I dunno. Neil Tennant has first hand experience of recording with Dusty, and he brought it up in the recent podcast. He said it wasn't syllable by syllable, but certainly word by word.

piece in another popular rock monthly on 'Dusty in Memphis' from another producer so I'm afraid it may be strange but its true

I think I read somewhere that Stevie Nick's vocals on the 'Tango in the Night' album were done by splicing together words/short phrases, but this was more due to her being off her nut on various pills.

as far as Dusty goes, I think there are words/syllables that *could* have been 'dropped' in (the 'Pro-oo-oo-ooved' at the climax of the chorus for instance). I doubt that each and every 'it' and 'and' would have been treated in the same way though. But it's probably the examples of her dropping in syllables that would stick in your mind if you'd been there.

http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Dusty_Springfield

and here:

http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/topia/article/viewFile/113/105

I can't imagine that it's true, although Dusty was notoriously fastidious in the studio, and a nightmare for producers, I haven't seen any evidence to suggest a technique which if technically possible, would surely be detectable on the recordings.

As for the recordings with the PSB, Dusty was in ill health, and her voice was pretty much shot, so I can imagine it was difficult - similar situation to Tammy Wynette on Justified and Ancient.

popular legend has it that the songs are so good that Bon Scott must have wrote some of them before he died. I've read this in a lot of poorly researched articles about AC/DC over the years. All bollocks of course. Subsequent biographies of the band and well informed reportage indicates that Brian Johnson penned most of them and although Angus and Malcolm chipped in on some songs they mainly busied themselves with the melodies and guitar parts, well as the wider business aspects of the album.

Mr Tennant was there and producing the track in question - don't see what more evidence you want. Prior to in-the-box mixing technology, it was tedious to splice or bounce multiple takes and punch ins together rather than technically impossible. Cross fading on syllables can be done even on magnetic tape by changing the angle of the splice although I would think the PSB were recording to (tape based) digital multi-track in that era. That would allow for bouncing multiple takes without any generation loss and any SSL desk of the time would allow for automating fade up or down at the right point. Of course, they were also early adopters of sampling technology such as the Synclavier which is another way to compile a master take from multiple sources. I'm not saying it is easy - far from it.

Have you listened to the podcast? It sounds pretty genuine and heartfelt to me.

gb

seem to remember seeing Mariah Carey adopt a similar syllable-by-syllable approach on Fame Academy when making a recording about 9 or 10 years ago.

It looked like an incredibly tedious process, but that's Mariah for you.

And doesn't legend have it that Mr Oldfield insisted on recording Maggie Reilly's vocals on "Moonlight Shadow" and "To France" word by word and syllable by syllable? That was well before Pro Tools.

Dunno, unless you dissenting chap/pesses are audio engineers, I don't see why this would be such an insurmountable feat.

She mutters; it's recorded; it's spliced together. Cumbersome, sure. Impossible? Why?

Print the myth!!!!!

That Captain Beefheart taught The Magic Band exactly what to play on Trout Mask Replica by using a piano

That The Fall are 'always different; always the same' is a great John Peel line, but patently not true.

Incidentally, Jimbo Morrison's drunken vocal at the end of 'Wild Child' (from the S**t Parade) was apparently stitched together from various outtakes, or so I heard.