No words necessary

I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
–Igor Stravinsky

I’m old enough to have listened to Dark Side of the Moon, the massive 1973 hit album by the progressive rock band Pink Floyd, for over fifty years. Not consecutive years, mind you, but off and on.

I had a vinyl album, a CD, and even a cassette tape in my possession at various times over that time period, but I never paid any attention to the music credits listed on the album covers. It’s not that I’m in the habit of not reading the credits on album covers. I do, but for whatever reason, not this particular album.

I can’t say how many times over the years I’ve listened to The Great Gig in the Sky, one of the songs off the album, but it’s perhaps unforgivable that I’d not heard of Clare Torry until only recently. Torry is the singer-songwriter who contributed the improvised vocals to the song. Prior to this, she made a living performing cover versions of popular songs from the 60s, and also worked as a session musician at Abbey Road Studios, where some of the most famous musical recordings in history have been produced.

Rolling Stone magazine ranked her vocals on the song as the second-best performance in rock history. That’s quite an accolade. Torry was paid the paltry sum of £30 for the session work and only received full joint songwriting credit with Pink Floyd’s keyboard player, Richard Wright, in 2005 after she sued both EMI and the band for songwriting royalties.

The story behind how Clare Torry became the voice on The Great Gig in the Sky is the stuff of dreams. You can listen to it in her own words in this interview she did years later.

Essentially, Alan Parsons (he would later form the Alan Parsons Project), who was working as the sound engineer on the studio recording, had heard Torry singing from her cover albums and arranged for her to be booked to do some vocal work on the recording. She was basically asked to interpret the chord sequence and instrumental recording to lay down a vocal track without using any actual words.

Apparently, Torry managed to pull off this unusual request in just two takes, with an abandoned third attempt that she didn’t think improved on the first two. Parsons cobbled together the final vocal track, which we all now hear in its magnificent glory, from those takes.

Music critic Craig Jenkins of the entertainment website Vulture was flowing with praise when he said: “Torry’s performance manages to express the full range of human emotion without relying on words.” He is also said to express the opinion that the song “was pea soup without her.”

While these tributes come from professionals in the music business, ordinary fans are no less impressed:

And this gem:

It is truly bewildering that no one involved in making the recording bothered to tell Torry that her vocals would be included in the final cut of the song. Torry only found out after it was released when she picked up a copy of the album at her local record store and found her name listed in the credits.

I’m just glad that she is now being fully honoured and receiving the credit she deserves, which includes royalties.