Bobby Vinton - My Elusive Dreams (1970/2018)

Bobby Vinton scored a surprise hit in early 1970 with a revival of the 1967 David Houston/Tammy Wynette country hit "My Elusive Dreams," a man's confession of his restlessness and its effect on his marriage and family. The record only made the Top 40 of the pop charts, but it hit the Top Ten of the easy listening charts and even broke Vinton into the country charts for the first time in his career, and that was accomplishment enough to justify building an LP around it. So, Vinton went into the studio in late January and cut his versions of six recent hits: "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head," "Something," "I'll Never Fall in Love Again," "Leaving on a Jet Plane," "Traces," and "Baby Take Me in Your Arms" plus a rendition of "If Ever I Would Leave You" from Camelot. The album was filled out with revivals of a couple of early-'60s hits, "I Will Follow You" (aka "I Will Follow Him") and "Baby I'm Yours," cut the previous fall, as well as a submission from songwriters Buddy Kaye and Phil Springer, "The Perfect Woman." The normally breezy Vinton turned emotional on "My Elusive Dreams," practically breaking into tears after the verse in which the baby dies. His readings of the recent hits employed arrangements that were very close to those of the original recordings, and he sang them in his more familiar light style. He was somewhat out of his depth on "If Ever I Would Leave You," especially for anyone who associated the song with the big-voiced baritone of Robert Goulet, but on the whole the album must have pleased longtime fans ready to hear his versions of contemporary material.