Tommy James and the Shondells did the standard version.
Thanx 
I could just imagine what would happen if a well-known Bill Withers song were thus altered:
Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone…
[vibrato] Wino, wino, wino, wino, wino, wino…[/vibrato]
Isn’t the version of “Crimson and Clover” that has the heavy vibrato effect the one by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts?
I don’t know about that version, but the Tommy James version has heavy application of electronic tremolo.
Vibrato is a styling.
Good singers can sing without it.
Brass musicians do the same thing, high range notes are difficult to control, so rather than bet on nailing that perfect in tune high C you vibrato it. Its an intentional inconsistency to buffer small pitch bending errors.
Then he does not own that C.
Drach, 12 years of misc music, sings ok, and plays 6 instruments. I can vibrato if I want to :D.
“Misc music” obviously does not include singing opera unmiked. Straight tone means you are A) doing something wrong and B) risking injury.
Admittedly I am not an unmiked opera singer, everything I was ever taught was if you cant do it clearly without straining, you don’t go there. If you have to vibrato to do it safely, you probably have little business going there.
I also spoke to my wife about this last night who is a much better trainied singer than myself (she was in various state honor choirs and had exentsive private singing lessons way back when). She concurs that its mostly styling and hardly a “natural” thing. Its a trained technique. Like many other things some people pick it up faster than others.
It also sounds like hell for anything more than solo work if you ask me.
I suspect that vibrato is another one of those individual preferences as to whether or not you enjoy it. I think there are varying degrees of tastefulness to vibrato and there can be too much of a good thing.
I, sadly, cannot sing vibrato and in fact, am losing what used to be a halfway pleasant singing voice much like my mother did. Used to be able to sing soprano and now I am lucky if I can sing tenor with the men! 
To me, it sounds like there is a qualitative difference between the vibrato of trained opera singers and that of pop singers. I wonder if the same mechanism is at work at all. FWIW, I disklike the overdone operatic vibrato and the overdone pop vibrato of singers like Whitney Houston, et al. Give me a singer who can vary from a nice medium vibrato to a straight tone to a growl – whatever fits the songs. Different strokes and all.
So I’m a Philistine. So sue me.
I sing tenor in a mixed southern Gospel quartet, but I’m a lousy tenor. (Actually, since I only have about a four-note range where I’m any good at all, I’m not even a good baritone. Singing sure is fun, though.) Anyway, there are times when the natural vibrato that others have spoken of comes through, and it’s a pleasant feeling. Sometimes I catch myself in that moment thinking, “Hey! That’s pretty cool!”
RR
What is still not getting through is that vibrato happens when you stop straining.
It’s getting through; you and dreamer made it quite clear in your first posts. My points were:[ul]
[li]The vibrato that trained classical singers and that which many pop singers use sound like two different things[/li][li]I don’t necessarily enjoy it or think it appropriate all the time[/li][/ul]
RR
I’m a flutist, and my father was a (French) hornist. When I was 9 years old, he was horrified to hear me trying to play with a “nanny-goat” vibrato—I was just trying to imitate the guy who played in the New York Philharmonic at that time. So, he attended a convention and cornered a highly respected oboist to ask about vibrato; Dad came home with an exercise that is very artificial, but results in the player being able to control the speed of vibrato (to apply it to varying styles and emotions in the music) without even thinking about it. At the same time, one can retain the ability to play that “white” sound (without any vibrato), which is useful every once in a while. It involves “pulsing” one’s tone to a metronome set at 60.
This is done by tightening the commonly called diaphragm, and sounds just terrible in slow motion! First, you do one pusle per tick, then two, then three, etc., but never progressing to the next step without first being able to control the slower ones. It’s tedious as the dickens, but the results are worth it.
Singing and flute playing are very similar in terms of breath control. The flute, unlike all other wind instruments, has no ARTIFICIAL resistance to the flow of air, such as a mouthpiece/reed being placed against or in the mouth. I have no idea how singers “learn” to apply vibrato, but many are certainly “naturals.” One thing that makes me sad is the way that vibrato slows down as the singer ages: Dinah Shore was a perfect example of that. Then there are opera singers—and I agree that many of them over-use vibrato—who have a vibrato that bends underneath the main note, rather than slightly above it; this makes me literally feel like throwing up!
Lastly: I don’t know how “they” came to this conclusion, but almost all singers in “Early Music” groups sing without any vibrato at all. Also, although we do not have castrati any more (I think!), we DO have what are called countertenors, who have learned to sing in the falsetto range while making it sound natural.
Whew! Sorry I “talk” so much! :o
I’m a flutist, and my father was a (French) hornist. When I was 9 years old, he was horrified to hear me trying to play with a “nanny-goat” vibrato—I was just trying to imitate the guy who played in the New York Philharmonic at that time. So, he attended a convention and cornered a highly respected oboist to ask about vibrato; Dad came home with an exercise that is very artificial, but results in the player being able to control the speed of vibrato (to apply it to varying styles and emotions in the music) without even thinking about it. At the same time, one can retain the ability to play that “white” sound (without any vibrato), which is useful every once in a while. It involves “pulsing” one’s tone to a metronome set at 60.
This is done by tightening the commonly called diaphragm, and sounds just terrible in slow motion! First, you do one pulse per tick, then two, then three, etc., but never progressing to the next step without first being able to control the slower ones. It’s tedious as the dickens, but the results are worth it.
Singing and flute playing are very similar in terms of breath control. The flute, unlike all other wind instruments, has no ARTIFICIAL resistance to the flow of air, such as a mouthpiece/reed being placed against or in the mouth. I have no idea how singers “learn” to apply vibrato, but many are certainly “naturals.” One thing that makes me sad is the way that vibrato slows down as the singer ages: Dinah Shore was a perfect example of that. Then there are opera singers—and I agree that many of them over-use vibrato—who have a vibrato that bends underneath the main note, rather than slightly above it; this makes me literally feel like throwing up!
Lastly: I don’t know how “they” came to this conclusion, but almost all singers in “Early Music” groups sing without any vibrato at all. Also, although we do not have castrati any more (I think!), we DO have what are called countertenors, who have learned to sing in the falsetto range while making it sound natural.
Whew! Sorry I “talk” so much! :o
P.S. - About 14 years later, I was playing principal flute in an orchestra, and sitting to my left was the principal oboist. One day, he complimented me upon my use of vibrato, and finally it was the perfect time to tell him that HE was the person my father had grilled all those years before! He was SO tickled!
I’m a flutist, and my father was a (French) hornist. When I was 9 years old, he was horrified to hear me trying to play with a “nanny-goat” vibrato—I was just trying to imitate the guy who played in the New York Philharmonic at that time. In my father’s era, ONLY the Russian hornists used vibrato. So, he attended a convention and cornered a highly respected oboist to ask about vibrato; Dad came home with an exercise that is very artificial, but results in the player being able to control the speed of vibrato (to apply it to varying styles and emotions in the music) without even thinking about it. At the same time, one can retain the ability to play that “white” sound (without any vibrato), which is useful every once in a while. It involves “pulsing” one’s tone to a metronome set at 60. This is done by tightening the commonly called diaphragm, and sounds just terrible in slow motion! First, you do one pulse per tick, then two, then three, etc., but never progressing to the next step without first being able to control the slower ones. It’s tedious as the dickens, but the results are worth it.
Singing and flute playing are very similar in terms of breath control. The flute, unlike all other wind instruments, has no ARTIFICIAL resistance to the flow of air, such as a mouthpiece/reed being placed against or in the mouth. I have no idea how singers “learn” to apply vibrato, but many are certainly “naturals.” One thing that makes me sad is the way that vibrato slows down as the singer ages: Dinah Shore was a perfect example of that. Then there are opera singers—and I agree that many of them over-use vibrato—who have a vibrato that bends underneath the main note, rather than slightly above it; this makes me literally feel like throwing up!
Lastly: I don’t know how “they” came to this conclusion, but almost all singers in “Early Music” groups sing without any vibrato at all. Also, although we do not have castrati any more (I think!), we DO have what are called countertenors, who have learned to sing in the falsetto range while making it sound natural.
Whew! Sorry I “talk” so much! :o
P.S. - About 14 years later, I was playing principal flute in an orchestra, and sitting to my left was the principal oboist. One day, he complimented me upon my use of vibrato, and finally it was the perfect time to tell him that HE was the person my father had grilled all those years before! He was SO tickled!
Early-music singers do not have to sing over 100-piece Romantic orchestras.
Explain Stevie Nicks’ voice to me. I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t even listen to her sing. I’ll turn the radio off if a song from her solo career comes on. I hate the vibrato in her voice. It’s awful and unpleasant. IMO, anyway. I know there are other pop/rock singers with same kind of voice, and I don’t like them much either, the only one that comes to mind now is Ray Thomas of the Moody Blues. I assume this is something they can’t control any more, Stevie Nicks didn’t sound like this in the old days. I’ll chalk it up to lack of training, I’m sure Stevie Nicks didn’t spend hours on vocal training her youth.
John W. Kennedy is quite correct, but he didn’t quite explain the difference between tremolo and vibrato.
Tremolo is a variation in amplitude (loudness), such as the Bee Gees made annoyingly famous (“how can you mend…a broken he-a-a-a-a-a-rt…”).
Vibrato, on the other hand, is a variation in pitch (frequency) either above or below the fundamental pitch of the note you’re singing. This, not tremolo, is the point of the OP.