Andrew's profileThe White Horses Televis...PhotosBlogListsMore  |  Tools Help |
|
December 13 The Original 'White Horses' music score Jacky's Theme Song revised and updated on 03/09/09
Back in April 1968 a lady with a respected career as a popular Singer and an alternative career as a session singer in her own right 'Jackie Lee' was contracted to the Philips label and with ties to 'De Lane Lea' dubbing studios she was asked to record a theme tune for a summer BBC childrens television series.
The series was 'The White Horses' and the theme tune was recorded in Mono and Stereo on the Philips label BF1647 and LP Sbl7851, it was mastered in 8 track Stereo and pressed as a Mono single and later on made available as a Stereo album. For fans of the TV series the Mono fold down version is the prefered recording. The song was released in Europe as far and wide as South Africa and America.
Until the early '70s studio technology was extremely limited. Reverb, phasing/flanging, tape reversing and speed changing... not a lot else. The effect on Jackie's voice is simply double tracking, which would only have been possible by overdubbing the vox onto the instrumental backing, crude, but effective. The double tracking was Jackie's idea, since she wasn't happy with the fluffy cutesy vocal - so different from all her previous work. The sounds are fuller in Stereo; with the mono folddown you almost get a subtle phasing effect at times. It's most likely that the instrumental backing was recorded to four tracks, then the vocals overdubbed at another studio with the backing dropped to two or three tracks. The album master is 1" (as were the stereo cuts she did at Abbey Road, the mono ones being 0.5") and were flat transferred to U-matic in the late '80s/early '90s. You can still find the original Mono vinyl release on E-Bay for under £10. The compilation CD album 'Jackie vol 2' is out in the shops and features Jacky's White horses song. The song still has a dreamy magical feel to it even now and will continue to charm new generations of Horse mad girls well into the future.
A new CD album is in the pipeline this album will draw on the Philips and Page One era and have versions of White Horses plus We're off and running not forgetting Love is Now from the film Loving feeling and the preferred version of the title track to the movie Barbarella plus i expect lots more. If you have ever heard any of these tracks you will be forming a queue as i speak.
Technical contributions to above text by Steve Panter.
Today i got a lovley e-mail from the actual singer of this song Jackie Lee and would like to share it with you... see below.
Hello Andrew,
I have just viewed your White Horses YouTube again and am so impressed with the work that you have put in to it. I would like to thank all of the fans that have watched it and love the wonderful interesting comments they have made about my recording. It also brings back so many happy memories to me. I must say I loved the song the moment I sang it and I did try to get the feeling of great joy and happiness into the lyrics. I do think I succeeded in that. I remember Michael Carr calling me and saying how thrilled he was with my rendition. He was such a darling man. I missed him when he passed away. Thanks to you I am getting a lot more fan mail from people who still get great pleasure from listening to my recording of White Horses and that it brings back so many happy memories of their youth, as is the case with myself as well. I would be more than happy to answer any questions that I receive from anyone who would care to write to me and will answer them all personally to the best of my knowledge and ability. My very best wishes to all my fans and also to you Andrew. Jackie Lee. Jackie Lee can be contacted on either of the below mail boxes
Below is an example from my collection of the prefered version to get on Vinyl, that's recorded in Mono.
 Comments (3)
TrackbacksThe trackback URL for this entry is: http://ferieninlipizza.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!73DA1C5FCFD9A58F!1507.trak Weblogs that reference this entry
|
|
|
