I’d been thinking about the sound of the female voice a lot lately in recordings so a rummage through the record collection was called for (in the interests of scientific research etc etc).
The first album out of the rack was a self titled album from Libby Titus (CBS Sony 25AP 724). Released in 1977, it is something of an obscurity now but, given the number of heavy hitters appearing on it (Garth Hudson, Grady Tate, Robbie Robertson, Tony Levin, Rick Marotta, and Hugh McCracken), the big boys at CBS must have thought they were on to a big seller.
To tell the truth, the album does sound a bit dated today – rather more so than a Carly Simon album of that period – but it still has much to commend it. It’s a laidback, mellow kind of album that sits nicely with you after you’ve had a long hard day and Libby Titus’ somewhat jazzy and very tasteful phrasing is a delight, especially on her cover of Lieber and Stoller’s “Kansas City”. Strangely enough, the Carly Simon songs on the album are less successful but, then again, no one does Carly better than Carly.
The other thing I notice is the sound quality. The heftily processed i.e. auto tuned and compressed vocal sound forced upon our ears these days just doesn't feature here (but with an engineer of the standard of Phil Ramone behind the desk you wouldn’t expect it to). Maybe it is all down to the price tag on the engineer. Someone once said – think it might have been me – that a good female vocal sound was the direct result of expensive microphones, good acoustics and a patient engineer.
Should you wish to check out the album yourself then a vinyl copy will set you back about a tenner although you will probably have to get it from the USA or Canada. The album was issued on CD a couple of times in Japan (1993 and 2007) and even the reissue will set you back £30. But you really want the vinyl, don’t you?