Blending elements of lounge, new age, ethnic, jazz, rock, pop and gospel music. New songs and new arrangements of earlier songs. Intimate and laid back, smooth vocals with thoughtful, uplifting lyrics. No pitch shifted vocals. 93 pure analog. 100 Love!

13 MP3 Songs in this album (65:15) !
Related styles: Pop: New Romantic, New Age: Progressive Alternative, Type: Lyrical

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Details:
Walter Clark's BEST THING TO COME blends elements of lounge, new age, ethnic, jazz, rock, and gospel music. Featuring new songs and new arrangements of earlier songs, Intimate and laid back, smooth vocals with thoughtful and uplifting lyrics. No pitch shifting or fancy computer tricks, no "filler" songs (they were all deleted before the final pressing,) and over 94 pure analog recording. This is an album that took three years to produce and almost never saw the light of day, and it only saw the light after extreme sacrifice, literally hundreds of remixes, and untold hours of study, analysis and rehearsal. Its a pleasure to listen to but its not a casual work. Its meant to be a statement.
Although recordings of his unique voice and arrangement style have just begun to surface with the 2002 release of his first album, "Perfect Love," Walter Clark has been on the music scene, performing for audiences around the world for over 30 years. He has become a fixture at such upscale hotels as The Ritz Carlton and is currently performing at the St. Regis hotel in Osaka Japan. With a repertoire of over 500 songs spanning multiple genres and decades he has been able to excite and satisfy listeners of varied backgrounds and maintain a career exclusively as a performing artist since 1980.
Unique and non- traditional in his approach to harmony and arrangement Clark also manages to convey an air of spirituality and humility in his music which can be quite appealing to some.
Born in Brooklyn New York, he studied classical music for 10 years in Philadelphia, but took a U turn in his studies in the mid-sixties and decided to pursue more popular music, learning by ear some of his favorites by such greats as Ramsey Lewis, The Beatles, McCoy Tyner and Quincy Jones. He dabbled in various R&B groups in Philadelphia but had all but given up on a musical career until a fateful meeting with John Lennon in the early 70's.
Lennon urged him not to give up on his music, but Philadelphia had little to offer in the way of full time work, and after leaving the city and relocating to the Washington D.C area he decided, immediately upon the death of Lennon to quit his day job, putting all his energy into pursuing a career in music.

âFrom the moment I made that decision, everything changed. Before that, I had been content to work a day job and gig at night, but now Lennon's words came back to haunt me. I realized that over 7 years had passed since the meeting and I still had not made a firm and complete commitment to my art, and had made no progress. It was time to make a choice. It was very scary to just up and quit my job, but little by little, positive things started happening to me.â During the early 1980's he performed as a lead vocalist, backup vocalist, and multi-keyboard player in a variety of Top 40, Rock, Soul, Reggae, and Jazz groups. In 1983 a talent scout saw him performing in a group, and invited him to become the regular entertainer at former Washington Redskins' quarterback Joe Theismann's Restaurant in Bailey's Crossroads Virginia. There he began his solo career and worked for two years, building up his repertoire, fans, and his confidence as an artist. He then moved on to the Washington, D.C. hotel circuit, first with a full time position entertaining at the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, a 5 Star hotel in Rockville, Maryland, and then at the Olde Towne Holiday Inn, in Alexandria, Virginia, and the Ramada Hotel in Oxon Hill Maryland, where he entertained for a period of three years. On October 3, 1986 he appeared at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C. in a noontime concert entitled âPortraits in Jazzâ sponsored by the National Portrait Gallery of Washington.

In 1989 a friend submitted one of Walter's tapes to Quincy Jones. Although Quincy was reportedly very excited about his fresh and original sound he was too busy with other projects to get involved with Walter, but sent the word back that he should get out of the hotel circuit, and do some traveling, preferably internationally in order to expand his horizons. â I wasn't expecting to hear anything from Quincy. The fact that one of my idols had actually took the time to listen to my demo, that he liked it and had even offered some advice was a stupendous event to me. I immediately decided to make some international connections and see what would come of it.â And in November 1989, Walter decided to do just that and to try his luck on the road. After several trips to the Far East he settled in Japan.

Why Japan?

My interest in Japan started at a young age. In my pre-teens I studied judo from a Japanese sensei in Philadelphia. Then later in college I continued judo and also took up an interest in Japanese cooking and adopted their macrobiotic diet. So when the gig in Japan came up, I jumped at the chance to see this country. The Japanese audiences' level of sophistication, respect and knowledge of jazz here was a big surprise to me. The people have been very kind and supportive. Its peaceful, clean, safe and quiet here, and I love the food. Since 1992 it has been his base of operations, and between international engagements, he has worked there in Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka, and Fukuoka in various clubs, restaurants, and 4 star hotel's numerous dinner shows, concerts and special events .

The warm and relaxing quality of his vocal intonation has enabled him to work in a variety of fields, including that of a narrator for Universal Studios, Japan, Fujitec International, and a national television appearance by Mr. Clark on the popular âNinki Monoâ celebrity TV program in Japan. From 2000-2001 Clark also appeared in a TV commercial for Genova jewelry in Japan's Kobe/Osaka area. In the year 2001, in spite of a rigorous performing schedule, he produced and released two CD's which featured live and multitrack recordings. In February 2002 Clark appeared as an actor several times on NHK's historical TV series âSono toki rekishi ga ugoita,â roughly translated as âThis was a turning point in history.â It was also a turning point for Walter. After that TV project, and with the birth of a new child, Clark began to spend more time at home. The focus for the remainder of the year was on research and development of new songs, new techniques of recording, and personal growth. The 2002 year end release of "Perfect Love" was the product of the years efforts. It was also the first CD to feature Original songs, and the first CD to be marketed commercially in Japan. Through a wide variety of musical genres and original arrangements Walter imbues every performance with a jazz ambience delivering relaxing renditions of ballads and love songs, covering music that has a positive message timelessness and staying power.
In July 2006 he completed recording of a new solo CD entitled Many Splendid Things, a jazz fusion collection of uniquely arranged standards. âDuring regular performance I play many styles of music but my aim in producing this CD is to showcase a few of my favorite standard tunes for the enjoyment of the more adult listeners.
â Usually I sing and accompany myself on piano, with my left hand playing a bass synthesizer, and right hand playing horns, strings, guitar, reeds, and other sounds on other synths that are mounted on top of the piano, along with a drum machine which I play with hands and foot pedals. If an audience closes their eyes and listens it sounds like a 4 or 5 piece band and singer. Nothing is pre-recorded or sequenced. Everything is live, and the arrangements change with every performance, which, as Billie Holiday once said is one of the prerequisites of jazz. I often switch instrumentation, sometimes just singing vocals with piano and bass, to give a pure acoustic sound. This was done on quite a few songs in the upcoming work. In this fashion, the basic 8 tracks of the rhythm section, and vocals were all recorded live on this CD. Later, we added other tracks to fill out the sound and make it more interesting. To be perfectly honest with you, I am probably not what one would call a pure jazz player. It is an album of standards but part of my style is just to present music in different lights and genres. My preference is to make the emotional quality of music more important than technical aspects. I did, however, my best to faithfully serve the original writers of the songs. My goal as an artist is to create music that is healing, in whatever form possible."

Andre Black appeared in a couple of great trumpet solos, but other than that, Clark performed, arranged, recorded, mixed and mastered this entire CD.

The latest release, Best Thing to Come, will probably be Clark's last multitrack recording for a while as he intends to make future releases primarily recordings of live performances.