A (Sort of) Classical Christmas

With Helmut Lotti, so perhaps you understand the “Sort of” in parentheses in the post title. After all, while the guy is talented, he just doesn’t have the voice–or the musical chops as a whole–to pull off a “classical” anything. Face it, he experienced success too quickly as an Elvis impersonator in a rather loose European pop venue (“loose”?!?–I can think of no kinder term for a field where David Hasselhoff has experienced massive success as a pop music performer. Just sayin’). While he has a nice enough voice, certainly better than 90%-plus of successful American pop “singers,” he carries the atrocious “Elvis (crooner) scoop” into songs where it’s higly inappropriate, has some really unfortunate vowel production, 50s-60s pop consonants (swallowing his unfortunate vowels from time to time, for example, making them even worse), etc.

Too bad, really, since the arranging and instrumental performances are top notch, while Lotti’s vocal performances are just OK. Here’s a snippet for an example:

[audio:Helmut-Lotti-God-Rest-Ye-Merry-Gentlemen-excerpt.mp3]

See? Not offensively sung, exactly, just mediocre. Good enough for many Xmas Eve services at small local congregations, but worth just a little more than I paid for it (I got the album as a free promo *heh*).

Here’s an example of a 34-year-old Lotti taking some tutoring from a 64-year-old Cliff Richard in 2003:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHTaPjVUtYw

I’m no big Cliff Richard fan (especially his histrionics), but he’s certainly got some chops, and it’s interesting to listen to how Lotti pretty much mimicked him, as best he could.