We learned negotiations. We learned promoting. Our determination that we were showing was an inspiration to the people we were working with, and they gave us an opportunity to move forward. As the new decade dawned, the group came up with another smash! Leo Graham, Jr. I moved to Chicago from Arkansas, when I was very young. Besides the Manhattans, Leo is best known for his three-decade-long partnership with the late Tyrone Davis. I was the co-writer on that with a gentleman named Floyd Smith.
That was the first song I wrote, when I started out writing songs. We were very close with Tyrone. We were like brothers — like with Blue. After I started with Blue, we got very, very close He knew Floyd Smith. They were writing together. He was just trying to do something, before he met me. Nobody knew anything about Leo Graham. After he started writing for me, he did such a good job that I wanted him to produce me.
I was a songwriter there for a couple of years, and I signed there to do a record of my own, too, which never happened.
I also did some things with Linda Clifford for Curtom Records. We signed with Columbia Records around He sings every line to Gerald Alston, and he knows what he wants He was a bass player. Leo was very articulate. He worked to perfection. He was an easy guy to work with and he made you comfortable. He was an excellent bass player. As a producer of these songs I would hire Paul to play bass on all of these things, and he did a fantastic job on them. I met through him a group that Tyrone and I were producing called Amuzement Park.
We did an album on them, which I still have somewhere in the can that I need to try to release at some point. Later Paul would work with many artists, including the Dells, L. That was the first thing I produced. James Mack arranged all my stuff. He was a very, very smart guy and he helped me a whole lot in early part of my career.
James L. Mack was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in , and moved to Chicago at the age of five. The first instrument he learned to play was flute. He passed away in Athens, Greece, on August 6 in after suffering a pulmonary embolism.
Produced by Leo Graham, written by Leo and Paul Richmond and arranged by James Mack, in the spring of the infectious and slightly country-tinged Shining Star hit gold and peaked at 4-soul and 5-pop. Also in the U. Once we heard it produced and heard how it was going, everybody fell in love with it. With Leo the group cut their records at the renowned Universal Studios in Chicago. He took time to show you. If he wanted some song in a certain way, he would come right out and sing it to you.
It was a little more relaxed. It put us on the map, I think, forever. It opened doors and venues that we had never been before, crossed over into the pop market For us to come out number one with that competition was really an accomplishment. We worked more and gained a lot of recognition. We got an opportunity to polish our act, so that we could be more competitive.
We were able to acquire some of the things that we wanted in life, like homes and cars. We were able to reach a wider audience than we had previously, internationally. As an example, in March the group toured Japan for the first time. Japan is another country that we do very well in. The fans know the records. Shining Star brought about some interest from Columbia executives and they made me an offer to do something with Champaign. We started out with just three songs, but Columbia was so pleased that they signed up the group to do the whole album, so I did a whole album on them.
Champaign was an interracial septet out of Champaign, Illinois. The b-side was written by Gerald and Barbara Morr. Hermi said she thought it would be a good match, and so Barbara and I started working together. I performed in recitals all during my childhood and was considered a prodigy. As I got older, I was also very involved in music at school, as a pianist and singer, performing, accompanying, singing in glee clubs, a cappella choir, madrigals as well as doing musical shows and musical programs in the community.
Barbara kept herself busy with music at the University of Utah singing, recording, travelling, creating musical shows, studying piano with Oscar Wagner and composition with Ned Rorem.
After graduation Barbara moved to New York to work in popular music and music for advertising. I did that for ten years before becoming a songwriter and being asked to join Love Zager, a boutique production, writing and publishing house. The above-mentioned classic ballad, Am I Losing You by the Manhattans, which Barbara co-wrote, scored a great success in early I had a large catalogue with Love Zager and on some songs I just wrote music, and others were more integrated with all the writers contributing to music — melody and chords — and lyrics.
Sometimes it would happen with Gerald, for instance, that he would bring an idea with a few lines of lyrics and melody and although we would collaborate to write the song, primarily I would write the chords and be a major part of finishing the melody and lyrics. There is also the style that is being considered, while the song is being written. Hot on the heels of the smash single the Manhattans released an album named After Midnight, which — similarly to Shining Star - also stroke gold 4-soul, pop.
In the summer of it climbed up only to soul, with no pop show. You just hope for the best. We had no say in the face of it. They felt like it was a crossover song. They felt like it was a pop song.
I guess they imagined the Manhattans was on its way over to the pop side of the charts, but they were wrong. We still sing it on our show today. Not all the time. We vary. We do different shows in different areas. Girl of My Dream was backed with a slow and soulful movie song called The Closer You Are, which all the four members collectively wrote and produced under their Scorpicorn Music, Inc.
Jack Urbant was the arranger. We sold more albums than we did singles, and some of those album cuts were songs that the people played all the time. The year-old Dennis Earle Lambert www. He found success also with numerous country, pop and rock acts — e. We met him at one event, but we never really worked with him, per se. I love the production Everything was running smoothly.
When you got a Grammy and you got a hit record, number one on the charts - songs like Kiss and Say Goodbye - everything seems to run smoothly. Jerry Ragovoy, an ingenious songwriter and producer, passed away recently, on July 13, after suffering a stroke. He was Norman Harris and the Manhattans produced together three tracks for the album and they were cut back at the Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia. We laid the rhythm tracks, go home and wait for thirty days, go back and do the background vocals, come back fifteen days later, do the lead vocals, come back, do the mixing Hours were hard to get and they had to fit us in.
Whenever you had a day to record, you had to do everything within that day, and get it done. Norman Ray Harris, a native of Philadelphia, passed away untimely in , at only 39, due to cardiovascular disease. The rich orchestration on this delightful remake is provided by its arranger, Vince Montana, Jr. I was hoping for it to be an A-song, but it was just another album song. John R. He passed away in late The song was written by Robert S.
Riley, Sr. He was an independent promotion guy, and we made sure we did one of his songs on every album we did from the early 70s throughout before he passed away. He allowed artists to be themselves. He was a very nice gentleman. After Midnight is an apt title for the album, because it offers dreamy and downtempo music to create favourable atmosphere for romantic, after-hours moments.
I knew Jackie for years and it was no problem. It was on its way up the Billboard charts, and then Unfortunately the next single, released in early , got lost altogether. It had a little country-flavour to it also. I love it. It was a big turntable hit, but nothing ever to sell records.
Places in New York played it, because it had a nice beat and groove to it, but it was never a bona fide hit. Entertainers have a reputation of meeting women all over, groupies or whatever. It was a positive song. He cared about her, but he knew he had to move on. Both of these sides appear on the album titled Black Tie soul, pop , which was released almost simultaneously with the single in June Leo Graham. It was neither storming, nor easily flowing, but hanging loosely in between, and it floundered only to soul.
It was a CBS call. The b-side was a sentimental and dreamy but also slightly meandering slowie named I Wanta Thank You, and on this song, alongside Leo and Paul, they credit Brian Hines as one of the writers.
He had an idea, I would add something, Paul would add something, and then we just all put it together. Paul was the bass player, and Brian was like a keyboard player and I played a little guitar on it.
The third single culled from the album - Honey, Honey soul — was an atmospheric slow song, not unlike Just One Moment Away. That was a good song. Forgotten 80's Hits by Various Artists. Similar artists. Barry White fans. Sade fans. George Benson fans. Chaka Khan fans. Imagination 67 fans. George Michael fans. Marvin Gaye 1 fans.
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