“When the Snow is On the Roses”
Sonny James
Written by Ernest Bader, Larry Kusik, James Last, and Eddie Snyder
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
September 16, 1972
The lyrics are almost irrelevant here.
Sonny James was a great singer in a way that got lost to the sands of time for many years, and today is still ghettoized into traditional pop territory.
It was once common to find a beautiful song written in another language and change the lyrics to make it work for English speaking audiences. Ed Ames did a beautiful job with this German song, and his version laid the template for the chart-topping James cover.
You can hear that the song wasn’t originally written in English by how the language has to be mangled a bit to make it work with the original melody. But he sounds fantastic and I love the way he is able to smooth out the rough edges of the songwriting with his vocal performance.
It’s hard to believe that we are only going to see Sonny James one more time.
“When the Snow is On the Roses” gets a B+.
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I like the lyrics, melody, and vocal performance. The production is boring as hell. “B”.
My Mom used to listen to this all the time. For that reason alone. I like it. However, I couldn’t rate it but nice memories.