A Message from Barry
Thursday, September 18, 2014
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Hi Everyone, I think you know by now that the new CD comes out on October 28th. Since it was such a complicated album to make, different than any other album I’ve ever made, I thought I’d take you through the creating of it step by step. I’ll be posting a note every week until the album is released. The making of "My Dream Duets" began six months ago with a conversation I had with Jay Landers, Senior Vice President of A&R at Verve/Universal Records. Jay has been a friend forever. We’ve worked on a lot of projects together. We did my swing Christmas album called "A Christmas Gift Of Love," and those great Bette Midler albums. Jay suggested that I make a duets album. It certainly made sense since duet albums are so popular these days. But, I thought, there are SO many duet albums. Some of them are pretty great too. Anyway, I kept wondering how would my duet album be any different or any better than all of the other ones? But I went along with Jay and started to make a list of the singers I would love to sing with. When I was finished making the list, I sat back and did a double take. All of my choices were all gone! All of them! They’d passed on years ago. So, I showed my list to Jay and he said don’t worry. (Famous last words!) Because of the incredible technical progress that has been made, it might be possible to create an album of duets with these great legends. It seemed impossible to me, but he told me to give him a week or so and he’d get back to me after he’d spoken with his people. While waiting, I began to listen to songs that these great artists had recorded. I listened to them and imagined how I could re-arrange the songs so that they would turn into duets. When I was done listening and making all my notes, I had a list of 45 potential artists singing their famous songs. I decided that if this impossible project could actually be done, I would call the album, "My Dream Duets" since it would be a dream come true to be able to sing with these artists I’d admired so much all of my life.
More later,
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