Voices From Beyond
Death has never really been the mandatory retirement age in Hollywood. Stars go in the ground, but marketable celebrity never gives up the ghost.
Nobody blinked when Ray Charles raked in posthumous Grammys, or when digital technology made it possible to cast Steve McQueen, who died in 1980, as the spectral pitchman in a Ford Mustang commercial, or when Laurence Olivier landed the role last year as the nefarious villain in the science fiction film "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" more than a decade and a half after his funeral.
But, as Dr. Frankenstein learned when he saw those torches outside, using science to break new burial ground is not always a crowd-pleasing stunt.
"Just because you can do something, well, that doesn't mean you should do something," said Jim Ed Norman, who speaks from firsthand experience.
Norman was behind a grand experiment in Nashville that used the miracles of technology to put new lyrics into the mouth of a dead singer, namely Conway Twitty, the country star who died in 1993.
"I knew it could be done. And once you know that, you get to thinking of all the things that could be done," Norman said.
What do you want to hear? Elvis singing Eminem? Perhaps a Microsoft jingle from Frank Sinatra or a new antiwar anthem from John Lennon?
"Yes, all of that," Norman said, "and more. And it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. I wanted to put it out there and see what happened."
In one sense, the experiment worked perfectly: The finished track was seamless and completely believable to the average ear. Twitty's family enthusiastically signed off on its release. The recording was a "duet" between Anita Cochran and Twitty on a tune called "(I Wanna Hear) A Cheatin' Song," which Cochran wrote.
The recording starts off as straight as a West Texas highway -- a simple song of honky-tonk heartache -- but it takes a sharp turn into the Great Beyond when, 2 1/2 minutes in, Cochran asks Twitty, her childhood idol, "Can you help me, Conway?"
The long-gone baritone answers, "Yeah."
But maybe Twitty should have said "nope." Looking back on everything that happened next, Norman reflected recently that "in a way, this was like opening a Pandora's box."
Norman has a long resume in country music, including producer or player with the Eagles, Hank Williams Jr. and Crystal Gayle, and then as an executive who nurtured the careers of tradition-minded singers Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam and Travis Tritt.
