Remember my challenge to you all? Well, I may just have found a male voice that tingles my spine, toes and assorted body parts in between as much as Mr. David Cassidy's voice does. The aspiring contender to the crown of "Sexy smooth voice as evocative as it is sweet" is....drum roll please....
Michael Bublé.
I kid, I kid.
Seriously, the contender is the lead singer of a Canadian group, The Philosopher Kings. I came across one of their old-but-feels-like-yesterday-hits from 1997 (was that really TWELVE years ago?!?) as well as their cover of a mid-80s MTV staple of the same vintage and went, "whoa, sexy, sexy...who are you and why did I drop your CD from my playlist?!" Listened to a few of their obscure hits and the evidence of a winner is mounting.
Ladies and gentlemen, feast your ears on Mr. Gerald Eaton, aka Jarvis Church in his second life as a solo artist, post-The Philosopher Kings. So far, I prefer his work with TPK but I'm not familiar with his whole discography. His voice is sexy, smooth, evocative and has that elusive sweetness I find so addictive in a singer's voice.
Comments, as usual, are welcome.
Couldn't limit myself to three songs, sorry. This one is more recent, from a 2006 album:
Finally, a sweet sentiment and video from Jarvis Church, Mr. Eaton's solo alias:
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
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24 comments:
Good music,like that! Nice and smothy voice. But never heard of this group here in Germany...anyway,sound´s really good.
By the way...Daydreaming David,thank´s for this nice blog,to share thoughts and love to David Cassidy.
Daydreaming, I think you HAVE met the challenge. Wow!!! Congratulations!! That's one sexy voice with similar qualities to David's. I think the word I'm looking for is timbre (SLK, help please). They have a similar rich set of harmonics (natural frequencies that produce music (as opposed to noise)) to their voices. I quickly looked up all this stuff up so I'm not sure I got it right. I’m just trying to find the words to describe the quality and richness of David’s voice that I love.
By the way, Happy Thanksgiving to all you readers in the US. :-)
LuckyB, welcome to the blog and thank you for the compliment. Glad you like The Philosopher Kings! I love introducing lesser-known Canadian talent to others when I can.
Singme, I'm finding Eaton's voice almost as addictive as David's. Unfortunately, I don't enjoy his material as much as I do David's but I'm starting to crave some of his songs. The replay button is going to get worn out, I think.
Forgot to say: I hope that SLK will chime in here too. I think you're on the right track with timbre - thanks so much for the link - you know I love learning this stuff.
The richness of David's voice reminds me of a slightly breathy and gritty, richly harmonic tenor sax. I think that sound is about the sexiest besides David's voice.
I couldn't find exactly what I'm looking for (I wish I had my dad's collection of jazz sax with me), but this is similar to the quality I'm looking for - Chris Farris.
My dad played mostly the tenor sax throughout his teens and adult life. He practiced hours daily, played local venues, and was for a long time considered the best in the area in which we lived (Trenton, New Jersey). He had won contests, was commissioned to form a band to entertain troops in Korea, and had opportunities to go pro, but chose the family life instead and the stability of teaching and school counseling. I wonder if I'm so partial to it because of my dad's playing.
Ooo, nice! Thanks Singme. I see the similarity. I'll have to find other musicians who play the tenor sax - love the sound.
Mike Melvoin, one of the musicians for the PF is quoted in "Could it be Forever" that David "was a young tenor. A young guy with a higher voice is capable of singing love lyrics and sounding innocent. That was part of the sociological formula of David's appeal to young girls. He was not a threat. Putting the same lyrics in the hands of a baritone singer would have been ominous."
Good band, see what you mean about the voice. He reminds me of so many good soul/R&B/motown singers from years past. Thanks, I would never have heard or come across this band I guess.
It's great for you all to find voices thay may equal or excite you more than David's.
For me, I will never find another, not really bothered about trying. David's voice is unique. Not just his singing voice but his spoken voice too. Course, the old goat's speaking voice is a little raspier now. But when he was young!! Not so much the KP voice but David's own. Loved the accent, the way he pronounced his words. His voice on the Billy and Blaze stories (God I am admitting listening to stories) and the Weekend at Wembley. I am addicted. I need an Ipod or mp3 so I have his voice in my ear whenever I want. The way he emphasies things like Lo oove yew ooo or whatever and his mannerisms. I think the video of How Can I Be Sure explains everything, the one where he wears pink! He would be so easy to mimic. This is camp but so totally s*xy as well. Don't know if he was playing it 'straight' here or taking the mick. I love his voice so much that if I had to choose between looking at him and listening to him I would choose the latter.
Sorry for taking the thread off track.
Wow, British Fan!!! Hears to his voice in your ears, anytime, anywhere. LOL!! You're reminding me that I need to get moving on my music orders!!!
Thanks for that info, DD. That makes sense.
Hi you guys, sorry, Thanksgiving has kept me busy...liked the Philosopher Kings clips. The style kind of reminded me of Level 42. The guy's voice is certainly good. Timbre is the right element that we're all looking for, definitely. I'm kind of with British Fan, though. DC is unique. "I loo oove yew ooo" indeed!
There's a band in Las Vegas called I've been thinking about lately. They're not famous, but they used to play in Reno when I lived there, and they had the most beautiful singing voices. Plus the brothers are sexy! This is Jerry Lopez, the brother who heads the band, playing guitar and singing Ain't That Peculiar. Lenny Lopez starts singing at about 4:00. I used to love to go watch them play. They were one of the very few casino acts who were immensely talented and committed to the music. DC could learn a lot from them! I wish I could find better clips of them.
Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!
I will take the thread off track too. British fan, you wrote about his accent, and I have been meaning to ask you native speakers of English if he did have an accent back then, that has disappeared now. I LOVE the way he pronounces the word "home" on Can't go home again for example. I noticed it already back then, it was not anything like the swenglish I learned in school. There are other words too, but I can't remember them right now. Does anybody know?
Forgive me Daydreaming, I always write what comes into mind, despite what the thread is about.
Sorry, I got the name wrong on that link I posted. It's Carl Ferris. I don't know where I got Chris from. :-0
I see what you mean SLK, about Level 42. And that Fat City band is phenomenal. I don't think I've ever seen a woman play the bari sax!
MaeB, I think some of his early accent comes from his New Jersey roots. The way I've heard him say love, home, roof (or a word like it).
....so great to be in complete agreement with you! Indeed,I LOVE the way he pronounce some words...like "yeeewoo and meee" in "I Write the songs" to watch on YT.It´s a little more different from the version you can find on cd.Guess he sang it live in that show.
I can not talk about his accent...of course there are some different accents in the US, but think we mainly distinguish the sound of american-english and british-english.
Unfortunately all the foreign movies in German television has taglines.
.........so imagine David ...or better to say Keith Partridge... speaking German, as he did in PF when the show was aired in Germany.What a shame!!!
Oh LuckyB, what a shame!!!
Sorry....!!! I wrote it wrong, of course the foreign movies are NOT taglined. I would say the movies are synchronised.Therefore he speaks German.
MG..hope my english is not too bad!!!;-))
British fan, I realize my search is futile. I'm not even sure why I'm trying. Perhaps I'm getting annoyed at how much David Cassidy's voice affects me? It's never happened before. Addicted truly describes my state as well. You mention the "Billy and Blaze" stories...I popped those in during a two-hour drive and was just enchanted by his storytelling. My pre-schooler was lulled to sleep many, many nights by his soothing voice on those recordings. Eventually, said little one got bored, of the stories more than of the voice, I'm sure, and I've put them aside.
SLK, Level 42!! Yes, I'd almost forgotten about them. You are right, as usual, they have a similar sound. The funk element is stronger in The Philosopher Kings but I loved Level 42 when they were big here and I'm sure they were an influence for TPK. Glad to hear that timbre is the correct term for what we're looking for here.
LuckyB, your English is just fine. Thanks for contributing to the thread. We call it "dubbing" when an actor's voice is replaced by another's voice in the foreign language, so The Partridge Family was dubbed in German when shown in Germany and dubbed in Spanish when shown in Mexico, etc. The term is synchronisation in French as well. It means that the target (foreign) language has to match the movement of the actor's lips speaking in the source language (in this case, English) - tricky for translators to achieve!! Taglines, as you call them, are known as sub-titles and that's when the target language dialogue text (e.g. German) is shown at the bottom of the screen. The source language is still heard. It might have been better if The Partridge Family had been sub-titled instead of dubbed in German: you would have heard Keith's original voice! Mind you, Keith's voice was NOT David's, as I'm sure many of you noticed. I don't know if the show's producers played with David's speaking voice the way they did with his singing voice on those first couple of albums but listening to him speak in interviews back then in the rare clips we have, David didn't sound like Keith! He sounded much sexier ;-)
LuckyB, the other term for dubbing is: voice-over.
Thank you DD. I'm glad it's not just me. Maybe we should give him even more credit for his acting on PF. I thought his speaking voice was ok as Keith but when I heard David Cassidy speak for the first time I thought I'd been hit with a sledgehammer. I'll never forget. It was so different. It was divine. I had a floppy disc once that you put on a record player (from Jackie magazine I think). I played it over and over. It drove me crazy. (It drove my family crazy in a different way). Apart from that it was the all too rare interview clips.
Good luck in your search for new voices DD. It's always fun trying.
Thank you very much,Daydreaming David you´re very kind:-))!
You just put a smile on my face,sitting here in front of my laptop.
It´s a little funny (I´m laughing!).....think I got the wrong words to explain what I would like to say.Anyhow you understood what I meant I guess and I got an englishlesson as well.Thank you again!! ;-)))
Anyway I´ll try my best and please forgive me any grammatical errors.... it´s a veeeeeeeeerrry long time ago I learned english in school!
British fan, you know that floppy disk message is available on the web still? If you don't have it, I'll find it for you - it might be listed on the Downunder fansite. Divine...is so right! I found another description of David's voice today: "sweet and forlorn".
LuckyB, that was simply a little terminology lesson and it's my pleasure; your English grammar is just fine :-) You express yourself in English better than most for whom English is their only language, so be proud! :)
Your English is fine, LuckyB! No worries. I never knew they may have played with his voice on PF. I knew about the music, but not PF.
I'm really looking forward to hearing those early interviews!!
Thanks!
Singmedavid, it's just my theory that the show altered his voice. It might simply be David acting as Keith. In fact, that is more probable and another indication that he DID in fact play Keith very well. British fan commented on this a while back - forget if it was here or on your blog - David's voice and mannerisms were very different than Keith's. You just have to look at the short interviews in the Weekend at Wembley clips to be struck by the DISSIMILARITIES between the two.
British fan, you'll find an audio clip of David's welcome message to his fan club here. That is so not Keith Partridge speaking.
THANK YOU FOR VERY MUCH for that link DD. I'm afraid my floppy disc, vinyl records and posters fell into the abyss years ago. After I left home, dad moved and put some of his/our belongings in storage (well a shed actually!). They succumbed to the damp and wildlife. It was my own fault for not taking them with me but I was in love and into the New Romantics by that stage and left all my teen stuff at home. Silly, silly girl that I am!
Thanks DD!!! He does sound a bit different. It sounds like he deliberately made his voice softer and more articulate on PF. His accent sounds a little like Humphrey Bogart's (especially the way he says his eses), which makes sense since HB is from New York.
British Fan, mr_evasion on ebay UK is selling a whole bunch of David memorabilia if you're interested!
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