Well, the heads sounded quite tight on the sessions that yielded both Mr. White's Can't Get Enough and Love Unlimited's In Heat albums. That both LP's had sequential catalogue numbers - T-443 for the Love Unlimited album, T-444 for Barry's - also suggests that both were recorded in the same one or two sessions. One would have to do the kind of sessionography (from the same source of files) of the variety one has seen for the likes of Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee et al., to unlock all this. And that might be a key to why "I Belong To You" hit #1 here at this time and place: This was near the tail end of the apex of "Barrymania" in America, where virtually everything he touched turned to gold. (I say "virtually" because except for these plus The Love Unlimited Orchestra's first LP and biggest hit, none of the other acts Barry produced [i.e. Tom Brock, Jay Dee, Gloria Scott] sold much, and certainly not to the degree of success he enjoyed - a paradox, given how Mr. White considered himself first and foremost a producer, writer and spotter of talent, and how he seemed most uncomfortable as a performer given what I'd read over the years.)
Yes, Barry liked high pitches. It's psychological, too. Higher pitched music (and slashing bass) makes it seem livelier and faster paced.
The other thing: Both LP's listed the same two engineers on the back cover - Frank Kejmar and Paul Elmore.
And one more thing (to quote Lt. Columbo): On both albums, Garamond Bold was used for the text on the back covers. Another example of what Bill Engvall used to call "There's Your Sign."
Next Billboard #1 R&B single for week of February 22, 1975: Lady Marmalade - Labelle This is another hot single from early 1975. Labelle came out of nowhere with this dirty little ditty. Since it's sung in half English, half French, the lyrical meaning went over a lot of people's heads. If more people had realized what the lyrics meant, the song would have been banned on a lot of radio station stations, i'm sure. Maybe not. This was the 70s. I thought i'd present a performance video, and this one uses the unedited album version. We'll be hearing from Patti Labelle again in about ten years.
"Voulez-vous couche avec moi, ce soir?" Yeah, I took French in high school so I knew what that meant and my friends and I always had a laugh over the naughtiness. A girlfriend asked me once what that meant when we were listening to it one night. I told her and she said Yes! Merci beaucoup. I still prefer this over the remake.
Count me as being more a fan of the 45 edit. More to the point than on the Nightbirds LP. But while Labelle in this form may have "come out of nowhere," that wasn't necessarily the case. Remember the "with Labelle" credit on the cover of Laura Nyro's 1971 album Gonna Take A Miracle? And way before that, Patti La Belle and The Bluebelles (of "I Sold My Heart To The Junkman" and "Down The Aisle (Wedding Song)" fame). And the producer and arranger was someone very familiar in the New Orleans R&B scene - Allen Toussaint.
I agree! Yup. Allen Toussaint had that famous 8/4 time signature, very 'Nawlins-sounding. The song was also written by Kenny Nolan, a man we'll hear from in two more years.
Wow. A living sonic fossil. Amazing it charted so high, on either countdown. Like the rest of you, never heard it before.
That's more like it! I remember the song from the time, and my uncle loved it, but I don't recall him owning a copy. He knew what that lyric meant, though. LaBelle brought a fantastic glam sensibility to R&B, along with Patti's incredible pipes. It seemed like Nona Hendryx was the driving force behind the band, though. A cousin of a more famous Hendrix. "Lady" was a bit forgotten in the '80s - I seldom heard it on oldies radio. Too raunchy for that whitebread genre. It started cropping up again in the '90s, thanks to the funk/disco revival that rolled along early in the decade. Moulin Rouge in 2001 and its multi-superstar cover cemented the song's full return to the public consciousness. In spite of the assembled army of contemporary superstars, the remake feels like a disjointed, overinflated mess compared the raw power of the original. Aguilera eventually turns up and makes everybody else on the remake sound like
Aguilera often (ok, usually) annoys the heck out of me, and she's pretty annoying here too, but at least she's got the pipes to tackle the song. The rest of that crowd doesn't.
I.I.N.M., his collaborator on that was Bob Crewe - the proverbial "Fifth Season." They also wrote another record which was a hit around this time - "Get Dancin' " by Disco-Tex & The Sex-O-Lettes (Featuring Sir Monti Rock III).
Speaking of "Get Dancin'", I finally obtained the very rare 12" single version of that song last year. It was on a 70s K-Tel comp, of all places. My local radio station played it instead of the single version.
Good lord/lawd, I haven't heard that in over 30 years, and it's probably going to be another 30 before I hear it again.
I suppose there will be more "Lady Marmalade" discussion when it comes up on the other Billboard thread. I'm sure there will also be those that will jump way ahead into the 80s when it does.
I think in that sense (if nothing else), it's fortunate there aren't that many contributing to this thread. Keeps out the jumping beans who veer back and forth like a time machine gone haywire. Lordy, I recognize this as an exercise to keep to the process of the journey of each of these numbers reaching the top the first time, if not everyone does. I know this to be the case with my C&W #1's thread. Six toppers already and it's still on Page 1.
Credit the lacquer cutting staff at Columbia's New York studios (with their 2-pitch lead-out grooves and machine-stamped type in the deadwax spelling out their matrix numbers) for that.
There are about twice as many messages in this thread kvetching about people who dare to discuss anything other than the current #1 than there are messages mentioning something other than the current #1. And the self-appointed topic police have already scared off potential posters, as was recently noted in one of the UK #1s threads (where people routinely mention other hits and - remarkably - the world doesn't come to an end). Frankly, I'd much rather read about a #1 act's other hits - past or future - or what influence a #1 hit had on the charts going forward than this constant, incessant carping. Enough already!
It's fine to discuss other songs in the general timeframe of the discussed #1 hit, but some people like jumping too damn far into the future, and some justify that by saying it's on the album, ignoring that it's a singles thread. There are lots of songs in the time frame of the discussed #1 without having to jump so damn far into the future just because someone can't wait. When you jump so far ahead, it confuses those who drop by, and, they also jump around. And, lastly, I revived this thread from the person who abandoned it and left the forum, so I am the de facto OP. The OP gets to set the thread policy. The OP of the other thread doesn't mind the jumping around, so you can do it there. What I would prefer to see there doesn't really matter. All things become clear in time. No one really jumped around in either thread until we got to the mid-70s. I find that interesting. Could it be that many of the participants are younger and are more familiar with the era they are jumping to? Could it be the album guys don't really like discussing singles as much as album cuts and artists? Could it be that some just don't really like the concept of discussing one song or point in time in sequence? Well, just don't jump ahead six months ahead and there will be no carping! Anything before the currently discussed #1 is fine. Discussing anything around the time of the #1 hit is cool. But, man, it spoils it all when ya jump three, five, six months down the road. Why? An artist can have another chart single released and on the way up by then. See, it's all about order. Without order, you have chaos. I am a really laid-back, non-conformist guy, but I guess coming from the corporate business world, and having grown up military, I have to respect some sense of order.