65 Love Affair

I don't know who the artist is that sings this song but it's one that gets played a lot of me oldies station around here. I guess I sort of have a beef with the song because none of the things that the singer is describing sound like things that were going on in 1965 but rather like things that were happening in the 50s. I may be 30 years late complaining about this song but it's almost midnight and I have overdosed on White Album and feeling delirious

 

Paul Davis sings it.

 

The song was originally called "55 Love Affair" but the record company made him change the title because they felt the whole 50s pastiche thing was dead by that point and it wouldn't connect with audiences. Of course, that meant that the song didn't really make sense anymore, but it was still a fairly big hit.

More details here: '65 Love Affair - Wikipedia

 

Every time I have a power outage, that darn song always plays first when my music server resets. The title alphabetizes first given its '65 Love Affair label. All titles with apostrophes move to the top. Weird how many times I've heard that song lately.

 

It's also a terrible sounding song. Sounds like a transistor AM radio. Or was that done on purpose? I understand it was a digital recording too.

 

DooWop DooWop DiddyWop Doo.

 

I love this song, and just happened to be listening to it the other night. I have noticed a slight pitch/speed difference between the album version that appears on the Cool Night album versus the "single version" from best-of comps... the "single version" runs slightly faster, making the album version sound a little draggy. I prefer the slightly faster version.

I seem to recall a similar thing happening (but to a more pronounced degree) with another single by Gerry Rafferty? Anyway... I thought it was interesting to see '65 Love Affair come up here with me so recently rediscovering it and the little pitch difference.

 

How strange, especially since I'm a DJ and a fan of the late Paul Davis , that I never knew the fact that the song was changed from '55 to '65 and worse yet, I never noticed that the lyrics really don't make any sense, because of that change. Still, a radio ready smash, of which Paul was so good at delivering.

 

Hard to believe that the man who brought us "I Go Crazy", "Sweet Life", "Cool Night", "Do Right" and "'65 Love Affair", among so many other great ones, looked like Gregg Allman, with the exact same laid back Southern drawl, as well?

Here is a rare interview with Dick Clark, just after they performed "'65 Love Affair" on "American Bandstand". Sadly, just like Gino Vannelli, Paul Davis, even after having two of the biggest of singles of his career, never got a second ARISTA album release, thanks to the one and only turd, named Clive Davis!(Thankfully, no relation to Paul!)

 

OMG what a terrible song, fortunately the lyrics on Youtube are indersiverable

 

What you have to realize, though, is that for very large portions of America, "things that were going on in 1965" really weren't all that much different from what was "happening in the 50s."

Just as an example from personal experience…while all of my friends and I from the suburbs were delirious for The Beatles, folk rock and garage rock in 1965-66, if you visited kids in the city or some of the smaller towns surrounding it, it was like "the 60s" never happened. The only thing they wanted to know about, irrespective of race, was soul music. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the lines were very clearly drawn.

And that paradigm persisted throughout the rest of the decade for many. My first wife graduated from high school the same year I did (1969), but was from a town about 15 miles from me. Same deal there; she was a cheerleader, and football and cars were pretty much the only thing that mattered to her and most of her classmates. She eventually was exposed to more, but in the end (as I discovered ruefully), that was still pretty much who she really was.

All of the other cultural artifacts that surrounded what we knew completely passed those other areas by as well. What's sometimes hard for some to grasp is that their reality isn't/wasn't necessarily everybody else's reality. But it's hard to see that when you're in the middle of it.

 

BTW, this would be Paul Davis's birthday today.

 

I'd rather it be 69 Love Affair

 

I liked the record in general when it was charting as it has some interesting changes and modulation.

What I really disliked was Paul's insistance in using a Linn on it. I was using two Linns that year, but never for a track like that. If he (and whats-his-name the engineer) would've opted for real drums on the track, I think it would've had a much nicer foundation.

The Lm1 is sort of innocuous on Cool Night, but even that one would've been better served with real drums.

So much of his 81-83 stuff is so comped and layered with those kbd parts he overdubbed on the 24-trk, that it imo sets up a cardboardy sound. The Linns just intensify that.

At least I Go Crazy...as massively keyboard comped as that was, had real drums. Probably only because Roger was still 18 months from releasing the first Linn.

 

Kyle Lehning was the producer of the Cool Night album.

 

It sounds like they recorded the drums with a cheap Casio keyboard. Hate the way it sounds.

 

I liked the song when it came out. Read an interview with Paul Davis where he said he wanted to write a song in the vein of Hall & Oates. Which makes sense - You Make My Dreams had come out the year prior.

That said, despite not being religious my favorite PD song is Do Right.

 

The "Cool Night" album was produced by Paul Davis & Ed Seay. That's what the LP says. Further, "'65 Love Affair"'s title was changed mostly because it made no sense for Paul. Paul was born in 1948. He would have been 7 years old in 1955 so the situation made no sense for him to sing about. It kinda threw off the lyric, of course, but I guess they figured no one would care. Turns out they didn't. It was a big hit for him.

'Course, Paul is said to have completely hated the album and left Arista as fast as he could after it was released too. Shame, too, as it was his most commercially successful. That had to annoy him big time.

Ed

 

Oops...I knew it was produced in Nashville though.

 

I usually like anything that has to do with the year 1965 - first and foremost being my birth.

Not this -

 

That’s what she said

 

I miss Paul Davis...…..what a voice.

 

BTW, Paul was NOT a fan of the Linn Drums and admitted that Clive Davis admitted that they be used instead of real drums.

 

It reminds me of a cross between Hall and Oates of that era and the theme song to "Greatest American Hero."

 

Album recorded in Atlanta, Georgia at Web IV Studios.

Ed