Monday, August 4, 2008

Notes and Comment

I have been asked to bring greater attention to comments on threads that seem to be burned out, and in that spirit, I wish to reproduce here a comment on this thread from a new OPC commenter, sdstein7:

"Just Once", sung by James Ingram, was credited to Quincy Jones.

I don't have my official Billboard books with me, so I can't verify the chart position to see if "Just Once" made the Top Forty, but it was huge, of course, back in 1980, and James Ingram went on to a successful solo career, so much so that it never occurred to me that "Just Once" wouldn't have been released under his own name. But apparently it wasn't, and neither was "One Hundred Ways," another massive quiet-storm hit. They were both from the album The Dude, credited solely to Quincy Jones.

So score one, or one and a half, for sdstein7, but as if that's not enough, he or she goes on to write:

And a slightly different twist:

The 1969 instrumental hit "The Horse" was actually the backing track to the "A" side of the record, entitled "Love is All Right". The singer on "Love is All Right", Cliff Nobles, is credited for "The Horse", although he does not perform on the track.


That's awesome, and so clearly in the wheelhouse of OPC that you'd think sdstein7 had been reading this blog for decades. The only other Top Forty hit in that category - singles in which the credited performer doesn't even appear on the record - I can think of is "He's a Rebel," credited to the Crystals but cut by Darlene Love and the Blossoms because Phil Spector couldn't get the real Crystals back in the studio fast enough to suit him. Ike Turner didn't appear on Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep-Mountain High," but of course that famously didn't make the Top Forty.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is how the official "Billboard Book of Top 100 Hits" credits "Just Once:" "Quincy Jones featuring James Ingram" so the commenter was right. To answer your chart question, it got to #17 in Aug. 1981.

However, regarding your posts on one-hit wonders from last year, you may wanna get the book I have, because some of those artists did have second hits (or more).

Just to cite one example, the Five Stairsteps are cited as having a whopping 17 Top 100 hits. I would argue "Danger! She's a Stranger" (#89 in 1967) is their best.

Tom Nawrocki said...

My official cutoff for whether something is a hit is if its reaches the Top Forty. You may use a different criterion if you choose.