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Posted By: Jim Liddane on: 05/05/2008 13:02:04 EDT
Subject: RE: Little Blue Man

Message Detail:
I had never known that Hugh Downs was supposed to be the voice until I saw it stated in Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles - and he usually gets it right.

However, Fred Ebb said later that he had spent hours in the studio trying to get various voice-over people to imitate what he was speaking until eventually, Charles Grean (Betty Johnston's husband) who was conducting the Orchestra, and the song's co-writer Paul Klein, more or less said that nobody was coming close to getting it better than Fred himself and that he should do it.

And Betty Johnston herself says on her website, that Fred Ebb is the voice - and I suppose she ought to know!

It was recorded in 1957, but it was not a hit until February 1958.

Incidentally, Atlantic labelled some radio copies of the song as being performed by "Charles Randolphe Grean & His Orchestra: Vocalist Betty Johnston", but the only
vinyl copy I have seen labels her as the artist, and her husband as providing the orchestra.

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