Premiere: Barry Manilow duets with Louis Armstrong

Barry Manilow usually doesn't like to listen to his albums once he's done with them, but for My Dream Duets, he makes an exception.

"After working on albums for so long — it takes months and months of mixing — the last thing you want to do is listen to them," he says. "But this one is different."

On My Dream Duets, out Oct. 27, Manilow, 71, gets to hear himself singing with some of the great voices of pop music, including Judy Garland, Dusty Springfield and John Denver.

Manilow's duet with the late jazz great Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World/What a Wonderful Life, premieres at USA TODAY. It will be available as an instant download for those pre-ordering My Dream Duets on iTunes beginning Tuesday.

When Verve Music asked Manilow to record an album of duets, he began to compile a wish list of other singers, only to realize that they had all died. He and Verve then went to a company that can strip away the instrumentation from recordings, and it provided him with vocal tracks from the likes of Whitney Houston and Andy Williams.

"I was given Andy Williams' vocal by itself, without any echo, without any EQ," he says. "When I played Whitney Houston's voice, and it came at me, I had to back away from the keyboard. It was like she was standing right there.

"I was able to redo their songs, re-orchestrate the backgrounds, take the vocals and make them into duets. Sometimes I'd change keys, sometimes I added stuff at the end. I redid the original songs into brand-new renditions."

Like many people, Manilow became familiar with Armstrong's recording of What a Wonderful World through its use in the 1987 Robin Williams film Good Morning Vietnam. For this track, he and songwriting partner Bruce Sussman came up with a new song that complemented What a Wonderful World, which was written by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss.

"It's a totally separate song," Manilow says, "but the melody fits over the melody of What a Wonderful World."

Here's the track listing for My Dream Duets:

1. The Song's Gotta Come From the Heart with Jimmy Durante
2. Goody Goody with Frankie Lymon
3. Dream a Little Dream of Me with Mama Cass
4. I Believe in You and Me with Whitney Houston
5. Sunshine on My Shoulders with John Denver
6. Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart with Judy Garland
7. Moon River with Andy Williams
8. The Look of Love with Dusty Springfield
9. The Candy Man with Sammy Davis, Jr.
10. I Wanna Be Loved by You with Marilyn Monroe
11. What a Wonderful World/What a Wonderful Life with Louis Armstrong