By 1969,
Andy Williams had long since worked out a winning formula for the two albums he cut each year. There was an established audience -- made up of many of the same people who tuned in to watch him on television -- who wanted to hear him sing his versions of the lighter fare that was turning up on the pop charts. So, selecting songs for a new album was as easy as listening to the radio on the drive to the studio and picking out ten or 11 songs. Of the 11 tracks that made up his fall 1969 album,
Get Together With Andy Williams, ten were songs that had enjoyed chart renditions during the previous spring and summer, right around the time
Williams was recording the LP. (The exception was an appealing
Mac Davis composition, "You Are.")
Williams was nothing if not versatile, but some of these songs were better suited to him than others.
Charles Aznavour's "Yesterday When I Was Young," which
Roy Clark had recorded for a hit, was an emotional ballad right up
Williams' alley, as was "Love Theme From Romeo and Juliet," a hit for
Henry Mancini. Even "Quentin's Theme (Shadows of the Night)," the theme song from the popular vampire soap opera Dark Shadows, gave him something familiar to work with. On the other hand, "Good Morning Starshine" and "Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In," both from the musical Hair, were a stretch.
Williams turned the former into a children's song, complete with a children's chorus and comic effects, but the result was cloying; for the latter, he simply copied
the 5th Dimension's arrangement. But
Williams' audience was accustomed to hearing him sing the hit parade on his TV series and specials, and predictably,
Get Together With Andy Williams was another gold album, his 14th.