Memorable Singles from March 1981

Plastics : Diamond Head

Released as a gold flexi-disc 33 1/3 rpm single, "Diamond Head" is just as fun and quirky as you would hope to hear from this Japanese new wave band. Produced by Alex Sadkin who worked on all of the Grace Jones releases this same year. A favorite single of mine from 1981

Altered Images : Dead Pop Stars

The debut single from Glasgow's Altered Images rose to UK#67. The band, coming off a tour opening for Siouxsie and the Banshees, would shed their punk influences quickly enough to record both UK#2 "Happy Birthday" and UK#7"I Could Be Happy" before the year was out. By then front woman Clare Grogan had stolen a million hearts.

Dexy's Midnight Runners : Plan B

The new Dexy's single, which sounds like it could have pulled from Searching For The Young Soul Rebels  only peaked at UK#58. Maybe fans felt they'd already heard this before. David Hepworth of Smash Hits wasn't impressed:

Teardrop Explodes : Reward

Though released in January, "Reward" spent much of the month of March in the UK Top 10. It even got the Liverpool band on Top of the Pops. In his book 'Head On', Julian Cope says the band were doing Acid, speed, booze and weed from breakfast all the way to their appearance. The drugs would take their toll on the band, which would break up by the end of 1982.

Grover Washington Jr featuring Bill Withers : Just The Two Of Us

Thanks to the US#2 hit, Grover Washington Jr's platinum album Winelight topped the US jazz charts for too many months to count. That silky electric piano sound comes courtesy of Richard Tee who also played on Paul Simon's "Slip Slidin' Away". 

Taana Gardner : Heartbeat

The 20 year old Newark singer scored a massive disco hit with "Heartbeat" which would be sampled in the basis of "Lyrics 2 the Rhythm," the song from the "New Jack City" soundtrack by The Essence, Ini Kamoze's ubiquitous 1995 summer hit "Here Comes the Hotstepper," and De La Soul's 1989 hit "B.U.D.D.Y. Remix" 

The World's Alright With Me

Bill Withers : Lovely Day

[Purchase]

In the first week of November 1977, Bill Withers ascended the US album charts with Menagerie, his sixth studio album. Withers has always come across as the good friend trying to cheer up his listeners. The first two songs are exceptional. The lead track is the feel-good hit "Lovely Day" ( #1 in France, #7 in the U.K., #30 in the US). The second track is the sublime quiet storm  "I Want To Spend the Night With You". Both were featured in Withers's 1980 greatest hits album which I bought in high school.  Former pro football player Michael Strahan would crank "Lovely Day"  in the dressing room before Live! With Kelly and Michael. Withers has also entered the disco age with "She Wants to ( Get on Down)". This would be his second gold album following Still Bill.

40 Year Itch : Donna, Al and Bill

Donna Summer : Spring Affair ( single edit)

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On October 11, 1976 Donna Summer released her fourth studio album, Four Seasons of Love. It's a concept album co-written with Giorgio Moroder. There's an eight minute disco song for each season, highlighted by the opening track "Spring Affair". I like A Love Trilogy better .One of the most enjoyable things about writing this blog is discovering just how innovative the Summer/Moroder/ Paul Bellotte team really were. I was 12 years old and couldn't have cared less about disco at the time. But Brian Eno and David Bowie were certainly paying attention.

Al Green : Smile a Little Bit More

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For his biggest fans it was enough just to have Al Green overcome the "scalding grits episode"and to sing another set of songs written with Willie Mitchell. But this is formula, pure and simple. A low point from which Green would rebound with 1977's Belle Album.

Bill Withers : Close to Me

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Wait! Bill Withers recorded an album called Naked and Warm? Yeah and let's all just be thankful nobody got too literal about the album cover. This is what we call a transitional album. Withers is leaving behind the acoustic guitar for the "quiet storm", jazz-inflected sound that would eventually result with such hits as "Lovely Day" and "Just the Two of Us". There's some nice funk in the opening track "Close to Me".

40 Year Itch: Life is Just a Shadow

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+'Justments doesn't have the hits like Just As I Am and Still Bill, but Withers's third studio album does contain the same kind of funky rhythms and small town church elder philosophizing. Dorothy Ashby's harp and Jose Feliciano's guitar ( especially on "Can We Pretend") add some textures to this heartwarming, criminally forgotten album. Questlove says this is his favorite album of 1974:

   Later I learned that the record was kind of Bill Withers's version of Here, My Dear, Marvin Gaye's 1978 divorce record for Anna Gordy for his own wife, actress Denise Nicholas. "Railroad Man" is the happies song on +'Justments, and it's about a train that decapitates a swindler.

40 Year Itch : Just Call On Me, Brother

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We had been up all night the night before rehearsing together, even arguing with each other --each of us with only one thing in mind, to do our best.

Bill Withers

                On a rainy Friday Evening in early October, 1972, Bill Withers -- just two years from working full time for an aviation company--took the stage at Carnegie Hall with his crack band. Nervous? More like excited. Withers has always been disarmingly himself. Still Bill. He's the kind of guy you want to meet for beer and conversation. The kind of a guy you want for a friend. 

            And that night Withers returned over and over again to the theme of friendship. Brotherhood. Family. Would  today's popular male artists ever record a song with lyrics like those of  "For My Friend"?:

                                                              One of us has to say he's sorry 
                                                              Or we will never be friends again 
                                                              Lets have a drink and talk it over 
                                                              I want to keep you for my friend

Then there's " I Can't Write Left-Handed" sung from the point of a view of an injured soldier who seems more concerned about his younger brother than himself:

                                          Would you please write a letter, write a letter to my mother?
                                            Tell her to tell, tell her to tell, tell her to tell the family lawyer 
                                            Trying to get, trying to get a deferment for my younger brother

   The magical video below, from a 1973 BBC concert includes the songs "Ain't No Sunshine", "Lonely Town, Lonely Street", "Grandma's Hands", "Use Me", "Let Me In Your Life", "Lean On Me", and "Harlem"  but, best of all, you can see Bill Withers sitting for a spell and just talking like a friend.

          Live at Carnegie Hall captures an even more special evening. There may have been thousands in the audience-- all there presumably to hear the hits (an eight minute jamming version of "Use Me", "Ain't No Sunshine", "Lean On Me") but it wasn't long before they were taken in by the man from Slab Fork, West Virginia.

   By the time we got into "Harlem", us and the audience had become all happy members of one big band all on one stage. In about an hour and a half that audience transformed us all from nervous, serious musicians into free and happy people. I know I'll never forget it.

40 Year Itch : Dadgummit-ah!

[Purchase]

Bill Withers followed up the folk soul of his debut Just As I Am by taking over the production reins and enlisting members of the Watts 103rd Rhythm Band to raise the funk. And the funk do cometh especially on raunchy cuts like the #2 pop hit "Use Me" and "Who Is He ( And What Is He To You)?". Makes you wonder if some  Foxy Brown kind of lady entered his life right about the time "Ain't No Sunshine" hit Number One. You know, the kind who is too much woman for one. But not enough for two. Using him until she used him up.





No matter how funky things get, Withers plays it cool . We've all probably heard "Lean On Me" too many times by now. But next time,  listen to the song in the context of all the gospel soul that was hitting the charts in 1972: Aretha Franklin's Young Gifted And Black and Amazing Grace, The Staple Sisters's "I'll Take You There", Jesus Christ Superstar. The Rolling Stones's "Let It Loose" and "Shine A Light"? Could the compassionate singer be JC himself?

40 Year Itch : Lean On Me

In "The Forty Year Itch" New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik pronounced a rule about American popular culture: "The Golden Forty Year Rule":

The prime site of nostalgia is always whatever happened, or is thought to have happened, in the decade between forty and fifty years past.


 In the 1960's, the New Vaudeville Band's 1920-ish megaphone hit  "Winchester Cathedral" won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Recording while Paul McCartney dabbled in Roaring Twenties song craft with tunes like "Your Mother Should Know" and "Honey Pie". In the 1970's, the 30's were hot. Moviegoers flocked to theaters for "The Sting" and "Paper Moon". And the trend continues today, or so Gopnik would have us believe.

Works for me obviously. So instead of trying to nail down whether an album came out on a particular day, week, or month...I'm just going to title posts with "40 Year Itch". Speaking of which, Bill Withers released his only #1 single "Lean On Me" on April 21, 1972. It's one of those songs you might find yourself accidentally playing on the piano. That's kind of how Withers wrote it:

"I bought a little piano and I was sitting there just running my fingers up and down the piano. In the course of doing the music, that phrase crossed my mind, so then you go back and say, 'OK, I like the way that phrase, Lean On Me, sounds with this song.'"

Six Degrees of Separation: Booker T and the MG's to Luther Ingram

1. Booker T and The MG's: I Want You ( She's So Heavy)

[Buy it]




In 1969, The Beatles and Booker T & The MG's had mutual fan clubs. John Lennon called the Stax band "Book a Table and the Maitre D's" and, in 1970,  The MG's covered the entire Abbey Road album.

2. Bill Withers: Do It Good

[Buy it]




In 1971,  Booker T Jones produced and played on the Bill Withers debut Just As I Am. On the short track "Do It Good", Withers tells listeners how "Mr Jones" told him to just do what he does, and do it good. The following album Still Bill included the #2 1972 single "Use Me",  a track on the Anchorman soundtrack .

3. Gene Chandler: Groovy Situation

[buy the soundtrack]




Another track on the Anchorman soundtrack was the million selling single "Groovy Situation" from 1970. "Groovy Situation" was originally recorded by an R&B duo The "Duke of Earl" discovered, Mel and Tim.

4. Mel and Tim : Starting All Over Again

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Best known for 1969's  "Backfield in Motion"Cousins Mel Hardin and Tim McPherson scored a Top 20 in 1972 with "Starting All Over Again". That was a the year they performed at Wattstax,a concert held to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots. Other performers included The Bar-Kays, Issac Hayes and The Staple Singers.

5. The Staple Singers: We The People

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The Staple Singers performed "We The People" at Wattstax as well as "Respect Yourself, a 1971Top 20 pop hit written by Stax Records singer Luther Ingram and songwriter Mack Rice. Frustrated with the world, Ingram told Rice "black folk need to learn to respect themselves."

6. Luther Ingram : If Lovin You Is Wrong (I Don't Want To Be Right)


[Buy the album]

In the Summer of  1972,  Luther Ingram topped the Billboard R&B charts  ( and hit #3 on the pop charts) with "If Loving You is Wrong ( I Don't Want To Be Right)". He sold nearly 4 million copies of this song about an adulterous affair. Millie Jackson covered the song in our last Six Degrees.