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Originally Posted by propbeanie
Well, I can't find a good "original" version of this, but these guys ain't half-bad:
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this is the version our band copied from anyway... surprisingly, we didn't sound quite this good... ahem.
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Here is the original by The Righteous Brothers, produced and co-written by Phil Spector and recorded at Gold Star Studios, which used to stand about 3 blocks from my home...
There may be a very good reason your band's version "didn't sound quite this good". The Spector "Wall Of Sound" production style was less of a recording session than a construction site. This is from the Wikipedia entry on the song:
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The Righteous Brothers original version
The song was recorded at Studio A of Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles. When Hatfield and Medley went to record the vocals a few weeks after the song was written, all the instrumental tracks had already been recorded and overdubbed. They would repeat recording the vocal many times - Medley would sing the opening verse over and over again until Spector was satisfied, then the process would be repeated with the next verse. The recording took over 39 takes, and around eight hours over a period of two days.
The song would become one of the foremost examples of Spector's "Wall of Sound" technique. It features the studio musicians the Wrecking Crew, included for this recording were Don Randi on piano, Tommy Tedesco on guitar, Carol Kaye and Ray Pohlman on bass, and Steve Douglas on sax. They were also joined by Barney Kessel on guitar and Earl Palmer on drums for this session. Jack Nitzsche usually arranged the songs for Spector but he was absent, and the arrangement for this song was done by Gene Page. As with his other songs, Spector started by cutting the instrumental track first, building up layers of sound to create the Wall of Sound effect. The recording was done mono so Spector could fix the sound exactly as he wanted it. According to sound engineer Larry Levine, they started recording four acoustic guitars, when that was ready, they added the pianos, of which there were three, followed by three basses, the horns (two trumpets, two trombones, and three saxophones), then finally the drums. The vocals by Hatfield and Medley were then recorded and the strings overdubbed. The background singers were mainly the vocal group The Blossoms, also joining in the song's crescendo was a young Cher. Reverb was applied in the recording, and more was added on the lead vocals during the mix. According to music writer Robert Palmer, the effect of the technique used was to create a sound that was "deliberately blurry, atmospheric, and of course huge; Wagnerian rock 'n' roll with all the trimmings."
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The "Loving Feeling" recording session is legendary, standing among other Spector productions, such as Ike & Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High" session. It's too bad such a great record producing talent was contained in such a horrid man...
...although, Phil Spector was personally responsible for me getting my bar tending job back in the mid 70s...
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