Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley You Can't
Be Serious Podcasts. Ladies and gentlemen, have we got a
show for you today. We will be talking about two murders,
a rape, glass coffins, and stolen shoes. And that's all
in the first two songs.
Speaker 2: You think he's kidding, he is not kidding. It's incredible
the stories involved in this album. Yes, it really is.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, it's something special that we get to
do when we go into an album that is by
quote unquote various artists, because we were exploring all kinds
of stories. But this is this is one for the ages.
I'm excited to get into it. Here we go with
the Shirley You Can't Be Serious Podcasts.
Speaker 2: We hope that you'll join us and have the time
of your life. Just be our baby, be our little bit. Okay.
D Before we get into a track by track, some
people might feel like the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, Why are
you covering the Dirty Dancing soundtrack? That's not really kind
of in our sweet spot. But listen, this is a
top five selling album of the nineteen eighties. It is
one of the best selling albums of all time. It
was released in the eighties. It has multiple hits from
the eighties, including the best song of the year. I
mean it's it's definitely our wheelhouse. It's just that you
might not realize it's our wheelhouse. That's true.
Speaker 1: So you pick up the Dirty Dancing soundtrack and you're
going to think, well, okay, this is going to be
all songs from the late fifties early sixties, because that's
the time period of the movie. But in fact, especially
when you got the first part of the album, it's
mostly brand new songs.
Speaker 2: Yeah it is. Here's the thing that blew me away? Okay,
So I knew this was a big thing. I heard
it on the radio every time I turned it on.
I mean, Dirty Dancing was a force in eighty seven
and eighty eight. Yeah, undeniable. Yeah right, but this is
the thing that blew me away. Okay. Here's the top
five selling albums of the decade. Yes, number one thriller
No Surprise There, Yeah right, which we have done track
by track, Yes episode one. Yes number two is Back in.
Speaker 1: Black, which we've done track by track.
Speaker 2: Yes, No Surprise There, No surprise, go back to that episode. Great.
Episode number three was bad by Michael Jackson, which we
covered track by track. Yeah, number four is Dirty Dancing.
Here we are, we're checking this one off the box, clicking.
Speaker 1: This box today. We've got several others on this list,
and number five was Appetite for Destruction Gang. We matched
up one versus three, two versus five. And the funny
thing is that the Dirty Dancing Soundtrack is the number
four selling album of the nineteen eighties. Saturday Night Fever
is the number four selling album of the nineteen seventies.
See that's important. If you are just tuning into us
for the first time. Welcome aboard Shirley fan anew. We
have in the last two episodes covered Dirty Dancing the
movie versus Saturday Night Fever the movie, and now we
are covering Dirty Dancing the soundtrack versus Saturday Night Fever
the soundtrack.
Speaker 2: And at the end, I think we'll probably rank them
all one to three, four. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: When we said which of these albums that we're going
to cover first, I said to you, well, let's do
Dirty Dancing first because it's got the older songs, and
then we move into the seventies. And that kind of
makes sense that way. But as it turns out, It's
kind of a back and forth, worth ping pong thing
because you've got songs from the fifties and sixties, and
you've got songs from the eighties, and then when we
cover Saturday Night Fever, we're gonna have songs from the seventies.
So we're covering four decades of music all in two
podcasts episodes.
Speaker 2: Literally, when we do this matchup, this will be the
first time we venture into the fifties, the first time
we venture into the sixties. Next week we're going to
venture into the seventies for the first time. Yeah, So anyway,
it's gonna be fun. This album was so successful that
they literally created a sequel album that was released in
March of nineteen eighty eight with a very.
Speaker 1: Creative title More Dirty Dancing This is Okay. The original
Dirty Dancing soundtrack was number one for eighteen weeks. On
May seventh, nineteen eighty eight, Dirty Dancing Soundtrack was number one.
More Dirty Dancing was number three. It's crazy, best selling album.
Speaker 2: That is crazy. People were nuts for this music, and
it doesn't make any sense. We're talking about nineteen eighty seven.
What were the albums and the bands that we were
listening to in nineteen eighty seven, it dislodged Bruce Springstein
from the number one spot. YEP, George Michael knocked it
out a couple of times. But we're talking about Appti
for destruction. We're talking about hysteria, We're talking about kick.
Speaker 1: We're talking about girls, Girls, Girls. We're talking about White Snake,
White Snake. Big albums, big albums that are hard rock albums.
And what we have is a soundtrack from a low
budget movie starring two people who were largely unknown at
the time, topping the charts and becoming one of the
best selling albums in.
Speaker 2: History, thirty two million albums sold. Do you know that
this is the all time greatest selling album in Germany
all time? This is the thriller of Germany.
Speaker 1: So the popularity of this album actually caught the producers
by surprise. The album had one million copies on back
order before a single had even been released. What Yeah
eighteen weeks at number one on the Billboard two hundred
album Sales charts and went platinum eleven times.
Speaker 2: One Thing I Want You to Put a p in? Okay.
The album was released July eighteenth, nineteen eighty seven. Yeah.
The movie was released August twenty first, nineteen eighty seven.
Uh huh so almost, well a little over a month later. Yeah,
put a pin in that because one of the singles
was dangling out there for a month, unhelped by the movie. Wow, okay, Yeah,
put a pin in that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting when you think about Mike Footloose in
comparison to that, where they released the soundtrack before the
soundtrack was already a huge success by the time the
movie had come out. This is an entirely different scenario.
So we talked earlier about how important the soundtrack was
in all of the movie. We talked about how Eleanor Bergstein,
the writer of the movie, went to her old forty five's,
her old finyls and made herself a mixtape. And this
was the way that she pitched the movie to people.
She would give them a copy of this mixtape, give
the producer a copy of the mixtape, and say here's
my idea for the movie. And she was rejected and
rejected and rejected. But then years would go by and
the producers would call her back up and say, hey,
I've worn out that Ebe's dirty dancing tape you gave me.
Could you give me another copy.
Speaker 2: You realize you said no no on the movie. Loved
the soundtrack.
Speaker 1: So this soundtrack, this tape that she had, she used
it as her guiding light as she wrote the script.
The soundtrack came first, then she wrote the script.
Speaker 2: Are we ready? Yeah, let's jump in. All right, let's
dive in.
Speaker 1: Before we get going on the music, let me just
say this. We talked in our last episode about how
it was so difficult to get the rights to this music,
and I brought up the fact that they got rid
of one guy and brought in another guy. The guy
they brought in was a guy named Jimmy Iiner. That
name's gonna come up a few times as we're talking today.
I just want to say Einer and his brother Don
Heiner founded the publishing house cam Usa in the seventies.
Don Heiner is a name you may have heard of before.
He wanted to become the president of Columbia Records and
the president of Sony Music. So not too shabby, right,
But at this time in the eighties, Jimmy Ironer was
really he was a record producer. He had been in
a band, of course on his own, but he was
kind of a guy who was able to do both things.
He was able to handle business side things and also
a very proficient producer. And he's been responsible for some
of the remixing of some of these songs. But he's
the guy that I said last episode he went and
kissed Phil Spector's big toe. Yes, yes, in order to
get the rights to some of these songs. And had
he not done that, we would not have the movie
that we had, and we would not have this soundtrack.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be amazing. Yeah, it's fascinating stuff. Okay, we ready, yeah,
all right. Diving into our first song on the album, ye,
be my Baby. I feel like we're forgetting something. No,
never mind, let's just keep on going. Be my Baby,
Be my Baby. Let's hear it.
Speaker 1: Okay, here this first drum beat, it's unmistakable, it's huge.
Speaker 2: It was an accident. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the guy who did the drum beat on this
one is Hal Blaine and he was a member of
the Wrecking Crew. The Wrecking Crew was Phil Spector's studio
band that became Brian Wilson's studio band for Pet Sounds,
which is regarded as one of the best albums of
all time. They were the most proficient musicians. It included
Glenn Campbell, which we talked about back in our Toto episode,
and Hal Blaine was the drummer and he said that
famous drum intro was an accident. I was supposed to
play the snare on the second beat as well as
the fourth, but I dropped the stick. Being a faker,
I left the mistake in and it became ba ba boom,
and so everyone wanted that beat.
Speaker 2: That's amazing story. Drop my stick and faked it. I
asked our buddy James Buckley. I'm like, hey, you're the drummer.
I'm not the drummer. Does this have a name? He goes, no,
but it's like the most famous phrase in drum history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no real name for it. It's just the
accident that happened and everybody loved right.
Speaker 2: So that phrase has been used by Billy Joel, by
Taylor Swift, by meat Loaf, by the Carpenters, by Amy Winehouse.
And I even sent him the first song on Poisons
Look with the Cat Drag Da album. I said, this
is it too right? And he's like, yep, yep, that's it.
That's awesome.
Speaker 1: So this song was performed by the Ronettes. Yes, and
we mentioned Phil Spector earlier, and man, is there a
host of stories here.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, we could spend a week here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the Ronettes started with for Ronica Bennett, who became
Ronnie Spector. Yes, three females who were black and sang
harmony together were the end thing at this time, right,
And so here was their plan. She had her, her
sister and their cousin all dress in the same dress,
wear their hair the same and go stand in a
line outside of a famous club. And as they're standing
in line, sure enough, their plan works and some guy
opens the door and he's like, hey, you're late, get
in here. And they got in by mistake. Somebody thought
they were the band. They were not the band.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: They got out there. They had practiced singing before and
they did a whole lot of fun dancing for everybody
in the crowd. And it was that that led to
them becoming the Rownets.
Speaker 2: That is an incredible story. Yeah, those of you who
don't remember, this was used during the opening scene of
Dirty Dancing. It's that sort of cepia toned slow motion
introduction of the Dirty Dancing to this song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the preview so that you're not so shocked when
you see.
Speaker 2: It later on.
Speaker 1: In the movie of the Dirty Beat, there was a
clear distinction. There was clean teene, which is what Baby
listened to before the night in the basement, and then
the dirty dancing, which was her rhythm.
Speaker 2: We talked about how that scene had to be her
going into oz. They didn't have enough money to film
an opening scene for dirty Dancing, so they had to
kind of create something out of the footage that they had,
So they came up with that Cepia tone dirty dancing scene,
the intro to dirty Dancing, like we talked about. But
emil Ardlino, Eleanor Bergstein and Linda Gottlieb watched that scene
and we're trying to figure out the perfect song to
play over that scene. They played four hundred songs. Oh
my gosh. When they finally hit be My Baby, all
three in Unison were like, this is it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until we started studying this that I realized
how big a song this was. I just I mean,
it was just in that group of cool do woppie
kind of sixty songs that I knew. I didn't realize
what kind of Megaton Bomb.
Speaker 2: This thing was right. The song was so perfect that
they had to go battle for it. Linda Gottlief said
they paid seventy five thousand dollars for the use of
that song. Yeah, it was played for thirty seconds. And
when you think, oh, seventy five thousands not that much,
well it is when your budget's four point five million dollars, Yeah,
for the entire movie, right, for a thirty seconds worth
of song, Right, and you've also got eleven other songs
that you're trying to get exactly, And actually it was
more like twenty other songs that you're trying to get,
that's right. I talked to my dad about this song,
and I played two songs for him. Be My Baby
was released August of nineteen sixty three, and it reached
number two on the charts. And I'm like, what song
is better than Be My Baby? Right? Yeah? You know
you know I like you this right? I love it.
I love it? What is it? So? I played for
him the song sugar Shack by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs. Yeah,
and to me, it's kind of a it's kind of
a goofy song. Anyway, I played it for him I'm like,
which are these two songs? Is the bigger song? And
he's like, be my baby? And now he knew both. Right.
It's just interesting though, for whatever reason that at that
moment in time, sugar Shack was the hot song.
Speaker 1: It's the difference between hot now and hot forever?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: You ready to talk about Ronnie Spector and Phil Spector,
Phil Spector and the madness that ensued. Yes, okay, So
Ronnie Spector is part of the ron Ets. Was heard
by Phil Spector and he thought, this is this is
the band I want to hang my hat on. And
this really, this song is where he truly built his
wall of sound style of producing. He and the Wrecking
crew spent hours and hours and hours playing the song
before they ever hit the record button. So he was
an absolute perfectionist. As we know, he was also completely mental.
Speaker 2: Right, convicted murderer Phil Spector, Right, he wasn't convicted at
this time as well before all of that.
Speaker 1: But but yes, that's a story that we definitely need
to talk about. So he's got this music and he's
also he's the one who wrote this song. I mean
him and a couple of other guys. But you think
about the words of this song, it's kind of almost
foreshadowing as to what his life's going to be like
with Ronnie. Of this, I'm going to infantilize you as
well as completely dedicate my life to you. And so anyway,
he's he's got this music. He finally a forty fifth take,
they finally record the one that they're going to use,
and then they bring Ronnie in to record the vocals,
and she spent three days practicing the vocals, all of
which she spent in the bathroom of the gold Star
Recording studio. She's like, they're supposed to have this amazing
sound in gold Star Wars studios. Well, I can tell
you the bathroom sounds even better because of the echo.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: It was because of that echo that I had all
my oo oohs and uh wah wahs and all of
those things that came from me practicing in there.
Speaker 2: She said.
Speaker 1: When I went in there and laid down the vocal track,
everybody in the band was like telling me how wonderful
I was and I was going to be the next
Billy Holiday. Wow, fantastic. So obviously this gets them noticed
and on the charts. They go out to London and
start touring. You know who Their opening band was, The
Rolling Stones.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: The Rolling Stones were opening for the Ronet.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: While they were out there, they met the Beatles. This
was before Beatlemania, This was before nineteen sixty f and
everybody went crazy. And she'll say, Beatlemania is what killed
that doop sound?
Speaker 2: Okay? You know, like.
Speaker 1: Everybody was about the British invasion and nobody cared about
groups snapping their fingers anymore. Sure, but at the time
she made friends with them. They weren't super famous, and
so they're touring England. They're a band in England, so
they become friends. She even went on a few dinner
dates with John Lennon when the Beatles eventually came to
the States.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Yes, And it was at that point that Phil Spector
said to her, because they got offered to tour with
the Beatles. The Ronettes were going to tour with the Beatles,
and he said, you can go on tour with them,
or you can marry me, but you can't do both.
And so she thought, well, he's a producer and I
love him, and this is a way to get every
song I want recorded.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to go with Option B. Terrible move.
Speaker 1: You could say that, Yes, you could say that.
Speaker 2: We could literally spend a week podcasting about this.
Speaker 1: So tell me what you know about the marriage of
Ronnie Spector and Phil Spector.
Speaker 2: Ronnie Spector wrote a b about her life with Phil Spector.
I haven't read the book, and I don't know a
whole lot, but I do know that he was very abusive,
very controlling of her, would not let her leave the house.
How did he keep her from leaving me? He stole
her shoes. He stole her shoes. He figured, if I
have every one of her shoes, she can't leave. This
dude was obviously nuts from the outset nuts. Now he
gets a lot of credit for the Wall of Sound
and all this other stuff he produced, the ules, He
did all these wonderful musical things. He was also a psycho, manipulative,
abusive husband.
Speaker 1: There is a strong overlap between psychotic and genius, and
this guy was walking the line on that one.
Speaker 2: He bought a coffin with a glass cover and told
her if she ever leaked him, he would kill her
and put her in it and let everybody look at
her dead.
Speaker 1: They tried to have children, Okay, couldn't have any children,
so they decided to adopt. He treated their son nearly
as badly as he treated her, kept him in his room,
locked up without a bathroom.
Speaker 2: Pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Then a few years later he adopts twins without asking her,
without her consent, without her knowledge, he goes and adopts twins.
What it's crazy.
Speaker 2: It is really really crazy.
Speaker 1: And I mean she literally has to escape by running
away and her mother has to protect her from this
crazy man.
Speaker 2: Okay, I mean, we could spend a lot of time here,
but here's the thing that blew me away. Okay, so
set Ronnie Spector aside for just a second, and I
know we don't really want to get into this, but
one of my eighties guilty pleasure movies is a John
Landis movie that has Steve Gutenberg, Rosanna arkent Our, Cindeo Hall,
Andrew Dice Clay. He's got all these bit parts in.
It's called Amazon. Women on the Moon, Okay, and it's funny.
It's just a lot of fun. There's a scene in
the movie where they actually go and visit the moon
and there's a woman there. Her name's Lana Clarkson. She's
actually the woman that Phil Spector killed and late I
went to jail for Selana Clarkson was a struggling actress.
She had been in some sort of sword and sorcery movies.
She had been in Amazon Women the Moon. She had
been on Three's company, and she was working as a waitress.
She wasn't giving him the time of day, but the
management said, hey, that's Phil Spector. Go take good care
of him and got to treat him like gold. And
he said, hey, you want to take a ride in
my limo, and she's like okay, I guess, took her
back to his house, propositioned her. She refused, and he
blew her head off. He said she kissed the barrel
and the gun went off. Jerry didn't buy that. No,
they did not.
Speaker 1: Man, I kind of want to know more about Phil Spector,
but since this is not a true crime podcast, right,
we're gonna move on. I'm gonna circle it back over
to the song because I'm going to police hopefully blow
your mind speak a piece of information.
Speaker 2: Okay, read, let's go. Yes, So they are recording be
My Baby.
Speaker 1: Phil Spector has a friend of his over and his
girlfriend and they're waiting for the backup singers to show up,
backups fingers supposed to be darlinge love. She doesn't show up. Okay,
maybe she's scared a phill. I don't know what it is.
But she didn't show up. And so Phil is not
the guy who likes to be kept waiting, and so
he's like, hey, man, I heard your girl can sing?
Speaker 2: Can she sing?
Speaker 1: And he's like, well, yeah, she can sing. And the
girl tries to explain what her level of expertise is
and Phil says, I don't care. Just go in there.
Speaker 2: I just need some noise. The guy the sonny bono. Sure,
let's go. Where are you going to get that information
other than the Shirley podcast? Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
That is fantastic. We'll be here all man, wait to go.
You blow my mind, Man, you blow my mind. I
got something for you. Okay. Do you know the song
that plays while David and Maddie consummate their relationship on Moonlighting?
Could it be Be My Baby? It is Be my Baby.
Speaker 1: We like to throw it back to Moonlighting whenever we can.
Speaker 2: We love Moonlight. We got to talk about Moonlighting with
Let's talk just briefly about the song take Me Home
Tonight Okay, Eddie Money, Yeah, so I can remember. I don't.
I don't like that song. I never have. It was
annoying to me.
Speaker 1: It was on all the time and annoyed me crazy.
Speaker 2: And my Little Baby that it kept I was like, ah,
this is so annoying. I had no idea that, just
like Ronnie says, meant it was Ronnie and that being
my Little Baby was from the sixties. Song had a
direct reference to that song about fifty times in that
song take Me Home Tonight, and that's her singing, and
she's in the video she's doing that. She looked pretty good.
She looked great. Yeah, she looked fantastic in eighty six. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw an interview with her on Letterman in eighty three,
and you could tell that she was probably self medicating
in order to get past the life that she had
experienced with Phil Spector.
Speaker 2: Well, so at.
Speaker 1: One point she's complimenting Paul and she says, I love
him so much. He's like the Woody Allen of Rotten
and Roll.
Speaker 2: It's litterally cute. Okay, we got to talk Brian Wilson
for just a second. Oh yeah, I don't want to
derail the whole podcast. My Baby. But we have to
talk about Brian Wilson.
Speaker 1: So without this song, we might not have had pet Sounds.
Speaker 2: It's insane, right, Yeah. So Brian Wilson was driving his
car one day with his girlfriend and he's driving down
the road mine in his own business, and on the
radio comes be my Baby.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: He literally is thunderstruck. He has to pull the car
over and it's like psychologically jacked his brain, right, he
has to pull it over and like analyze the song,
like what's going on here? Because this is blowing my mind.
The vocals, the guitars, the Wallace sound, all that is
just blowing him away, and it literally affected him for
decades afterwards.
Speaker 1: It is an amazing So let's just say that we
didn't really even talk about the music and the song itself,
but it is an amazing song if you listen to
the strings that are behind it. I mean, the engineer
said he wept as he was mixing the strings in
with the rest of the song, and it is truly amazing.
But I think it may have hit Brian Wilson harder
than it hit any other human being in the world.
He would obsess over the song like a Islamic convert
obsesses over the Koran. It's one of the things that
I read he was mesmerized by. He would be like,
listen to this. It sounds like the beating of a
branch in the wind and a baby's rattle and the
call of the mockingbird. I mean just it was affecting
him in a significant and severe way, but in a
real and practical way. He went, Okay, who are the
musicians on this album? I gotta meet Phil Spector. I
got to talk to him, and I got to find
out who's playing this music. And it's because of that
that we get the Wrecking Crew and their contribution to
music history in pet sounds.
Speaker 2: Don't Worry Baby is a sequel that he wrote for
the Rawnetts to make a sequel to be my Baby.
Let's listen to Don't Worry Baby. Roopquirre awesome classic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I can totally hear the Roett singing that
as a sequel, but they said.
Speaker 2: No, So the Beach Boys took it and made it
an instant classic for them. Absolutely. I thought it was interesting.
The DJ who played the song when he got thunderstrucked
in his car, Wink Martindale. Okay, he's the game show
host from like Tic Tac Doe and Oh my Wenk Martindale,
Oh my gosh. Wow. So his daughter Carne Wilson, Yeah,
from Wilson Phillips. Yes, she said that during her childhood
she awoke every single morning to boom boom boom fam. Wow.
He compared it to Einstein's theory of relativity. Could spend
all day here, we probably knew more.
Speaker 1: I think the fact that Brian Wilson had some psychological
issues and Phil Spector had some psychological issues meant that
there was a meeting of the unstable minds on this one.
Speaker 2: Hey, you know what one thing I got to bring
up before we move on. When Phil Spector was in jail,
he still had control of this song and he would
not allow Ronnie Spector to play it at her concerts.
Talk about freaking man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and both of them passed away last.
Speaker 2: Year, right, I believe that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Dick Clark called it the record of a century when
he introduced him Wow on American Bandstand, and now they
use it in Seaoleis commercials.
Speaker 1: That's the best segue I've ever heard. What's our next song?
Speaker 2: Next song? On the album, song number three is She's
like the wind, She's not the wind too much.
Speaker 4: He rides to night.
Speaker 5: Next time me.
Speaker 2: D This song is by Patrick Swayze.
Speaker 1: Patrick sways born in Houston, Texas, second child of Patsy Swayzee,
a dancer, choreographer, dance instructor, and like the dance person
in Texas.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: His dad was an engineer and draftsman, but while he
was in school he developed skills in ice skating, ballet dancing,
classical ballet. Acted in the school plays. Was a football
player hoping for a scholarship until he injured his knee
and wasn't able to play anymore, which.
Speaker 2: Is why he had no dancing on his acting resume.
Speaker 1: That and he wanted to be known as an actor,
not a dancer, but he did keep dancing. He also
did martial arts, which came into play later on for Roadhouse.
Yes it did, few other beautiful movies that he meet,
Yes it did, he said. He used it to channel
his self deprecating rage.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right.
Speaker 1: So he met in nineteen seventy a lady named Lee's
meeting okay. She was a student in his mom's dance
classes and seventy two, he went to New York City
to complete his formal dance training at the Parkness Ballet
and Jeoffrey Ballet Schools, and then in nineteen seventy five
he married Lisa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they stayed married until his death. Yeah. He said
that she was the inspiration for this song. Oh that's sweet. Yeah,
that's sweet. Here's the interesting thing about why this song
got on this album. Okay, they would desperate for songs.
They were trying.
Speaker 1: They had a lot of songs that they wanted, but
they needed originals because the ones that were already popular
were too expensive and too hard to get.
Speaker 2: So Patrick's standing there and he's like, hey, guess what,
I've got a song.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it turns out he wrote a song for the
movie Grandview USA. He wrote it for the character that
Jamie Lee Curtis played in that movie. Yeah. Well, they
didn't accept it, right, So he tried to get it
put in on the Young Blood soundtrack in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: So he'd been turned down twice at this point when
they are filming Dirty Dancing.
Speaker 2: So they're like, well, yeah, we'll bring it in dude,
let me, let's hear it.
Speaker 1: You know, Lisa got Leeb listens and says, I love it.
Let's put her down.
Speaker 2: I have anything. She's not weird, it's cheap, it's available.
He's standing right here. It sounds good. Let's do it.
It reached number three on the Hot one hundred Deep.
You want to hear the two better songs?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, okay. The only reason I bring it up
is because they're fairly notable songs. All right, all right? Yeah,
so this reached number three on February twenty seventh, nineteen
eighty eight. The Dirty Dancing soundtrack is still extremely hot
at this time. Okay. The songs that were number one
and number two. Number one was Father Figure by George Michael, Yeah, okay.
Number two was What Have I Done to Deserve This?
By The Pet Shop Boys? Okay, yeah, And then the
next week She's Like the Wind stayed at number three
and got leap frogged Bye, Never Gonna Give You Up
by Rick Astley.
Speaker 1: Well he got Rick Roll, he did get rig Roll.
Speaker 2: That's tragic. All right. Do we got to talk about
the music video for She's Like the Wind Really quick? Okay,
nothing fancy, lots of clips from the movie. Patrick Swayze
all over the place. Yeah, do you know who the
director of the She's Like a Wind video is?
Speaker 1: I did not look that one up, Sir.
Speaker 2: David freaking Fincher, Get the heck out of town. David
Fincher is the director Oh my Gosh, seven, Fight Club,
Panic Room, Gone Girl, Zodiac, the Social Network. Oh my gosh,
David fincher' is one of the best directors in Hollywood
right now. Wow, And he's cutting his teeth on a
Patrick Swayze love song. That's fantastic. What do you think
of this one?
Speaker 1: I love this song. It's beautiful, right, He's beautiful. And
I was, you know, amazed when I first learned that
it was him that was singing. I was just like, oh,
this doesn't sound like him to me. Now, once I
know that he's singing, I'm like, Okay, I can hear
his voice in it, but he's got a very distinct
singing style compared to what he sounds like speaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this reach number one on the Adult Contemporary chart,
and because it's Patrick swayzey, it's literally one of the
most high profile one hit wonders of all time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a beautiful song, and I'm glad that he
finally found somebody who said, yes, let's put it in
our movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too. Yeah, all right. Next song on the
album is a song called Hungry Eyes. Okay, so the
music on this is awesome. I gotta tell you.
Speaker 1: I didn't dive into the intricacies of the music on
these songs. I just like listening to them. I'm not
rushing out to learn how to play the guitar solo
on this particular song. It's just these are kind of
adult contemporary style of music, and for me, I just
want to listen to it and I enjoy it.
Speaker 2: It is adult contemporary, but it's fun. Yeah. And I
used to slow dance to it when I was a
kid in the eighties.
Speaker 6: Two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet this is on the Makeout List of
eighty eight. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: This song was written by Frankie Privett and John D.
Speaker 2: Nicola. Yes, they also wrote another song on this album,
which we'll cover in a little while.
Speaker 1: Sure, and it was sung by Eric Carmon. I got
to issue a formal apology, Okay. When we covered Footloose,
I talked about Eric Carmon, and I talked about the
fact that he had written this song. He did not
write this song. Right, he only performed it.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: He happened to be one of the guys that Jimmy Einer,
who I talked about earlier, produced, and so he got
a call from Jimmy that said, hey, I got a song.
I'd like you to come sing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a remake. Frankie Privett released this song
and was a mild hit in nineteen eighty four. It's
off their album making the point. Okay, so this is
an actual remake. Okay. You know we've talked a few
times before where a song is released and it just
doesn't quite hit, but people think, you know, this is
a good song. We need to give this another life. Yeah,
so they asked Eric Carmen to sing it, and they
re recorded it, reput it out there, and it made
it to number four on the Hot one hundred.
Speaker 1: Now Eric Carmon, just tell you this. I didn't get
into his history last time we talked about Footloose, Right,
he was the one that said I fing love it
on the lyrics for the most para Paradise, But anyway,
he loved music from an early age. Was classically trained
on the piano, picked up the guitar and taught himself
how to play and was a member of a group
called the Raspberries for a while. Huh, and they had
some mild success, and then he went solo. And when
he was solo, he had a huge single called All
by Myself.
Speaker 2: I remember the song when I was young.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you can't mistake this, Yes, you can't mistake this,
and I love there's a comedy bit on this of
when does all by Myself go from being something good
to something bad? You know, when the little kid does something,
they're like, look, daddy did it all by myself too?
Oh by, here's something I did not know though. Okay,
he based this song on Rochmaninov's Piano Concerto number two.
I had no idea. I just thought this was a
cool pop song. It is based on a classical concerto.
Speaker 2: Okay, I gotta ask you. Have you watched the music
video to this lately? No, you're missing out. I have
to say.
Speaker 1: I can probably imagine because Eric Carmon appeared on stage
during the Dirty Dancing Live tour that occurred shortly after
the movie was such a big success, and he was
in a black muscle T shirt without much muscles, but
lots of chest hairt a sequiny shoulder, padded jacket. Yeah,
and the big hair that every girl that you knew
in the eighth grade had.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Yeah, well special. I gotta tell you you're really
missing out if you don't go back and watch the
music videos on this because it's part of the package. Right, Yeah,
so I watched the music video. Yeah. So you have
Eric Carmon and he's watching like a projector version of
Dirty Dancing on the wall. So you've got little clips
of the movie in the background or whatever. Right, smoking
hot model, Okay, that he's got hungry eyes for They
got hungry eyes for each other, all right, okay, but
this is where the video goes off the rails for me. Okay, okay,
So they keep staring at each other and nothing's really happening,
and little clips of dirty Dancing, and then the sax
solo comes, and who plays the sax solo? The smoking
Hot Model, right, And then at the very end, like
they've been making eyes at each other the whole time,
she's with a guy that is like a grip for
the music video. He's like a graying, short, balding guy
who's just like standing there. So she plans one on
him and I'm like, who is this guy? I mean,
it just looks like she grabs somebody off the street.
And then when her face like emerges from the kiss,
it's a different girl. Beavis and butt Head would have
a field day with this video. The original girl left
in the middle of the video to go play back
up for Robert paulin, Yeah, exactly, what exactly? That's fantastic.
Now I'll have to go check that way. That is awesome.
Speaker 1: So in the movie, this is one of the most
memorable scenes, right this is the scene that we talked
about where you have Johnny and Baby dancing and standing
behind Baby guiding her is Penny, and you have this
look of longing from Penny as she looks down as
Johnny is starting to fall in love with Baby, who
you know was already in love with count.
Speaker 2: It's some dancing montage.
Speaker 1: They almost said we can't put this scene in yet
because it's too early. It's given it's tipping her hand,
But I mean, who didn't know that that was what
was going to happen?
Speaker 2: Of course, right, of course, great song, great song, love it.
This song reached number four February thirteenth of eighty eight,
So makeout song of eighty eight on Valentine's Day. Yep,
the same week that She's like to win hit number
ten is rocketing up to chart. Okay, all right, moving on,
all right, d So the next song on the album
is a song called Stay.
Speaker 1: Okay, we can't talk too long on this song because
it's only a minute in one thirty six. The song
was written by Maurice Williams. Yes, this performed by Maurice
Williams and the Zodiacs. Right, he was fifteen, nineteen fifty three.
He's fifteen. He's in the car with the girl and
he's trying to get her to not go home. He fails,
but he was like, man, it seemed like a good
tagline for a song, just stay. And he said, like
a flood, the words just came to me. So I
wrote the song when he was fifteen. He's with a girl. Yep,
he's trying to keep her from going home. In the lyrics,
he's like, your daddy won't mind. Right, So he develops
a couple of bands. They get out of high school.
They start touring around, not having a whole lot of
success at that time. They're called the Royal Charms. But
then as they're touring, their station wagon breaks down in Bluefield,
West Virginia, if you'd like to know which not too
far away they would be recording Dirty Dancing. Twenty something
years later, they come across a British built Ford car
known as the Zodiac, and that is where they got
their name. Maurice Williams and the Zodiac.
Speaker 2: Oh cool. Now.
Speaker 1: They had a song called Little Darling, which you've probably
heard before but not by then got covered by another
Canadian group called the Diamonds, and then they weren't really
super excited about stay. But this ten year old girl
here's the song and says that song is incredible, and
it's her causes them to go, you know what, we
should go ahead and put that on the demo tape
that we send out, and that's how the song came famous.
Speaker 2: The ten year old girl loved it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They recorded it in nineteen fifty nine in a Quanta Hut, which,
by the way, but Shirley can't be serious podcast studio
is also inside a Quantza hut. It's a great place
to record.
Speaker 2: We're Fancy, We're Fancy. This is the shortest number one
song in Billboard history. In history.
Speaker 1: It's so short that it was made a part of
another longer song by Jackson Brown later on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jackson Brown played it at the end of all
of his concerts. I thought that was kind of a
cool The Four Seasons have covered this YEP. I listened
to Cindy Lapper's version last night. It's good good, It's
a good song. YEP.
Speaker 1: I like the song, but it's been over for like
three four minutes ago, so probably time to move on
to our next song.
Speaker 2: Last song on side one.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is obviously not a sixty song, right, this
is a modern song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was released as a single. I didn't
know that, really, I did not know that either.
Speaker 1: This was one of the ones that was one of
the four that were released as a single, because I
remember I was like, I know that I've heard the
song on the radio before, but because it was released
as a single. Now it's by a lady named Mary Clayton.
She spells her name m E r R Y. Do
you know what she's born on?
Speaker 2: Christmas Day? Merry Christmas, Mary freaking Christmas.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: If only she had been in Dumb and Dumber, we
would have come full circle. Very this song is about
deciding to have sex for the first time. Yeah, it's
like driving around.
Speaker 2: I don't think I know. Yes, yes, we are going
to do it. Got her to stay. Do you know
who the person who is originally going to sing the song,
Mary Wells Okay, okay. Now you may remember her from
the song My Guy, Yeah, my guy. Yeah. She was
hired to record the song, but when she came to
the studio to cut it, she had a horrible cold
and then she just said, forget this crap, I'm out
of here and just left. So the producer's like sitting
there ready to record. He's got nobody record it. Well,
one of the backup singers is Mary Clayton okay, and
he's like, oh god, now I'm gonna have to explain this,
and he's like Mary Wells, Mary Clayton close enough they
won't even notice Hi, this is Mary. Yeah. So because
their names were the same, he didn't have to do
any explaining and he just said, Mary Clayton, would you
like to sing this song? She's like yes, yes, Okay,
that's awesome. Now wait a minute, I got I got
to play this for you. Because when I saw the
name Mary Clayton, I knew exactly who it was, and
you're saying you don't know who this is. Yeah, okay,
let me play this song for you. We talked about
it on our Good Fellow's episode, Yes we did. So
this is Give Me Shelter by the Stones. What do
you got? Okay? So Mary Clayton in the sixties when
Gimme Shelter was being recorded, yep, got a call in
the middle of the night. Her producer's like, hey, these
guys are in from England. They're the Rolling something or others.
We're not really sure who they are.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to be opening up for the Ronettes exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: So they're recording the song and they want a woman
to sing this part, and so she's laying in bed
like crap, she's pregnant, like major pregnant yea. And her
husband's like, you need to get down there and sing that.
She's like, I'm not going. He's like, guess you are.
She's like fine. So she's stomping around. She says she
was really mad. She gets down there, they introduced themselves.
She's like, okay, hi, Mick, you know Keith, you know
who are you guys? Like, oh, the Rolling stones okay, great,
and Mick had written this part in the song that
he really wanted to be sung by a female, and
the words were rape and murder. It's just a shot away.
So she sings it with a lot of personality and
mixed like, yeah, that's perfect. Could you do it one
more time? And she's kind of pissed because it's the
three o'clock in the morning, right, So she says, yeah,
I'll do it, and in her head she's like, I'm
gonna sing this next version and I'm gonna blow them
out of this room. And that's where you get this
part right here. It's unmistakable. She is singing so hard,
her voice is cracking and breaking, and it's so passionate.
Speaker 1: So we get this incredible piece of this incredible song.
But it has a tragic ending.
Speaker 2: Yeah it does. The next day she has a miscarriage.
It's terrible. I thought that was urban legend. I heard
her say that right from her very mouth. Yeah, that
the stress and strenuous nature of this song she believes
cause that miscarriage. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She's been a backup singer for literally dozens and dozens
of amazing acts. She sang with Clyde King. She sang
with Lenyard Skinnyard sweet Home Alabama. That's her, you're listening
to you sing in the background. She co starred with
Ali Sheety and Made to Order, Oh my gosh, he's seriously.
Speaker 2: Yeah and a little bit.
Speaker 1: Same year, she was a major character in the final
season of Cagney and Lacy. Oh and you Ready Yep.
In nineteen eighty nine, she recorded a cover version of
the song Almost Paradise with Eric Carmon.
Speaker 2: WHOA, that's a deep cut right there. Good job, I
had no idea about that, Okay.
Speaker 1: So one final tragedy though. Twenty fourteen, she was in
a car crash in Los Angeles, California, and both of
her legs had to be amputated.
Speaker 2: Tragic. When she woke up, the doctor was checking on
her mental state and he said, I just want you
to know I had to take your legs. She said,
can I still sing? And he said yeah, and she
said that I'm okay.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic, that's that's amazing. Well a great, yeah, that's
a great one.
Speaker 2: All right. It's stop on your tape player, kick it out,
flip it over side to dirty Dances sound turn.
Speaker 1: This This song is one that I recognized, But it's
not the group that I was expecting.
Speaker 2: It's not the singer that I was expecting. Right, I looked.
Speaker 1: I can't figure out where the song is in them.
Speaker 2: I don't remember. Yeah, I don't remember. I'm not really sure.
Speaker 1: And obviously there was something where they had to get
a different group to sing the song because this is
not the sixties.
Speaker 2: Version of the song.
Speaker 1: But so on the album, we're gonna talk about it, Okay,
let's go all right. So this song was originally recorded
by a female singer named Leslie Gore. She recorded it
when she was only seventeen years old, but she had
already had two mega hits before that tell Me. At sixteen,
she had had It's My Party, which was a number
one hit in nineteen sixty three, Yes, followed up by
another top forty hit called Judy's Turn to Cry, and
then she comes out with you Don't Own Me as
her third big hit. All by the time that she's
turned seventeen.
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
Speaker 1: This song is like women's power song before you had
this real big feminist movement that occurred, expresses like emancipation
and says, hey, you don't own me. I get to
do what I want to do, and you don't tell me,
and you don't put me in a place I wonder.
Speaker 2: Phil Spector wrote this song I don't know. I think
somebody came up to her and says, nobody puts baby
in the corner. She said, you're right now. This song
reached number two February first, nineteen sixty four. Yeah, the
number one song that could not overcome I Want to
Hold Your Hand by the Beatles. There you go.
Speaker 1: So this song was covered by a group called the
Blow Monkeys. I'm not familiar with these guys. They are
a UK band and they've had a few hits.
Speaker 2: I remember one song that they had in the eighties
that was pretty big. Yeah, in eighty six called Digging
Your Scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was on their second album, Animal Magic, which
got to number twenty one on the UK Album's chart.
It got attention because it was talking about the backlash
against gay people, with AIDS being a pandemic at the time. Okay,
So January of eighty seven, before Dirty Dancing comes out,
they released their third album called She Was Only a
Grocer's Daughter, which is a reference to the Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher.
Speaker 2: At the time okay. It got to.
Speaker 1: Number twenty in the UK, and then it got to
number five in the UK and number twenty eight in Italy.
Wasn't released in the United States and so it didn't
chart there, but it was featured in a movie, Police
Academy four Citizens on Patrol.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love the Police Academy movies. That's fantastic. Yeah, Hey,
I'll tell you who did cover this? Yeah? Jone Jet
released a cover of this song as her first solo
single in nineteen seventy nine, which is kind of cool
in itself. But the B side of that single, uh
huh was an early version of I Love rock and Roll? Nice?
How about that? That's awesome. Hey, I'll tell you where
I know this song from. And this is gonna be weird.
Maybe it's just me. Yeah, But the NFL released a
commercial a couple of years ago dedicated to their line
of clothing, and Alyssa Milano sang the song why the video.
Speaker 1: Wowo Alyssa Milana, Yes of who's the boss fan? Okay,
we've done with this one. Yep, all right, I'm in
the moon for some country. You got any country on
this album?
Speaker 2: Well, let's see if we can oblige you here. This
song is unmistakable.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've heard very many songs sound
anywhere near the song, but it is one that.
Speaker 2: People just know. You just know. Hey Baby. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This song is by Bruce Channel Okay. He originally was
a performer for a radio program called Louisiana Hayride. Then
he joined up with a harmonica player, yes, which you
can hear in this song. His name is Delbert McClinton
and they were doing country music together and Bruce wrote
the song Hey Baby with Margaret Cobb in nineteen fifty nine,
performed the song for two years before they recorded it.
Recorded it in Fort Worth with producer Bill Smith, and
the song went to number one in the US in
March nineteen sixty two, held that position for three weeks.
Now this country singer gets to go tour Europe. Yeah,
and he was assisted at one of the gigs by
the Beatles Oh Wow, who were unknown at the time.
John Lennon, who had heard Hey Baby, actually had it
on his own jew box, was amazed by mcclinton's harmonica playing,
and legend is that Lennon got taught how to play
the harmonica or at least how to Play It Better
by McClinton, And if you listen to the song love
Me do, you.
Speaker 2: Can hear those skills play that for you real quick, dude,
you blow my mind. There you go. That's fantastic. So
this is the first number one hit on the Hot
one hundred with an exclamation point in the title fantastic.
There you go, love it. And this was used in
the movie when they were on top of the log
and they're working on their dancing in ballads. Yes, yeah,
so there you go. Okay, we're done with that one. Yep.
All right, moving on to the next song called Overload
by Alfie Zapacosta.
Speaker 1: This, okay, this was not on my playlist in nineteen
eighty seven, eighty eight, or any year thereafter. Okay, you
mentioned the singer's name is Zapacosta.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything else that he has done except
for the radio commercial jingle for Pizza Nova.
Speaker 2: Are you serious? That's it?
Speaker 1: That's all I got, Wow, recorded in the same year
that he recorded this.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well here's what I got. I got one thing
on this neat it to me? Yeah, all right. So
obviously they had a budget for this album and once
they got done paining Phil Spector, there wasn't a lot
left over, right, so they needed some songs. So Jimmy
Iiner had to look around and be creative, right right,
So he found this Canadian singer guitarist named Alfie's Apacosta.
He agreed to write and cut Overload for two thousand
dollars on way. Okay, there you go, two thousand bucks
for this one. Yeah, I doubt he got anything on
the back end either. How would you like to get
two grand and no royalties from an album that sold
thirty two million?
Speaker 6: Companies?
Speaker 1: Who would not like that very much? Feel a little
bit like Vincent Price and Thriller exactly? He did get
twice as much as Vincent got.
Speaker 2: There, that's true. Okay, we done with this one.
Speaker 1: Let's be done with this one. I'd be fast forward
and clear this one already.
Speaker 2: All right. The next song is a song called Love
is Strange? Hey, Jason, how do you call? Please do
not say that?
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me who the song is? Block Mickey and Sylvia.
Mickey and Sylvia. So Mickey is Mickey Baker born in Louisville, Kentucky.
His mother was black and his father, who he never
met was probably white, okay, thirty six. At the age
of eleven, he was put into an orphanage. Ran Away
had to be retrieved by the staff from Saint Louis,
New York City, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. This is this guy
has got some legs on, so he can move at
eleven or twelve or whatever he is. Eventually the orphanage
quit looking for him. At the age of sixteen, he stayed.
Speaker 2: In New York City.
Speaker 1: He worked as a dishwasher and a laborer, but when
he was hanging out in the pool halls, he realized
he could become a full time pool shark. That lasted
for a little while until he decided to change his life,
went back to dishwashing and was determined to become a
jazz musician. And he was going to play the trumpet.
And then he went to the store with fourteen dollars
and they said, well, you don't have enough. Would you
like a guitar? Oh, my gosh, And that's how he
became a guitar player. By nineteen forty nine, Yeah, he
had his own combo, had a few paying jobs, decided
to go out to California, but they were not receptive
to progressive jazz music in California at that time, So
he got stranded in California. Then he saw a show
by a blues guitarist named pee Wee Creighton. And he
saw that pee Wee Creighton was driving a nice car,
and he's like, hey, can you actually make money playing
this simple blues stuff? And he's like, oh yeah, he said,
So I started bending strings. I was starving to death,
and blues was just the financial thing for me, right then,
So starts playing the blues. By the mid nineteen fifties,
he's a music instructor and he has a student in
his class named Sylvia When you.
Speaker 2: Jesus and That's fantastic.
Speaker 1: He gets inspired by the musical duo of Les Paul
and Mary Ford and says, we should make a duo together,
and that is how the group Mickey and Sylvia form. Okay,
so they start doing tours together. They end up sharing
a bill with Bo Diddley. They hear Bo Diddley play
the song called Love Is Strange and they say, hey,
can we record that? He says, sure, go for it.
Single was released in November fifty six. It became their
biggest hit topped the US R and B charts and
was number eleven on the US Pop charts in fifty seven.
They recorded a second version of it, You know this one.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: They recorded a second version of it in nineteen sixty two,
and it featured a drummer on his first paid session
gig Okay. The drummer's name was Bernard Pretty Party, who
later went on to develop the Pretty Shuffle, which we
talked about as the inspiration for the drumbeat of the
Toto song Rosanna.
Speaker 2: It comes full circle show that is blowing my mind.
That is fantastic.
Speaker 1: They eventually broke up, but Sylvia had some success afterwards.
Speaker 2: So Sylvia had a song in nineteen seventy three that
reached number three. Okay, it's called pillow Talk. So I
listened to pillow Talk. She simulates an orgasm in this song.
In the seventies, early seventies. Oh yeah, here's the other
thing more important than that, uh huh. She creates sugar
Hill Records, which you may have heard of because they
put together the Sugarhill Gang, who had the breakthrough hip
hop song rappers Delight Again.
Speaker 7: You don't stop the record to the rhythm, Go back
and check out our Beastie Boys versus running in and
see episodes with Mister Deaf Dave David Wright.
Speaker 1: I remember having sugar Hill Records when I was a kid.
I remember having rappers to light off the sugar Hill label.
Speaker 2: When I saw that, I nearly fell out of my chair. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Her her maiden name was Vanderpool, but she married a
guy named Joe Robinson and so she was Sylvia Robinson
and he and she formed sugar Hill Records together in
seventy nine.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic. So I got just a couple of things
for you here. Okay. So it's the from the famous
scene in the movie where Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray
are actually like lip syncing the words to each other. Yes,
how you call your boy? I think it's still doesn't Dancer,
And they're crawling around on the floor and it's super sexy,
little air guitar going on. Yes. So eleanor Birsty watched it.
She's like, Wow, this is fantastic. This has to stay
in the movie. The problem is we don't have the
budget for this song. Worse than that, they can't just
pluck it out like plug and play with something else
because they lip sing too. Yeah, it's the best part
of the scene. And so everybody's watching it going, well, crap,
what are we gonna do? And so luckily they managed
to get the music authorized, but they were really nervous
for a little bit that they were gonna have to
cut this scene for financial reasons. Awesome. You know what
other movie this? Uh, this song appears in tell Me
I'm Not Kidding Deep Throat. In fact, it caused a
second resurgence of this song.
Speaker 1: The fact that it was in Deep Throat. Yeah, well,
I mean it was a very popular movie. There you go,
keep cut.
Speaker 2: How about that something? Okay, okay, onto the next song.
This next song is called where are You Tonight? Where
where are You?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 2: That's he haw, I'm sorry wrong song?
Speaker 5: I want.
Speaker 2: Where all right?
Speaker 1: This is a new song, another eighties hit because it's
a new song. This is by Charles Thomas Johnson, who
was one of the founding members of the Doobie Brothers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that blew me away. Those guys are the Doobie Brothers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he went on and had his own solo career afterwards,
and that includes him getting a call from jimmy Er saying, hey,
we need another song for this album.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what Jimmy Ier called him. He said he had
to go to a remote studio in Louisiana mm hmm.
And he said it was just a paper mill town.
It smelled bad, and he's like, well, who cares, that's
fine whatever. So he cut this song. When he turned
it in, had never seen a movie, didn't know anything
about it. Mm hmm, and then found out later, of
course the soundtrack was this massive sensation. Yeah. He said
he got a new BMW out of the deal. Nice.
So it's the Field.
Speaker 1: Though it's an eighty song, it has a feel very
much like the older songs that are on this album.
I agree, it's got a doopy, fingersnapping R and B
feel too sure. Yeah, moving on now, We're moving on
to a song that actually was an R and B song,
maybe the R and B song, This do wop song
of all doop songs.
Speaker 2: This song is called in the Still of the Night.
I was waiting for it.
Speaker 1: I was waiting for I'm like, if you don't play
White Snake right now, I'm going to not forgive you.
Speaker 2: I couldn't. I knew it. I knew it was coming,
and I'm glad you did it. Hey, I'm glad it
didn't disappoint, but we are covering that song later this summer.
Speaker 1: It's another hit from nineteen eighty seven and it's the
third Still of the Night. There was a Still of
the Night by Cole Porter as well. Changed the spelling
of night on this one so that those two songs
didn't get completed. This song is by the Five Satins.
They formed in New Haven, Connecticut in nineteen fifty four.
Started off with Fred Paris and had Lewis people, Stanley Dorch,
Ed Martin, Jimmy Freeman and Nat Moseley. They didn't have
a whole lot of success, A little bit, not a
whole lot. This song was written by Fred Paris and
they recorded it in the Saint Bernadette Catholic School basement
in New Haven, Connecticut, February nineteen fifty six, just.
Speaker 2: After church one day. Can I use the basement? Sure?
Go ahead. This song is one of the only songs
to be released and charted three times as its original form. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It also has been released and charted by Boys to Men.
Speaker 2: That's how I know it from the nineties version of
the Boys to Men.
Speaker 1: I knew the song. I knew the song and the
Still of the Night. Well before this, I actually kind
of listened to fifties music, even before Dirty Dancing and
made it cool again. Okay, so I was familiar with it,
but I did not know about the Debbie Gibson.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Dabbie Gibson, that's cool. They didn't realize that how
good this song was.
Speaker 1: It was released originally as the B side to another
single Yeah. It was on a single called the Jones
Girl Wow, and it ended up charting at number three
on the R and B chart and number twenty.
Speaker 2: Five on the pop chart. Wow. Okay.
Speaker 1: In a case of painfully bad timing, the group's lead
singer was drafted into the Army right after the success
of In the Still of the Night, so they had
to reorganize again, but eventually he came back.
Speaker 2: I wrote this hit song and now I'm in the army. Yeah.
I did read that Fred Paris wrote this about a
former girlfriend. She moved away. He tried to contact her, couldn't,
So it's likely that there's a woman out there who
doesn't even realize that this song is written about her. Wow.
Speaker 1: Iconic song, the doo wop song of all duop songs.
You're Ready to move on.
Speaker 2: Okay, wait a minute, do we forget anything.
Speaker 1: We've talked about eleven songs, but there's twelve songs on
the album.
Speaker 2: What happened? I guess it's time to kick in the
finale and have the time of our life.
Speaker 4: No time like this, people guess us he's such.
Speaker 6: And Okay, we knew that we skipped it.
Speaker 2: Everybody, we knew we skipped it. But how do you
not put this song at the end. This belongs at
the end. Is the finale. It is the finale. You
have to close with this one or else people will
be stampeding for the doors on our podcast. So once again,
this is a song that is written by Frankie Privett
and John Dinaicole. So here's how this happens.
Speaker 1: Jimmy Iner, who knows Frankie Privett YEP, calls him up
and says, I got a movie.
Speaker 2: I need you to.
Speaker 1: Write a song for it. And he's like, what's the
name of the movie, Dirty Dancing. He's like, oh my gosh,
Jimmy's doing porn movies again. He's like, no, no, no, no,
And in five minutes he tells him the plot of
the movie.
Speaker 2: Right, yes, girl, boy love.
Speaker 1: Dancing, all of that good stuff sixties.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He says, I need this as the finale song. Right,
this is gonna be our finale song. I think it
could change your life. Frankie Prives like, okay, he goes,
there's just one problem. Frankie Prive is like okay. He goes,
it has to be seven minutes long. And he said,
what goes, well, the finale is seven minutes long, So
the song has to be seven minutes long. He's like, okay,
all right, I'll give it a try. I'll see what
he can do. Right, And so he comes up with
the music for it. He's got this kind of idea
of what.
Speaker 2: It should be.
Speaker 1: He records that. He's listening to it in his car.
He calls Jimmy Ironer and said plays the track for him.
He's like, how does this sound? He goes, that's great,
develop that into a full song. So he's listening to
it in his car. He's on the Garden State Parkway exit. Okay,
and he's he's got this this. Jimmy Ironer said, this
song could change your life. And the only word that
he can think of is the end word, which is.
Speaker 2: Life, life, life. And then he comes up with it.
Speaker 5: I had the time of my life and the rest
is history.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic. That's a great story. Yeah, I heard that
when Jimmy Ironer called him that. He said, number one,
it's got to be seven minutes long.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, it's got to start slow, finish fast, and have
a Mama beat.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 2: By the way, it's got to be a hit because
you know, it's the most important song on the entire movie. Right.
Speaker 1: The version that they listened to when they were filming
the movie was the version that Prankie Privet recorded.
Speaker 2: It's his voice the demo right right.
Speaker 1: When you see Patrick Squaysey lip syncing the words, he's
lip syncing to Frankie Privet, not to Bill Medley.
Speaker 2: That's incredible. So Okay, when Jimmy Ironer is going around
trying to find people to record the vocals for this song,
knowing that it's the most important song, that it's the finale,
that you've got to knock it out of the park,
he goes to Donna Summer and Lionel Ritchie. You know
what they say, No, no, not interested, who's this movie?
I mean, what are we talking about here? Right now?
Speaker 1: It's important to note. They weren't sure that this was
going to be the song. Initially, they listened to multiple
tapes of multiple songs trying to figure out what the
best song for the finale was, right, and it's ken
you were to the choreographer who's listening to the song
with Miranda Richardson trying to find the perfect song, and
they go after tape after tape after tape and they
can't figure it out. And they get to the very
last tape and he says, and I hear it. Is
it just because we're on the very last tape that
I think that this has to be the right song?
Speaker 2: Right? And she's like, no, this is it, this is
this is the one that it has to be. Oh,
that's better. They also asked Daryl.
Speaker 1: Hall and Kim Carnes, Okay, now, interestingly, Daryl Hall had
covered The Righteous Brothers.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. Interesting, Okay, go ahead. So they said
no as well, because Dirty Dancing, we don't know the producer,
we don't know the director, we don't know the lead actors, right,
Patrick Swayze, who's that, right, Jennifer Gray never heard of her? Right?
And so they went to Bill Medley and they're like, hey, Bill,
you're the voice of the sixties. He actually was coming
off a very popular moment in time because top Gun
had sort of reintroduced him to pop culture yep, from
You've Lost That Love and feeling right all right. So
they went to him and he's like, no, my wife's
getting ready to have a baby. I taught promised her
I'd be there for the birth. I don't have time
for this. I'm not doing it, okay. So then they
went to Jennifer warrens Now she had done up where
I belong and right Time of the Night from the seventies. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: She's got a real strong voice, very strong.
Speaker 2: But she she's like, you know, when I looked at it,
there was three riders on the song. To me, that's
a giant red flag. She's like, I almost just said
no way, but she said she started warming to the
idea as long as Bill Medley was seeing with her,
And so Jimmy kept calling him saying did you have
the baby yet? Did she have the baby yet? Did
she have the baby yet? He's like, you have to
do this. You're the voice of the sixties. You have
got to do this. And when they finally changed the
recording venue from New York to La, where Medley lived,
Baby was born. We're coming to La. You gotta do this.
Jennifer says she'll do it if you do it. He
finally caved. So this is the bit the Blue Meat Way. Yeah,
and I never knew this. I've heard this song a
thousand times in my life. Okay. Bill Medley and Jennifer
Warrens are supposed to be the older versions of Johnny
Castle and Baby singing to each other. That's great about
the events in the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So little history on Bill Medley. Okay, we all
know him from The Righteous Brothers, right yep. But the
Righteous Brothers didn't have a whole lot of success initially, Okay,
he had been in a couple of other groups. He
ended up forming The Righteous Brothers with Bobby Hatfield by
mid sixties hadn't had a whole lot of success. But
in nineteen sixty four they appeared in a show with
some other groups at the Cow Palace in San Francisco.
The Cow Palace, The Cow Palace. Okay, there was a
conductor for the band for the entire show who is
impressed by them and said, I would like to record
you on my own record label. You know who the
conductor was, David Page is dead, Phil Spector, Phil Spector.
So in sixty five with Phil Spector they have their
first number one hit with You've Lost That Love and Feeling,
which was produced by Phil Spector, and then later on
they had another major hit with Unchained Melody, which then
showed up later in Ghosts the eighties with Ghosts and
Patrick Swayzy.
Speaker 2: Yes. Wow, I didn't even think about that, having a
Patrick Swayzey connection. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mentioned at the outset we're going to talk about
two murders, and so far we've only talked about one.
Speaker 2: Okay, you ready. Yes.
Speaker 1: Bill Medley met his first wife, Karen O'Grady in church.
They started dating in nineteen sixty three and they were
married at the beginning of his music career. They had
a son named Darren in nineteen sixty five, but ultimately
they got divorced when he was about five. Okay, fast
forward to nineteen seventy six. His first wife, Karen had remarried.
At that point, her name was Karen Class. She was
raped and murdered by a stranger, and in seventy six,
because of this, Medley stopped performing music to take care
of their ten year old son, Darren. The murder had
not been solved, and Medley employed a private investigator to
try to track down the killer. On January twenty seventh,
twenty seventeen, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department announced that
investigators used a controversial DNA testing method to solve the
murder that was at this point thirty years old. Forty
years old. Set, we're talking seventy six to twenty seventeen,
forty one years later.
Speaker 2: Whoa.
Speaker 1: They said that the case was solved through the use
of familial DNA, which identified the killer named Kenneth Troyer,
a sex offender and fugitive killed by the police in
nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, dude, that's incredible. I don't know where
you came up with that. That's great now, Yeah, a
little lighter note, okay.
Speaker 1: Jennifer warrens. Yes, she had smiled success as a solo artist, right,
uh huh. She seems to do pretty well when she
does duets. In sixty eight, after a few years in
musical theater and clubs, she joined the cast of a
television show called The Smothers. Brother's Comedy Hour.
Speaker 2: Ha ha. We've talked about that.
Speaker 1: Yes, in our Toto episode, which would later be hosted
by Glenn Campbell Marity Page. Yes, it's all first full circle.
But this is the tidbit that I love. Nineteen eighty five,
she recorded a duet.
Speaker 2: She's great with.
Speaker 1: These duets in the eighties. Huh with bj Thomas. Okay,
the song is as long as We've Got each Other.
Do you recognize the title? Yeah, okay, let me play
it for you.
Speaker 2: It's Bailey Ties, It's family freaking Ties. It's growing Pains.
It's growing pains. It's growing pains. There you go. Oh,
that's awesome. Way to go. She had a lot of
success with eighties duets.
Speaker 1: We've got the growing pains theme, we've got already dancing
and the best song off of the album. And we
have Joe Cocker from Officer and a Gentleman and lift
us Up where we belong.
Speaker 2: Man. Those are a big time huge. Those are a
big time huge. Speaking of duets, I mentioned that the
album came out a month before the movie. Okay, yep,
and they dropped the song I've Had the Time of
my Life a week or so before the scheduled released
of the movie. Well, the movie was delayed by about
a month, and so Time of My Life is out
there just kind of hanging unboosted by the movie, right,
and it's kind of floundering. It's not really doing anything
like it hit the charts. But then it's starting to
drop and nothing really happening, and kind of landed with
a dud, right, which blows me away until a month
later when the movie came out. Bill Bedley said he
was actually at the release party of the movie and
they were already already talking about this second single to
drop and he's like, I haven't even given this a
chance yet, guys, yeah, okay, But so it almost fell
off the charts. So once the movie was released, though,
the song of course took off. And he had just
done a duet with Gladys Knight for the movie Cobra. Yeah,
and that song was called Loving Unborrowed Times Game.
Speaker 3: In the scene, I mean, and so he's on the
road with the White's brothers and the DJ said, hey, man,
they're playing the hell out of your song right now,
and he's like, which one.
Speaker 2: What are you talking about? And the guy said, the
song with that girl, right and he's like, the song
with that girl. Are you talking about Gladys Knight? He said,
I don't know, man, And so he said. By the
time they got off the road, about two weeks later,
they were the number one song all over the blow.
He had no idea what was happening while he's unchore.
It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: So with this song, they not only hit number one
on the Billboard Hot one hundred, they spent four weeks
at number one on the Adult Contemporary chart.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: They win the Oscar for Best Original Song. That's the
third one, by the way, for Jennifer Warrens. They win
the Golden Globe same category. Yep, and they win the Grammy.
Listen to this when they re released the movie for
television audiences in January of nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the song charted again. It's a great song. It's
a great song.
Speaker 8: And no, and like I said before, if you don't
get a little bit misty when he does the lift,
there's something wrong with you.
Speaker 2: You need to examine your heart. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so sorry, we tricked you everybody. We took the
first song and we put it last. But how do
you not have that song as the finale and you
got to Yeah.
Speaker 2: By the way, this is still showing up in the
movie Crazy Stupid Love with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Yeah,
they do the lyft to the song. Yes. And then
in twenty eighteen, during the Super Bowl, the NFL ran
a spot where Eli Manning and Odell Beckham Junior do
the lift.
Speaker 1: Let's do it, Let's do it.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm ready, I'm gonna catch you. Come on one. Two. Yes. Oh,
I knew we could do it. What a final song.
It's so important to the movie, and it really is
the heart of the movie. It's a joyful song. I
feel like dancing, I feel like doing the lift. It
makes me feel great.
Speaker 1: Everybody, if you've listened to us this long, don't forget
to hit that follow button, don't forget to hit that
subscribe button. If you can write a review for us
that says, nobody puts baby in the corner or time
of my life. Yes, well, I mean that's pretty easy
to put in review, So easy peasy, put time in
my life, or if you are feeling like a challenge,
nobody puts baby in the corner. Put that in a
five star review and you'll be entered into a contest
to win one of our awesome metal cups custom engrave
with your name and the Surely you Can't be serious logo.
Be sure and check out our Patreon page if you
feel like giving a little money to the podcast. We
spend hours of time to do this and we want
to bring it to you for free, but if you're
feeling generous, we'd love the donation as well.
Speaker 2: Come back next week as we go track my track
through one of the biggest albums of the seventies, the
soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. We're Gonna be Beijian all
over the place. D D dot A fuck dude. Thanks guys,