Old Master Painter / You Are My Sunshine
From The Smile Shop
Contents |
Sessions
November 14, 1966
| Song title: My Only Sunshine | |
| Studio: | Gold Star |
| Time of session: | 8-11:30 PM |
| Engineer: | Larry Levine |
| Master Number: | 56866 |
| Length Of Song: | 2:20 |
| Musicians/vocalists: | Carol Kaye (bass guitar), Diane Rovell, Arnold Belnick (violin), Norman Botnick (viola), Joseph DiTullio (cello), Jesse Erlich (cello), James Gordon (drums), Raymond Kelley (cello), Leonard Malarsky (violin), Jay Migliori (tenor saxophone, clarinet), Tommy Morgan (harmonica), Alexander Neiman (viola), William Pitman (guitar), Lyle Ritz (upright bass), Joseph Saxon (cello?) |
Instrumental track recorded Nov 14, 1966 with 15 musicians at Goldstar (as My Only Sunshine). Vocal recorded Nov 30, 1966 with 5 Beach Boys (as My Only Sunshine).
Recorded as My Only Sunshine this track originally was in three sections: a short instrumental rendition of the standard Old Master Painter (recorded by Frank Sinatra, Richard Hayes and others), the You are my Sunshine chorus, and a Brian Wilson fade (slated as "Part Two") with "when skies are gray" and "how much I love" background vocals by Mike. When Brian recast Heroes and Villains in January he replaced the Barnyard ending with the Old Master Painter tag, wiping the "skies are gray" vocals. The Byron Preiss tape included Old Master Painter/My Only Sunshine followed by the original fade (but without the "skies are gray" backing vocal) which was mistakenly labeled "Barnyard," the Boys confusing it with the earlier true Barnyard Heroes and Villains fade. Linett propagated the mistake by labeling this piece Barnyard on his 1988 comp tape, and it has been labeled as such on countless bootlegs since, until an acetate of the true Barnyard surfaced, complete with animal sounds. The Sunshine fade appropriated for Heroes and Villains is now often referred to as "false Barnyard" because of its´ history, and the version with the skies are gray backing vocals "Barnshine."
When "false Barnyard" was moved into the cantina mix as the fade, it left this song incomplete. -- Lou Shenk, A SMiLE Primer
Actually, this track is a medley of "The Old Master Painter" and "You Are My Sunshine." After a brief instrumental snippet of "Painter," Dennis is featured on "Sunshine." A TeenSet article from 1966 relates how Brian came up with the idea of performing "Sunshine" in a mournful key and changing the lyrics to the past tense. The instrumental track was cut on 14 November, with Dennis' contribution added on the 30th. -- David Prokopy, The Prokopy Notes
The next night he is back at Gold Star and a studio full of cellos, strings and percussion performing those same poignant chords. There is no sheet music. There hasn't been time for that. Brian is doing the arrangement on the spot. He prefers to work that way - like Fellini on the set with no script, scurrying about and whispering snatches of dialogue into his players' ears. -- Smile Brian and Pull Them Strings, Teenset, 1966
Brian fiddled with the coda to "Heroes" very often, and for this version he took a part from another song, as he frequently did. This segment, with its clip-clop percussion and a vaguely Western-sounding melody, was for a long time thought to be the widely discussed but unheard "Barnyard" segment. In actuality, this part was actually taken from the end of the song "The Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine." -- Ed Howard, Smile: The Definitive Lost Album
November 30, 1966
| Song title: My Only Sunshine | |
| Studio: | Columbia |
| Time of session: | |
| Engineer: | |
| Master Number: | |
| Length Of Song: | |
| Musicians/vocalists: | The Beach Boys |
Just a very winsome... melancholy... almost rubato type of rendition, sung by Dennis. -- Mike Love
Of all the songs on the semi-official Smile tracklist, none are more surprising than "The Old Master Painter." Seemingly a half-realized medley, this track feels somewhat out-of-place amid the much more ambitious company of songs like "Heroes & Villains" and the various multipart suites. Why, on an album heavy with high concepts and complex structures, would Brian choose to include a song that merely pairs up the standard "The Old Master Painter" with "You Are My Sunshine?" The answer, of course, is the same as with virtually all things Smile: no one really knows.
What we do know is that the idea came from something as simple as Brian thinking it would sound great to re-do "You Are My Sunshine" with a melancholy mood. The idea was first featured in an early, unheard mix of "Heroes & Villains" that Brian erased immediately after recording it, and sometime after that he seems to have developed the short sketch into its own separate track. The song -- which is barely over a minute as it exists today -- featured a short instrumental take on "TOMP" before shifting into a low-key rendition of "Sunshine" with a beautifully sad lead vocal by Dennis Wilson. There also is a version without the vocal overdubs (heard on the Sea Of Tunes one-disc boot), but otherwise not much else is around. The instrumental sessions were all tracked in one day on November 14, 1966, and Dennis' vocal was recorded just a couple of weeks later on November 30. The song would have been slightly longer as Brian originally intended, but he removed the Western-sounding fade (recorded the same day as the rest of the tune) from it and added it as a tag to the "Cantina" mix of "Heroes & Villains."
Still, even with the tag, "TOMP/Sunshine" would have been the shortest song on Smile, probably by quite a bit. Since it's placed last on Brian's song list, it might've been considered an outro to the album, which would have had interesting consequences for the record's flow. Certainly, it's easy to imagine as the closer, but then we would have an album called Smile that began with a kind of church hymn and ended with an ironically depressing cover of "You Are My Sunshine." -- Ed Howard, Smile: The Definitive Lost Album
Available Session Recordings
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Official Releases
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
