Begin to Love

AMG Review of Begin to Love

William Ruhlmann
All Music Guide

Although the British Invasion began to marginalize many middle of the road pop singers starting in 1964, some of them fought back, notably Dean Martin, who hit number one with a rock & roll styled arrangement of "Everybody Loves Somebody" in August 1964, and Robert Goulet, whose "My Love, Forgive Me (Amore, Scusami)" peaked in the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1965, leading to a Top Five placing for a similarly titled LP the following month. Columbia Records quickly followed with another Italian import, "Begin to Love (Cominciamo Ad Amarci)," which was unable to match the success of its predecessor, although it did chart for a couple of weeks in the Cash Box Top 100. That was enough to name Goulet's next LP after it. Begin to Love, his tenth solo album (counting a live recording and a holiday collection) in about three-and-a-half years, reflects the varied challenges facing a pop singer in the mid-‘60s. The intended hit, which leads off the disc, and the arrangement of the standard "As Time Goes By," which follows, have something of the lightly rocking feel of Martin's "Everybody Loves Somebody." (The former chart is by Ralph Burns, the latter by Sid Ramin, who handles the rest of the tracks, except for Burns' "With These Hands.") Thereafter, the selections and the musical approaches taken with them are quite varied. A playful style is given to Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh's "Real Live Girl" (from the 1962 musical Little Me), then there are more traditional piano-and-string arrangements for "In the Still of the Night" and "Smile." "The More I See of Mimi," one of a few mediocre contemporary songs, has a barbershop quartet quality. Randy Sparks' recent hit for his group the New Christy Minstrels (Columbia labelmates), "Today," finds Goulet going folk over an acoustic guitar in a performance reminiscent of "Try to Remember" from The Fantasticks. Then it's back to the traditional string charts for more mid-century standards, "Long Ago and Far Away" and "Time After Time," before the album peters out with a couple of inferior compositions, the frothy rhythm number "I Never Got to Paris" and "The Fall of Love," which seems to have been a song written for promotional purposes for the 1964 film epic The Fall of the Roman Empire by taking part of Dimitri Tiomkin's score and adding lyrics by Ned Washington. This is a lot of different material treated a lot of different ways. Goulet, to his credit, just keeps singing with his usual commitment and quality, although he seems to be more comfortable with the standards. The times require such flexibility.