THOMAS FEARED HE’D UPSET BACHARACH WITH SCRATCHY SICK VOCALS
RAINDROPS KEEP FALLIN’ ON MY HEAD singer B.J. THOMAS feared he’d butchered the classic BURT BACHARACH/HAL DAVID movie tune - because he was so sick when he hit the studio to record the song.
The singer wasn’t Bacharach’s first choice to record the tune for the Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid soundtrack and he feared the songwriter would replace him after hearing his poor rendition of the song.
In an upcoming BlogTalkRadio.com interview, Thomas recalls, "I flew out to California and… I was sick with laryngitis and was beat up pretty bad from touring out there rockin’ and rollin’. I had been to the doctor a couple of days before we did the session and I could barely talk. The doctor didn’t want me to even speak for two weeks, let alone sing.
"He gave me a B12 shot and I got through the song after five times. Burt was quite upset that I wasn’t in good shape but the 20th Century Fox guy (movie executive) said, ‘Boy this is great. It sounds like maybe Paul (Newman) was singing! That’s a great idea!’ "He thought that I was singing it in a way that it could be Paul. He didn’t know I was barely getting through it! If you hear it now you can hear it’s a little scratchy. The masters are with 20th Century Fox but when you see the movie you can tell." Fortunately, Thomas and Bacharach got the chance to re-record the track when the singer was better: "We did recut it six weeks later in New York for a single and got it exactly right." The song from the 1969 film went on to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song and became the first U.S. number one of the 1970s.
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