Professor of Accounting and Finance Department: Business Administration Welcome Everybody. I hope you enjoy the benefits of using the LAVC PORTAL. Throughout the semester I will be adding course content and information to help you succeed. Don’t give up Often life doesn’t go in the direction we want it to. Does that mean our lives are doomed and we can’t achieve the success we dream of? Let’s be realistic: Everybody fails. Consider the following: Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper? Editor because “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” Disney went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland. In fact, the proposed park was rejected by the city of Anaheim, California, on the grounds that it would only attract “riffraff”. Thomas Edison’s teacher said he was “too stupid to learn anything.” He was fired from his first two jobs for being “nonproductive.” As an inventor Edison made more than 1,000 unsuccessful attempts to invent the light bulb. When a reporter asked him how it felt to fail 1,000 times, Edison said that he didn’t fail all those times but that the light bulb was an invention of 1,000 steps.

Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4 years old and did not read until he was 7. His parents thought he was “subnormal,” and one of his teachers describe him as “mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in foolish dreams.” He was expelled from school. Every cartoon that Charles Schulz, creator of the comic strip Peanuts, submitted to the yearbook staff at his high school was rejected. After Fred Astaire’s first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM, dated 1933, read “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.” Astaire kept that memo over the fireplace in his Beverly Hills home. Decca Records turned down a recording contract with The Beatles with this fascinating evaluation: “We don’t like their sound. Guitar groups are on their way out.” A friend of mine in the music industry personally auditioned a singer by the name Reg Dwight in the 1960s. He unceremoniously shoved the singer out of his office for wasting his time. That singer is now better known as Elton John. Imagine if these individuals had given up, believing they were doomed to failure and would never achieve success.

Do you think they ever felt down and depressed? Sure. But they didn’t allow a gloomy state to overtake them, to overpower their desire to succeed. In every case they did succeed - in a huge way, far greater than their wildest dreams. Bad experiences can be viewed as positive in hindsight. They can be stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks. It’s your choice. But be determined to never give up. Class Listing The Bread And Beer Band LP 1969 - Save The Vinyl Save The Vinyl Links The Bread And Beer Band LP 1969 In early 1969, Elton John (then known by his given name of Reg Dwight) and friends formed a band known as The Bread And Beer band The group recorded a single and an album in Feb. 1969, which was produced by Chris Thomas at the legendary EMI Studios at Abbey Road. The single was released in the UK only, in Feb. of '69. The album was planned for June of 1969, but cancelled, and the band put out on their own label in a handmade sleeve.

The album reissued on cd in 1994 (bootleg) ​The Bread and Beer Band: Elton John (Reg Dwight) with Bluesology - Come Back Baby (1965) - YouTube Elton John (Reg Dwight) with Bluesology - Come Back Baby (1965) Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Jan 9, 2009 Bluesology's first single, featuring a young Reg Dwight (Elton John) on vocals & keyboards. The song (words & music) was written also by the 18-year-old Reg. A couple of years later he teamed up with lyricist Bernie Taupin and they created much better songs! Category How Reg Dwight conquered the world - Telegraph How Reg Dwight conquered the world 12:01AM GMT 11 Mar 2007 Lynn Barber reviews Elton: the Biography by David Buckley Sir Elton John turns 60 on March 25, so let the celebrations commence.

For his 50th birthday, he wore a three-foot-high silver wig topped by a Spanish galleon shooting real smoke from its cannons - unfortunately, the wig was so tall he had to be driven to his party in a removal van, which made him cross. A few months later, we saw him moist-eyed and soberly dressed singing "Goodbye, England's rose" in Westminster Abbey. Candle in the Wind remains the biggest selling single of all time - 33 million copies worldwide. Perhaps it really is time to take the old darling more seriously. Which is what David Buckley attempts to do in this somewhat plodding biography. He maintains that Elton is a better musician that we ever give him credit for - the trouble is that the showmanship, the costumes and the razzmatazz get in the way. How can you admire someone's credibility when he is dressed as Donald Duck? But, of course, Elton came to fame in the 1970s, when he was competing with the most florid manifestations of glam rock, and he has never quite shed the trappings of that era.

Reg Dwight's transformation to Elton John began in 1967 when Dick James, the music publisher, teamed him up with the lyricist Bernie Taupin and paid them £10 a week to produce a minimum of 18 songs a year. Up till then, Reg had been hanging round Denmark Street, working in a record shop, singing background vocals on other people's records (Lily the Pink, for instance) and "trudging up and down the motorway, playing Knock on Wood for the 115th time" with his band Bluesology. He was popular in the music industry but barely known outside it till he started working with Taupin. They worked so fast that they produced 11 albums in six years, often writing and recording two songs a day. Their 1976 hit Don't Go Breaking my Heart (which Elton sang with Kiki Dee) was written in 10 minutes. By the mid-1970s, two per cent of all the records sold in the world were by Elton John. But by then Elton was complaining of exhaustion and was sometimes too depressed to get out of bed.

He had always drunk quite heavily, but now he was using cocaine as well. And his love life was confused, to put it mildly. As an adolescent, he found the thought of sex "completely frightening" and longed to be molested, but wasn't. At 21 he got an engaged to an American pickle heiress who was two years older and four inches taller than him, but when Long John Baldry pointed out, "You love Bernie more than this girl," he told her the marriage was off. In fact, his relationship with Bernie Taupin was platonic, but Elton found him "the soulmate I'd been looking for all my life". He came out as bisexual in a 1976 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, but said in another interview that he was attracted to older women. And in 1984 he married a younger woman, a sound technician called Renate Blauel, who everyone agrees was very sweet. But the marriage was doomed, according to Elton, because he was really married to cocaine.

At one point he was doing a line every four minutes, and was also bulimic - he would eat a tub of ice cream, three bacon butties and four jars of cockles then throw up. It wasn't until 1990 that he went into rehab and sorted himself out. At 30, he declared that, "When I'm 40, I don't want to be charging round the country doing concerts." Since then, he has announced his retirement at frequent intervals, usually mid-concert when the sound system has gone wrong, but he shows no sign of slowing down. And whereas most old pop stars live in the past, he takes a lively interest in new music, which produced an enjoyable recent collaboration with the Scissor Sisters (I Don't Feel Like Dancin' ). Moreover, he has finally found personal happiness with his partner David Furnish, whom he "married" on the first day of the Civil Partnership Act in 2005. The Elton who emerges from Buckley's biography is a lovable old cove - temperamental, to be sure, and still apt to throw tantrums, but definitely with his heart in the right place.

He is, and has always been, incredibly generous to friends and employees (all the staff at Rocket Records got a Cartier watch one Christmas) but also to charities - he set up the Elton John Aids Foundation in 1992, but even before that he was giving all the profits from his singles to charity, and in 1988 raised £15 million by auctioning all the stuff he had collected. So his wildly extravagant spending (£293,000 on flowers one year) has always been matched or surpassed by equally extravagant giving. In fact, he seems to have found the shopaholic's perfect modus vivendi - constant shopping followed by periodic auctions, with all the proceeds going to charity. As a model for the painless redistribution of wealth, it could hardly be bettered. He is generous with his time too. Buckley tells how, in 1977, Elton was sitting in his house near Windsor, watching Wimbledon on the telly, when a gaggle of students arrived at the gate. They explained through the intercom that they were from a nearby college and the musicians who were meant to play their college ball that night had suddenly cancelled - could Elton step in?

So off he went and played the gig for free. "I wasn't doing anything that night," he explained years later, "so I thought, 'Why not?' I admired their nerve." Same with Elton - you've got to admire the nerve of short, dumpy Reg Dwight from Pinner, who imagined he could be a pop star and actually, amazingly, is. BootlegZone : Elton John -- Reg Dwight's Piano Goes Pop Booklet & packaging :Full color inserts with fold-out booklet Total duration: 56:48 Comments In the Sixties and early Seventies, budget record labels such as Gallery, Hallmark, Boulevard, Avenue, Music For Pleasure, Marble Arch among others, issued compilations of current hit songs. However, these labels chose not to pay the royalities for the actual song, instead choosing to have anonymous "sound-alike" cover versions made. Elton John, using his given name of Reg Dwight, was one of the many uncredited artists involved in this endeavor. Elton performed on a huge number of these tracks either as lead singer or playing piano & backup vocals.

He began doing this in early '69 and continued until well after his self-titled "Elton John" lp was a certified hit, in the summer of 1970. This CD, later withdrawn, was the first reissue of 20 of those anonymous tracks, since they were released back in '69-70. After it was withdrawn, the tracks were released on another CD by the same label, entitled "Chartbusters Go Pop". The following liner notes were prepared for the CD release: Reg Dwight's Piano Goes Pop by Tim Joseph October 1984 Liner notes for the CD As you will have realised, the CD you are holding features Elton John singing 20 cover versions of chart hits from 1969 and 1970.

It was the era of the budget-priced chart-buster album: the months hit singles would be re-recorded by session musicians to match the originals as closely as possible ("can you tell the difference between these and the originals"!) Top Of The Pops is the series which you're most likely to remember (each volume bedecked with a scantily-clad female similar to the one featured here), but many other companies ran similar series throughout the '60s and '70s, selling surprisingly large numbers of copies in Woolworths, high street supermarkets and other outlets. Using cover versions meant the albums could be made cheaply, and for the buyer, a good collection of hit songs could be had for much less than the price of buying the actual singles. In fact, people tend to underestimate exactly how many copies the top titles (mainly Hallmark/Pickwick's Top Of The Pops and MFP's Hot Hits series) did sell. At least one Top Of The Pops cover gleefully reprints a copy of the BBC's Top 1O chart, showing their last volume perched at No. 1, above the likes of the Floyd's Meddle, T.

Rex's Electric Warrior, Lennon's Imagine, Carole King's Tapestry and Elton's mate Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells A Story. In fact these cover albums were only allowed into the charts for a short period in 1971 before some sort of snobbery or pressure from the "real" music industry - mainly over the interlopers' "unfair" budget price - caused their swift removal, and a chart fatwa on such LPs from then on. Although sales of these albums would seem to have reached a peak around the period of 1971-73, the trend had started several years before, although it was confined at first to EPs. Many people will still have one of the Top Six EPs from the mid '60s about the house. (The one exception to this was Top Six's (only?) cover-version LP, Beatlemania which made an isolated appearance in the Top 20 LP charts). With the rise of the long-player, the cover artist labels were quick to move into this area, and the success of the "cover version" albums was only stopped by the arrival of labels such as K-Tel and Arcade (both of whom reached No.

1 in Summer 1972 with their first releases) who licensed the original versions from record companies and made a killing in the process. It wasn't a new idea: series such as Motown Chartbusters had regularly made the Top 5, but this was the first time labels had regularly rounded up actual chart singles so soon after they had been hits. And once you could buy a compilation of the latest sounds by the real artists, although admittedly at twice the price of the covers, it was still cheaper than purchasing the singles individually and you were less likely to suffer derision at the hands of your friends. Ironically, the success of the Phase 2 K-Tel brigade was itself killed off when record companies realised they'd make more money by doing such compilations themselves, most notably with the Now That's What I Call Music series. What is surprising is that it took the majors 10 years to cotton on to the fact. K-Tel et al were forced to move further towards single-artist or specialised-genre compilations. The phenomenal success of the old cover-versions albums in the late '60s is reflected in the fact that dozens still survive, at least those issued by the bigger labels.

You can go to any charity shop and pick them up for 50p apiece - or less: in fact it would almost seem a legal requirement for every Oxfam shop to carry at least three in their racks (alongside the obligatory Partridge Family album), many still with their former owners names lovingly etched across the cover in biro, and the words "good" or "crap" assigned to each song. You're therefore probably slightly embarrassed to be seen with this CD: don't be. If your name is Reg Dwight or Elton John, you shouldn't be embarrassed either; the music on this disc is all first class. The snobbery attached to those "cover version" LPs is quite unnecessary. The records never claimed to be more than a cheap collection of "today's top sounds" to give the average pop fan 12 recent hit tunes for the price of 1 or 2 singles. Seems fair enough to me. (Remember, these were the days long before the more anal-retentive aspects of artist-orientated record collecting.

Believe it or not, most people used to buy records because they liked the songs!) I believe there are two reasons for the snobbery surrounding to the genre (OK, three: some of those sleeves were pretty grim), both of which are misplaced: Firstly, the fact that the records were recorded and released cheaply leads people to assume that the results must have been horrendous. Not necessarily so: even though the records were cheap, the performances were not. The playing was always (well, mainly!) exemplary: the Top Of The Pops albums used to boast on their back covers that the tracks were recorded by "the cream of today's session musicians" in top studios (although the players were of course never individually credited), and this was perfectly true. As American Elton John fan John F. Higgins wrote, "The resulting records, no doubt made available in the budget bins of retail outlets across the land pretty much as soon as the vinyl had cooled enough to ship, made no mention of the musicians involved. To be blunt, the album covers were void of detail to the point where consumers were led to believe they were getting the original versions when they put the platter on their hi-fi. But instead they got a different kind of talent.

A kind that comes from those skilled in the art of RE-creation." Secondly (perhaps more importantly here) was the simple fact that the artists weren't the originals. "Can you tell the difference?" asked Music For Pleasure's Hot Hits LPs with an implicit boastfulness. Well, yes, you generally could, but 24 years after the event does that really matter? (There are, of course, people who will swear by White Plains' version of My Baby Loves Lovin'; the same people who could not actually name the identity of that band's lead singer and who have forgotten that White Plains themselves were a session group put together much in the same way as the derided "cover version".) That the covers could be good is amply illustrated by the contents of this CD. Quite simply, these Elton John recordings are magnificent (and of course he wipes whats-his-name from White Plains completely out of the water). Yet their existence has largely been swept under the carpet. Elton himself has rarely referred to them in detail and his major biographies hurry through the story in a paragraph or two, generally with a perceptible shudder. This is as much a shame as it is misplaced.

Put it this way, if Elton John had released this collection as an official DJM "tribute to 1970" album in (say) 1973, it would no doubt have been derided. And yet what difference would there have been between that record and Pinups, a much-lauded Number One album by David Bowie (incidentally no stranger to these cover albums himself) which featured some of the worst TOTP-like covers of Pink Floyd and Who classics (amongst others) you could ever (not) wish to hear? When I first heard these Elton John recordings, two things surprised me. Firstly, although it has long been rumoured that Elton appeared on these cover LPs, no one has ever gathered them together before. Many people perhaps thought they didn't exist, or if they did, it was merely a couple of songs. What amazed me is just how obvious Elton's vocal presence is: on all 20 tracks, it really couldn't be anybody else. It's therefore surprising that nobody picked up on it at the height of his fame in the early-to-mid 1970s.

Perhaps nobody ever bothered to play their old Hits 1970 albums after 1971! Secondly, if the aim of these tracks was to sound as close to the original single as possible, it could actually be argued that Elton failed totally in his job! Despite the fact that he is meant to be a great mimic (Philip Norman in his biography Elton recounts a story of his incredibly accurate impersonation of The Bee Gees' Robin Gibb on a cover of Saved By The Bell), every track here sounds like nobody other than Elton John himself. For which, twenty years (or more) on, we have reason to be grateful, because throughout this disc Elton puts on the kind of performance one might have thought he would reserve for his own recordings. Quite simply, on several of the tracks Elton rips the original to shreds. Before we go on, it may be worth clearing up two related myths. You note I call him Elton rather than Reg as on our somewhat jokey sleeve. Despite the title of this CD, the tracks were indeed recorded by Elton John rather than Reg Dwight.

He'd taken on the professional name in 1968 after leaving his former band Bluesology, and upon signing with Dick James Music ("Elton" came from Bluesology's sax player Elton Dean, "John" from their singer Long John Baldry). Tied in with this is the long-held assumption that these tracks must have been recorded (along with those by Bowie and - supposedly - Rod Stewart) in the days when they were all young unknowns, struggling for that elusive first contract. In Elton's case, it has always been implied that these recordings must date from between his releases with Bluesology (1965-1967) and his first minor breakthrough with the Lady Samantha! single (January 1969). Not so. Elton had almost released an album of covers on Decca Records as part of a four-piece combo (featuring various DJM luminaries) called The Bread And Beer Band back in June 1969. Test pressings exist of the LP, which includes the likes of Mellow Yellow, If I Were A Carpenter and Needles & Pins, but the record's release was cancelled at the last minute.

(A single released in February featuring The Dick Barton Theme had flopped spectacularly).

But take a look again at the list of tracks featured on this CD (along with original artists, chart position and date of hit): all but one actually date from 1970: Snake In The Grass Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich 23-May 69 She Sold Me Magic Lou Christie 25-Jan 70 Come And Get It Badfinger 10-Jan 70 My Baby Loves Lovin' White Plains 9-Feb 70 United We Stand Brotherhood Of Man 10-Feb 70 Good Morning Freedom Blue Mink 10-Mar 70 Young, Gifted & Black Bob & Marcia 5-Mar 70 Spirit In The Sky Norman Greenbaum 1 -Mar 70 Travellin' Band Creedence Clearwater Revival 8-Apr-70 I Can't Tell The Bottom Hollies 7-Apr 70 Cottonfields Beach Boys 5-May 70 It's All In The Game Four Tops 5-May 70 Yellow River Lou Christie 1-May 70 Lady D'Arbanville Cat Stevens 8-Jun 70 In The Summertime Mungo Jerry 1-Jun 70 Up Around The

 Bend Creedence Clearwater Revival 3-Jun 70 Love Of The Common People Nicky Thomas 9-Jun 70 Neanderthal Man Hotlegs 2-Jul 70 Signed Sealed Delivered Stevie Wonder 15-Jul 70 Natural Sinner Fairweather 6-Jul 70 By the time of the final recordings here (around August 1970 if we assume that these versions were recorded about a month after the original single became a hit), Elton John had been a solo recording artist for almost 2 years.

His second single Lady Samantha, although not a hit, had received around 120 radio plays, many favourable reviews and respectable sales. He had already released his first two albums, Empty Sky and Elton John, the second of which had reached no. 11 in the charts. That album featured both his US Top 92 hit Border Song (which also formed Elton's debut on "Top Of The Pops" - the TV programme, not the LP series!) and his first UK hit, Your Song, (although the latter was not released until January 1971, after the release of his third LP, Tumbleweed Connection. In fact, THAT album had itself already been recorded back in March 1970).

Here's a quick look at his discography to date (recording dates are given in brackets): 3/68 I've Been Loving You (December 1967) 1/69 Lady Samantha (December 1968) 6/69 EMPTY SKY (LP) (December 68 - April 1969) 3/70 Border Song (January 1970) 4/70 ELTON JOHN (LP) (January 1970) 4/70 From Denver To LA (US only - theme from film "The Games") (1969) 6/70 Rock 'N' Roll Madonna (January 1970) 10/70 TUMBLEWEED CONNECTION (LP) (March 1970) 1/71 Your Song (January 1970) A pretty weighty canon, even for that period. Furthermore, by the end of August 1970, he had recorded and broadcast no less than 8 BBC sessions, plus an 30-minute early "In Concert" broadcast, which can hardly have failed to broaden audience awareness.

So all in all, although Elton was indeed still "up-and-coming", he was hardly unknown. So why on earth did this almost-famous pop star on the brink of international stardom (less than one month away from an enormous American breakthrough with his legendary concerts at LA's Troubadour Club) continue with his day job, so to speak? Only Elton himself can answer that one, although a couple of reasons spring to mind. The first, quite simple: money. Well, possibly. Despite the success of the Elton John LP, Elton was not on a particularly lucrative contract with DJM, especially as the latter party had spent much money on studio time and promotion for Elton over the previous 18 months. (In fact, the DJM label was set up specifically to release the Empty Sky LP.) As Philip Norman put it: "Times being tougher than tough, Elton could not afford to turn down any kind of freelance session-work. During late 1969 his talent for mimicry earned him at least as much as did his true persona.

As a Motown prodigy, a crewcut surfer, a Mississippi swamp rocker, even an English footballer with the vocal range of a tired moose, he was utterly convincing." DJM had Elton on a weekly retainer of ï¿½l5 a week for his services, which included recording demos of other peoples songs for the company. (Poor Bernie Taupin as mere lyricist only received ï¿½l0!). Mind you, paying the rent was no problem: for the past two years, both Elton and Bernie were living and writing in the comfort of Elton's Mum's place in Northwood Hills. Most biographers also point out the enormous growth rate and subsequent cost of the EJ record collection at this time. In fact, he even got a job at London's Musicland record shop, not only to pay for his habit but also just to be near to all that vinyl! Even would be superstars need pocket money, it appears.

Even so, the fees for these sessions was not likely to be enormous (remember the budgets for each album would be pretty limited, that for the artwork non-existent) and they hardly seem worth the risk of total loss of artistic credibility that Elton could have suffered by continuing with these sessions. Secondly, for the first three years of his "proper' music biz career Elton John was a confirmed studioholic. Although he failed his legendary audition for Liberty Records in June 1967, he had caught the attention of A & R man Ray Williams, who also had connections with publishers Dick James Music. Having been introduced to Taupin by Williams, Elton started recording demos of their material both at Regent Sound Studios and DJM's own facilities. Before long, Elton had virtually monopolised DJM's studio almost to the exclusion of everybody else. It was actually this which led to him signing to DJM: when Dick James found out about the situation, he demanded to hear the tapes, liked them and signed John and Taupin up as writers and Elton as a demo musician. For a couple of years, Elton did virtually nothing but record, the products of which can be divided into five groups.

Firstly, he and Taupin continued to turn out "commercial" songs by the score, most of which were demoed in the hope of their being covered by other artists. The pair did succeed in getting several songs covered by the likes of Dukes Noblemen (7/68), Guy Darrell (8/68 and 10/69), Ayshea (2/69), Plastic Penny (2/69), Lulu (one of her final six songs chosen for that year's Eurovision Song Contest) (3/ 69), Spooky Tooth (9/69), Orange Bicycle (1/70), Toe Fat (2/70) and Edward Woodward (4/70), although none were commercially successful. Secondly, as well as the "commercial" direction forced upon them by DJM, the pair were also writing and recording songs of a more personalised style, which in the end led to Elton's own recording contract. As we have already seen, by mid 1970 he had already released two LPs and four singles; this material barely scraped the barrel of the mountain of recordings made.

Philip Norman recounts that by the time of Empty Sky, at least a hundred finished "masters" had been recorded as well as innumerable demos. (32 of these tracks recently appeared on a 2-volume CD entitled The Dick James Demos.) Thirdly, part of Elton's task at DJM was also to record demos of other people's songs. A remarkable tape from July 1970 has recently appeared on bootleg of Elton and Linda Peters (later Thompson) recording a full LP demo of songs by Nick Drake and John Martyn arranged by Drake's producer, Joe Boyd. Again, there must be many more of these recordings lying in DJM's vaults. Fourthly, Elton appeared as a session musician, on both piano and/or vocals, on many other records. Notable chart successes included backing vocals on Tom Jones' Delilah (No. 2, 2/68) and Daughter Of Darkness (No. 5, 4/70), plus piano on The Barron Knights' An Olympic Record (No. 35, 10/68), Family Dogg's A Way Of Life (No.

6, 5/69); The Hollies' He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother (No. 3, 9/69) and The Scaffold's Gin Gan Goolie (No. 38, l0/ 69). Finally, there were the "anonymous cover versions" as found on this CD. Elton must have felt a certain sense of irony as he recorded at least a couple of the cover versions on this disc. He will certainly have had no trouble reproducing the piano lines on the cover of The Hollies' I Can't Tell The Bottom From The Top, as he'd actually played on the original single in the first place! While it's not confirmed that he played on the Brotherhood Of Man's United We Stand single (although he did do the original demo), he definitely appeared with them as part of the backing chorus on their "Top Of The Pops" TV spot. And with his former associations with Rogers Cook and Greenaway (who were amongst the first to encourage him in his career), he may well have featured on Blue Mink's original Good Morning Freedom as well.

Quite simply, Elton John found his vocation in the studio and in one way or another recorded more tracks in three years than most acts manage in a whole career. Recording is simply "what Elton did" for a living. A few extra cover versions taking three hours from start to finish was all in a day's work, and hardly a big deal. There is a third (and possibly most likely) reason for Elton's continuing presence in the cover versions world: he simply enjoyed doing it. Basically, Elton loved (and still does love) his job. He had found his life's work, and lapped up anything that came his way. His vocals on these sessions would seem to prove this theory, and as he had no other direct responsibility for the success of the project, why shouldn't he have enjoyed himself? He'd always wanted to be a singer, and surely this was a (relatively) lucrative way of practising one's chops in various styles. Let's be honest: there is no way he would have carried on doing these sessions at this stage in his career if he hadn't actively wanted to, simply because they were fun.

The sessions were run on a tight budget, but despite having the pressure of exactly reproducing a hit record in three hours, several ex-sessioneers have described the sessions as relaxed and fun to do. One gets the idea that while the sessioneers did a professional job, and probably took a certain amount of pride in their achievements, they did not take the projects entirely seriously, able to put the recording behind them after the three hours were up. This is backed up by an interview with the late David Byron, Uriah Heep's vocalist, who also spent his early days on these cover version sessions. "It was just a once the month thing," he told Paul Gambachini in 1976. "They made twelve cover versions (in a session). I think I started late '67.

At that time there was a guy called Peter Lee Sterling did all the lead vocals, who is now Daniel Boone, and there was some argument after about a year and Peter left and we started doing it at Pyeï¿½ and a bunch of singers came down one day to do backing vocals, Perry Ford was one of them, Russ Stone who'd just had a hit record (We Do It, rpm ed), and people like that, and Elton John. We just developed a rough sort of friendship on this once or twice a month basis, we all sort of got together and did all the vocals. I generally did all the lead vocals, and then he (Elton) and Perry and used to do all the backing vocals, and occasionally he did a lead vocals. He didn't think he could sing to save his life, but I thought he was alright." In the biography The Many Lives Of Elton John, Elton's friend Lesley Duncan recalls that "if a big ensemble was needed for any sessions, Reg would be there.

He had a zany sense of humor, and we all laughed a lot." Conversely, Philip Norman's description of events not only places far too much seriousness on the recordings, but is also completely inaccurate: "We find [Elton] in another low-rent studio, trying to forget he is Elton John or ever possessed style or material of his own. Shutting his eyes like a heritic under torture, he swallows his natural voice and pulls down the shutter in his throat. From his grimacing lips there emerges a thin, reedy note, filled with the tremulous angst of a pullet about to have its neck wrung. All present agree it to be horrendously like Robin Gibb of The Bee Gees." A quick listen to any of the tracks on this CD will confirm that at no time did Elton John forget who he was; as I said before, his own individual style is stamped on every track. And I imagine that he was quite proud of his Robin Gibb impersonation! It is known that Elton played piano on several of these sessions as well as providing vocals, although of course this is harder to identify.

Several tracks would seem to feature his distinctive style, of which it has been said to have been more than heavily influenced by Leon Russell, at his peak with Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs And Englishmen around this time. (Elton has been quoted as saying Russell was like a god to him at one time, and when he was seen in the audience at an Elton John show later, Elton was very worried about his performance. The two did later meet up, and to Elton's relief Russell was very approving indeed). It would seem more than likely that if he was booked as vocalist, he will also have been the featured keyboard player. Whether Elton actually liked any of the songs featured on this disc (the Stevie Wonder was a cert and the two CCR tracks seem likely), it didn't stop him from putting in a spirited performance on each. Either way, the public liked them: only three songs on this CD (surprisingly including Stevie Wonder's Signed, Sealed Delivered) had failed to reach the UK Top 10. The tracks here appeared on a variety of labels, from the well-known Music For Pleasure, Hallmark and Marble Arch to the more obscure North East London independent labels Deacon, Boulevard and Avenue.

Marble Arch was Pye's budget label: it has been suggested that Boulevard and Avenue were also part of the Pye Group (the road imagery would seem to confirm this!) which is possibly why tracks moved from label to label. (In case you're wondering where Deacon fits into that scheme, it could have been named after the Deacon Industrial Estate in the same northeast London area where the other labels were based!) The tracks were recorded by several companies, many independent, and mostly done at Pye Studios, one of Britain's top studios of the time (again, Philip Norman is wrong to call the studio "low-rent"). Recordings would then be licensed out several times to different labels, sometimes with a different lead or backing vocal, but all using the same backing track. Signed, Sealed, Delivered is known to have appeared on at least six albums! Even Elton himself probably can't tell you how many tracks he appeared on during this period. Collectors have located about 7 tracks not on this CD featuring him on lead vocals, but there are many more where he appears as backing vocalist and possibly pianist.

Quotes from Elton himself on the recordings are thin on the ground, but - talking to Paul Gambachini - he did mention them in an interview in 1976. "I really enjoyed doing them, they were really very well made records, in fact some of them I think the backing tracks were excellent, and David Byron, he used to do most of the singing on these, and Dana Gillespie used to do more of the girl ones, and I was occasionally allowed to do one or twoï¿½ I did Signed Sealed Delivered...". However, nobody has yet turned up a copy of the Norman-mentioned Saved By The Bell Bee Gees' cover, which Elton claimed he recorded for a Dutch company. He even demonstrated to Paul Gambachini how he did this. Holding his neck to make his vocal chords swell - hey presto, after six takes a perfect Robin Gibb! (Saved By The Bell was no. 1 in Holland at the time, hence the request for it to be covered). Meanwhile, Piano Plays Pop is a vitally important CD, conversely made up from recordings that in themselves (especially at the time) couldn't be less important.

As John F Higgins says, "By picking up this item and reading the cover, you already know more about the contents than the people who originally purchased these tracks did twenty odd years ago. You know that the singer of these songs is Elton John." It is a serious release of recordings from a genre that couldn't have been less serious. It is certainly the first of its kind, and therefore a law unto itself. You can make of it what you will (Quite what Oxfam may make of hoards of collectors descending on their shops snapping these old albums up is another matter!). You don't need the originals of these tracks to enjoy the disc to the full, although it makes it kind of fun if you do remember them (can YOU tell the difference?!). But away from the originals, Piano Plays Pop stands up in its own right, both musically and as a pretty definitive roundup of an interesting footnote in the history of Britain's biggest superstar. I don't suppose he'll lose any sleep over it. He certainly has nothing to be ashamed of. Tim Joseph Reg Dwight (regdwight) on Myspace Reg Dwight Select the types of content you would like to see. All types Your search did not return any results. Please try again.

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Pick one that's hard-to-crack, only known by you, and at least 6 characters long. Zip Code ? Please enter your zip code here. Connect me to people I follow on Twitter ? You may already know people on Myspace. If we find matches from the people you follow on Twitter, we'll connect you to them right away. Tell my followers about Myspace ? Let your followers know you're on Myspace with a Tweet. Celebrity Names - Find Out the Given Names of Celebrities at WomansDay.com! Retna Advertisement - Continue Reading Below It's not uncommon for stars to change their names before making it big. Whether to avoid confusion (one comedian's birth name was Albert Einstein) or to add that special star quality (another famous heartthrob upgraded from Archie Leach), swapping out given names is a time-honored Hollywood tradition. Read on to see if you know which well-known stars have given the term "name dropping" a whole new meaning. Most Popular Albert Brooks (Birth name: Albert Einstein) Through his first year of college, actor Albert Brooks was known by his birth name, Albert Einstein (no relation).

To avoid confusion with the famous scientist, the actor chose Brooks, a family name, when he began his stand-up comedy career. The name switch was an obvious move for him: When asked why he did it, he replied: "Do I even have to answer?" Photo by Retna. Ben Kingsley (Birth name: Krishna Bhanji) Advertisement - Continue Reading Below The Academy Award winner was born in England as Krishna Pandit Bhanji—Krishna is the name of a Hindu god and Bhanji is a Muslim surname. He started his acting career in the theater, but when he decided to make the move to film, he changed his name because he, along with his father, believed a British name would help him succeed. He chose his father's nickname, Ben, and a last name inspired by his grandfather's nickname, King Clove. Of the name change, Kingsley has said: "The irony is that I changed my name from Krishna Bhanji to Ben Kingsley in order to play Mohandas Gandhi!" Photo by Retna.

Cary Grant (Birth name: Archibald Alexander Leach) Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Hollywood legend Cary Grant was once known by a far less recognizable name—Archibald Alexander Leach. In order to escape his working-class English upbringing, Grant ran away from home and joined a troupe of comedians and acrobats. His travels with the troupe eventually led him to Hollywood, where he was offered a contract from Paramount under one condition: that he change his name to Cary Lockwood. After some negotiations, he settled on Cary Grant. Photo by Getty Images. Charlie Sheen (Birth name: Carlos Irwin Estévez) Most Popular Like father, like son. Actor Charlie Sheen, born Carlos Irwin Estévez, decided to take dad Martin Sheen's surname instead. But Martin Sheen was actually born Ramón Antonio Gerard Estévez, and adopted the name Sheen from his favorite Catholic archbishop, Fulton J. Sheen , in order to improve his chances at an acting career. It looks like it worked for both generations. Photo by Retna.

Demi Moore (Birth name: Demetria Guynes) Despite the fact that Demi Moore no longer goes by her birth name, Demetria (her last name is from first husband Freddy Moore), she clearly has an affinity for unusual monikers: She named her three daughters Rumer, Scout and Tallulah. And it seems that name-swapping runs in the family: In 2007, Moore's daughter Tallulah Willis (then 13 years old) legally changed her name to Lula Willis. Photo by Retna. Elton John (Birth name: Reginald Kenneth Dwight) Advertisement - Continue Reading Below The iconic singer, born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, changed his name to pursue fame. His choice was inspired by singer Long John Baldry and sax player Elton Dean. The star never felt at ease with his birth name—he's even said that hearing it made him cringe—because he thought it didn't have enough star power. "If you're going to make a record, Reg Dwight is not going to make it," he's said. Photo by Retna.

Judy Garland (Birth name: Frances Ethel Gumm) Judy Garland, born Frances Gumm, and her sisters used to tour the vaudeville circuit as "The Gumm Sisters." But when the name was met with laughter at a performance, they were encouraged to choose a new moniker. The reason behind the choice of Garland remains a mystery, but there are plenty of theories. Two such explanations: that it was a tribute to the character Lily Garland from the film Twentieth Century, and that the trio had been told they were prettier than "a garland of flowers." The star chose Judy as her first name based on a popular song. Photo by Getty Images. Michael Keaton (Birth name: Michael Douglas) Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Actor Michael Keaton was actually named Michael Douglas, but when he moved to Los Angeles and started auditioning for TV roles, he had to change his name to avoid confusion with the more well-known star. He chose Keaton for a surname because he'd read an article about actress Diane Keaton and thought her name sounded good. Years later, Michael called Diane and thanked her for her name, but the two have more in common than he realized: Diane Keaton was actually born Diane Hall.

Photo by Retna. Miley Ray Cyrus (Birth name: Destiny Hope Cyrus) Most Popular At age 15, Destiny Hope Cyrus legally changed her name to her childhood nickname, Miley. Her friends and family used to call her "Smiley" which eventually changed to "Miley." As a tribute to her dad, country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley adopted "Ray" as her middle name. Photo by Retna. Whoopi Goldberg (Birth name: Caryn Johnson) We have to agree: Caryn Johnson just isn't as catchy as Whoopi Goldberg. The actress decided to give up her birth name when she started acting, and instead chose to go by her nickname, "Whoopee Cushion" (we'll let you imagine how she got that name). Her mother convinced her to change her last name to something more conventional, and suggested Goldberg. Photo by Retna. Mickey Rooney (Birth name: Joe Yule, Jr.) Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Actor Mickey Rooney, born Joe Yule, Jr., got his big break when he was a child actor—he scored the part of Mickey McGuire in a show based on a comic book series.

His mother wanted to legally change his name to Mickey McGuire to beef up the publicity for the show, but the comic's creator wasn't wild about the plan, so they went with Mickey Rooney instead. Photo by WireImage. Shirley MacLaine (Birth name: Shirley Beaty) Because she changed her name, it's not common knowledge that actress Shirley MacLaine is actor Warren Beatty's big sister (he added the extra "t" himself). During her early acting career she was auditioning for a role and the producer kept mispronouncing her name, so she opted to change it from Beaty to MacLaine. But she kept her first name, which was inspired by Shirley Temple. Photo by Getty Images. Anne Rice (Birth name: Howard Allen O'Brien) Author Anne Rice didn't have fame in mind when she changed her name from Howard. According to Rice, her mother had named her after her father, but when a nun asked Rice what her name was on the first day of school, she told her it was "Anne." Her mother, knowing how self-conscious Rice was about her given name, let it go, and she's been known as Anne ever since.

Clearly a fan of playing the name game, Rice has also published novels under the pen names Anne Rampling and A.N. Roquelaure. Photo by Retna. Bono (Birth name: Paul Hewson) Thanks to his vocal skills, the lead singer of U2 was given the nickname Bono Vox—which means "good voice" in Latin—by a friend. He dropped the Vox and became known as Bono by everyone, including close friends and family. Photo by AFP/Getty Images. Elvis Costello (Birth name: Declan MacManus) Musician Elvis Costello, born Declan MacManus, has gone through plenty of monikers. During early performances he adopted the name DP Costello, a tribute to his father, who performed as Day Costello (Costello was his great-grandmother's maiden name). A few years later, Costello's manager decided to change his first name to Elvis, after the legendary musician. About 10 years after that, he decided to go back to his original name, adding Aloysius as a middle name. Finally, he adopted the alias Napoleon Dynamite for his 1986 album, Blood and Chocolate. Photo by Getty Images. Most Popular:

Question: By what name is Reg Dwight better known?
Answer: Elton John