A conspiracy theory on Raymond Donnez (a.k.a. Don Ray et al.)

[Syncophonic]

We all know that French (some say Italian?) arranger/composer/producer Raymond Donnez was often credited as Don Ray on his collaborations with other artists, including Alec R. Costandinos (and his other brainchildren), Cerrone and Santa Esmeralda. Donnez was also a performer in his own right, having released a full-length LP (Garden of Love, 1978) and a 12" single (Simplify/Stop your running, circa 1982) under the pseudonyms Don Ray and Donray. He was credited on the first two Love and Kisses LPs as keyboardist and arranger (sometimes as Don Ray), as well as on other Costandinos' works from the 1977-78 period. But starting with the Trocadero Lemon Blue soundtrack, Donnez/Don Ray suddenly disappeared from the credits on ALL Costandinos-produced recordings, and was replaced by another arranger named Raymond Taras Knehnetsky. Knehnetsky's arrangements, however, were strikingly similar to Donnez's; so much that it was hard to notice any differences in the string and brass melodic phrasing and harmonic structures. Even under Knehnetsky's direction, the overall musical output remained consistent with the style of early Costandinos' works. In other words, Alec still sounded like Alec R. Costandinos. It was only after Alec decided to revamp his band lineup almost in its entirety back in 1979 -starting with Love & Kisses' You Must Be Love- that we could start noticing a major trend shift in the musical result. As you may remember, halfway into the production of You Must Be Love (in all likelihood, the album's title track must have been his last recording with the old lineup), Alec turned to a New York-based brass section which included the Brecker Brothers, among others, while London musicians like Alan Hawkshaw, Mo Foster, Peter Van Hooke, Ricky Hitchcock and Ray Cooper were abruptly replaced by Bernard Arcadio, Andre Ceccarelli, Jean-Claude Chavanat, Tony Bonfils and Manuel Roche. I'm not sure about the reasons for the band overhaul, but we can go over this in more detail in a separate thread. Despite these changes, Knehnetsky was still the arranger, so even if Costandinos' sound was now a completely different one, it is quite probable that Knehnetsky was not the creator of the new sound.

After carefully considering these pieces of information (i.e., reading between the lines), and given Donnez's propensity to work under different "identities", does anybody other than me tend to think that Raymond Taras Knehnetsky is nothing more than just another pseudonym used by Raymond Donnez? Also, take a look at the arrangement credits on Costandinos' Featuring Alirol & Jacquet album: "arranged by Raymond Jimenez". How come all late-70s musical arrangers in France are named Raymond? Did they all attend the same conservatory of music? Did they all share the same musical influences? Is all this just a mere coincidence? A way to evade taxes? Or are these indeed three different persons? Not that there is anything wrong with it, it is just simple curiosity. Hopefully I will now be able to bring some clarity to this enigma -- one that has haunted me over the years.

Discussion is open...

-MS

[discodjinn]

I remember reading(but can't just now recall the source) that Don Ray fell out with Costandinos over credit issues on the lps. If this were true, then it seems unlikely that Ray continued any collaboration with his former mentor.

[remicks]

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Too bad DON RAY was satisfied with just his one LP .....

Interesting crowd wern't they ??

Have you read this thread ...... more game playing amongst them .....

http://www.discomusic.com/forums/showthread.php/755


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[Syncophonic]

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Have you read this thread ...... more game playing amongst them .....

http://www.discomusic.com/forums/showthread.php/755

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I sure did -- very entertaining reading, I must say. There is also another very educational thread on the subject, which I'm sure you have read too:

http://www.discomusic.com/forums/showthread.php/3752

Back in April 2006 Sir Alec was the star guest of a talk show on a Sirius Satellite radio station. It's a one-hour interview, very insightful material. I will try to work on the audio transcript, as I happen to have a copy of the broadcast. He speaks very fondly of his old collaborators, particularly Mo Foster, Peter Van Hooke and Ray Cooper, but he totally refuses to mention Cerrone by name and instead refers to him as "a French artist"...

[STEPHEN L FREEMAN]

It's likely that any number of pseudonyms were used by Don Ray. Alec composed and recorded under 5 different names that I know of.

And, if you research actual recordings, as opposed to threads, you'll see that Don Ray and Nick Skorsky, were working together as far back as '74. Costandinos worked with Cerrone in '74, and was with Barclay for almost a decade prior. And that's just two of dozens of combinations of the same characters in all the Euro recordings that hit big from '76 to '79.

Remember that, until computers democratized things, in the 80's, you had to have a LOT of money, or be an excellent studio musician, to get your recordings made. There wasn't this sea of writers, arrangers and producers, within the music communities. (ie; the core Euro people, US people, Canadian people, etc...)