Muses about music, musicians, and musical interludes of all sorts. Also, chronicling the creation of an album of original songs, by a guy who figures he might as well.
I’m not sure
this fits the category, since it’s not a dreadful song. But
this is an example of an ill-conceived song that hasn’t aged well.
Back in 1984,
Frank Sinatra was still touring and very occasionally recording music. He had
gotten smart about making occasional albums after the first few released after
his “retirement” in 1971 didn’t sell as much as you would think. Trilogy:
Past, Present, and Future was a deservedly a big seller, and
while She Shot Me Down wasn’t, it is a great album made for
good reasons—Sinatra wanted to make something with one of his favorite
arrangers, Gordon Jenkins, who was ill with ALS (Jenkins “Future” portion
of Trilogy had gotten a lot of criticism, and Sinatra didn’t
want that to be Jenkins’ final recorded work). Sinatra had worked with Quincy
Jones a few times in the 1960s, and they had gotten along well. Since Jones was
now the hottest music producer on the planet (thanks to Michael Jackson
and Thriller) it made sense to give it another go. The original
plan was for Sinatra to do a record with Lena Horne, who had just won a Grammy
working with Quincy Jones, but that plan was dropped.
The end album
result was a Sinatra solo, with primarily standards (and “How Do You Keep the
Music Playing?”, which became a standard). But for the album’s centerpiece,
they went in a different direction. “Theme From New York, New York” had become
a top 40 hit four years before and was Sinatra’s biggest hit on the Billboard Hot
100 since 1969’s “My Way”. Even after it fell off the charts, it became a
surprise hit at parties and dances, usually as the last song of the evening,
complete with a kick line. So I’m sure Jones said, “Hey, why not try it again
for Los Angeles—and why can’t I get a piece of the action this time?”
“L.A. Is My
Lady,” cowritten by Jones, his wife Peggy Lipton, and Sinatra's favorites Alan
and Marilyn Bergman, was the result. With a synth line running throughout
(surely one of the few times synthesizers were used on a Sinatra record), it
doesn’t have the sound of “New York, New York,” but it has everything else, including
the tempo shift/kick line section at the end.
The weirdest
part of this song is the music video. In 1984, everybody made music videos to
get them on MTV (there weren’t really any other outlets for them at the time;
even VH1 hadn’t started up yet), but MTV mostly stuck with AOR/rock acts until
Michael Jackson forced them to play black acts as well. Still, MTV didn’t want
to play singers your parents listened to such as Sinatra. So the result was a
Frank Sinatra video with very little Sinatra in it (I’m not sure that was a
conscious decision on the part of the video director or Sinatra just declined
to film anything new--he does appear in a few older clips). It does have an
endless stream of cameos from people in the entertainment business at the time,
as well as Sinatra buddies. I’ve managed to identify all but one of them (the
running times correspond to the first appearance that person made in the
video):
0:05 – David
Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen, from Van Halen
0:53 – Donna
Summer, singer
1:02 – Fernando
Valenzuela, pitcher, Los Angeles Dodgers
1:26 – Tom
Bradley, mayor of Los Angeles
1:29 – unknown
actor (this one is driving me crazy, so please send your ideas!) and Michael
McDonald, singer
1:32 – Alex
Haley, author, and Quincy Jones, music producer
1:34 – Dale
Bozzio, Terry Bozzio, and (I think) Warren Cuccurullo, band members, Missing
Persons
2:01 – James
Ingram, singer
2:09 – Jilly
Rizzo, restauranteur
2:15 – Dean
Martin, actor/singer, and LaToya Jackson, singer/sister of Michael Jackson
2:22 – Nancy
Sinatra, singer/daughter of Frank, with her two daughters AJ and Amanda, and
Quincy Jones’ two daughters, Kidada (designer) and Rashida (actress)
3:06 – Jane
Fonda, actress/workout entrepreneur, and Peggy Lipton, actress/wife of Quincy
Jones
3:11 – Dyan
Cannon, actress
3:22 – Joey
Amalfitano, Los Angeles Dodgers coach, and Tommy Lasorda, Los Angeles Dodgers
manager
3:39 – Clarence
Williams III, actor (far right)
So no Ol’ Blue
Eyes except in retrospective footage, but we get Missing Persons instead. Whee!
Anyway, the
song became the title track for L.A. Is My Lady, which was released
on Jones’ label Q Records. (Sinatra’s label normally was Reprise, which he’d
sold off to Warner Brothers a few years after starting it.) “L.A. Is My Lady”
didn’t become the hit everybody expected (it didn’t even make the Billboard Hot
100, although it did peak at #34 on the AC chart), and with the synthesizer
dominating the arrangements it couldn't be duplicated easily in concert.
(According to Setlist.fm, Sinatra did use it pretty regularly between 1984 and
1986, but I think it was gone thereafter.) It’s available for download or
streaming either on L.A. Is My Lady and the best-of Sinatra
Sings Alan & Marilyn Bergman, and there are few live versions (with a
notably different, small-combo jazz arrangement) for streaming or download as
well.
Capitol Records
had Murray in the studio as much as they could there for a few years; she wound
up releasing four studio albums in a little over two years between 1978 and
1980. I’ll Always Love You was the parent album for “Broken Hearted Me”
(which somewhat gave lie to the album title sentiment), and became Murray’s
fourth platinum album in her native Canada (it only reached gold in the
States). “Broken Hearted Me” was written by Randy Goodrum, who had also written
her “You Needed Me” (plus Michael Johnson’s “Bluer Than Blue” and Gene Cotton’s
“Before My Heart Finds Out” in 1978)—he would have a long string of writing
credits into the 21st century on the pop, AC, and country charts.
Chris
Thompson & Night, “If You Remember Me,” #17, 12/1/1979
It didn’t start
out as a Night song. “If You Remember Me” is the main theme from The Champ,
which starred Jon Voight, Faye Dunaway, and Ricky Schroeder in a remake of the
1931 original. It was released as a Chris Thompson standalone single (and was originally
listed as such on the Hot 100) a few weeks after Night’s second single, “Cold
Wind Across My Heart,” the follow-up to their first hit “Hot Summer Nights.”
But “Cold Wind Across My Heart” went nowhere, and when “If You Remember Me”
made the top 40, someone at Planet Records decided it was now by Chris Thompson
and Night—even though Billboard listed it otherwise, their
eponymous album didn’t include the song, and it’s likely Thompson is the only
band member on the song (it’s pretty heavily orchestrated; Night was, in theory
anyway, a rock band). Anyway, it was added to later pressings of the album.
EDIT: I originally claimed this isn’t available on Spotify; it is, but not
under either Night or Chris Thompson & Night. It’s available on a Chris
Thompson solo best of (albeit at a slightly slower speed than the regular
release), and on The Champ soundtrack. Use “If You Remember Me” to
search.
Blondie,
“Dreaming,” #27, 12/1/1979
Blondie had
such a strange Hot 100 chart history. Ten singles reached the chart (nine
during their heyday, plus “Maria” in 1999), of which four made #1. Of the
remaining six songs, none charted higher than #24. “Dreaming” was their first
single off Eat to the Beat, another album that probably lost ground
because of the crowded marketplace in 1979 (it peaked on Billboard’s
album chart at #17, whereas Parallel
Lines went to #6 and Autoamerican to #7; all three went platinum),
and it’s pretty great: a typically dispassionate Deborah Harry vocal behind
propulsive Clement Burke drumming. (From the lines notes from their Platinum
Collection anthology: “Clem: I think I overplayed on the track. Everybody:
You did!”)
Niteflyte,
“If You Want It,” #37, 12/1/1979
As disco became
a dirty word for Top 40 programmers in late 1979, smooth R&B started to
gain some traction. Niteflyte was a two-person outfit, with percussionist
Howard Johnson and guitarist Sandy Torano, that did surprisingly well on the
pop chart with this song, which peaked on the Billboard R&B chart at
#21. It was their one pop hit; they had two songs make the lower reaches of the
R&B charts before breaking up in the early 1980s. Johnson would later
embark on a solo career, making #6 on the R&B chart and #1 on the dance
chart with “So Fine.”
I’m surprised
Clive Davis signed off on this song being the first single from Manchester’s
1979 LP Melissa Manchester; Davis loves the ballads and this is a soft
disco/rock track. “Pretty Girls” was written by Canadian singer/songwriter Lisa
Dal Bello while she was still a teenager, reaching #84 on the Canadian chart,
with a slightly more disco arrangement. (Given Dal Bello was 20 years old
when the song came out, it’s remarkably aware and cynical about how awful men
can be to young women.) Anyway, Manchester’s version managed to barely scrape
into the top 40, and considering it’s not on most of her anthologies, I guess
Arista changed its mind (it is on The Essential Melissa
Manchester-The Arista Years, which was assembled by Sony after they took
over Arista). Dal Bello would provide vocals on Boz Scaggs’ 1981 hit “Miss
Sun,” and then reinvented herself as an alternative rocker in the late 1980s
under the moniker Dalbello.
Ronnie
Milsap, “Get It Up,” #43, 12/1/1979
Yes, you read
the song title right—somebody at RCA Records either fell asleep at the switch
or decided to see what they could get away with. The song is actually a dance
track, which didn’t really fit Milsap’s style, and was the B-side of “In No
Time at All,” which made #6 on the Billboard country chart. (Milsap had
48 top 10 country hits between 1974 and 1991—actually, none of them peaked
below #6. How does anybody not write about that?) RCA decided to offer “Get It
Up” to pop stations, and obviously some of them played it. The title
terminology is used so vaguely in the song it would seem everybody involved
knew exactly what they were talking about, but who knows? Not available on any
of his greatest hits sets; you’ll have to listen to it on the original album, Images.
England Dan
& John Ford Coley, “What Can I Do With This Broken Heart,” #50, 12/1/1979
Light disco by
white acts was certainly a thing for a little while, wasn’t it? “What Can I Do
With This Broken Heart” was either a very late follow-up to “Love Is the
Answer” (which hit #10 for the duo in late May; both songs are on their studio
album Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jive) or an early release from their Best of
England Dan and John Ford Coley. In either case, radio programmers showed
they really weren’t interested in the pair’s music except for the ballads.
Disco arranger Gene Page handled the strings on this track; among the other
players were Lee Ritenour, Wah Wah Watson, and Richie Zito on guitar (they
needed three guitarists?) plus Bill Payne and Michael Boddicker (not the
Baltimore Orioles pitcher) on keyboards.
Nature’s
Divine, “I Just Can’t Control Myself,” #65, 12/1/1979
One-hit R&B
wonder act from—I’m not even sure. (According to the liner notes, their
self-titled album was recorded in Chicago, engineered in Detroit, and remixed
in New York.) Produced by Michael Stokes, who also wrote or cowrote most of the
songs; Lynn Smith and Robert Carter shared lead vocals. Released by Infinity
Records, a subsidiary of MCA, which pulled the plug on the label a few weeks
before this song peaked—and if nobody was working your music at a record label,
that pretty much brought things to a stop. Infinity had a fairly big hit with
Spyro Gyra’s Morning Dance album earlier in the year, but Billboard
noted they also distributed an album by Pope John Paul II, which turned out to
be a surprising flop and might have been the final straw. Nature’s Divine work
isn’t available anywhere anymore except YouTube.
The
Headboys, “The Shape of Things to Come,” #67, 12/1/1979
Another one-hit
wonder band, although this was a power pop/new wave quintet from Edinburgh,
Scotland. Originally starting under the name Badger, The Headboys recorded
their first album for RSO Records in 1979, and “The Shape of Things to Come” emerged
as their one hit, making #45 in the UK (and earning them an appearance on Top
of the Pops), #89 in Australia, and #17 in the Netherlands. But that was
it—none of the other singles from their first album charted anywhere, and a
second album was recorded but remained unreleased until 2010 (when it emerged
as The Lost Album). Of course, that’s the album that you can now
download or play on Spotify, The Headboys and “The Shape of Things to
Come” are unavailable anywhere except YouTube.
Maxine
Nightingale, “(Bringing Out) the Girl in Me,” #73, 12/1/1979
Final Hot 100 chart
hit for Nightingale, who had two major top 10 hits in the 1970s in “Right Back
Where We Started From” and “Lead Me On.” It’s more uptempo than “Lead Me On”—more
along the lines of the light disco mentioned previously. Nightingale landed one
more hit on the R&B chart in 1982 with “Turn to Me,” a duet with Motown
veteran Jimmy Ruffin (the guy who sang “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” solo;
the guy who sang lead for The Temptations is his brother David). She now mostly
performs on the oldies circuit.
The Shoes, “Too
Late,” #75, 12/1/1979
Power pop band
from Zion, Illinois that issued their first few albums themselves as far back
as 1974. By 1979 they’d gotten a contract with Elektra Records, which released Present
Tense, the parent album for “Too Late.” It’s somewhat similar to The
Records’ “Starry Eyes,” and an example of what Top 40 stations should have been
playing in that era. Amazingly, the band is still together—brothers Jeff and
John Murphy, along with Gary Klebe, handled guitars, bass, and the songwriting
and vocals; they’ve had several drummers over the years. They now run their own
label, which has also included such bands as Material Issue and Local H.
