" when he showed how his Talk Box worked to Peter Frampton, who was a friend of George's and was playing acoustic guitar on the session. Frampton was blown away by the sound and started using it in concert. He always thanks Pete Drake in interviews.
@@davediamond9436 You’re correct. Frampton evidently started experimenting with the talk box at Harrison’s 1970 sessions but didn’t record with it ‘til later (after Walsh).
Jack Cramer Not quite. This was an early instance of a voice box, where a performer can modify the instrument’s sound by simply shaping their mouths into syllables, and that combination is fed back into the microphone. A vocoder relies entirely on a performer’s actual voice, hence the word itself (“voice” and “encoder”)
It can be, cause whole scene is very well directed. Every actor is doing exactly his work. They worked with musicians and made them look perfectly. Qualified quality.
Modern media has made a very strong effort to alianate us from our cultural roots. Twerking and multiculturalism is the norm. Respectful conservative culture is alien and scary now.
If you like this check out “Hello Walls” by Willie Nelson where he records with him. There’s 2 versions but one of them you can definitely tell that it’s this guy.
This is so set in its time yet its a hundred years ahead of everything else. So atmospheric. A sound I only ever credit to certain techno and dnb artist. I'm blown away
Yes! The Anita Kerr Singers. They recorded the original version of this tune in 1960 under the name The Little Dippers and it was a hit record for them. It's on RU-vid and has a nearly identical vocal arrangement. They did the bumper music for WLS radio in the 1960s, which was where I first heard them.
Unless they were lip synching to the Anita Kerr singers the gentlemen here are some of Sonny James Southern Gentlemen. I'm not sure of the lady singer. I watched this movie and Sonny performs in it also and they are introduced as Sonny's Southern Gentlemen. The lady singer could be one of Anita Kerr's. I also understand many of the performances in the movie were lip synced so who knows.
@plnkfloydian Well ya see there bud, that there is a small amount of humour taken in by way of what might be called a 'phonetic artefact'. Ya see now, our fella here is talking into a make-shift talk box and thereby is forming words by way of some fair obstruction. This has a noticeable affect on the clarity of his pronunciation, adding some ambiguity to bilabial, labio-dental, and dental sounds. Thereby, also obfuscating those sounds that would be formed further back now. So there you have it bud. No psychopathy involved. Or should I say 'Gno gykobaty inbwlbet'. To be fair though, Pete does a stand out job of getting some clarity out of that - it's a hard ask to say the least. But eh, you'd better not be cheesing me there buddy - 'cus I'm fair sure you'd a got me a good'n.
Takes me back to summer of 95 when i stayed with my grandparents in Utah. Grandpa gave me a cassette tape he mixed with music like this. This song, Remington Ride and Sleep Walk were my favorites. Sadly he passed this year at the age of 87. Thank you internet for keeping precious memories only a click away.
This is probably the most beautiful song that I hate listening to the most. The way it's put together is magnificent, but it just gives me this underlying feeling of an end. Like this is the conclusion to something huge, and it's to be enjoyed one more time before it's gone forever.
The workings of a talk-box FYI : The guitar signal is split 2 ways. One going to the amp as usual. The other goes into the talkbox. Inside the talkbox , is a small speaker. The guitar sound travels up the tube and bounces around inside your mouth. It is then picked up by the microphone there for the vocals. By “shaping” the words in your mouth , the sound of the guitar becomes part of your voice. Play a song on your cell phone , stick the speaker end in you mouth and make the oooo and ahhh shape. You’ll get the idea..
I wondered the same thing. I know how the talk box works, so there’s gotta be a microphone hidden somewhere. Maybe a primitive lapel mic, or a boom mic above camera-view...or this could all be lip-synced. Which was/is common practice for television.
no. inside the talk box is a little dwarf. the tube goes direct into the ear of the dwarf. the dwarf has a little mic in his hands and talks what he hears into the mic. because the mouth of the dwarf is so small, it sounds so different.
this is amazing. the piano hits hard. you can see Pete cracking a smile like he knows how amazing it is. and that blonde behind him cant stop smiling from the sounds
I'm stunned reading the negative comments on this link. This is not only a beautiful tune it's also an innovation of monstrous bounds. Addicted to this
what year was this from? and did you know that they went on to do more on the talk-box to regular electric guitar with Joe Walsh and Peter Frampton. look for it on here.
BaronVonPenguin If it isn’t to someone’s liking, perhaps they just move on, but the internet gives morons an anonymous place to vet their pent up anger. Really is a shame and really shows the maturity of the human race.
Pete Drake met Peter Frampton while he was recording parts for George Harrison's All Things Must Pass in 1970 and Frampton was so enamored with Drake's music that he gave him one of his own talk boxes. The rest is history.
Lol, this is a joke people. This talk box obviously pre-dates Frampton’s. “Forever” was recorded in 1964. All Things Must Pass in 1970. Pete Drake was the person who introduced Frampton to the talk box during some sessions.
It is the calm of the age of innocence. Picture it, 1963, President Kennedy has great plans for America and its people and everyone is starting to get along and people respect each other...
Because they were all pretending then and people are more honest now. Plus it sucked to be anything other than a white male, and not non-white and non-male people are refusing to be submissive.
When I first saw this I thought it was from a David Lynch movie, the staging, the people (especially the lady with the red bouffant), their clothes, the camera angles, the performance, they couldn't be authentic...i was wrong.
Tyler Glanz there just needs to be an awkward cut to someone standing in a field who suddenly gets sucked into a vortex followed by some sinister music.
when the five spooky looking people going ooh ooh in the middle, it really started getting surreal, southern gothic. glad I wasn't the only person who sense something ominous (and beautiful) about this...Lynchian.
Sounds wayy ahead of its time. I sometimes take for granted how special it is to be able to view these old recordings so easily its really something special.
I played this while i was alone in a roof of a building at night. It has that surreal and classic feeling no other song has plus the feel being alone at night peering in to the city makes it so aesthetic
This is incredible, it’s like being trapped in some kind of blissful purgatorial time glitch where the past and the future exist concurrently in opposing but adjacent dimensions. Or something.
It's partially because it is an analog sound and video artifact. This footage never saw a zero/one binary system until it was digitized from the source. Every single bit of the equipment you see there is analog. Maybe the nostalgic dimension you perceive resonates because of the integrity of the analog recording, being filtered through a binary system. Either way, I agree...this performance is surreal. I keep stumbling back on this video year after year.