On The Time's first album you can hear Prince's vocals quite prominently on most of the songs and on 'The Stick' you can also hear Lisa's vocals too. I'm assuming Prince left the guide vocals on there for Morris to sing along too when recording, but were they meant to be on the final album or were they left on by mistake?. I also read most of The Time's first album was played on by Prince and his band at the time (Dez, Dr Fink, Lisa etc.) instead of The Time themselves. So was it originally intended to be released as a Prince album or a group album under another name (I know there was a unreleased album by The Rebels) and he decided to give it to The Time instead, hence their (Prince et al's) involvement in the album.

I think what you hear more than any sort of "guide vocal" is background vocals. It needed to sound like more than just Morris singing and Prince was in a hurry to get the album done, so he just left his background tracks on there.

Keep in mind, too, that when this album was recorded, not only had nobody ever heard of The Time, but Prince's reknown was still pretty limited. It isn't as if the album was released in 1985 - when everybody would have said, "Hey, that's Prince! "

This trick (vocals of main artist + Prince "backing vocals") was used by Prince on many of the early protege albums. Most of them were not really good singers (Morris, Sheila, V6, A6) so dubbing Prince's (or Lisa's or Jill's) vocals below theirs gave the overall vocal performance a positive injection. I have to say, I really enjoy most of the examples of that technique. I like the way Prince's voice mixes with the other, less trained, voice. Most likely Prince's vocal were recorded first, as guide (some demo's exist of these songs with only Prince on), but were left on in the final mix. Probably the guide vocals were not meant to be left on in the first place, the decision could be made during mixing. Prince has always been know for his ad-hoc decisions, working quickly and making decisions purely on artistic and intuive basis.He must have liked the end result (with his own vocals in the mix) and released the songs this way.

It also shows how Prince the producer knew well the weak spots of his performers (not so hard to hear...) and came up with a proper solution. Maybe he learned this from Frank Farian (-;

[Edited 9/8/11 4:47am]

thetimefan said:

On The Time's first album you can hear Prince's vocals quite prominently on most of the songs and on 'The Stick' you can also hear Lisa's vocals too. I'm assuming Prince left the guide vocals on there for Morris to sing along too when recording, but were they meant to be on the final album or were they left on by mistake?. I also read most of The Time's first album was played on by Prince and his band at the time (Dez, Dr Fink, Lisa etc.) instead of The Time themselves. So was it originally intended to be released as a Prince album or a group album under another name (I know there was a unreleased album by The Rebels) and he decided to give it to The Time instead, hence their (Prince et al's) involvement in the album.

They were meant to be there. Lisa co-wrote "The Stick" btw. And no, it was never intended to be a Prince album and it is quite vastly different from "The Rebels".

"The Rebels" was intended to be a group project where each group member had equal input. So for example "Thrill U Or Kill U" was Andre's song, "Disco Away" was Dez's song... etc.

The Time, on the other hand, was a way for Prince to get more music out there and be able to make the harder funk music that he wanted to make without sacrificing the vision and creative path he wanted to go down with his own albums. And so 90% of what you hear on all Time albums bar "Pandemonium" is Prince - but with Morris singing lead.

There is no connection between the material The Rebels recorded and the material of The Time. Two different visions for these projects.

jazzz said:

This trick (vocals of main artist + Prince "backing vocals") was used by Prince on many of the early protege albums. Most of them were not really good singers (Morris, Sheila, V6, A6) so dubbing Prince's (or Lisa's or Jill's) vocals below theirs gave the overall vocal performance a positive injection. I have to say, I really enjoy most of the examples of that technique. I like the way Prince's voice mixes with the other, less trained, voice. Most likely Prince's vocal were recorded first, as guide (some demo's exist of these songs with only Prince on), but were left on in the final mix. Probably the guide vocals were not meant to be left on in the first place, the decision could be made during mixing. Prince has always been know for his ad-hoc decisions, working quickly and making decisions purely on artistic and intuive basis.He must have liked the end result (with his own vocals in the mix) and released the songs this way.

It also shows how Prince the producer knew well the weak spots of his performers (not so hard to hear...) and came up with a proper solution. Maybe he learned this from Frank Farian (-;

[Edited 9/8/11 4:47am]

hunt down and listen to prince's version of chocolate. brother prince has no need for a watch...he knows what time it is.

I love Prince's backing vocals on Girl - beautiful.

Good point about how Prince utilised himself, Lisa and Jill Jones to do the backing vocals because it does add something extra to the songs. I made reference to The Rebels as that was a side project for Prince, although I know there's a difference in terms of musical genre. The Time are more Minneapolis Sound/Funk, whilst The Rebels was more of a rock sound. To show his versatility I was assuming maybe Prince was thinking of releasing a Funk album, in addition to the Rebels under a different name (like he was planning to do in the 80's as Camille) to put more music out there. But because Warner's would have been against it he could have shelved the project & gave the songs to Morris & The Time instead. So overall it seems all the protegee acts were basically used as a vehicle for Prince (or Jamie Starr/The Starr Company ) to release more music.

TheFreakerFantastic said:

I love Prince's backing vocals on Girl - beautiful.

Me too!!!