The AT40 Blog/June 18, 1988: A rap hit kids could relate to

By 1988, the burgeoning rap and hip-hop music scene was growing. Still, though, there were no rappers who carried the mantel for a younger generation to truly relate.

Run-DMC, L.L. Cool J., Salt-N-Pepa, J.J. Fad,  Kool Moe Dee and newcomers NWA and Public Enemy were big and bold with the raps, but none of them had a remote thought about entertaining kids. Young adults were about as far as these rappers were going to cater to with their messages.

Enter two young guys from Philadelphia to be, as they say, at "the right place at the right time."

One night in 1985, a young D.J. named Jeff Townes, best known as D.J. Jazzy Jeff, was performing and getting everyone on the dance floor with his instrumental grooves that made him one of Philadelphia's best performing D.J.s. His technique of "scratching" called "transforming," scratching a record in such a way that it weaves with repeated movements of the crossfader, made him an innovator.

But something was missing that night in the house party he was performing at in south Philly -- his "hype" guy, who was late to the gig. It just so happened that the house party was only a few houses down from where a 16-year-old boy named Will Smith was living. Smith, not afraid of going to a house party in the neighborhood, jumped on stage to help Townes and the two flowed together like they had done it a long, long time as Smith made raps up to the instrumental jams Townes was creating and spinning. Townes has said that the most upsetting thing about the night the two met was that his "hype guy" finally arrived and he had to break the news he wasn't going to be his "hype guy" any longer.

The two new friends worked Philadelphia clubs and house parties throughout most of 1985 and grew a reputation. Before long, they got noticed by a Philadelphia-based record label called Word Up Records. The small label's A&R man,  Paul Oakenfeld, brought them in and the duo brought him their rap jam to a song they did a raw recording of called "Girls Ain't Nothin' But Trouble," a tale of a guy trying to get the vibe of a girl one night and finding himself in a scenario he has a hard time getting out of, mainly due to the fact the girl was married, all done to a musical backdrop of -- all things -- the theme song to the 1960s TV series I Dream of Jeannie.

That song became a regional hit in their area in 1986 just before Smith graduated from high school. But getting any attention beyond the Philly and hip-hop areas was a challenge.

Still, their reputation was growing as a rap act that needed to be heard, especially when Smith, who now took on the moniker of "The Fresh Prince," was rapping on songs that had no profanity on it. One man got the gist of it all -- he was burgeoning hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons, the brother of Run-DMC's Joseph Simmons, the Run of the group. He got D.J. Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince signed to Jive Records in 1986 and the pair recorded their first album "Rock The House," and it sold a modest 300,000 copies in the spring and summer of 1987, and it was big enough for the pair to join fellow rappers Run-DMC and Public Enemy on a tour.

Their name was now out there, but because rap was still a music that many in the mainstream avoided like a bad flu, it was going to be a tough sell for them to be liked by more people. By 1987, however, the walls of the rap world were beginning to come down in front of mainstream America. In 1987, L.L. Cool J. released "I Need Love," a rap "ballad," that made the Top 15. In late 1987, Salt-N-Pepa scored their first Top 40 hit with the infectious "Push It." Soon after that L.L. Cool J. was back with a movie hit, "Going Back To Cali" from Less Than Zero. And shortly after that, a trio of ladies known as J.J. Fad rocked the Top 40 in the late spring 1988 with "Supersonic."

Now rap music needed an anthem that was clean and didn't have a "double entendre" message to it. Run-DMC helped to start breaking down the walls in 1986 with "Walk This Way," a rap revival of the old Aerosmith song that also featured lead singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry. Rap music was missing that "clean" record everyone could get.

Enter D.J. Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince. In late 1987, the pair went back into the studio to record their next album. They spent four months crafting the album and putting together more scenarios and rap jams to the music Townes was spinning. By the winter of 1988, the pair was done with the album that was called "He's The D.J., I'm The Rapper," which showed a changing of the guard with Smith, now 19, becoming the front guy and Townes as the behind-the-scenes D.J./mix-master.

The record label decided to give another single a try. The first single was "Brand New Funk." Though it sampled four different songs, most notably James Brown's "Funky President (People It's Bad)" and L.L. Cool J.'s "I Can't Live Without My Radio," the release did not resonate with those in mainstream America. The song never hit the pop chart and only got as high as No. 76 on the Billboard Hot R&B chart.

With the thought of a spring smash all but gone, Jive Records went to Plan B. And the next song on its agenda was a ditty called "Parents Just Don't Understand." Those who heard the song felt this was the "next best thing."

In this rap, Smith is lamenting that he can't have freedom at all from  his parents, who want him to grow up just a normal, regular guy -- from another era, that is. In the first verse, Smith goes school shopping with his mother and it's none of the clothes that his friends wear and that the moment he puts on these threads "from 1963" he would ridiculed by his classmates and that he had to explain to his mom that this ridicule would last "200 more times" for the entire year.

In the next verse, the Prince's parents are taking a vacation, but they leave the Porsche behind. He has no license, but that doesn't stop him from grabbing the keys and driving around the city with the car. In his venture, he picks up a girl who is turned on by not only the car, but by, well, him. He goes faster, she pushes her hand further up his pant leg and at that moment, a cop pulls him over. He finds out that the girl was a 12-year-old runaway and that he gets put in jail. Mom and dad have to cut their vacation short and the torment and torture begins on the ride home, where "one would beat me, while the other was driving."

"Parents Just Don't Understand" was going to be the song. Jive Records was confident that the earlier disappointment of "Brand New Funk" would go away. The record company had the boys make a music video to their new song and that, too, was a smash with Smith acting the role of the naïve teenager who has to deal with the headache of "out of touch" parents. The budget was small to do the video inside a studio without going anywhere, but it turned out to be the tipping point in what was about to turn this duo's career in a forward manner.

Released in early May 1988, "Parents Just Don't Understand" debuted on the Hot 100 on May 21, 1988, at No. 75, the breakthrough the boys were waiting for. It jumped from there the next week to No. 59. It slowed down, but kept going the next two weeks to No. 52 and then No. 46.

Then on June 18, 1988, "Parents Just Don't Understand" became the latest rap single to reach the pop Top 40 as it bolted into the countdown at No. 36. It moved up modestly to No. 32 the next week, then into the Top 30 at No. 26 on July 2, 1988. It got to No. 21 the week after that. Then it cracked the Top 20 on July 16, 1988 at No. 17. A week later, it was up five places to No. 12 and destined to become rap music's second Top 10 hit after "Walk This Way." All fingers pointed toward that.

But it held the next week at No. 12, lost its chart bullet, and by August 6, 1988, Casey Kasem's last regular Top 40 countdown show before leaving the show after 18 years, it dropped to No. 13. Three weeks later, it was off the Top 40, but then came the follow-up Top 40 hit, "A Nightmare On My Street," a tale of what happens when best friends go to see the latest Nightmare On Elm Street film and how it affects the Prince, who doesn't believe in the dude, but then sees him in both his dreams and in reality. That song would peak at No. 15, but may have gotten to the Top 10 had the makers of the movie not sued Jive Records for copyright infringement, forcing the record label to scrap the music video they did for the song and eventually settling out of court with New Line Cinema. That affected the song's chart run.

In late 1988, the record label gave "Girls Ain't Nothin' But Trouble" another try now with the success of two Top 15 hits, but it only got as high as No. 57 in the re-release.

And in February 1989, D.J. Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince made history at the Grammys as they were awarded the very first rap Grammy honor for "Parents Just Don't Understand," winning in the Best Rap Performance category.

The duo was now an international smash as well as a domestic one. In 1989, they recorded their next album/CD "And In This Corner ... " that gave them another Hot 100 single, the novelty hit about the baddest man in boxing at the time, "I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson."

By 1990, NBC had seen the appeal of Will Smith and gave him a TV show about his character called "The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air," which would run for six seasons until 1996.

In 1991, the rap act finally got their first Top 10 smash with the nostalgic "Summertime" about growing up to summertime parties in their native Philadelphia. It would peak at No. 4 on the pop chart and, more importantly, gave them their very first No. 1 R&B hit that summer. They followed it up with a rap version of the 1979 Anita Ward No. 1 hit, "Ring My Bell," which peaked at No. 20. In 1993, the pair had their last Top 40 hit with the international smash, "Boom! Shake The Room," which got to No. 13 in the U.S., but gave the boys their first No. 1 hit in the UK.

There'd be one more chart single, and then that'd be it for D.J. Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince. Smith was becoming an international acting superstar and he began to focus on that aspect of his career. The act finally broke up in 1996, but the two remained friends well enough to every so often reunite to recreate the music that helped break both of them. And Smith hinted in late 2015 that there may be a tour by the pair come the summer of 2016.

Chances are that if there is one, they will recreate the moment when both became superstars thanks to a story about teenage angst and rebellion.

The kind of story that kept the interest of teens everywhere and still does to this day.

The AT40 Blog/June 15, 1985: Sting's "answer" to his biggest hit

If one ever listens to a Sting song, you know he can get pretty deep. The songs he wrote as a member of his band, The Police, are prime examples. Sometimes, Wikipedia can be your best friend in deciphering his lyrics, most notably the 1984 Top 10 hit, "Wrapped Around Your Finger," the band's last Top 40 hit.

So when he wrote the words and music to what would be his first Top 40 hit, "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free," he was looking at the complete antithesis of the biggest hit he ever wrote and recorded, "Every Breath You Take," by his  band two years earlier.

Where "Every Breath You Take," the No. 1 song of 1983, was about possession and always being there, his solo debut single was the complete opposite, according to the singer-bass player.

"This song was as much a hymn to my newfound freedom as it was an antidote to the brooding issues of control and surveillance that haunted 'Every Breath You Take,'" Sting said in describing that debut solo hit. "Perhaps the highest compliment you can pay to a partner is 'I don't own you -- you're free.' If you were to try to possess them in the obvious way, you could never appreciate them in the way that really counts. There are too many prisons in the world already."

With The Police "on hiatus" in 1984, Sting (real name Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner) began work on his studio album, "The Dream Of The Blue Turtles." But unlike his previous albums with bandmates Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, Sting went a totally different direction. He changed his musical style and brought in jazz artists he knew that could make an impact.

Darryl Jones: The Chicago-based bass player was 22 and highly touted as a member of the legendary Miles Davis' touring band when Sting recruited him. Jones would eventually take over for the retired Bill Wyman as the Rolling Stones' bass player in 1993.

Kenny Kirkland: By the time Sting brought him in, the New York native and keyboardist was 28 years old and had made a name for himself in jazz with Polish fusion violinist Michael Urbaniak, Eastern European jazz star Miroslav Vitous and working on albums with horn player Wynton Marsalis.

Omar Hakim: The drummer had worked with vibraphonist Mike Mainieri and singer Carly Simon. He became a member of the group Weather Report and soon after that, became a featured session musician on the British band Dire Strait's biggest album, "Brothers In Arms."

Branford Marsalis: Turning 24 during the session, the horn player and older brother of Wynton Marsalis had played with Art Blakely's Jazz Messengers as well as Lionel Hampton and Clark Terry. Ultimately, the New Orleans artist would be Jay Leno's choice as his first bandleader on The Tonight Show when he took over for Johnny Carson in 1992.

Add backing vocalists Janice Pendarvis and Dolette McDonald, and Sting had his new "band" for the album. He and that band flew to Barbados to record the album at the same recording studio, Blue Wave Studio, that Eddy Grant recorded his 1982 breakthrough album, "Killer On The Rampage," which featured his 1983 summer smash, "Electric Avenue," which, ironically, was kept out of the No. 1 spot that summer by "Every Breath You Take." Grant actually added congas on a cut from the album, "Consider Me Gone."

After arriving on the island, Sting took a nap and it was in that nap he dreamed the title of the project. According to Sting in his Lyrics By Sting, "I dreamed I was sitting in the walled garden behind my house in Hampstead, under a lilac tree on a well-manicured lawn, surrounded by beautiful rosebushes. Suddenly the bricks from the wall exploded into the garden and I turned to see the head of an enormous turtle emerging from the darkness, followed by four or five others. They were not only the size of a man, they were also blue and had an air of being immensely cool, like hepcats, insouciant and fearless. They didn't harm me, but with an almost casual violence commenced to destroy my genteel English garden, digging up the lawn with their claws, chomping at the rosebushes, bulldozing the lilac tree. Total mayhem: I woke up to the sound of Branford in the room upstairs, riffing wildly on the tenor sax, followed by his unmistakable laughter."

Songs on "The Dream Of The Blue Turtles" had various subjects -- love, such as "Love Is The Seventh Wave," the similarities between the devastation of youth in World War I and heroin addiction in a current-day London in "Children's Crusade," a miners' strike in his native United Kingdom on "We Work The Black Seam," and an uncertain future that Sting could explain as people are more loving than not in the powerful, Cold War anthem, "Russians."

But the first single "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free," was a "follow-up" to his old band's biggest hit ever. In the two years between making the album "Synchronicity" with his band mates and "The Dream Of The Blue Turtles," Sting's perspective had changed.

"I've been through periods of wanting to be possessed, by my parents, my girlfriends. I don't want to be owned anymore," he told Rolling Stone in 1985.

While it opened a door into that issue for the star, there was more to what he was writing.

"In relationships I feel very susceptible to entrapment," Sting told Musician magazine in 1985. "I see the bars go up and I try and escape, usually in the most violent and vicious way. I've destroyed one person totally; I've left people in a bloody pulp as I've felt the bars go up. If anything, 'Set Them Free' is a kind of warning. I'm not really into the idea of permanent relationships. I find that phony, shallow and unrealistic in many ways. That's not to say the relationships I have are in any way inferior. I think they're more intense because of that belief."

Featuring Marsalis' saxophone and the keyboards of Kirkland, "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" was one of the first songs the band recorded for the album.

When A&M Records executives heard the tracks from the album, they mostly agreed that song should be the leadoff single for Sting, partly because it was a departure from what the artist had done in the band. Though the transformation may have started happening with the last two Police albums, "Ghosts In The Machine" and "Synchronicity," A&M felt the time was right to show another side of Sting's artistry.

"If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" made its Hot 100 debut at an impressive No. 44 on June 8, 1985, showing that music fans were ready for something new from Sting, especially with it being a solo effort. One week later on June 15, 1985, the song debuted in the Top 40 at No. 33, the highest Top 40 debut hit of the week.

From there, the song bounced up to No. 26 then into the Top 20 at No. 19. One week later, it was No. 13 and then No. 11 the week after that. Then on July 20, 1985, "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" became Sting's first Top 10 solo hit, entering at No. 7. The next week, he was in the Top 5 at No. 5, then into the Top 3 at No. 3 on August 3, 1985. It held at No. 3 for two weeks before finally dropping to No. 4 by August 17, 1985 and heading back the other way. The hit would spend 18 weeks on the Hot 100.

To promote the first single, the band filmed a music video with British music video wizards Kevin Godley and Lol Crème, who did the landmark dark video for "Every Breath You Take." For it, they filmed each member of the band separately, then put them on a sound stage, some members in the foreground, others in a faded background, a cool visual for those who understood and others who thought Godley and Crème had gone completely daft.

Let's just say the music video is "beautifully flawed."

Sting began to earn a new audience away from his band who many first thought when they heard their songs in the late 1970s was on the borderline of punk. Then again, all good musical acts find ways to grow and share new music with others.

And the Brit proved to be a winner with "The Dream Of The Blue Turtles" and that debut hit. Sting earned Grammy Award nominations for Best Male Vocal Performance and Album of the Year, losing in both cases to good friend Phil Collins and his "No Jacket Required" album.

Three other songs from "The Dream" would become Top 40 hits with "Fortress Around Your Heart," which sounded more like a jazz track than the debut single, hitting the Top 10 and peaking at No. 8. "Love Is The Seventh Wave" and "Russians," the eerie track that Sting would open the 1986 Grammy Awards with, would both be Top 20 hits.

More importantly, the debut album's success gave Sting a chance to broaden his horizons with his next few albums, "... Nothing Like The Sun," "The Soul Cages," and "Ten Summoner's Tales." In 2000, Sting hit the Top 20 with "Desert Rose," a world music hit featuring Algierian singer Cheb Mami.

These days, Sting is looked upon as a star on the world stage with a more sophisticated sound and one totally different from his earlier
days as a member of The Police.

And the song that he set his lover "free" as a "follow-up" to 1983 No. 1 hit with The Police got the ball rolling during the summer of 1985.

Being deep does have its benefits.

The AT40 Blog/June 7, 1980: A child prodigy learns from dad

During the early years of Rock 'N Roll, there were three types of music that were the heartbeats. One was soul music, and those came out in the ballads that were made famous by such singers as Sam Cooke, Brook Benton and Jerry Butler. There was blues music, that a lot of instrumentalists played that became famous. And there was upgraded country music, country music with a beat.

Jerry Lee Lewis was a rocker who dabbled in what many called rock-a-billy music. So did Buddy Holly, as did Buddy Knox and Jimmie Rodgers. And there were the Burnette brothers, Johnny and Dorsey. Johnny scored Top 20 hits with "Dreamin'," "Little Boy Sad" and the Top 10 smash "You're Sixteen." Dorsey had one Top 40 pop hit with "(There Was A) Tall Oak Tree," but scored numerous chart singles on the country chart.

Johnny Burnette's career was in full swing. Then came the early morning of August 14, 1964. On that Friday morning, Burnette had taken his unlit fishing boat out for a ride in Clear Lake, Calif. He was going to do some early-morning fishing. Without much warning, Burnette's boat was hit by a cabin cruiser that understandably never saw the boat or Burnette in it. Burnette fell out of the boat and drowned. He was just 30 years old.

Dorsey Burnette never was the same without his brother, though he continued on with his career. His life would be over too early as well when he suffered a heart attack and died on August 19, 1979, at the age of 46, mere weeks after he released his latest album, "Tall Oak Tree." The brothers were interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, Calif., alongside their parents.

At the same time of Dorsey Burnette's death, a song began charting in South Africa, a country that you wouldn't associate with the Burnette brothers or with rock-a-billy music.

That hit single made a big impact on the charts there, climbing as high as No. 3 by the end of the year. It was called "Tired Of Toein' The Line." And it was by an artist named Burnette.

But it wasn't Johnny or Dorsey. Instead, it was a guy named Rocky Burnette, the son of Johnny Burnette, born Jonathan Burnette on June 12, 1953, in Memphis.

Rocky Burnette was 11 years old when his father passed away. It devastated Rocky in many ways, but mostly without any money coming in, not only did they lose their car, but their home and all their Hollywood friends. But one friend of his father's kept the family upright in those years after his death.

That was Glen Campbell, a prominent studio musician who worked with Johnny Burnette and had made a name for himself as part of the famed Los Angeles-based studio group, The Wrecking Crew. What he did was finance the family by hiring Burnette's widow, Thurley, as his personal secretary. That kept the family afloat for a few years and at the age of 14, Johnny Burnette got into the music his dad loved. And a few years later, he was signed to Acuff-Rose Publishing in Nashville to get his feet in the door as a teenager. But Burnette was asked to right songs for the teen idols of the time, David Cassidy and The Osmonds.

That wasn't what Rocky Burnette was about. He wanted to pay homage to his late father, but he also wanted to rock out a little more. As Burnette himself said in a 1980 People interview, "I was told, 'Think Jimmy Osmond.' Do you know what that does to the psyche?"

On top of that, Burnette was living out of the back seat of a friend's 1951 Mercury and was "mooching off everybody," as he said to People.

"I couldn't even afford a tuna fish sandwich," he said.

But the worst was yet to come for young Rocky Burnette. In 1977, his longtime girlfriend, Carol Lee Trent, was killed in an automobile accident, sending him reeling. Two years later, Burnette lost five family members, including his grandmother Willie Mae and, of course, his uncle Dorsey.

Then he caught the break he was looking for when EMI America signed Burnette to a deal shortly after he arrived in England to work alongside a group called The Pirates that played the music Burnette grew up around, including his dad's work. He ventured to Wales to record what would be his debut album, "The Son Of Rock And Roll." It was during that time, he met up with former Everly Brothers and Brothers Grim bass guitarist Ray Coleman. He and Burnette sat down to write a song that would change fortunes again.

The song, which was about the imminent breakup of a relationship, was called "Tired Of Toein' The Line." The song featured the mix that Burnette was craving for, a rock song that had the elements of rock-a-billy, most notably a twangy guitar that Burnette solos on near the end of the song.

EMI America thought highly of the song, too, and released it in South Africa first, peaking in early 1980 The success there emboldened them to go to other countries. So in late April 1980, "Tired Of Toein' The Line" was released. `On May 10, 1980, it was the highest debuting single on Billboard's Hot 100 chart at No. 71. It would climb to No. 60 the next week, then No. 48 the week after. There was a short climb the next week to No. 43.

Then on the week of June 7, 1980, "Tired Of Toein' The Line" entered Burnette into the Top 40 at No. 34, the first time a Burnette found his way into the Top 40 since his father hit with "God, Country And My Baby" in 1961. It was also the highest debut of the week within the Top 40.

Burnette made a big move of eight places to No. 26, then to No. 20 on June 21, 1980. From there, "Tired" moved up a little bit at a time, to No. 18, then No. 15 and No. 13. A one-point move the next week was starting to give those doubt as to whether Burnette's song had the muscle to make the Top 10. Then on July 26, 1980, "Tired Of Toein' The Line" proved it was anything but tired when it marched up four places to land Burnette in the Top 10 at No. 8, 20 years after his father had done the same thing with "You're Sixteen." Like his dad's hit, Burnette's own hit would also tap out at No. 8, where it held for two straight weeks before falling back to No. 13, then No. 31, No. 37 and out by August 30, 1980.

Burnette's song was heard all over the place – at parties, on the beach, in backyard gatherings and in the roller skating rinks. And wherever the music video could be shown, one that featured Burnette playing in a band all with models (six years before Robert Palmer did it on "Addicted To Love") and who he douses with a fire hose at the end of the song, it helped lead to the song's popularity.

In Canada, it was a big summertime hit where it would peak at No. 4. But in Australia at the same time the song was taking off in the U.S., it went straight to No. 1 there, giving him his only No. 1 song anywhere.

The second single, "Baby Tonight," was ready to be released. Burnette and his band were excited. But one major problem sidelined hope of another big single – EMI America went belly up because it didn't have the funds to promote the single. Soon after, the company was consolidated and started anew.

So Burnette decided to rekindle an old love and put it back on the road. No, it wasn't a car ... it was actually the Rock And Roll Trio, a three-man group that played rock-a-billy music that involved his dad and uncle and lead guitarist Paul Burlison. Burlison teamed up with Johnny Black and Tony Austin and toured with Burnette throughout Europe, where they were applauded almost everywhere they went. Burnette signed with Enigma Records and he and the Trio put out "Go Hot Or Go Home!" which sold miserably, allowing Enigma to drop Burnette and the Trio.

Burnette wandered throughout musical landscapes through the rest of the 1980s and into the 1990s where he worked as a session musician and released another CD called "Tear It Up" on Core Records. In 1997, he co-wrote, "You Got Away With Love," which became a monster smash hit throughout Europe for Percy Sledge, the singer of "When A Man Loves A Woman" fame.

These days, Burnette is out doing rock-a-billy shows where he can. And keeping it in the family, cousin Billy Burnette, Dorsey's son, became a solo artist and then in 1990, joined Fleetwood Mac as a guitarist for a short time after Lindsay Buckingham left.

In the summer of 1980, we found out that the apple didn't fall far from the tree when Rocky Burnette proved he could be as big a rock-a-billy star as his dad was with one memorable record.

He made his rock-a-billy forefathers proud.