Mike Sammes...

I have mentioned before that when I was a little girl, my dad would play music for me.  We both enjoyed Olivia Newton-John, so I have already blogged about her.  One thing I always wondered about was the identity of the deep voiced guy who sang backup on her earliest recordings.  I finally asked the right person, who discovered the mystery man's identity.  Why I couldn't find this out on my own, I'll never know.  I mean, I can Google with the best of 'em.  But now I know, so here's a blog post dedicated to the late Mr. Sammes, who had quite a colorful and interesting history in rock and roll.

Turns out Mike Sammes led a choir of sorts-- The Mike Sammes Singers-- who recorded seven albums in the United Kingdom and were responsible for backing vocals on The Beatles' "I Am The Walrus" and "Goodnight".

Oddly enough, my first exposure to the song "Goodnight" was a rendition by The Carpenters, which also used a choral sound to back up her lead vocals...

The choir in this version came from the Carpenters' alma mater, California State University, Long Beach, and Richard Carpenter's professor and friend, Frank Pooler.

Anyway, all that is cool and shit, but I'm most interested in Mike Sammes' distinctive vocals.  Check 'em out...

 You can hear him on the chorus...

And even more on "If You Love Me Let me Know"...

Here too... This video is totally freaky...

In this video, Olivia's got quite the accent.  I was in the womb when this was recorded.  I feel old now.

Mike Sammes' career apparently really suffered by the mid 1970s, because artists were using overdubbing and multi-tracks to do their own backup singing.  The Carpenters were really into doing that.  And I know Olivia did a lot of her own backup, too.  Still, Mike Sammes had a very interesting and distinctive voice that lent some color to Olivia's otherwise whitebread songs.  He sort of gave those songs a real old school country feel.

I might have to learn more about this guy.