Johnny Rivers had seen and done it all as a superstar singer and producer of the 1960s. He had claimed 14 Top 40 hits between 1964-67, mostly with remakes from Chuck Berry's "Memphis" and "Maybellene" to Harold Dorman's "Mountain Of Love," blues standards "Seventh Son" and "Midnight Special" and the Four Tops' "Baby, I Need Your Lovin'."
Interestingly, though, his only No. 1 hit was with an original he co-wrote with famous producer Lou Adler, "Poor Side Of Town," in November 1966.
Then in 1967, the man who was born Johnny Ramistella in New York City on November 7, 1942, but grew up in Baton Rouge, La., tried his hand at a new venture – owning a record label. He founded Soul City Records and right out of the box, he was on the production of the two-time Grammy Award-winning smash by the Fifth Dimension, "Up, Up And Away."
But as the 1960s became the 1970s, things changed. Rivers sold the record company with the help of friend David Geffen to Bell Records. Rivers went back to recording and scored three Top 40 hits between 1972-75, including the Top 10 remake of "Rockin' Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu."
Still, Rivers didn't have the kind of success in his 30s as he did when he was in his 20s. He was looking for one more bit of glory – even if it was his last. And he found it when he heard a song that came out by a little-known act called The Funky Kings, which featured future songwriting stars Jack Tempchin and Jules Shear. On The Funky Kings' version of a song called "Slow Dancing," he heard the smoky, rich vocals of the song's writer, Tempchin, over a simplistic musical backdrop of acoustic guitar, percussion and lively backing vocals.
The song reached No. 61 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1977, but made the Top 15 on the easy listening chart (now adult contemporary chart). Another version of the song was recorded by Olivia Newton-John, but never charted.
Rivers resurrected his old Soul City Records label after recording the Funky Kings' song. He finished the album that would become "Outside Help" after recording the song. But there was one thing Rivers needed to do – he changed the title from "Slow Dancing" and made it the sub-title, renaming it "Swayin' To The Music (Slow Dancing)" because earlier in 1977, the songwriting-singing brother act The Addrisi Brothers had a Top 20 hit with "Slow Dancing (Don't Turn Me On)" and he wanted to avoid confusion.
The song is about a young man with his young lady all alone, the radio on, and the mood hits them enough to just slow dance together with the feeling of "there's nowhere else I'd rather be than here." Unlike the Funky Kings' version of the song, Rivers added an electric guitar and an orchestra behind him. And for special effect, he recorded the sound of crickets making noise at night for the backdrop during his vocals.
Rivers had not scored a hit with a ballad since 1967's piece of nostalgia, "Summer Rain." And when it hit the Hot 100 at No. 88 on June 25, 1977, it was not so certain how well it would do. But it would move up the chart 10 or more notches at a time and on July 30, 1977, it made its Top 40 debut at No. 36. The next week, the song zoomed up eight places to No. 28.
But then came the long trip: It moved up from No. 28 to No. 26 to No. 24 to No. 22 to No. 20 to No. 17 to No. 16 to No. 14 to No. 13 to No. 12 to No. 11 on the week of October 15, 1977, a painful and slow dance up the Top 40.
Then on the week of October 22, 1977, Rivers' slow climb with "Swayin' To The Music (Slow Dancing)" came to an end when it skipped up one last notch from No. 11 to No. 10. The song would turn out to be the ninth and last Top 10 hit. It would slip down the Top 40 from that point to No. 19 then to No. 27 before falling off, but in the end, "Swayin' To The Music (Slow Dancing)" would spend 15 weeks in the Top 40, his longest-running Top 40 hit in his career. By the end of 1977, "Swayin' To The Music (Slow Dancing)" would become Rivers' second gold single after "Rockin' Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu."
However, it would also be Rivers' 17th and final Top 40 hit. In early 1978, another track from his "Outside Help" album, "Curious Mind (Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um)," another remake, this time of the Major Lance smash of 1964, barely missed out on the Top 40 when it peaked at No. 41.
That would turn out to be Rivers' last chance at a Top 40 hit. Once again, Rivers abandoned recording on his own label and signed with RSO Records where in 1980 he recorded "Borrowed Time," then in 1983, he was inked to CBS Records and recorded "Not A Through Street." Neither album gained any attention for Rivers. In 1998, he once again resurrected Soul City Records for which he recorded a pair of CD – "The Memphis Sun Recordings" (an album of older cuts done in the 1960s) and a newer CD, "Last Train To Memphis." In 2009 at the age of 66, Rivers recorded the CD "Shadows On The Moon."
You can still find him out on tour doing over 50 dates a year, even in his early 70s.
As for the man who wrote Rivers' last hurrah, Tempchin became a bigger star when he made friends with Eagles member Glenn Frey, co-writing the smash hit "Already Gone" and writing "Peaceful, Easy Feeling" solo. When the band broke up in the early 1980s, Tempchin and Frey began to write songs together for Frey's solo albums, hits that became '80s classics like "Smuggler's Blues," "The One You Love," "You Belong To The City" and "True Love."
Johnny Rivers had seen and done it all in his career. And with his last Top 40 hit being a Top 10 smash, he got to experience one last major accomplishment in "Swayin' To The Music (Slow Dancing)."
Not a bad ending, really.
No comments:
Post a Comment