Nino Tempo & April Stevens - Whispering

Hi there.

I'm new to the chat board, and am hoping that there's someone who can answer a nagging question. It seems that every CD release of Whispering by Nino Tempo & April Stevens has strange glitches during the spoken bridge. The song seems to speed up in tempo and then sounds like it skips several times. Is the song this way on the original vinyl? Are there any CDs without this problem? Thanks for your help!

Dave

Dave, I share Aaron's sentiments in welcoming you to the Board. I just pulled my copy of the duo's "Best Of" CD on Varese Vintage for you, and popped on "Whispering". It is definitely in mono, and, to my ears, has by far the worst quality sound of any of their Top 40 hits. After listening to it, I even think there is a possibilty that Varese may have used a vinyl source for this collection. This strikes me as a bit odd, as they were signed to a major label (Atco, at this time.) But April & Nino were both already seasoned music biz vets, even by '63. Additionally, Tempo could be considered to have been a bit of a headstrong maverick, given the era. He was always way-above-average in offering up his opinions to label execs, and was quite involved in almost every aspect of he & his sister's recordings - probably viewing label execs' input as simply a "necessary evil" to getting their songs out. Good for him, I say. I always thought he was a bit ahead of his time in this regard, and seemed to have more of the mentality that they were "independent music contractors", as opposed to the many acts that would simply sing/do 100% of what they were told to by their labels. What was also helping Tempo at the time was the leverage of him (and everybody else) knowing that Phil Spector wanted to sign he & April to his label, Philles. So, for this all-important follow-up to their #1 hit "Deep Purple", Tempo (with label CEO Ahmet Ertegun's blessing this time, no doubt - especially after Ertegun thought that the "Deep Purple" track was awful, and that the 45's flip side was gonna be the hit. Tempo strongly disagreed, and told Ertegun he wanted out of their Atco deal immediately unless "Deep..." was included as one side of their new 45. Ertegun relented, and Tempo was soon vindicated for his belief in the song) may have simply gone to his personal "storehouse" of he & April's recordings, looking for another standard they'd updated (which may explain the song's iffy audio quality - perhaps it was simply a demo version they'd done that was deemed "good enough to go with" in the interests of time - not an uncommon practice during 1963/64.) However, Dave, I certainly didn't hear any actual skips on my CD version. I also have the 45 filed away, and I will give it a listen next time I'm in my "1964 original 45 boxes" neighborhood (unless another kind soul can beat me to it!)   :)

Edited by jimct

There aren't any skips or other problems with the original Atco 45 with the exception of the poor sound quality! I agree that it sounds like a disc dub of a demo. I have their first Atco album, but not the second which contains Whispering.

GM

How does the song sound on the stereo LP? I do hear the crackling in my mp3 (which I can't recall where it was sourced from at the moment, it also seems to cut the song off before the full fade out). It is wide stereo so I don't think it was a demo recording....those would've been done direct to mono.

I was told a few years ago that the session tapes for Deep Purple and Whispering were located and that Deep Purple was remixed but that the tape for Whispering was badly damaged and couldn't be salvaged, which struck me as odd but I never thought anything of it until now...