Released 1965 Genre Pop Language English | Recorded 1965, London, UK Length 9:06 | |
Label Pye Records NEP 24237 (UK)
Vogue CPV 8343 (France) | ||
"Call Me" is a song composed by Tony Hatch for Petula Clark which became an easy listening standard via a hit version by Chris Montez.
"Call Me" first appeared as the title cut on a Petula Clark EP released in 1965 by Pye in the UK. "Call Me" and the three other tracks on the EP: "Heart", "Everything in the Garden" and "Strangers and Lovers" were also released on Clark's album I Know a Place (a.k.a. The New Petula Clark Album).
Also in 1965 Chris Montez, who had scored the hit "Let's Dance" in 1962 and subsequently dropped out of the music business, was invited to resume recording by A&M Records' founder Herb Alpert. Alpert was unhappy when Montez began recording for A&M in his previous Chicano rock style and personally suggested Montez shift to easy listening choosing "Call Me" as the song to be Montez's debut single on A&M. Released in November 1965, "Call Me" entered the Easy Listening Top 40 in Billboard that December entering the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1966; that March "Call Me" peaked on the Easy Listening chart at #2 and on the Hot 100 at #22.
Montez's version of "Call Me" was released as a single in the UK on the Pye label in January 1966 but failed to chart: "Call Me" was also a non-charting UK single release in 1966 for Lulu.
Covers
Georgia Gibbs recorded "Call Me" as the title cut for her final album released in 1966. Other versions of "Call Me" have been recorded by Shirley Bassey, Vikki Carr, Eliane Elias, Astrud Gilberto, Peggy Lee, Trini Lopez, Mimì Berté, the New Classic Singers, Walter Wanderley, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, Joanie Sommers and Nancy Wilson and the rock group Los Tijuana Five (Mexico). In October 2007, as part of his album Romancing the '60s, Frankie Valli also covered this song.
Instrumental recordings of "Call Me" are often used as background music in radio and television. In 1973 Bell Telephone utilized the song "Call Me" as the company's advertising jingle.
Eliane Elias included the song in her 2004 album Dreamer.