Composes, Produces & Sings/Let It Be Written, Let It Be Sung

Artist: Ellie Greenwich Label: Raven [Australia] Category: Music Average customer rating: Media: Audio CD Number Of Discs: 1 UPC: 612657008423 EAN: 0612657008423 ASIN: B00000I08D Release Date: 1999-03-04

Composes, Produces & Sings/Let It Be Written, Let It Be Sung

Tracks:

1. I Want You To Be My Baby
2. Beautiful People
3. Baby Baby Baby
4. Goodnight Goodnight
5. A Long Time Comin'
6. The Sunshine After The Rain
7. Niki Hoeky
8. The Letter
9. Oh How Happy
10. I'll Never Need You More Than This
11. I Don't Want To Be Left Outside
12. Ain't That Peculiar?
13. Maybe I Know
14. Wait 'Til My Bobby Gets Home
15. Today I Met The Boy I'm Gonna Marry
16. And Then He Kissed Me
17. If You Loved Me Once
18. Be My Baby
19. What Good Is I Love You?
20. Chapel Of Love
21. I Can Hear Music
22. Goodnight Baby-Baby I Love You
23. Gettin' Together
24. River Deep, Mountain High
25. Big Honky Baby

Similar Items:

1. The Raindrops
2. I Can Hear Music: The Ellie Greenwich Collection
3. The Best of Darlene Love
4. The Best of the Crystals
5. Listen, Listen: The Definitive Collection

Product Description

1. I Want You To Be My Baby
2. Beautiful People
3. Baby Baby Baby
4. Goodnight Goodnight
5. A Long Time Comin'
6. The Sunshine After The Rain
7. Niki Hoeky
8. The Letter
9. Oh How Happy
10. I'll Never Need You More Than This - (Single 1970)
11. I Don't Want To Be Left Outside
12. Ain't That Peculiar
13. Maybe I Know
14. Wait 'Til My Bobby Gets Home
15. Today I Met The Boy I'm Gonna Marry
16. And Then He Kissed Me
17. If You Loved Me Once
18. Be My Baby
19. What Good Is I Love You?
20. Chapel Of Love
21. I Can Hear Music
22. Goodnight Baby, Baby I Love You
23. Getting Together
24. River Deep, Mountain High
25. Big Honky Baby - (bonus track)

Format: CD

Customer Reviews:

+1/2 -- Inconsistent but with some high points.......2003-12-13

This Australian 2-fer combines a pair of albums, along with a 1970 single and an early bonus track. The first 10 tracks comprise Greenwich's 1968 LP "Composes, Produces & Sings." This is an album caught between the bubblegum of her Brill Building/Red Bird work and then-contemporary soul sounds. The result is some very fine sunshine pop, such as the transcendent "Goodnight Goodnight," along with tunes seasoned lightly by Southern funk. "Niki Hoeky" (sung the previous year by Bobbie Gentry, and the same year by Aretha Franklin) sounds like something Greenwich would have written for The Dixie Cups, and a cover of The Shades' of Blue "Oh How Happy" fits Greenwich nicely. Even better is the Bob Crewe produced call-and-response revival of the jump hit "I Want You to Be My Baby."

Tracks 11 and 12 collect both sides of a 1970 single in AM radio-ready mono. Both feature horn arrangements, with "I Don't Want to Be Left Outside" more dramatic than the B-side cover of the Marvin Gaye hit "Ain't That Peculiar." Tracks 13 through 24 represent Greenwich's second solo LP, "Let It Be Written, Let It Be Sung," recorded for Verve in 1973. Two years past the breakthrough of Carole King's "Tapestry," Greenwich finds herself weighed down with pedestrian mid-70s productions. This is especially troublesome when applied to the stellar catalog of her 1960s titles she chose to cover. The phased guitars, doubled vocals, muted trumpets, and soon-to-be-disco strings dissipate the youthfulness and naïveté that made these songs so brilliant in the first place.

The Cabaret-styled waltz-time "Be My Baby" is novel, but not in a way that will make you forget The Ronettes. The album's one true bright spot is a luscious take of "Goodnight Baby" segued into a Memphis-meets-Nashville version of "Baby I Love You." The searching French horn may be a bit over-the-top, but still, this megamix of Barry & Greenwich is a delight.

The CD closes with a wonderfully corny slice of 1962, "Big Honky Baby." It's a fine reminder of the great work Greenwich did as a vocalist with the Raindrops, and a nice root on which to hang these later chapters.

3-1/2 stars, if allowed fractional ratings.

Indispensable........1999-11-26

Classic........1999-11-26

Great post-Red Bird EG.......1999-09-11

That having been said, this album's a little bit of a letdown. I was hoping for another "You Don't Know" (see "The Red Bird Story") or two, but this isn't *that* good. So it's not nirvana...it IS pretty amazing stuff. The originals, anyway...her decision to do "Niki Hoeky" is pretty redoubtable. I mean, why dabble in Pat and Lolly Vegas when you can write as well as she does? Her own songs--"Baby Baby Baby", "Goodnight", and esp. "I'll Never Need More Than This", a great lost Spector/Greenwich/Barry song, are transcendant tunes. The production, however, is what keeps me from giving it 5 stars...it's (not-so) classic late-60's style, with a farty bass that never fails to annoy. But I hardly notice it, now that I've played it a few hundred times...Ellie's great songsmithery triumphs in the end.

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9. Ether Teeth ~ Fog
10. Troubled Sleep of Piano Magic

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