Touch Of Class - Cry To Me (SongDecor)

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Original Artist: Touch Of Class
https://youtu.be/IxzP4Tp1Huo

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"Cry to Me" is a song written by Bert Berns (listed as "Bert Russell") and first recorded by American soul singer Solomon Burke in 1961. Released in 1962, it was Burke's second single to appear in both Billboard magazine's Hot R&B Sides and Hot 100 singles charts. Several other artists recorded the song, including Betty Harris (1963), the Pretty Things (1965), the Rolling Stones (1965), Freddie Scott (1967) and others.

On December 6, 1961 Burke recorded one of his best known songs, "Cry to Me", "an ode to loneliness and desire" "one of the first songs to unify country, gospel and R&B in one package", that is considered "the paradigm for Southern soul ballads." "Cry to Me" was written by Bert Berns (as Bert Russell), conducted and arranged by Klaus Ogermann, and produced by Bert Berns, "a roly-poly white New Yorker with a deep love and empathy for black music despite a formal music education at the Juilliard School of Music and a music background far removed from the searing soul in which, by 1963, he specialized", with whom Burke had a difficult relationship. Burke "distrusted the young producer", and often spoke of him disparagingly, but later acknowledged Berns as "a genius" and "a great writer, a great man." Cissy Houston, who provided backing vocals on several of Burke's songs that were produced by Berns, believed "Burke changed his mind about Bert as soon as Sol started working with him in the studio. Bert's emotion-charged songs and Sol's gospel delivery was a marriage made in heaven." Although Burke recognized Berns's skill for crafting hit records, he rejected two Berns compositions, "Hang on Sloopy" (later recorded by the McCoys), and "A Little Bit of Soap", a recent hit for the Jarmels. Burke explained in 2004: "I felt a little unsafe about it, because they were pushing me in an ethnic market, so why would I want to say that (about soap) to my people? It didn't have the meaning it needed to have." In frustration after Burke had rejected his song choices, Berns offered him a final song, "Cry to Me", which Berns sang to him very slowly. According to Burke in a 2008 interview: "I said 'That's terrible. It's just too slow for me, I don't like slow songs.' And Mr Wexler says, 'Listen, this guy writes for you, you're pissing him off. You're pissing me off, too.' (Laughs) I tried to sing it a couple of times that way, couldn't even feel it. Then I asked the young man in the studio, the engineer Tommy Dowd, 'Could we have them speed this up?'"


A Touch of Class (often shortened in initials as ATC) were an international Eurodance group based in Germany, although the four members each came from different countries —Joseph "Joey" Murray from New Zealand, Sarah Egglestone from Australia, Livio Salvi from Italy, and Tracey Elizabeth Packham from England. The pop group was active from 1997 and their most successful release was "Around the World (La La La La La)", released in 2000. The group disbanded at the end of 2003. Murray and Salvi would later form a cover band Démodé Trio with Yvette Robinson in 2016.

The four met together in Hamburg, Germany as cast members of the international Broadway theatre German production of the stage musical Cats from October 1997 to April 1998. Sarah Egglestone played Bombalurina, Livio Salvi played Mungojerrie, Tracey Packham played Syllabub, and Joey Murray played as Munkustrap/swing dancer. The four quickly became friends and decided to form a dance group. Egglestone noted, "We were there sitting watching television one day, seeing groups and saying 'there's no reason [...] why we can't do this.'" The group first met with producers Alex Christensen and Thomas M. Stein in 1999 and began working on material under the name ATC. The group experimented with merging male and female vocals together. "Producers don't seem to want to mix the voices so often [...] that helps give us that little bit of an edge," Murray remarked.
Their first single, "Around the World (La La La La La)" (which was an English cover of the song "Pesenka" by the Russian group Ruki Vverh!) was first released on 1 April 2000 and went number one in Germany for six weeks in summer 2000. It was later an only Top 40 hit in the United Kingdom and United States.