Tearing Down the Wall of Sound by Mick Brown Page B

surroundings, at Master Sound Studios. For the first time he also had the benefit of experienced session musicians at his disposal, including the bass player Red Callender and the drummer Earl Palmer.
    Spector had written a handful of new songs, and in line with the conventional wisdom of the day Chudd decreed that the remainder of the album should be filled out with a grab bag of standards, including a Jerome Kern and George Gershwin song, “Long Ago and Far Away,” and the old chestnut, “Unchained Melody,” chosen to demonstrate the group’s versatility and broad appeal.
    But as the sessions wore on Chudd found himself experiencing much the same frustration that Bedell and Newman had felt watching Spector at work at Gold Star. After two weeks of positioning mikes, moving the group and musicians around the studio to capture the right sound and experimenting with echo, he had recorded only six of the required twelve tracks. Beyond impatience, Chudd called in his house arranger and producer Jimmie Haskell and instructed him to complete the album in one day.
    â€œIn those days the musicians’ union allowed us to record a maximum of six songs in three hours,” Haskell remembers. “Chudd said, ‘I’ve got the session booked for tomorrow; call the musicians and finish up the other six sides.’” Whatever reservations Spector might have felt about being so brusquely pushed aside, he kept to himself. “Chudd was tough,” Haskell says. “Regardless of how forceful Phil could be as he got older, Chudd would have overwhelmed him. He loved to be talked back to, but nobody had the guts to do it.”
    Haskell was given the songs, wrote the arrangements overnight and convened in the studio next day with the group and musicians. The six tracks were dispatched inside the requisite three hours. “But I can tell you this about those sides. They were somewhat on the sterile side. Phil took the time to get a certain sound, and when you do six songs in three hours you get a sterile sound. It can work, and when you have a good vocal on top of it you can have a hit record—but not this time.”
    Nor was it altogether Haskell’s fault. Spector’s new songs were largely derivations of a formula established with “To Know Him,” but none achieved anywhere near that song’s heart-stopping effect. Released as a single, “Oh Why”—the song that had already been rejected by Lew Bedell—reached only number 98. And
The Teddy Bears Sing
would quickly vanish without trace.
    The album’s most enduring legacy is the cover art—an unintended masterpiece of high kitsch, which shows Lieb and Spector, dressed in their sweaters stitched by Bertha, handing stuffed teddy bears to Kleinbard, who affects an expression of theatrical “Who, me?” coyness. According to the album’s liner notes, “Annette, the sixteen-year-old lead voice of the trio is a straight ‘A’ student and had her mind set on psychology as a profession before ‘To Know Him’ hit.” While “Phil’s biggest problem is not to forget the tunes that keep running through his mind. He never steps out of the house without a pencil and notebook. It is not uncommon for him to interrupt a date, dart out of a movie, or wake up in the middle of the night to jot down a new song that pops into his head.
    â€œThe Teddy Bears,” the notes went on, “are a good example of how today’s teenagers have a chance to become famous in the record field…In no other field of creative or industrial endeavor can the youngster express himself for so many and reap the lucrative rewards.”
    For the members of the group, the words must have seemed bitterly ironic. The contract that the Teddy Bears had originally signed with Era Records entitled the four members of the group to one and a half cents for each record sold. With the sales of “To