Do know how old that makes me feel? I grew up with her Scepter albums the first time around. My older sister used to play them back to back with her Aretha Franklin albums.
Wasn't this also the only time Elton John ever made #1 on the R&B chart? I know, in his '70's heyday, his "Bennie And The Jets" made the Top 20 on the Hot Soul Singles chart, and that plus "Philadelphia Freedom" warranted Mr. John appearing on Soul Train.
We're a few months, however, from Soul Train making another milestone, so I'm holding off on details about that till we get there.
Next #1 Do Me Baby - Meli'sa Morgan Week ending February February 15, 1986 3 weeks Another Prince cover
Prince still casting an enormous shadow over the pop and R&B music scenes. His personal star might have already been fading by this point, but his influence was still growing. Surprising this didn't even crack the pop Top 40, although the production is a bit shrill. She was huge on the R&B charts thru 1994 but never managed to cross over. It's a decent cover apart from the shrill EQ. She doesn't do anything unique with the track - it's pretty much a straight up cover - but she's got a good voice. She removes the stunning spoken passage from the end of the song, which is just as well since it would have been a cliché coming from a woman. Unfortunately that makes the song a lot less interesting and a lot more of your standard R&B slow jam. Which probably helped it chart so high, but in turn makes it kind of pointless.
And, I don't know if there was anything she could have done with it. Prince has created the mold so well that no one else could break it. Anyone's effort to do a Prince cover came up short. Now, that is not to say that anyone who did a cover of a Prince-penned song, or one he wrote for one of his stable of artists, falls short. Case in point: Manic Monday - Bangles I'm not jumping. It was released in January of 1986. To my amazement, it only got to #2.
For some reason, the part of "Manic Monday" after the bridge and before the last renditions of the chorus, reminds me of parts of "Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)" by John Fred And His Playboy Band. As for Ms. Morgan's record, I may've heard it once or twice - tops. At all times, not on any radio station but at Downstairs Records in mid-Manhattan. Seemed not to make any impression on me. Meanwhile, it was within this period in 1986 that Capitol ceased all vinyl production which had been at their Winchester, VA and Jacksonville, IL plants by that point. The former's label blanks were supplied by Keystone Printed Specialties Co., Inc. of Scranton since at least the early 1970's; the latter was mainly (since about 1982) Moore-Langen Printing Co. of Terre Haute, IN for label backdrops (many label sheet proofs on eBay of Capitol-related product have, in the area outside the labels, "Moore-Langen" printed on them). Afterwards, Capitol contracted with the WEA pressing plants - Specialty Records Corp. in Olyphant, PA, and Allied Record Co. of Los Angeles - to handle their vinyl product. Capitol's specs for small 3.3125" labels disappeared with their plants' closure; Specialty (whose 45's were vinyl) had the labels blown up to regular 3.625", but Allied's 45's were styrene and their center labels were 3.5625" diameter.
Same here. I bought the 45, maybe played it once or twice, and filed it away. Until this #1, I didn't even remember what it sounded like. I'm not missing anything.
The only thing about Ms. Morgan that made the most impression, it would seem, was that one pic as on the clip.
How Will I Know - Whitney Houston Week ending March 8, 1986 1 week Narada Michael Walden's production bleeds through on this one. @sunspot42, I believe this is your favorite WH song?
Yes! Absolutely my favorite Whitney cut, and one of my favorite singles from this year. The best I think of Narada Michael Walden's many hit productions. It's more Motown than Atlantic, which is somewhat unusual given that Whitney was more allied with the Atlantic / Stax side of the fence than the whole Diana Ross / Jacksons Motown world, but honestly I feel like this material better-suits her big, shouty voice and piercing headtone. With ballads that voice is just way, way too much sometimes, whereas on this material it punches thru the fun, busy mix and just makes the whole thing irresistibly joyous. It's like those breezy hits from Stephanie Mills or Deniece Williams, but Whitney turns it up to 11 and it totally works. Unfortunately Clive decided we needed ballads, ballads and more ballads, and most of her subsequent uptempo numbers aren't so much fun as annoying, like the lead single off her next big record (although there is a pretty good uptempo number off of that record). She wouldn't have another hit I really loved until her Annie Lennox-penned single in the mid-'90s. My second-favorite Whitney single is a ways off - it hails from 1999, almost 15 years from now. At the rate we're moving over on the pop thread, it'll take almost that many years to reach that hit.
I'm shocked that video hasn't been remastered in 4K yet. Maybe a bunch of it was shot on video instead of film?
I know the chorus in the way it was arranged sounded a bit similar to another song Walden had produced and co-written - "Who's Zoomin' Who" by labelmate Aretha Franklin. (Even though the chord structure of each was a bit different.)
I'm surprised. You, of all people, knowledgeable of many R&B producers' nuances (i.e. Rodgers/Edwards, Mtume/Lucas) . . .
No. I knew NMW produced it. I just never noticed how similar the two songs are. That's all. NMW produced both songs so it makes sense.
