rigorousintuition.ca

"Hello Stranger" was a 1963 hit single by Barbara Lewis, which spent two weeks at number one on the R&B singles chart in Billboard, crossing over to #3 Pop.[1]

"Hello Stranger" was written by Barbara Lewis herself, who was originally inspired to write a song with that title while working gigs in Detroit with her musician father: “I would make the circuit with my dad and people would yell out: ‘Hey stranger, hello stranger, it’s been a long time’". The song is notable because its title comprises the first two words of the lyrics but is never at any point repeated throughout the rest of the song.

Lewis recorded "Hello Stranger" at Chess Studios in Chicago in January 1963. The track's producer Ollie McLaughlin recruited the Dells to provide the background vocals. The arrangement by Riley Hampton - then working with Etta James - featured a signature organ riff provided by keyboardist John Young. The track was completed after thirteen takes. Lewis would recall that, on hearing the playback of the finished track, Dells member Chuck Barksdale "kept jumping up and down and saying, ‘It’s a hit, it’s a hit.’...I didn’t really know. It was all new to me.” [1]

McLaughlin flew to New York City to pitch "Hello Stranger" to Atlantic Records, who had picked up Lewis' previous two singles for national release. Atlantic optioned "Hello Stranger" but then had second thoughts on the viability of releasing such an unusual track. The ascendancy of "Our Day Will Come" by Ruby & the Romantics to the top of the Pop and R&B charts in March 1963 motivated Atlantic to release "Hello Stranger" that month;[2] Entering the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1963, the track took another month to reach the Top 40. Impelled by its #1 status in St Louis MO, it entered the Billboard Top Ten that June for a five week stay.

Oh, a storm is threatning
My very life today
If I dont get some shelter
Oh yeah, Im gonna fade away

War, children, its just a shot away
Its just a shot away
War, children, its just a shot away
Its just a shot away

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its way

War, children, its just a shot away
Its just a shot away
War, children, its just a shot away
Its just a shot away

Rape, murder!
Its just a shot away
Its just a shot away

Rape, murder!
Its just a shot away
Its just a shot away

Rape, murder!
Its just a shot away
Its just a shot away

The floods is threatning
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or Im gonna fade away

War, children, its just a shot away
Its just a shot away
Its just a shot away
Its just a shot away
Its just a shot away
I tell you love, sister, its just a kiss away
Its just a kiss away
Its just a kiss away
Its just a kiss away
Its just a kiss away
Kiss away, kiss away

YOUTUBE NOTES. The London Festival Orchestra, an old warped record, some vacuum tubes, Sony Vegas, and 2 mics - my attempt to create better fidelity in a recording. The amp is a 1964 Scott 299D, the turntable Akai record player, the speakers Klipsch Forte, the mics Behringer T-1 Vacuum Tube Condenser Microphones, and the software Cakewalk Sonar 8.

LYRICS EXCERPT. Son watches father scan obituary columns in search of absent school friends
While his generation digests high fibre ignorance, cowering behind curtains and the taped up painted windows

Decriminalised genocide, provided door to door Belsens
Pandora's box of holocausts, gracefully cruising satellite infested heavens

Waiting, the season of the button
The penultimate migration
Radioactive perfumes
For the fashionably
For the terminally ... insane, insane
Do you realise? Do you realise? Do you realise?
This world is totally fugazi

Where are the prophets?
Where are the visionaries?
Where are the poets, to breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary?

LYRICS.
Day by day, year by year
When I’m walking along this street
I’m seeing the ruins crowing up to houses

Many windows still stay empty
There was no return for many people
About the things what just happened
No one speaks about it anymore

But I’m still asking who we are

We’re what we are
We’re standing here
Divided, defeated and else
We are still alive!

We’re what we are
We’re standing here
It can’t be over yet
No time for sadness
We’re what we are
We’re standing here
We’re what we are

We thought ‘resurrection from the ruins’
Dreams had to come true
40 years of united power
We made ashes into gold

Now everything changed
Things from the past are worthless today
Now we can get everything
But didn’t we want more than that?

And I’m asking where we are

We’re what we are
We’re standing here
Reunited in one country
Rich and burned out

We’re what we are
We’re standing here
we’re not going down
No time to be angry
We’re what we are
We’re standing here
We’re what we are

We’re what we are
Divided, defeated and else
Finally, we still exist!

We’re what we are
We will get over it
Because life has to go on

We’re what we are
This is just a bad phase
We will never give up!

I. Prelude to Act I: At the Wedding
II. The Bridal Procession
III. Folk Dance: Halling (with Hardanger violin solo)
IV. Folk Dance: Springar (with Hardanger violin solo)

While the two suites (Op. 46 and Op. 55) from the incidental music to “Peer Gynt” by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) are ubiquitous, the original score is almost never heard in its entirety. Even the very famous movements like “In the Hall of the Mountain King” are rarely performed with the appropriate choral forces. This recording contains all the music Grieg ever included in performances of the incidental music to Henrik Ibsen’s play “Peer Gynt” - that is, Grieg’s original score (Op. 23), along with a few additional numbers he included in later performances, such as the Norwegian Dances (Op. 35).

The play by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is in five acts and it concerns the life of the hunter and folk hero Peer Gynt. The work itself was intended as a melodramatic satire on the “Norwegian character,” and in it Ibsen attempted to break many conventional practices in theatre at the time.

A synopsis of the play is available at the following website:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_Gyn...

Soprano: Toril Carlsen
Mezzo-soprano: Vessa Hanssen
Tenor: Kåre Bjørkøy
Baritone: Asbjørn Hansli

Hardanger violin: Knut Buen

Conductor: Per Dreier
Chorus master: Oskar Raaum

London Symphony Orchestra
Oslo Philharmonic Chorus