Speaker 1: This is a podcast from Minute Media.
Speaker 2: 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 3: You think he's kidding, he is not kidding. It's incredible
the stories involved in this album.
Speaker 2: Yes, it really is. 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 Podcast.
Speaker 3: 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 it track by track, some
people might feel like the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, Why are
you cover 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 2: 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 3: 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 Black.
Speaker 2: Which we've done track by track.
Speaker 3: 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. Yes, number four is Dirty Dancing.
Here we are, we're checking this one off the box,
clicking this box today. We've got several others on this list.
And number five was Appetite for Destruction.
Speaker 1: Bang.
Speaker 3: We matched up one versus three, two versus five. And
the funny thing is 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.
Speaker 2: 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. And at the end, I think we'll probably
rank them all one, two, three, four.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: 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 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 3: 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.
Speaker 2: With a very 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 and the
soundtrack was number one. More Dirty Dancing was number three.
It's crazy, best selling album. That is crazy.
Speaker 3: People were nuts for this music.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: It dislodged Bruce Springsteen 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 2: 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 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. 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 one on the
Billboard two hundred album Sales charts and went platinum eleven times.
Speaker 3: One Thing I Want You to Put a Pin in?
Speaker 2: Okay Yeah.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah. 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 finals 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? You realize you said
no no on the movie.
Speaker 3: Loved the soundtrack.
Speaker 2: 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 3: Are you ready?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's jump in.
Speaker 3: All right, let's dive in.
Speaker 2: 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 Heiner. 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 Ironn 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 3: It's gonna be amazing. Yeah, it's fascinating stuff. Okay, we ready, Yeah,
all right? Diving into our first song on the album, yeah,
be my Baby.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, wait wait, I feel like we're forgetting something now,
never mind, let's just keep on going. Be my Baby,
Be my Baby. Let's hear it.
Speaker 4: Okay, hear this first drum beat.
Speaker 3: It's unmistakable, it's huge. It was an accident. Okay.
Speaker 2: 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 bah bah boom,
and so everyone wanted that beat.
Speaker 3: That's amazing story.
Speaker 2: Drop my stick and faked it.
Speaker 3: 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. Yeah, there's no.
Speaker 2: Real name for it. It's just the accident that happened
and everybody loved right. 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.
Speaker 3: I said, this is it too right? And He's like, yep, yep,
that's it.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. 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 3: Oh my gosh, we could spend a week here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. 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 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: 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 Rawnettes.
Speaker 3: 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 2: Yeah, the preview so that you're not so shocked when
you see it later on in the movie of the
dirty beat, there was a clear distinction. There was clean teen,
which is what Baby listened to before the night in
the basement, and then the dirty dancing, which was her rhythm.
Speaker 3: 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 CPIA tone dirty dancing scene,
the intro to dirty Dancing, like we talked about. But
emil Ardlino, Eleanor Bergstein, and Linda Gottlie watched that scene
and we're trying to figure out the perfect song to
play over that scene. They played four hundred songs.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: When they finally hit be My Baby, all three in
Unison were like, this is it.
Speaker 2: 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 wopie
kind of sixty songs that I knew I didn't realize
what kind of megaton bomb this thing was.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: 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, the higher movie,
right for our thirty seconds worth of.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: 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?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: You know you know I like you this right, I
love it.
Speaker 2: I love it? What is it?
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It's just interesting though, for whatever reason that at that
moment in time, sugar Shack was the hot song.
Speaker 2: It's the difference between hot now and hot forever?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: 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. Right,
convicted murderer Phil Spector, Right, he wasn't convicted at this time,
was well before all of that. 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 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: It was because of that echo that I had all
my oo oohs and uhah wahs and all of those
things that came from me practicing in there. She said.
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
Billie Holiday.
Speaker 3: Wow. Fantastic.
Speaker 2: 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. The Rolling
Stones were opening for the Wow. While they were out there,
they met the Beatles. This was before Beatlemania, This was
before nineteen sixty four, and everybody went crazy. And she'll say,
Beatlemania is what killed that doop sound?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: You know, like 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 3: Interesting.
Speaker 2: 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. So I'm going to go with.
Speaker 3: Option B terrible move.
Speaker 2: You could say that, Yes, you could say that.
Speaker 3: We could literally spend a week podcasting about this.
Speaker 2: So tell me what you know about the marriage of
Ronnie Spector and Phil Spector.
Speaker 3: Ronnie Spector wrote a book 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.
Speaker 2: How did he keep her from leaving me?
Speaker 3: He stole her shoes.
Speaker 2: He stole her shoes.
Speaker 3: He figured, if I have every one of her shoes,
she can't leave.
Speaker 2: This dude was obviously nuts from the outset nuts.
Speaker 3: Now he gets a lot of credit for the Wall
of Sound and all this other stuff. He produced, the mules,
He did all these wonderful musical things. He was also
a psycho, manipulative, abusive husband.
Speaker 2: There is a strong overlap between psychotic and genius, and
this guy was walking the line on that one.
Speaker 3: He bought a coffin with a glass cover and told
her if she ever liaked him, he would kill her
and put her in it and let everybody look at
her dead.
Speaker 2: 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. It was pretty bad. 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. It is really really crazy. And I
mean she literally has to escape by running away and
her mother has to protect her from this crazy man.
Speaker 3: Okay, I mean, we could spend a lot of time here,
but here's the thing that blew me away. Okay, So
set Ronnie Spectro 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 Guttenberg, Rosanna arkent Our, Cindeo Hall,
Andrew dice Clay. He's got all these bit parts in it.
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
as a woman there. Her name is Lana Clarkson. She's
actually the woman that Phil Spector killed and later went
to jail for. So Lana Clarkson was a struggling actress.
She had been in some sort of sword and sorcery movies.
She had been in Amazon Women in 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.
Speaker 2: No, they did not. 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
I'm gonna circle it back over to the song because
I'm gonna hopefully blow your mind speak a piece of information.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's go.
Speaker 2: Yes, So they are recording be My Baby. Phil Spector
has a friend of his over and his girlfriend and
they're waiting for the backup singers show up. Backup's fingers
supposed to be darlinge love. She doesn't show up. Okay,
maybe she's scared of Phil. 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?
Can she sing? 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. I just need some noise. The guy the
Sonny Bono.
Speaker 3: Share, Let's go. Where are you gonna get that information
other than the Shirley podcast?
Speaker 2: Thank you ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 3: That is fantastic.
Speaker 2: We'll be here all man, wait to go.
Speaker 3: 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?
Speaker 2: Could it be Be My Baby?
Speaker 3: It is Be my Baby.
Speaker 2: We like to throw it back to Moonlighting whenever we can.
Speaker 3: We love Moonlight. We got to talk about moonlighting with basically,
let's talk just briefly about the song take Me Home Tonight.
Speaker 2: 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. It was on all the time and
annoyed me crazy. And my Little Baby that 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.
Speaker 3: Song had a direct reference to that song about fifty
times in that song take Me.
Speaker 2: Over Tonight, and that's her singing, and she's in the
video she's doing the Oh she looked pretty good.
Speaker 3: She looked great. Yeah, she looked fantastic in eighty six.
Speaker 2: Yeah. 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 3: Well, so, at.
Speaker 2: One point she's complimenting Paul and she says, I love
him so much. He's like the Woody Allen of rock
and roll.
Speaker 3: It's a little 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 2: So without this song, we might not have had pet Sounds.
It's insane, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Brian Wilson was driving his car one day with
his girlfriend, ye, and he's driving down the road mine
in his own business, and on the radio comes be
my Baby.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: 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 all the sound, all that
is just blown him away. Yeah, and it literally affected
him for decades afterwards.
Speaker 2: It is an amazing song. 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 got to 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 3: Don't Worry Baby is a sequel that he wrote for
the Rawnets to make a sequel to be My Baby.
Speaker 2: Let's listen to Don't Worry Baby. Roopwork awesome classic. Yeah,
and I can totally hear the Ronettes singing that as
a sequel, but they said no.
Speaker 3: So the Beach Boys took it and made it an
instant classic for them.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I thought it was interesting. The DJ who played the
song when he got thunderstrucked in his car Yeah, wink Martindale, Okay,
he's the game show host from like Tic Tac Doe
and Oh my gosh, wenk Martindale, Oh my gosh. Wow.
So his daughter Carne Wilson, Yeah, from Wilson Phillips.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: She said that during her childhood she awoke every single
morning to boom boom boom.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: He compared it to Einstein's theory of relativity. We could
spend all day here. We probably knew.
Speaker 2: 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 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Talk about freaking man. Yeah, and both of them passed
away last.
Speaker 3: Year, right, I believe that's right? Yes, man. Dick Clark
called it the record of a century when he introduced
him Wow on American Bandstand, and now they use it
in Sealis commercials.
Speaker 2: That's the best segue I've ever heard. What's what's our
next song?
Speaker 3: Next song on the album, song number three is She's
like the Wind.
Speaker 5: She's not.
Speaker 2: Too much, she run to night.
Speaker 1: Next to Me.
Speaker 3: D This song is by Patrick Swayze.
Speaker 2: Patrick sways born in Houston, Texas, second child of Patsy Swayzee,
a dancer, choreographer, dance instructor, and like the dance person
in Texas.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: 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 place. Was a football
player hoping for a scholarship until he injured his knee
and wasn't able to play anymore, which.
Speaker 3: Is why he had no dancing on his acting resume.
Speaker 2: 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 made,
Yes it did, he said. He used it to channel
his self deprecating rage.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right.
Speaker 2: So he met in nineteen seventy a lady named Lisa Neeman. 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 3: Yeah. They stayed married until his death.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He said that she was the inspiration for this song.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: They were trying. 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 3: So Patrick's standing there and he's like, hey, guess what,
I've got a song.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, they didn't accept it, right, so he tried. I
had to get it put in on the Young Blood
soundtrack in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: So you've been turned down twice. At this point, when
they are filming Dirty Dancing.
Speaker 3: So they're like, well, yeah, we'll bring it in, dude.
Let me. Let's hear it.
Speaker 2: You know, Lisa got Leeb listens and says, I love it.
Let's put it down.
Speaker 7: Number I have anything.
Speaker 3: She's not the 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? Sure? 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.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: 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?
Speaker 2: Okay yeah.
Speaker 3: And then the next week She's Like the Win dated
at number three and got leap frogged Bye, Never Going
to Give You Up? By Rick Astley.
Speaker 2: Well he got Rick Roll, he did get rig Roll.
That's tragic.
Speaker 3: All right. 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 swayzeye all over
the place.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Do you know who the director of the She's Like
a Wind video is?
Speaker 2: I did not look that one up.
Speaker 3: Sir David freaking Fincher, Get the heck out of town.
David Fincher is the.
Speaker 2: Director Oh my Gosh.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Wow, and he's cutting his teeth on a Patrick swayze
love song. That's fantastic.
Speaker 3: What do you think of this one?
Speaker 2: 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 3: 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 2: 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 3: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3: Next song on the album is a song called Hungry Eyes.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the music on this is awesome. I gotta
tell you. I didn't dive into the intricacies of the
music on these songs. I just like listening to them,
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 3: It is adult contemporary, but it's fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I used to slow dance to it when
I was a kid in the eighties too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I bet this is on the Makeout List of
eighty eight.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. This song was written by Frankie Privett and John D. Nicola. Yes,
they also wrote another song on this album, which we'll
cover in a little while, 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 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: 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 3: 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. Ok So this is an
actual remake.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: 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 2: Now, Eric Carmon, I'll 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 Paramo 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 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 3: I remember the song when I was young.
Speaker 2: 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?
Speaker 8: Oh By, here's something I did not know though. Okay,
he based this song on rock Moninov'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 3: Okay, I gotta ask you. Have you watched the music
video to this lately? No, you're missing out.
Speaker 2: I have to say. 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 hair, a sequindy shoulder,
padded jacket. Yeah, and the big hair that every girl
that you knew in the eighth grade had.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well special.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: 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 plants
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 heead
would have a field day with this video.
Speaker 2: The original girl left in the middle of the video
to go play back up for Robert Maulin.
Speaker 3: I yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic. Now I'll have to go check that way
is awesome. 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.
Speaker 3: Love with count It's the threesome dance scene montage.
Speaker 2: 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 3: 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, the
same week that She's like to win hit number ten
is rocketed up to chart.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, moving on, all.
Speaker 3: Right, d So the next song on the album is
a song called Stay.
Speaker 2: 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 a 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.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: 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 3: Oh cool.
Speaker 2: Now. They had a song called Little Darling, which you
probably heard before but not by them, got covered by
another Canadian group called the Diamonds, and then they weren't
really super excited about Stay 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 3: The ten year old girl loved it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They recorded it in nineteen fifty nine in a
Quantza 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 3: We're Fancy, We're Fancy. This is the shortest number one
song in Billboard history.
Speaker 2: In history. It's so short that it was made a
part of another longer song by Jackson Brown later on.
Speaker 3: 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. It's a
good song.
Speaker 2: YEP. 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, last song on side one. Yes,
this is obviously not a sixty song, right, this is
a modern song. Yeah, And it was released as a single.
I didn't know that, really, I did not know that either.
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.
Speaker 3: Do you know what she was born on? Christmas Day?
Merry Christmas, Mary freaking Christmas.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: 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 3: 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 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.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 3: Now wait a minute, I got I got to play
this for you. Because when I saw the name Mary Clayton,
I know 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.
Speaker 2: Yes we did. So this is Gimme Shelter by The Stones.
What do you got?
Speaker 3: 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 2: They're supposed to be opening up for the Ronettes exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: 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. 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
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,
and 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.
Speaker 6: It's unmistakable.
Speaker 3: She is singing so hard, her voice is cracking and breaking,
and it's so passionate.
Speaker 2: So we get this incredible piece of this incredible song.
But it has a tragic ending.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does. The next day she has a miscarriage.
Speaker 2: It's terrible.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah. 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 yeah and a little bit. 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 part Carmon.
Speaker 3: WHOA, that's a deep cut right there. Good job, I
had no idea about that, Okay.
Speaker 2: 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. Tragic.
Speaker 3: 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 2: That's fantastic, That's that's amazing. What a great Yeah, that's
a great one.
Speaker 3: All right. It's stop on your tape player, kick it out,
flip it over side to dirty Dances, sontre.
Speaker 2: This this song is one that I recognized but it's
not the group that I was expected. It's not the
singer that I was expecting.
Speaker 3: Right, I looked.
Speaker 2: I can't figure out where the song is in them.
Speaker 3: I don't remember. Yeah, I don't remember.
Speaker 2: I'm not really sure. And obviously there was something where
they had to get a different group to sing the
song because this is not the sixties version of the song.
But so on the album, we're going to 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 3: That's incredible.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: I wonder Phil Spector wrote this song.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think somebody came up to her
and says, nobody puts baby in the corner. She said,
you're right.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 2: 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 3: I remember one song that they had in the eighties
that was pretty big. Yeah, in eighty six called Digging
Your Scene.
Speaker 2: 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 at the time. Okay, it got to 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 3: Oh, I love the Police Academy movies. That's fantastic. Ye Hey,
I tell you who did cover this?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: 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?
Speaker 2: Nice? How about that? That's awesome.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Song wow video Wow, Alyssa Milana, Yes of who's the
boss fan?
Speaker 3: Okay, we've done with this one.
Speaker 2: Yep, all right, I'm in the moon for some country.
You got any country on this album?
Speaker 3: Well, let's see if we can oblige you here.
Speaker 2: This song is unmistakable. I don't know that. I've heard
very many songs sound anywhere near the song, but it
is one that people just know. You just know, Hey Baby.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: This song is by Bruce Channel.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: He originally was a performer for a radio program called
Louisiana Hayride. Then he joined up with a harmonica player
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.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: 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 can hear those skills for you real quick?
Speaker 3: Dude? You blow in my mind?
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 3: 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 balance. 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 2: 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 zap Acosta.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: I don't know anything else that he has done except
for the radio commercial jingle for Pizza Nova.
Speaker 3: Are you serious?
Speaker 2: That's it? That's all I got, Wow, recorded in the
same year that he recorded this.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well here's what I got. I got one thing
on this neat it to me?
Speaker 2: Yeah all right.
Speaker 3: So obviously they had a budget for this album, and
once they got done paying Phil Spector, there wasn't a
lot left over. Right. So they needed some songs. So
Jimmy Einer had to look around and be creative, right, right,
So they found this Canadian singer guitarist named Alfie's Apacosta.
He agreed to write and cut Overload for two thousand
dollars home way. Okay, there you go, two thousand bucks
for this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I doubt he got anything on the back end either.
Speaker 3: How would you like to get two grand and no
royalties from an album that sold thirty two million?
Speaker 1: Companies?
Speaker 2: 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 3: That's true. Okay, we done with this one.
Speaker 2: Let's be done with this one. I'd be fast forward
and clear this one already.
Speaker 3: All right. The next song is a song called Love
is Strange?
Speaker 2: Hey, Jason, how do you call your.
Speaker 3: Please? Do not say that?
Speaker 2: Okay? Tell me who this song is? Bock 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 to move at
eleven or twelve or whatever he is. Eventually the orphanage
quit looking for him. At the age of sixteen. He
stayed in New York City. 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.
Speaker 1: When you.
Speaker 3: And That's fantastic, 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.
Speaker 2: Okay, so they start doing tours together. They end up
sharing a bill with Bo Diddley.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: 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 topp to the US R
and B charts and was number eleven on the US
Pop charts In fifty seven, they recorded a seconecond version
of it. You know this one? No. 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 3: It comes full circle show that is blowing my mind.
That is fantastic.
Speaker 2: They eventually broke up, but Sylvia had some success afterwards.
Speaker 3: 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 Sugar Hi I Gang, who had the
breakthrough hip hop song rappers. Delight said, did.
Speaker 2: You don't stop the report to the rhythm? Go back
and check out our Beastie Boys versus Running You and
see episodes with Mister Deaf Dave David Wright. I remember
having sugar Hill Records when I was a kid. I
remember having rappers Delight off the sugar Hill label.
Speaker 3: When I saw that, I nearly fell out of my chair.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: 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 3: That's fantastic. So I got just a couple of things
for you here.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: How you call your love a boy?
Speaker 3: Comeyer o love boy?
Speaker 9: And if it's still doesn't dancer, I simply say, And
they're crawling around on the floor and it's super sexy,
little air guitar going on.
Speaker 3: 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 scen too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the best part of the scene.
Speaker 3: And so everybody's watching it going oh 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.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 3: 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 surgeons of this song.
Speaker 2: The fact that it was in Deep Through Yeah. Well,
I mean it was a very popular movie. There you go,
keep cut. How about that Deep something?
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, onto the next song. This next song is
called where are You Tonight? Where where are You?
Speaker 2: Oh? That's he haw, I'm sorry, wrong song?
Speaker 3: Where you all right?
Speaker 2: 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 3: Yeah. That blew me away. Those guys are the Doobie Brothers.
Speaker 2: 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 3: Yeah what Jimmy Iner 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 the movie, didn't know anything
about it, 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.
Speaker 2: Nice. So it's got It's the field. 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. Yeah, 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 do
wop songs.
Speaker 3: This song is called in the Still of the Night.
Speaker 2: I was waiting for it. I was waiting for I'm like,
if you don't play White Snake right now, I'm going
to not forgive you.
Speaker 3: I couldn't. I knew it.
Speaker 2: I knew it was coming, and I'm glad you did it.
Speaker 3: Hey, I'm glad it didn't disappoint, but we are covering
that song later. This summer hit from nineteen eighty seven
and it's the third Still of the Night.
Speaker 2: There was a Still of the Night by Cole Porter
as well. They changed the spelling of night on this
one so that those two songs didn't get confused.
Speaker 3: Soon.
Speaker 2: 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 3: After church one day. Can I use the basement? Sure?
Go ahead. This song is one of the only songs
to be released and charts three times as its original form.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It also has been released and charted by Boys
to Men.
Speaker 3: That's how I know it from the nineties version of
the Boys to Men.
Speaker 2: I knew the song. I knew the song in the
Still of the Night. Well before this. I actually kind
of listened to fifties music, even before Dirty Dancing. I
made it cool again. Okay, So I was familiar with it,
but I did not know about the Debbie Gibson.
Speaker 3: Yeah, David Gibson, that's cool.
Speaker 2: They didn't realize that how good this song was. 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 five on the
pop chart.
Speaker 3: Wow Okay.
Speaker 2: 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 3: I wrote this hit song and now I'm in the army.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 9: Wow.
Speaker 2: Iconic song, the dou wop song of all due wop songs.
You're ready to move on?
Speaker 3: Okay, wait a minute, do we forget anything.
Speaker 2: We've talked about eleven songs, but there's twelve songs on
the album. What happened?
Speaker 3: I guess it's time to kick in the finale and
have the time of our life.
Speaker 5: No, the time life like this people, I guess us
where he's such.
Speaker 1: And all?
Speaker 2: Okay, we knew that we skipped it. Everybody, we knew
we skipped it. But how do you not put this
song at the end.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: So here's how this happens. Okay, Jimmy Iner, who knows
Frankie Privett yep, calls him up and says, I got
a movie. I need you to 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. Right, yes, girl,
boy love dancing, all of that good stuff sixties.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: 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 Privet is like okay, he goes,
there's just one problem. Frankie Prive is like okay. He goes,
it has to be seven minutes long. 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 He's got this kind of idea of
what it should be. He records that. He's listening to
it in his car. He calls Jimmy Ironer and says,
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 life, life, life. And then
he comes up with it.
Speaker 10: I had the time of my life and the rest
is history.
Speaker 3: That's fantastic. That's a great story. Yeah, I heard that
when Jimmy Aner called him that. He said, number one,
it's got to be seven minutes long.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, it's got to start slow, finish fast, and have
a Mama beat. Oh, by the way, it's got to
be a hit because you know, it's the most important
song and the entire movie.
Speaker 2: Right, the version that they listened to when they were
filming the movie was the version that Prankie Privet recorded.
It's his voice the demo right right. When you see
Patrick Swayze lip syncing the words, he's lip syncing to
Frankie Privet, not to Bill Medley.
Speaker 3: 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. Here's this movie.
I mean, what are we talking about here?
Speaker 2: Right now? It's important to note. They weren't sure that
this was going to be the song. Initially, they listened
to multiple tape of multiple songs trying to figure out
what the best song for the finale was. And and
it's Kenny Ortega, 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? But
I think that this has to be the right song, right?
And she's like, no, this is it, this is this
is the one that it has to be.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's better.
Speaker 3: They also asked Daryl Hall and Kim Karnes.
Speaker 2: Okay, now, interestingly, Daryl Hall had covered The Righteous Brothers.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Okay, go aheady.
Speaker 3: 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?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: 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 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: She's got a real strong voice, very strong. But she
she's like, you know, when I looked at it, there
was three writers 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. Come
in to La. You gotta do this, Jennifer says, she'll
do it if you do it.
Speaker 9: Huh.
Speaker 3: He finally caved. So this is the tibt that blew meaway. 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.
Speaker 2: That's great about the events in the movie. 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
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, the conductor was.
Speaker 3: David Page is dead Phil Spector, Phil Spector.
Speaker 2: 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 Swayz. Yes.
Speaker 3: Wow, I didn't even think about that having a Patrick
Swayza connection.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mentioned at the outset we're going to talk
about two murders, and so far we've only talked about one.
Speaker 3: Okay, you ready.
Speaker 2: Yes. 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 Klass. 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. Whoa. 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 3: Oh my gosh, dude, that's incredible.
Speaker 2: I don't know where you came up with that. That's
great now, Yeah, a little lighter note, Okay. 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 3: Ha ha. We've talked about that.
Speaker 2: 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. She's great with 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?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, let me play it for you. It's Bailey Ties,
It's family freaking ties.
Speaker 2: It's growing Pains.
Speaker 7: It's growing Pains. It's growing Pains. There you go, Oh
that's awesome. Yeah, way to go. She had a lot
of success with eighties duets.
Speaker 2: We've got the growing pains theme, we've got dirty 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. Man.
Speaker 3: 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, and they
dropped the song I've Had the Time of my Life
a week or so before the scheduled release 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.
Speaker 2: Like it hit the charts. But then it's starting to drop.
Speaker 3: 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, God,
I haven't even given this a chance yet, guys. 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 on Borrowed Time.
Speaker 1: In the scene.
Speaker 3: And so he's on the road with the Whitis Brothers
and the DJ said, hey, man, they're playing the hell
out of your song right now, and he's like, which one,
what are you talking about? And the guy said the
song with that girl, right, and he's like the song
with that girl, I 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 wheel. He
had no idea what was happening while he was untoured.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic. 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. Yep.
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.
Speaker 3: Listen to this when they re released the movie for
television audiences in January of nineteen ninety one. Yeah, the
song charted again.
Speaker 2: It's a great song.
Speaker 3: It's a great song.
Speaker 11: 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 3: You need to examine your heart.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so I'm 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 3: By the way, this is still showing up in the
movie Crazy Stupid Love with Ryan Gosling and Emstone. Yeah,
they do the lift to the song.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: 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 2: Let's do it, Let's do it. Okay, I'm ready, I'm
gonna catch you. Come on one two.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 3: Oh, I knew we could do it. What a final song.
It's so important to the movie, and it really it's
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 2: Everybody, if you've listened to us this long, don't forget
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Speaker 3: 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. Do it up, dude. Thanks guys,