CHRONICLES OF THE PAST - "Happy Feet"

Edie Leighman, a very good singer and good fried of mine was the vocal contractor for an upcoming film called 'Happy Feet'. Edie and I toured together with Quincy Jones back in 1982 for the Dude Tour, and we've been working together since then. She gave me the premise of the movie and it sounded great and I was looking forward to working on this film especially with all of the music that she told me about.

We did quite a bit of singing for this film, singing songs from the past. The only time I had heard the expression 'happy feet', was from the song (not just) 'Knee Deep' by Funkadelic. One of the lyrics in that song is 'when she dance she gives me happy feet', so I was familiar with the expression :-)

I was able to sing on a lot of the demos for the film with other singers. I also sang some ad-libs, which is improvising on the spot on some of the songs for the film. Since a lot of the songs I did were demos, that meant the songs would be done again for the final.

Sometimes demos are done for a film so that the producer has a better idea of how a song might work with a various scenes. Every idea that someone comes up with doesn't always work with a certain scene, so they will call in singers to help work through various scenarios. Many times the same singers that were called will be the same singers that will work on the final.

So when the final scheduling for the singing of the film came along, can you believe it, I wasn't available. I was disappointed because I wasn't able to be there the day they were going to sing the finals and I was looking forward to it. Since many of the singers, work on various projects, sometimes a person just isn't available, which happened in my case.

So why then am I talking about a film that I sang on if I didn't sing on it? Well right before they were doing the final edits of the film Edie Leighman called me to say that some of the original 'ad-libs' that I had sung, when we recorded the demos, were going to be in the film, which means in essence I WOULD be singing in the film. She was calling me to let me know and to send me the necessary paperwork.

So even though I didn't get to be on the final session with some of my colleagues, some of the singing of the original demos that I sang paid off. When I got that call from Edie, I felt like the little penguin and I had 'Happy Feet'  - you can see me there on the right!

Until Next Time - Phillip