Windy (The Association song)

"Windy"
1967 German picture sleeve
Single by The Association
from the album Insight Out
B-side	"Sometime"
Released	May 1, 1967[1]
Recorded	March 28, 1967 (instrumentation) April 11 & 13, 1967 (vocals)
Genre	Sunshine pop
Length	2:53
Label	Warner Bros.
Songwriter(s)	Ruthann Friedman
Producer(s)	Bones Howe
The Association singles chronology
"No Fair at All" (1967) "Windy" (1967) "Never My Love" (1967)
Audio sample
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"Windy" is a pop music song written by Ruthann Friedman and recorded by the Association.^[2] Released in 1967, the song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July of that year. Overseas, it went to No. 34 in Australia, and No. 3 in Yugoslavia. Later in 1967 an instrumental version by jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery became his biggest Hot 100 hit when it peaked at No. 44.

Not to be confused with The Beach Boys' 1964 song "Wendy", "Windy" was the Association's second U.S. No. 1 hit, following "Cherish" in 1966. Billboard ranked the record as the No. 4 song for 1967. The lead vocals were sung primarily by guitarist Larry Ramos along with percussionist Russ Giguere (both would sing lead together in the band's last Top 40 hit "Time for Livin").

Friedman was introduced to the Association by her friend, Beach Boys lyricist Van Dyke Parks. Originally, she wrote "Windy" in a waltz tempo. But, their producer at the time, Bones Howe, changed it to the common 4/4 beat to assure it would have the commercial appeal necessary to be a hit.^[3][a]

Recording the vocals for the song would prove to be exhausting to Ramos, Giguere, and the rest of the band. The session started in early afternoon and ended at 6:30 a.m the next morning (after that, they had to take an 8:30 a.m. flight to a live performance in Virginia).^[3] The band was so tired of recording that Howe had everybody in the studio singing on the ending of the track, including Friedman, vocal arranger , his wife Marylin, and Jim Yester's wife Jo-Ellen, along with numerous others.^[3][4]

Ramos said Ruthann Friedman had written the song about a man, and that the Association changed the lyrics to make it about a woman.^[5] Many other sources confirm that it was written for a man.^[3][6]

Friedman later said about it in an interview with Songfacts:^[3][7]

I have heard so many different permutations of what the song was about. Here is the TRUTH. I was sitting on my bed – the apartment on the first floor of David Crosby’s house in Beverly Glenn – and there was a fellow who came to visit and was sitting there staring at me as if he was going to suck the life out of me. So I started to fantasize about what kind of a guy I would like to be with, and that was Windy – a guy (fantasy).

However, in another interview with Songfacts, in 2014, she understood that the song was about herself:^[8]

These days, looking back at myself in my mid to late 20s, I finally realized I was talking about me in that song, and how I wanted to be.

Session musicians[]

Because of the poor showing of their last album Renaissance, on which the Association performed all their songs, Howe had session musicians (later known as the Wrecking Crew) substitute for the sextet on their third album, which included "Windy", in order to get a radio friendly sound.

It is uncertain which session musician played on the final version of the single, because the song had several sessions, but the website Songfacts states that typically Hal Blaine played drums, Joe Osborn played bass, Ray Pohlman played guitar, and Larry Knechtel played keyboards. The recorder solo at the 1:07 mark and in the coda was played by the band's multi-instrumentalist Terry Kirkman.^[3]

But Kirkman himself made a comment of this article in the same website, and cited that, it was not he who did the solo, but Bud Shank ("California Dreamin'") in a piccolo.

Chart history[]

Covers[]

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• Wes Montgomery covered the song on his 1967 album A Day in the Life.
• Astrud Gilberto covered the song on her 1968 album Windy.
• Andy Williams released a version in 1968 on his album Honey.
• Jazz musician Rufus Harley covered the song playing the Great Highland bagpipe on his 1970 album King / Queens.
• Barry Manilow and The Association covered the song as a medley with "Cherish" on the 2006 album The Greatest Songs of the Sixties.

See also[]

• List of recordings of songs Hal Blaine has played on

Notes[]

References[]