May 6, 2018
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May 6, 2018
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3:08pm
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3:11pm
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3:14pm
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3:45pm
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4:35pm
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4:41pm
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4:41pm
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2:45pm
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The book on Titelman is his grandparents founded a Philadelphia knitting mill in 1904 after coming from Russia, and resettled the biz in Altoona courtesy of its Depression-era jobs development program. With its Ban-Lon textured fiber and Bob Cummings, Andy Williams and Gary Player spokesmen marketing, Puritan Sportswear grew to be America's leading men's sportswear brand. I'm sure my father cut their fabric outsourced to NY knitting mills. Alas, as he belied, men's sweaters fell outta fashion, plus with retail changing, Puritan knitwear unraveled and threw in the towel in 1991. Russ Titelman's parents being of the commie persuasion, moved away from the family's capitalism, and as the fortune cookie would have it, to LA's burgeoning record scene. His older high school sister became best friends with Phil Spector's girlfriend and she dated a member of his band. Outta the Teddy Bears' daily rehearsals in the Titelman living room, "To Know Him is to Love Him" became a hit, and Spector introduced Russ to more players in the music biz ("I started hanging around with Ed Cobb, the bass singer in the Four Preps"). Don Kirshner / Screen Gems signed him, and a year or two outta high school Titelman wrote the nocturnal "Don't Wake Me" with Cynthia Weil for the Cinderellas - a Cookies alias? - loaded with Wall of Sound musical cliches, and far superior to his "I Never Dreamed," with Gerry Goffin. "Guess I'm Dumb," written with Brian Wilson and recorded by Glen Campbell, was also crummy. He met Beach Boy Brian Wilson at Screen Gems' LA office, where Wilson often visited Lou Adler. "One day when I visited Brian he was writing 'Fun, Fun, Fun,' but the lyric he had at the time was 'Run, Run, Run.' He had a whole other lyric to it, and it was a good song that way, too! He was like a kid, going around barefoot in a T-shirt and jeans. I was never a fan of his early surfing records, but when he started idolizing Phil Spector and it was orchestral surf music, then I got interested in it. I loved the spontaneity of what was coming out of his head. Later, I thought 'Pet Sounds' was way ahead of anything of Phil's. As great as Phil was, his orchestrations were all the same kind of thing. But Brian's didn't have a formula! . . . . I went to a few Beach Boys sessions and Brian asked me to take a screwdriver and bang on a mike boom during 'She Knows Me Too Well'. That "tink-tink" you hear during the song, which sounds like a triangle, is me on screwdriver and mike boom." While sharing an East Orange, NJ apartment with Cookie Earl-Jean McCrea and her Raeletts sister Darlene, who he was dating, his one-time guitar teacher (through Spector), Ray Pohlman, now with "Shindig," invited him to join the TV show's band. "Richie Frost on drums, who played on all the Ricky Nelson records; Larry Knechtel played bass; Leon Russell played piano; Julius Wechter from the Baja Marimba Band was the percussionist; Jerry Cole was the lead guitar player; I played rhythm. There was a horn section, too. Then things changed, with James Burton and Billy Preston in the band for a while; Paul Humphries, too." Russ Titelman became friends with Jack Nitzsche, then with Lenny Waronker . . . . He'd go on to a 25-year record producing career with CBS Records, on albums by George Harrison, James Taylor, Paul Simon, Steve Winwood, and Eric Clapton, receiving 3 Grammy awards. The whole Billboard magazine interview/retrospective by Timothy White is at: http://www.spectropop.com/RussTitelman/index.htm | |
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2:03pm
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