I think everybody missed Mr. Natural. With no hit singles it vanished without a trace. It was their turn to R&B, but I always thought the title cut sounded a bit Tony Orlando:
The big change in Mr. Natural was the absence of Bill Sheppard and Blue Weaver, from The Strawbs, joining the backing musicians.
Everybody less one. I bought that album in '74 and don't even remember what prompted that since I'm sure radio didn't touch it. I do know Charade is one of my personal favorites. One of their most beautiful songs with a gorgeous, shimmering vibe and a killer clarinet solo. The album is a bridge of sorts between their past balladry and a sort of countryish/r&b hybrid in the uptempo tunes. A weaker set of songs overall but hardly the bomb most probably believe it to be, at least quality-wise.
I missed it. The last single I remember before "Jive Talkin"" is "Run To Me". And (no surprise here) the primary place where I heard these two songs were two very different radio stations -- Run To Me on "my parents"" radio station, and Jive Talkin' on "my siblings'" radio station.
I missed it too. The last single I heard was "Run To Me" on the easy listening station, andc "Jive Talkin" on the top 40 radio stations. I had heard "Run To Me" when in was on the charts, but didn't know or care who it was. So, Jive Talkin' was my introduction to the band. I'm sure most of my half of the baby boom generation was the same.
I'm sure there were mishearings of "Jive Talkin's" lyrics over the years. To some who were hard of hearing, the title sounded almost like "Geritol." And the line "It's all very fine..." sounded if one wasn't listening too closely like "strawberry pie."
I've often had trouble deciphering what the hell Gibb is singing. And that was when my hearing was good. Their next #1 and some of the Fever songs fall into that category, too.
I won't be jumping ahead, but as we go along Barry as a lyricist would seem to have taken some pointers from Bernie Taupin in terms of abstruse, WTF do they mean? lyrics.
I'm not even talking about what the words mean but more what the words are. It's a combination of the falsetto and production choices that make some words indecipherable. I'll elaborate more when we get there.
Nobody heard "Alive" on the radio?? The second single from "To Whom It May Concern"? Went to number 34.
Two hits off Main Course live on the Tonight Show, and a short interview with Johnny Carson, September 2, 1975.
Yeah, I did but not for very long. That's probably why I didn't buy the single. It never got the chance to cook in my ear.
Never heard this one before in my life. But it demonstrates how they'd consigned themselves to light rock hell. Disco rescued them from a fate worse than death. (Seriously though, I'm amazed Celine Dion hasn't cut a whole album of Bee Gees ballad covers. I'm not a huge fan of Madonna's cousin - although I love her personality, she seems geeky and sweet - but most of their ballads have the kind of high drama Celine could send completely over the top. Her fans would eat cuts like "Alive" up by the truckload.)
That was a great performance of Nights On Broadway! It should have been the second #1 off that album and Fanny should have been the third. Imagine, they would have achieved 3 no.1s from 3 albums in a row.
The follow-up to "Jive Talkin'" didn't quite make it to the top of the charts, stalling at #7, but "Nights On Broadway" is maybe the most important hit of the disco era and of the Bee Gees career. That's because it was on "Broadway" that the Bee Gees demonstrated a talent for the previously-impossible: the ability to sound like Earth, Wind & Fire and Gloria Gaynor, simultaneously. As the Wikipedia article on the song notes: Producer Arif Mardin asked if one of the Bee Gees members could do some screaming during the main chorus to make the song more exciting. In response, Barry Gibb began singing higher and higher, eventually singing it in a falsetto that was unexpectedly powerful. He had never known he had such an ability and Barry's falsetto became a trademark of the Bee Gees, although Maurice had been harmonizing in falsetto for years. Barry recalled in a May 2001 interview with Mojo magazine "Arif said to me, 'Can you scream?' I said, 'under certain circumstances'. He said, 'Can you scream in tune?' I said, 'well, I'll try' " Well, Barry didn't just try - he did. Boy, did he did! And it was with "Nights On Broadway" that the trio's falsetto harmonies ascended to toupee frazzling, polyester melting heights. For the next four years, armed with their secret genetic weapon, the Bee Gees were completely unstoppable, and seemingly omnipresent, until suddenly they weren't. More on that as we go thru the next few years worth of #1 hits. I wasn't kidding when I said they were the biggest thing since The Beatles. (Their success has always made me wonder just what the heck The Beatles would have been doing if they hadn't broken up at the turn of the decade. Paul certainly took a stab at disco, and the Stones proved quite adept at it. The formerly-Beatlesque Bee Gees became the masters of the genre. If they'd stayed together, could The Beatles have morphed into kings of the dance floor? What would that have sounded like? I'd love to dial up that parallel universe and listen in...)
In fact, all four Beatles did some kind of dance, R&B, funk, or disco...whatever you want to call it. Paul - Goodnight Tonight, Silly Love Songs John - Whatever Gets You Thru The Night Ringo - Oh My My George - Love Comes To Everyone I'm sure thy could of worked out some kind of massive hit, maybe with some collaboration with Billy Preston! There's an idea that never came to fruition! A lot of people on this forum have expressed disdain for Barry's falsetto for some reason. maybe they don[t think it's manly or some crap like that, but, I like it.
I never heard Alive on the radio, I don't think. I believe the only place I heard it was on The Best of Bee Gees Vol. 2. Run To Me was all over the radio, though.
Nearing it's peak of #21 was 11-year-old me's main jam of Summer '75, the reggae-ish "Black Superman" by Johnny Wakelin - who to my much later surprise turned out to be a white bloke from Brighton.
Certainly not musically. I remember one critic saying of Ms. Dion, "she doesn't so much sing as upholster a song." Then there are those who aren't singers but declaimers. We'll get to all those years from now.
“Jive Talkin” - this is a fun, upbeat song that was everywhere on the radio. I was interested in how an Australian group came to have a song with this title. It was originally called “Drive Talking” per Wiki, which goes on to say: According to Maurice, while hearing this rhythmic sound, "Barry didn't notice that he's going 'Ji-Ji Jive Talkin' ', thinking of the dance, 'You dance with your eyes'...that's all he had...exactly 35 mph...that's what we got." He goes on to say, "We played it to [producer] Arif [Mardin], and he went 'Do you know what "Jive Talkin'" means?' And we said 'Well yeah, it's, ya know, you're dancing.' He says 'NO...it's a black expression for ********ting.' And we went 'Oh, Really?!? Jive talkin', you're telling me lies...' and changed it." I guess he referring to that dance from the 20s (?).
I agree. Even though Mr. Natural is still heavily rooted in the ballad style that had been their stock and trade since the 60s, you can hear hints of what's to come over the next few years. "Down The Road" and "Heavy Breathing" sound like tentative stabs at the uptempo r&b that the Bee Gees would master on the next album. "Throw A Penny" wit the electric piano in the intro, is reminiscent of "How Deep Is Your Love". We even get a taste (albeit a barely audible one) of Barry's infamous falsetto on "Dogs".
The fact is that the Gibb family are British, not Australian. They were born in the U.K. They did a considerable amount of their growing up in Australia. Same with Olivia Newton-John. She's also a fellow Brit. There are people who fight that fact, but it's 100% true. Anyway... Copulating may have been the the original, old-time Black slang, but, by the 70s, it simply meant someone who was full of sh!^. Fake. Dishonest. A liar. "Jive-ass" "Jive turkey" "You're jivin'" "Don't jive me" "He's just jive" And, that's what the lyrics in the song are about.
