The Sandpipers - Softly

For a buck I'll pretty much take a chance on stuff that I'd normally ignore. The Sandpipers felt familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it - but I figured it was going to be an easy listening experience that would be in the same vein as "Up, Up and Away" by The 5th Dimension ... yeah, for all the reverence Jimmy Webb gets as a songwriter, particularly his collaborations with Glen Campbell - it was a surprise the goofy balloon song was a Webb composition.

Well, I came home and cleaned the record, which was in remarkably good condition. As with so many records from the '60s there was no date on the cover, or the album, but a quick search revealed this was released in 1968. The credits are sparse, to the point of being non-existent aside from Tommy LiPuma who produced the album, and a few others on the engineering side.

The first track was the title track which was a cover of a Gordon Lightfoot song. It was indeed in the easy listening style with an emphasis on strings and vocals. The album is actually a decent listen, and I really liked how the guys would sing in other languages. I think my favourite from the first side was the closing track"Quando M'innamoro" that would be a huge hit a year later for the incomparable Engelbert Humperdinck when he released the English version titled "A Man without Love" a song I have long associated with my old roommate Otto and his velvet smoking jacket. Yeah, lonely is a man without love.

Anyway, the second side pulls a one two punch where the boys cover Donovan and The Beatles, in their three part harmony easy listening style. You can't take the piss for that, all the easy listening kids were doing it back then. There's something weirdly nostalgic about hearing this now. The guys even covered Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" which was slowed down and was played as a melancholy lament. I actually really liked it,

Then it was over.

The album was supposed to close with "Gloria Patri" but my vinyl copy ended with "Suzanne" which was strange. I tried to look up the album and see if there was a variant or anything where the song was omitted but I couldn't find anything - it was just gone. I did find the song on YouTube, and while short, it's a shame it's missing. It was an interesting choice to include on a pop album, as the song is essentially a hymn, that lasted all of 21 seconds. It was really beautiful to be honest, and it's too bad they didn't extend it into a round ... oh well, it is what it is. I've heard longer amens stretched out when my dad's family would sing the doxology before dinner. It was a point on honour to see how long they could make it last with as many warbling harmonies as possible.

Sigh, it's a mystery as to where it went and for all that it probably doesn't make my dollar record worth more than the buck I paid, but it certainly is odd. There must be others out there, but it's not like there's a Sandpiper's club that discusses vinyl oddities. If there is, let me know and drop me a message below.

For an album I bought as an after thought it was what I was hoping for. I was too young to remember much from the '60s, but over time I've filled in some of the blanks. Artists like The Sandpipers were a strange bridge between folk and pop that somehow managed for a few years to find a middle of the road audience who wanted to be with the times but still liked listening to Jackie Gleason albums, and this strange marriage of styles seemed for a short time to be just what the doctor ordered.

The Sandpipers during this period were the trio of Mike Piano, Jim Brady, and Richard Shoff. Looking through their wiki, the guys were playing world music before it was even a thing. They would sing in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Latin, and even Tagalog. They would also often have a female counter vocal which added to their sound.

All in all, more fun than I expected.