Rant #2,813: The Glory of Love

Yes, I overslept really badly today.
 
I guess it had to do with the fact that this is the 2,813th Rant here, with that “13” number following me around and affecting my routine.
 
But yes, I overslept with not the greatest sleep of all time, but a good enough one that I feel refreshed as I write up today’s Rant.
 
Like James Brown once said, sang, screamed, hollered or yelled (take your pick, they are all correct) “I Feel Good!”
 
Now, what did I plan to write about today?
 
We have had a bushel of celebrity deaths recently—Dwayne Hickman, Betty White, Michael Nesmith, Sidney Poitier, and most recently, Ronnie Spector—and I wanted to do something different and out of the absurd in honoring their lives and their legacies.
 
I looked through my record collection to find any evidence of their presence, and while I did not find anything related to Hickman or White, I obviously did not go far to find items related to Nesmith and Spector …
 
But Sidney Poitier?
 
Yes, I even found some records related to him—somebody who never was much of a singer—in my collection.
 
Let me handle the easy ones first.
 
I was chagrined to discover that I had only a few records related to Spector, although the Ronettes are on several compilation LPs that I have.
 
I have a few solo singles of hers, and one is this one, “Try Some, By Some,” which came out in 1971 and reached #77 on the Billboard Hot 100.

 
The song was written by George Harrison—Spector had a long friendship with all of the Beatles dating back to the early 1960s—and the song was not only produced by Harrison, but also by Phil Spector, the notorious producer who was her husband at the time.
 
That is it for her.
 
As for Nesmith, I can really pick and choose what I have of his work, because between the Monkees, his solo work, and a project called “The Wichita Train Whistle Sings,” I have dozens of items to choose from.
 
So what do I want to highlight here?
 
Well, two things that I believe to be pertinent—and have little or nothing to do with the Monkees.
 
The first is this Japanese picture sleeve of his second single with the First National Band, his backing band after he left the Monkees.

 
“Silver Moon” is another good slice of what he was doing back then, a conglomeration of rock, pop and country, which was a bit before its time in 1970, and wouldn’t really become popular until later in the decade when the Eagles soared to new heights doing just about the same type of music.
 
I like the sleeve because it shows the entire band on the front, not just Nesmith.
 
The back (not shown) shows the lyrics of both sides of the record—“Lady of the Valley” is the B side—in both English and Japanese.
 
Pretty nifty indeed.
 
Then we have his solo single, “Rio,” one of the most important 45s that may have ever been released that few know about or have even heard of.

 
Released in 1977, the single was basically the song backing the video that he made, not the other way around, which was a revolutionary thought for the period before MTV.
 
He had this idea to have videos made of songs—no, he wasn’t the first one ot have this thought by a long shot, but he was the first one to view it in another dimension, so to speak—and this video led to others, led to his late night show “Pop Flicks,” which directly led to the creation of Music Television, or MTV, just a few years later, his brainchild and his idea that Viacom bought, and the rest really is history.
 
And then we have Poitier, a non-singer who did warble a bit in a few movies, but really was not much of a singer.
 
How is he represented here?
 
Way back when, it did not matter whether a film was a musical or not, chances are that a soundtrack LP was released to act as something of a souvenir of the movie.
 
The thinking was that if you liked a movie, you would go out and buy the soundtrack, even if it was simply filled with incidental, background music.
 
This practice pretty much went on through the mid-1970s, when blockbuster movie soundtracks like those for “Saturday Night Fever” and “Grease” bringing soundtracks to new heights, virtually wiping out anything that wasn’t thought to be something that would sell millions of copies.
 
Thus, with so many movies during this period having Poitier as its star, his photo was featured on so many soundtrack LP covers, even if he didn’t sing a single note.
 
1967’s “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” was one of those, and as an extra added attraction, he is also featured on the cover of a promo single that came out of that soundtrack, which is pictured here.

 
As you can see, Poitier is with fetching Katharine Houghton on the cover, and Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy are there too.

"The Glory of Love" by Frank DeVol is heard throughout the film.
 
So there you have it. I covered my bases even with Poitier, and I think you would agree that there is some interesting stuff here.
 
Hopefully, I won’t have to add to that list in the near future.
 
Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day …
 
Hmmm, do I have anything in my record collection featuring Dr. King … ?