Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright) It's amazing to me that this was #1 for 8 weeks. I heard it back in the day, but not very often. In fact, of the past six #1s, it's the only one that I couldn't quite recall all of, including the woman's part. Compared to the disco misery Stewart was about to inflict on mankind (THAT I've heard 50 bazillion times), this song is OK. I don't really see the hatred. It's no 'You Wear it Well', and the cynical Rod the Stud ambience makes it a bit hard to stomach, but I still see it as a continuation of the Faces era Stewart; I could imagine it being a weak track off of Ooh La La. Do Ya wamalamadingdong-won't-name-it-yet seems like the real cash grab to me. Eight Weeks... That's one week less than Hey Jude. That is the part that really rankles me. If this reaches 6, I would brush it off like a fly. At least it got us finished with 1976 quickly!
Love is Alive is one of my favorites. I much prefer it to Dream Weaver which is better known anymore.
She would have one more sizeable hit, a few years from here; to reveal anything else at this remove would be to jump ahead, and we can't have that now . . .
Look at four of those (I don’t include Rod’s as many here do like it). I do like those four bottom titles, but then look at the titles that got stopped at number two. Geez, there is there no justice in the world...lol!
Get Right Back I was too young to have heard it when it was a top 40 hit but I heard it enough as a recurrent oldie that I knew it when I discovered my father's copy of the Ktel release, Hit Machine, sometime in the early 80s. It almost sounds like a classic 60's Motown track but with some more modern (for 1975) as well.
This is a pretty solid list of songs. The Donna Summer song "Love to Love You Baby" is interesting. When I started college in the fall of 1979 I had a roommate whose girlfriend played Donna Summer nonstop. I remember this song from that time, but I have absolutely no recollection at all of ever hearing it on the radio in 1976. I don't remember the Silver Convention song either - they are going to (I think) reappear in the future... Both of the Gary Wright songs were huge. Someone else posted this above, and I agree. I too prefer "Love is Alive" to "Dream Weaver." But both were all over the radio. Lou Reed and The Spinners...My best friend had older siblings who had been to college and a big record collection - he was really into soul and R&B and I remember listening to those songs (especially The Spinners - he was a huge, huge fan) at his house. So around this time I am still being chauffeured around town by my Mom, listening to AM radio. My mom was (and still is) the most non-musical person I have ever met. However she really latched onto Edmund Fitzgerald. She referred to it as "the shipwreck song" whenever it would come on the radio. One of the things I like about it, is that it sounds "scary." It evokes a sense of dread and gloom right from the start. I am not sure exactly what it is, but I found it then (and still find it today) to be a little unsettling.
Great pop tune! To me, it sounded very different from the usual fare during the spring of 1975, but, what didn't sound different? And, of course, I got sick of hearing it because it was all over the place in early June of 1976. Yes, she had two more singles from that excellent pop album that charted better on the R&B chart and was played more on Black/urban radio. And, yes, she had one more major hit single that we will get to in three years.
I love this too. I have the mono promo single, which I believe is a dedicated mix. It sounds wonderful when processed as if being played on an AM radio station.
The producer, Pierre Tubbs, was a co-writer of J.J. Jackson's big 1966 hit "But It's Alright." Some copies pressed by CBS Pitman had the 1974 variant of the beige-tan/brown UA label with the rim print mentioning "United Artists Records, Inc.," rather than "United Artists Music And Records Group, Inc." Given "RBWWSF's" retro sound, I thought it a shame they didn't have any surplus label backdrops of UA's 1963-68 label design (black label, with "New York 19, N.Y." in the rim print) to use for it to go with the sound.
Pretty big hit called Lead Me On (can’t imagine that hit the top so I’m mentioning it now since you asked) by her a few years later and it was decent. I really though Right Back hit the top....surprised it stalled. Really great pop song and I still play it off of her album to this day.
I remember the standard 45 sounding really good. I have bought at least three copies of the album and they all sound bad. Of course, she was on UA so that is to be expected!
I sure remember that one but I don’t recall anyone bringing it up. That’s the beauty of some of those K-tel albums! Good little fun tune.
Maxine Nightingale's fantastic United Artists album of the same name was produced in England. For a cool little disco number, the lead track "(I Think I Wanna) Possess You" got quite a bit of airplay on Black radio. It's a stalker song, too.
Really? Interesting you find it a great album. I’ve played it a couple times and I wasn’t too much one way or the other, but I did find it interesting. I will give it a couple more spins. The fact that all my copies sound like mud doesn’t help. I know it was recorded well since the 45 and some cd comps of that song sound good. Do you have the standard UA or an import?
I have an original US pressing. It doesn't sound like mud to me, but does have that British "sound". I was impressed by the album right away.
It was written by a late 60's / early 70's singer called J. Vincent Edwards. He had this song that was a big hit in parts of Europe and N.Z . in 1970.
So was the J.J. Jackson single. For those who thought the record sounded "muddy," United Artists mastering engineers (including Bert Agudelo and Ralph Eck) on either East 3rd Street or 6920 Sunset in L.A. generally cut their records with a bit more compression and with slightly narrowed stereo compared with other studios (a fault also common in early 1970's MGM mastering jobs - compare their work on that label's release of Coven's "One Tin Soldier" from the Billy Jack movie to the Warner Bros. version, even considering they were two different recordings or takes). A blog devoted to jazz labels and LP's complained about the sound quality of 1970's reissues of up-to-the-1960's Blue Note product compared with original cuttings by Rudy Van Gelder.
His credit on the label was "Aided and Abetted by Vince Edwards," worded in such a way that the somewhat ignorant would think the former star of the early 1960's TV series Ben Casey had something to do with it.
Wow. It was a big hit. A No. 5 Billboard hit. It also topped the AC charts. Oddly, barely cracked the R&B Top 40. "...the track began to accrue interest that spring particularly in the easy listening market with the #1 position on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart attained that July. In all, "Lead Me On" spent seven weeks atop the AC chart (for the weeks of July 7, 14, and 21; August 4, 11, and 18; and September 1). On the Billboard Hot 100, "Lead Me On" peaked at number five, while reaching number 37 on the R&B chart.[3] Despite the fact that it was an AC song, it enjoyed better success in Canada, where it reached number two on the pop singles chart[4] and spent 4 non-consecutive weeks at number one on the RPM Dance Music Chart.[5]
