"(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" | ||||
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Single by the Alan Parsons Project | ||||
from the album Tales of Mystery and Imagination | ||||
B-side | "A Dream Within a Dream" | |||
Released | July 1976 | |||
Recorded | September 1975 | |||
Studio | Abbey Road Studios | |||
Genre | Hard rock | |||
Length |
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Songwriter(s) | ||||
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The Alan Parsons Project singles chronology | ||||
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"(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" is a 1976 single by the Alan Parsons Project. [1] It first appeared on their debut album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination: Edgar Allan Poe. The single reached number 37 on the US Billboard Hot 100 [2] and number 62 in Canada. [3]
As with the other songs on the album, it is based on a story by American author Edgar Allan Poe, [4] in this case "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" (1845). The song was written by Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson, and was originally recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London in September 1975. [5] The 1987 reissue adds a "cathedral organ", played by Parsons. [4]
It does not appear on either The Best of the Alan Parsons Project or The Best of the Alan Parsons Project, Volume 2 , as the band moved from 20th Century Records to Arista after the release of Tales of Mystery and Imagination. It appears on the American version of the 1997 2 CD Definitive Collection [6] and the 2007 collection, The Essential Alan Parsons Project . [7]
The Alan Parsons Project were a British rock band active between 1975 and 1990, whose core membership consisted of producer, audio engineer, musician, and composer Alan Parsons and singer, songwriter, and pianist Eric Woolfson. They shared writing credits on almost all of their songs, with Parsons producing or co-producing all of the recordings, while being accompanied by various session musicians, some relatively consistent.
Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe) is the debut studio album by British rock band the Alan Parsons Project. It was released on 25 June 1976 in the United Kingdom by Charisma Records and 20th Century Fox Records in the U.S. The lyrical and musical themes of the album, which are retellings of horror stories and poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, attracted a cult audience. The title of the album is taken from the title of a collection of Poe's macabre stories of the same name.
Eric Norman Woolfson was a Scottish songwriter, lyricist, vocalist, executive producer, pianist, and co-creator of the band the Alan Parsons Project, who sold over 50 million albums worldwide. Woolfson also pursued a career in musical theatre.
The Turn of a Friendly Card is the fifth studio album by the British progressive rock band the Alan Parsons Project, released in 1980 by Arista Records. The title piece, which appears on side 2 of the LP, is a 16-minute suite broken up into five tracks. The Turn of a Friendly Card spawned the hits "Games People Play" and "Time", the latter of which was Eric Woolfson's first lead vocal appearance. An edited version of the title piece combining the opening and ending parts of the suite was also released as a single along with an official video.
Stereotomy is the ninth studio album by the Alan Parsons Project, released in 1985.
"The Bells" is a heavily onomatopoeic poem by Edgar Allan Poe which was not published until after his death in 1849. It is perhaps best known for the diacopic use of the word "bells". The poem has four parts to it; each part becomes darker and darker as the poem progresses from "the jingling and the tinkling" of the bells in part 1 to the "moaning and the groaning" of the bells in part 4.
Jack Harris is an English vocalist known for his work with the British progressive rock band, The Alan Parsons Project. He sang lead vocals on "Day After Day " on the album, I Robot (1977), and the (falsetto-like) single "Pyramania" taken from the Grammy nominated Pyramid (1978). Capable of singing in both high and low registers, Harris also sang backing vocals on the band's debut release Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976), including the deep voice alongside John Miles on their debut single "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether", as well as the choir-like voice behind Arthur Brown on "The Tell-Tale Heart".
Alan Parsons is an English audio engineer, songwriter, musician and record producer.
Steve Balsamo is a Welsh singer and songwriter, best known for playing the lead role in the West End revival productions of Jesus Christ Superstar during the mid-1990s. He performs as a member of several bands and is also a successful songwriter. He is also on Eric Woolfson's sixth solo album, Poe: More Tales of Mystery and Imagination in 2003, on which he provides the vocals for eight songs.
American poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe has had significant influence in television and film. Many are adaptations of Poe's work, others merely reference it.
"The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" is a dark comedy short story by the American author Edgar Allan Poe. First published in Graham's Magazine in November 1845, the story centers on a naïve and unnamed narrator's visit to a mental asylum in the southern provinces of France.
"The Raven" is the first song by the Alan Parsons Project, recorded in April 1976 at Mama Jo's Studio, North Hollywood, Los Angeles. It is the second track on their debut album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which is a tribute to author and poet Edgar Allan Poe. Though the song is based on Poe's poem of the same name, and is almost a verbatim recital of the lyrics of the poem, Poe is not given song writing credit. It is credited to Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson.
The following is the complete discography of the Alan Parsons Project. Over the years they have released 12 studio albums, 14 compilation albums, and 38 singles.
The Essential Alan Parsons Project is a compilation album released by English progressive rock musician Alan Parsons and the Alan Parsons Project on 6 February 2007. It was released through Sony BMG as part of The Essential album series. The album featured some of the band's best known songs as well as some rare tracks.
The Definitive Collection is a 1997 2 CD compilation by The Alan Parsons Project, released through Arista Records. The American version begins with two songs from the Alan Parsons Project's first album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which was released on 20th Century Fox Records in the U.S. and Charisma Records in the U.K., prior to the band signing to Arista. The European version of the compilation does not include them. Both versions close with two tracks from Alan Parsons' first solo album, Try Anything Once.
Tales of Mystery & Imagination is a popular title for posthumous compilations of writings by American author, essayist and poet Edgar Allan Poe and was the first complete collection of his works specifically restricting itself to his suspenseful and related tales.
Eric Woolfson sings The Alan Parsons Project That Never Was is an album by the progressive rock musician Eric Woolfson, co-creator with Alan Parsons of The Alan Parsons Project, as well as main songwriter and manager of the band. Released in 2009, this was Woolfson's final album before he died of cancer in December of that year. The album includes songs that remained unreleased since the Project time for various reasons; however, as Woolfson himself remarks in the booklet, Parsons' dislike for some of Woolfson's compositions would have often caused them to be excluded from a Project album in its very early stages - such as, for example, "Steal Your Heart Away", an "unashamedly commercial" song with a conventionally sentimental lyric, which Parsons, in Woolfson's words, would have absolutely detested. "Somewhere in the Audience" and "Immortal" are slightly re-arranged and re-recorded versions of two of Woolfson's demos for his 2003 musical about Edgar Allan Poe; the final versions of these songs, sung by the musical's protagonist Steve Balsamo, are featured on the album Poe: More Tales of Mystery and Imagination. "Train to Wuxi" was the original version of "Train to Freedom", which is also included in the Poe musical and features Woolfson's one and only guitar solo.
Poe: More Tales of Mystery and Imagination is an album by Eric Woolfson. It contains some, but not all, of the songs from his musical Edgar Allan Poe.
Eye 2 Eye: Live in Madrid is a live concert performance by Alan Parsons released on both DVD-Video and Audio CD on April 6, 2010 on the Frontiers label. The show was performed with his band Alan Parsons Live Project, and was recorded live at the Plaza Mayor, Madrid, Spain, on May 14, 2004.
Tales of Mystery and Imagination may refer to: