CHER   -   Cher

YEAR:  1966
LABEL:  Imperial/Liberty
TRACK LISTING:  Sunny,  Twelfth of Never,  You Don't Have To Say You Love Me,  I Feel Something in the Air (Magic In the Air),  Will You Love Me Tomorrow,  Until It's Time For You To Go,  Cruel War,  Catch the Wind,  Pied Piper,  Homeward Bound,  I Want You,  Alfie
IMPRESSIONS:  Long, long before Cher's solo success with such songs as "Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves" etc., this is still back in the "I Got You Babe" era of Sonny & Cher.  Like her previous two albums, CHER is basically all covers re-arranged for Cher to sing with one Sonny-written new song.  I honestly can't say this is a particularly great record; it features competent if not spectacular covers sung by Cher before the timbre of her voice mellowed into the familiar 70s vocals we're more familiar with.  No, this album owes it's place here simply due to pure, base nostalgia on my part.  This is an album I found in my mother's record collection when I was a teeny tiny tot.  In the middle of my childhood house in Maple Surple, there was a sort of circular connecting area from which most of the rooms radiated outward like spokes on a wheel.  Standing in this "middle non-hall" which connected to my bedroom, the bathroom, the attic stairs, the living room and my mother's bedroom, was a black metal record two-tier record rack (which still stands in my bedroom to this very day).  The rack is not solid and opaque but totally open in that the first album cover in it can clearly be seen when look at the rack from the side.  This side coincidentally faces my bedroom door.  I couldn't have been more than 5 years old when the glum face of Cher confronted me from this album and I took it down and played it often over the years.  The songs were pleasant to my young ears (since they were obviously great songs originally and Cher didn't foul them up) but I do remember being fascinated by that odd bubble next to Cher's hand.  It looks like a soap bubble hanging there in the air.  What the hell is it?!?  It is just there or is it actually attached to that ring on her hand???  Is it a glass bubble on the ring???  If not, how did the photographer get a soap bubble to hang suspended in air exactly in the right spot to take the photo!?!?!?!?  Ah, these mysterious of our childhoods remain.  And hence, we have this post about it!
MY FAVOURITE TRACKS:  Sunny,  Twelfth of Never,  You Don't Have to Say You Love Me,  Will You Love Me Tomorrow,  Until It's Time For You To Go,  Pied Piper,  Homeward Bound
FACT SHEET:  CHER is Cher's third album.  It is produced by Sonny Bono and arranged and conducted by Harold Battiste.  The album consists of all covers except "I Feel Something in the Air" which was written for Cher by Sonny Bono.  The cover songs are of hits by respectively Bobby Hebb, Johnny Mathis (et. al.), Dusty Springfield, the Shirelles, Buffy Saine-Marie, Peter, Paul & Mary, Donovan, Crispian St. Peters/Bob & Marcia, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan and Dionne Warwick.  Cher's version of "Alfie" appeared in the eponymous film but it was Dionne Warwick's version of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David song which became definitive.