Harry Nilsson
March 17th, 1967
RCA Studio C
Hollywood, CA
Producer: Chip Douglas
Engineer: Hank Cicalo
Demo session for The Monkees
01. I Live In A World
02. Signs
03. Counting
04. Counting
05. Cuddly Toy
06. Hey Little Girl
07. Good Times
08. Superman
09. This Could Be The Night
10. The Story Of Rock And Roll
Here's an excerpt from Andrew Sandoval's book "The Monkees: The day-by-day story of the '60s TV pop sensation" from page 103:
After this crew clears out, Harry Nilsson enters the studio to record a private demo session for Chip Douglas. In 1965, Nilsson wrote 'This Could Be The Night' for Douglas's group MFQ [Modern Folk Quartet]. Though they recorded it with producer Phil Spector, who featured it in the 1966 movie "The Big T.N.T. Show", the song remains unissued on record and Nilsson's songwriting prowess is still relatively unknown.
At Douglas's behest, Nilsson today tapes more than ten potential songs for The Monkees to record, including 'This Could Be The Night,' 'Cuddly Toy,' 'The Story Of Rock And Roll,' and 'Good Times.' The composer just happens to be at RCA studios today to begin recording sessions for his own album, "Pandemonium Shadow Show." As it turns out, Nilsson will have a long and varied association with The Monkees.
* * * * * * *
My comments:
Sound quality is A+. A couple of the tunes are fragments. I'm not quite sure if anything else was actually taped since Sandoval suggests that more than 10 songs were recorded. The other voice you hear in between songs is Chip Douglas. "This Could Be The Night" is quite possibly the highlight of this session and seems to tickle Chip a bit since he recorded it with the MFQ. Oddly enough, The Monkees only released two Nilsson tunes, "Cuddly Toy" & "Daddy's Song". They did attempt versions of "The Story Of Rock And Roll" and "Mr. Richland's Favorite Song" shortly after this demo session. Overall, this set of recordings is too short but the sound quality makes up for it as well as having a chance to hear Harry completely un-overdubbed. I wonder why he never recorded some of these on his own...
If you folks dig this, I have more Harry to come soon...
Enjoy!
~Kyle
www.KyleGrayYoung.com
JazzKid84@hotmail.com