Procol Harum singer Gary Brooker dies at 76 [View all]

[highplainsdem]

Last edited Tue Feb 22, 2022, 03:53 PM - Edit history (1)

From the BBC:

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60485697

Gary Brooker, the frontman of 1960s rock band Procol Harum, has died at the age of 76, his record label has confirmed.

The London-born singer led the band throughout their 55-year history, co-writing and singing their most famous song, 1967's A Whiter Shade of Pale.

He was appointed an OBE in 2003, and A Whiter Shade of Pale was honoured by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

Brooker died at his home from cancer on Saturday, the band said in a statement.

-snip-

Tony Visconti wrote in his autobiograhy about first hearing a demo of this amazing song, as possibly the first American to hear it, when the demo was played for him in NYC by the producer who hired him to go to England.

I'll type that up and edit the OP to add it.



Here, from pages 25-26 of Tony Visconti: Bowie, Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy, about Tony's first meeting with Denny Cordell, a British producer with Essex Music, often called the "sister organization" of the Richmond Organization, which Tony then worked for in NY:

'I've got something with me that you might like to hear,' said Denny.

I took him into an empty office and from his briefcase he pulled out an acetate that he placed on the turntable. As he lowered the tone arm onto the grooves I had no idea what to expect. Instantly I was hit by the sound of a haunting organ played over a steady medium-slow rock beat. It was a sad, almost gothic composition, worthy of Bach, and I had heard it before. It was a variation of 'Air On a G String' (I had paid attention during music appreciation classes in high school). At first I was under the impression that this was an instrumental as the intro was so long. After almost thirty seconds my illusions were shattered when a voice, which I took to be a black soul singer -- but was really Gary Brooker -- began singing those surreal, but now immortal, lyrics. 'We skipped the light fandango, turned cartwheels 'cross the floor.' What the hell did that mean? Who cares? These disparate elements blended so incredibly well together.

'It's a new group I've discovered and I took them into the studio for a few hours in order to make this demo. They're called Procol Harum.'

The name was as strange as the music. Of course the song is now so famous, so a part of our collective consciousness, that it seems impossible to recall a time when it didn't exist. But there was I, probably the first American to hear "A Whiter Shade of Pale'. For many it's one of rock's most seminal songs, and for me, it literally changed my life.

Editing again to add that there isn't an exact date given for this first meeting between Cordell and Visconti, but it must have been very early April of 1967, more than a month before the single was released in the UK, since Visconti left for England a few weeks later, before the end of the month.


The excerpt below, from Wikipedia, is about the song's immediate impact after its release:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Whiter_Shade_of_Pale

The single was released on 12 May 1967 in the United Kingdom by Deram Records and entered Record Retailer's chart (later the UK Singles Chart) on 25 May. In two weeks it reached number 1, where it stayed for six weeks. Writing in 2005, Jim Irvin of Mojo said that its arrival at number 1 on 8 June 1967, on the same day that the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band topped the national albums chart, marked the start of the Summer of Love in Britain.[35]

According to music historian Harvey Kubernik, in the context of the Summer of Love, "A Whiter Shade of Pale" was the "one song [that] stood above all others, its Everest-like status conferred by no less than John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who were enthralled by the Chaucerian wordplay and heavenly Baroque accompaniment".[36] Kubernik also writes that, amid the search for higher consciousness during the flower power era, the song "galvanised a congregation of disaffected youth dismissive of traditional religion but anxious to achieve spiritual salvation".[37] In his 1981 article on the musical and societal developments of 1967, for The History of Rock, sociomusicologist Simon Frith described "A Whiter Shade of Pale" as the year's "most distinctive single", through its combination of "white soul vocal and a Bach organ exercise" and enigmatic lyrics that "hinted at a vital secret open only to people in the right, drug-determined, state of mind".[38] Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson had a profound reaction to hearing the song and momentarily believed that it was his funeral march; in a 2004 interview, he said, "When I hear it now, I [still] imagine myself at my own funeral."[39]

In the United States, the single reached number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and sold over 1 million copies. It also peaked at number 22 on the soul charts there.[40] Cash Box called it "a haunting, imaginative ballad [that] has a winning sound".[41] The song was included on the US release of the Procol Harum album, in September 1967, but not on the subsequent UK version.[36] In the Netherlands, the single entered the chart at number 1 in June 1967 and reached number 1 again in July 1972. A May 1972 re-release on Fly Records peaked at number 13 in the UK. Due to concerns about overexposure, the song was removed from the band's repertoire in 1969 for a number of years.[citation needed]

"A Whiter Shade of Pale" has continued to receive critical acclaim. Along with Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", "A Whiter Shade of Pale" was jointly recognised as "The Best British Pop Single 1952–1977" at the BRIT Awards, part of Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee. In 1998 the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, it appeared at number 57 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". British TV station Channel 4 placed the song at number 19 in its chart of "The 100 Greatest No. 1 Singles".[42] In 2018, the song was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a new category for singles.[43]