WS1670

THE SEA ".and we made love

and only the sea was watching."

composed by anita kerr

written by rod mckuen

the san Sebastian strings

I've wanted to write this album for a long time. It seems like always. I remember trying several years ago in New York, then abandoning it when something else came up. In 1963 a trunk I had shipped from Naples to the island of Hydra was lost and with it notes I had made on a "Sea" album. And, more recently, a composer- arranger and a friend I had interested in "The Sea" waltzed off together to create their own such project. No matter. That lost, abandoned, or stolen Sea means nothing now. The words here are the ones I have lived with for the past several weeks, and they remain for me important.

I don't believe a man can write about the sea and not include himself. Much of me is here and I have used the sea as a platform to speak about the times and the seasons and people's relationships to one another. Most of all, I've used the sea to write about loving.

Psychologists equate Man's love for the sea with mother-love. No wonder so many sun-tanned young men and women look out at us from magazines and tele¬ vision, selling beer and cigarettes from docks and sailboats!

In December of last year I approached the gifted Anita Kerr to write the music for this album. I would write the words. She agreed and we went to Warner Bros, to see what their interest might be in recording and releasing it. They were high enough on the idea to give us the nearly $10,000 it would take in recording costs

alone. We began to work. I sketched out thoughts on what the music should say and

the beginnings of poems that we might use. With this guideline, Anita wrote and arranged the music in two weeks over the Christmas holidays.

At the recording session, I heard her music for the first time. I felt it was unbe¬ lievably good and threw out everything I had written up until then. Three days later I had new words to fit the mood she had created.

The sea effects we chose are from Warner Bros. Pictures sound department and a dozen other sources. We must have gone through hundreds to find what we felt was right. Did you know the surf off the coast of Maine sounds unlike that at

Monterey? The voice belongs to a good friend. The name doesrr't matter. It is more important

that it is someone you might like to know, or someone you might like to have say to you the things that are being said here.

I have made love and thought myself a lover by the sea. Caught cold from it. Nearly drowned in it once or twice and walked alone by it more often than I care to remember. I've known the seas off San Francisco and San Sebastian, Capri and Catalina, Mauntak and Majorca, Mexico and the North Atlantic, and I've loved them all. How much fun it was to write about the sea! How much fun it will be to write about it again. I am indebted to many people for the chance. Mostly Anita

Kerr. Anita thinks like a man. Maybe because she is writing music in a man's world.

But, she is as feminine as a rose. I have never seen her terrify her husband with tears or whip her musicians with words, still she commands the respect and love of both. Writer Stan Cornyn calls her the "Indira Ghandi" of the music world. She is that. And she is gentle, warm, and unbelievably pretty — like the music she writes.

It is marvelous to know that I am not too young anymore (and not very old either) and that I'll be writing songs with Anita Kerr for a long, long time to come. I cross streets more carefully now.

ROD McKUEN,

January 1967

SIDE ONE My Friend the Sea

While Drifting

Gifts from the Sea

The Time of Noon

Afternoon Shadows

Do You Like the Rain?

The Days of the Dancing

SIDE TWO Pushing the Clouds Away

You Even Taste Like the Sun

The Storm

The Ever Constant Sea

The Gypsy Camp

Beyond the Bend Ahead

The Sea

Performance Rights on All Selections, WARM MUSIC — ASCAP

Between the two of them, Anita Kerr and Rod McKuen are responsible for the sale of more than forty million popular records in the United States alone. She as an arranger for such

artists as Perry Como, Floyd Cramer, Roy Orbison, Connie Francis, Al Hirt, Brenda Lee, Chet Atkins, Eddy Arnold, Brook Benton, and Lome Greene. McKuen as a songwriter whose material is sung and recorded by Andy Williams, Glenn Yarbrough, The Kingston Trio, Jack Jones, Henry Mancini, Pete Fountain, Billy Vaughn, Damita Jo, Jacques Brel, Judy Garland,

The Smothers Brothers, and Vic Damone, among others.

ANITA KERR moved to Los Angeles from Nashville last year to continue her composing, arranging, and recording. She is now one of the two or three

most sought after arrangers on the West Coast and the winner of two 'Grammy' awards from the Na¬ tional Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. As

leader of The Anita Kerr Singers, she records for Warner Bros. Records. She lives with her husband

and two daughters in nearby Sherman Oaks.

TJ X o H O

m a i > ro ro

ROD McKUEN has been called "the best song¬ writer in the country today" by High Fidelity maga¬ zine and by The London Times. He records for RCA-Victor and has a successful career as a singer in Europe as well as in America. He is the author of the best selling book "Stanyan Street & Other Sor¬ rows." He lives in France part of the year and the rest of the time in the Hollywood Hills with a

sheep-dog and two cats.

Some of the material in this album is from the books "Stanyan Street & Other Sorrows" published by Cheval-Stanyan Co., Box 2783, Hollywood, Calif., and "Listen to the Warm'

to be published by Random House. Both by Rod McKuen

anro for Warner Bros. Records

ARRANGED AND CONDUCTED BY ANITA KERR Engineers: Eddie Brackett & Wally Heider / Trumpet Solos: Cappy Lewis

Cover Photo: Joseph Muench

5

i/7 Laurindo Almeida Eric Andersen The Association Petula Clark Bill Cosby The Everly Brothers The Grateful Dead Vince Guaraldi Harpers Bizarre Mercy Rod McKuen Van Morrison The Neon Philharmonic Van Dyke Parks Peter, Paul & Mary Don Rickies The San Sebastian Strings The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band Mason Williams Glenn Yarbrough

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