CBS - S 80079

THE BEST OF CHRIS MONTEZ

Side 1: Ay no digas - No one knew - A little bit of soap - When your heart is full of love - Somebody loves you - Come on, let's go - Quantas veces

Side 2: Amor y paz - Let's dance - Mona Lisa - You're so fine - Yesterday i heard the rain - Heart and soul - Dolores, Dolores

Chris Montez (born Ezekiel Christopher Montanez, January 17, 1943, Los Angeles, California), is a Mexican American singer.

Born Christopher Montanez, he attended high school with the Beach Boys. At 17 he made his first single She's My Rockin' Baby. Chris Montez was a fan of another Los Angeles area teenager, ill-fated rock star Ritchie Valens. Producer Jim Lee helped to promote Montez, forming a record label called Monogram for him.

The second single that Chris recorded for Monogram proved to be the biggest hit of his career. In the early 60's there were a number of dance tunes on the charts, so he recorded Let's

Dance and in 1962 it became a top ten song and a huge hit overseas as well. He followed that with Some Kinda Fun, a song that he had co-written with Jim Lee. It had modest success in the United States but was a top ten song in the UK, sold a million copies, and led to a tour of the UK with the then-emerging Beatles.

Although Montez toured with Clyde McPhatter, Sam Cooke, The Platters, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, there were no more hits for Montez until four years later. This was despite The Beatles opening a London concert for him while performing with Tommy Roe. It was once speculated that John Lennon started a fight with Montez at a London bar, when Lennon allegedly poured a beer over Montez' head.

Montez returned to the recording studio in 1965, this time at A&M Records. Montez was searching for the same rock and roll formula that would replicate the success of "Let's Dance". During a recording session, A&M co-founder Herb Alpert (who co-produced Montez's first A&M album) suggested that Montez try a different approach: a middle of the road, soft ballad sound. Though reluctant at first, Montez agreed to go along with his mentor's suggestion.

"Call Me" (a Tony Hatch composition) was the first single released from his 1966 A&M album, The More I See You. The title single from the album, sung in a soft, very high tenor range and played on primarily adult-formatted radio stations, confused some disc jockeys, who were unfamiliar with Montez's past work. When announcing the song, the DJs would often refer to Montez as a female. But by the time the album was released, Montez' pictures on the front and back of the jacket cleared up any mystery surrounding his gender, as explained in the album's notes on the back of the record jacket.

The More I See You album yielded three Top 40 singles for Montez: The title cut, plus "Call Me" and "There Will Never Be Another You". Montez recorded three more albums for A&M and then from 1974 recordrd for CBS records.

Let's Dance is a song that just won't go away. It was re-issued in 1972 and became a hit song all over again in the UK, then came back again in 1979. It remains a popular song.

Montez today continues to perform, mainly to foreign audiences, but still maintains a series of concert dates in the US. Most of his American appearances in 2007 were in Branson, Missouri.

(info various, mainly edited from Wikipedia)