Listening to some old Fortunes tracks with beautiful harmonies.

Where have all the harmonies gone? Like The Turtles and The Beach Boys? And the Everly Brothers. Even the magnificent Andrews Sisters.
Scissor Sisters do some but nowhere near as good as The Bee Gees.

For me the best ever harmony group was The Hollies.

Graham Nash's harmonies to Alan Clark's lead with Tony Hicks in there too... incredible.
Any thoughts?

The best harmony singer I ever worked with was Tony Rivers(Cliff Richard and the TOTP albums from the seventies).

I don`t believe for a minute the Scissor Sisters recordings are not altered via software.

Hollies, Beatles, Beegees all superb.

The most impressive harmonic group to me ever though was the Four Seasons. Stunning, and they played at the same time.

Four Seasons! YES! Nice one, Mart.

Mamas and Papas?

Last time I heard real quality vocal harmonies they were by Hanson. I'm sure there must be others out there also.

The Mamas and Papas were brill, but what impressed me about the Four Seasons was the way they immaculately played instruments at the same time.
The Mams and Paps obviously inspired this sound and put pressure on how them(FS) as self contained acts should work.

Hanson Cat?

I like them but I can`t put them in this class.

The Hollies are class, but you do have to say, they have/had periods in which they back off their instrumentel playing to do the harmonies.
The Four Seasons never did that, but I tell you, another surprising one to throw into the thread that never did,was Def Leppard.
Fantastic harmonies of another genre.
"Hysteria" was fantastic and I saw them pull it off live by the sound desk.
Another genre, anything by the Finn brothers, they seem to read each others minds.
Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman of course from the Turtles.True innovation.

First went the melodies. With dance music & rap the rhythm is the most important part. With no melodies, there is no need for harmonies.

Indeed, one of the most championed acts currently, only have a single microphone on stage and not one single backing vocal on the current single.
I read a long piece about the Mama and the Papas,this morning, two particularly fascinating facts or urban myths depending on how you look at them.
The first album sleeve was withdrawn for misspellings ,that rumour has some creedence.(any jokes about my Grandad typesetting it will be ignored!)

The 50/50 surprising rumour, is that according to one of the band members, Michelle Phillips, Cass Elliot was not in the line up, but joined in singing when the record company came round to see them and remained there.
Quite a funny idea actually, join in on audition and crack it!
A harmony group I really championed, who fell by the wayside in the end as that genre, were The Christians.
Much like the Mamas, they were also auditioned at home.

How many A+R these days , make a journey to a potential acts house and say "ok sing to me!", the preferred contemporary method is "stand there in front a billion viewers and we will humiliate you".

That, as the way forward isn`t really encouraging a re-birth of the genre is it?

One act that has always stood out for me as the masters of harmonies has to be The Proclaimers. Other acts who i listen to if i need a harmony fix are...
The Beach Boys and Jellyfish!

I think the reason I rate the HOLLIES so highly is because of the strength of Alan's lead voice - it was able to take many other higher harmonies without losing the melody.

I could never quite work out which harmony was Graham and which Tony but they blended magnificently.

When you hear Hanson testing the accoustics of a hall by singing unaccompanied harmony, you might feel different.

Away from their most well known commercial releases they have some very good quality stuff, but many record companies assume that this isn't what the public want to hear.

Yes, Hanson can rock, and they can sound miles away from harmonic, but that's deceptive.

Has anyone noticed how many brothers appear in this thread?

Jellyfish`s cover of Badfingers`, "No Matter What" is stunning, I appreciate the reminder.

I'm still hearing harmonies, but mostly in country music and the various manifestations of country. At the moment, most seem to be going for very spacial sounding production on the records and, perhaps, perceiving harmonies as too much clutter in the mix. Given the ebbs and flows of production approaches, I'm sure this will change in the future.

The Moody Blues have done some excellent harmonies. Although not quite in the same camp as others mentioned here.

Crowded House do a nice harmony. Think of "Take the Weather With You".

10 years ago I worked with a girl band called Indiana that sang Roxette type songs in close harmony. Mixing the vox down was brilliant.

The most bizarre harmonies I've heard are from the Myst