THE MANHATTANS ALBUM

                    THE MANHATTANS – part 3 (1971 – 1979)

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  In the spring of 1976, right behind Kiss and Say Goodbye, Columbia released the third, self-titled album by the group on the label.  Carried by the huge hit single, the album peaked at # 6-soul and # 16-pop, which still today is the highest Billboard’s “TOP LPs” position for the group.  It stayed on the charts for half a year and became their first gold album, another remarkable achievement for the group.  Sonny: “With the success of Kiss, the LP was going to be big.  That’s the way we felt, and it went gold.”  It hit # 37 in the U.K. charts.

  The ten-track set was produced by both Manhattans Productions, Inc. & Bobby Martin, and the Manhattans with Bert deCoteaux.  Bobby arranged and cut his tracks at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia, whereas Bert arranged and cut his material at Columbia Recording Studios in New York.  Those days Bert was hot with Ben E. King and Supernatural Thing.

  Bert deCoteaux is a producer/arranger/writer and keyboard player out of New York, who has worked with numerous artists throughout the years.  Besides Ben E. King there are Sister Sledge, Diana Ross, Marlena Shaw, Millie Jackson, B.B. King, Bloodstone, Ace Spectrum, Albert King, Dr. Feelgood, Ramsey Lewis, Crown Heights Affair, Z.Z. Hill and Main Ingredient.  He passed away in 2005.

  Gerald: “Bert was good to work with.  He was reserved, but he knew his stuff.  He had a great taste.”  Kenny: “I thought Bobby Martin could have done that by himself.  As I said, there were some decisions we weren’t able to deal with.  I just felt that Bobby’s choice of material, the approach to his whole production and attitude were a lot more comfortable for me to work with him than Bert deCoteaux.  We felt like Bobby was one of the boys.”

  Bobby Eli: “In one session for that album Bobby Martin was standing there counting off the song and he poked himself in the eye with a drum stick.  He was holding a drumstick like a baton... but everybody laughed about it.”

  The album kicks off with a pleasant and airy Philly type of a dancer called Searching for Love, which Bobby produced and Mikki Farrow, Bruce Gray and Allan Felder wrote.  A romantic ballad named We’ll Have Forever to Love came from Sonny’s pen.  Sonny: “...just the feelings we all have, when were in love; that we will be with that someone forever, but it doesn’t always work out that way.  But that’s life, and you have to move on.”

  Take It or Leave It is a peaceful ballad, which Evie Sands co-wrote and which originally appeared on her Estate of Mind album in 1974.  Gerald: “I like that song.  I remember, when Mickey Eichner brought it to us, I loved it from the beginning.  And I really enjoyed listening to Evie Sands sing it.”

  Reasons is a song from Earth, Wind & Fire’s That’s the Way of the World album in 1975, and Bert produced it for the Manhattans.  Blue: “We tried to get a cover song on every one of our albums.”  The closing track on the A-side is Blue’s catchy and effortless dancer titled How Can Anything So Good Be So Bad for You, again produced by Bert.

  If You’re Ever Gonna Love Me is a classy and moody ballad, which has been cut by G.C. Cameron, Freddie North and Bobby Sheen, too.  The song was written by Frank Johnson, also known as Frank-o, a recording artist in his own right and a brilliant Southern soul writer and producer.  Frank: “I wrote If You’re Ever Gonna Love Me for G.C. Cameron on Motown Records.  He recorded it and released it.  Then Wishbone Productions pitched it to CBS, for the Manhattans.”

  Finally La La La Wish upon a Star was a poppy and melodic, “sing-along” ballad from Teddy Randazzo, Victoria Pike and Roger Joyce.  As a whole, The Manhattans offers melodic, beautiful and romantic music.  Also the two uptempo cuts are quite irresistible.  With smooth harmony, Blue’s monologues, Gerald’s leads and full orchestration, the group carved its niche and cemented their winning formula.  Kenny: “I thought it was a very good album.  I thought the artwork on it was very unique.  The photographer (Shig Ikeda) was very creative in his conceptualization.” 

                  RICHARD TAYLOR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Ricky” or “Richie” Taylor (baritone) went to Snyder High with George Smith in the 50s, served together with Sonny Bivins in the Air Force in Germany in the late 50s and became a permanent member of the Manhattans in the early 60s.  It was, however, right after Kiss and Say Goodbye in 1976 that Richard left the group.

  Sonny: “He left due to personal religious beliefs.  He became Abdul Rashid Talhal.  For a while we kept a mic-stand in his place on stage, but after about a year or so we knew he wasn’t coming back and the Manhattans became a quartet.  He was just a real nice, happy-go-lucky guy... hell of a singer, too.  Richard, Smitty and I were very close and it hurt me now that both of my dearest friends were gone from the group.”

  Blue: “He still sang on the album, but he became an orthodox Muslim, and his religion and his thoughts were not into music and the things that we were doing, so we gave him from April to December.  He left in April 1976.  He quit.  He didn’t want any more of it, he couldn’t take touring.  He was deeply into his religion, and we had to honour this, and we respected it.  So the four of us went on by ourselves and we had the door open for him till the end of the year, but he never wanted to come back.”

  Kenny: “Richard was a nice guy.  He was the heaviest out of us all.  Richard was more or less the street guy of the group.  He knew the streets very well.  He taught us a lot of things (laughing), and he loved to sing.  When we started working together, Richard was always the last one to come to the table, so to speak.  If we had to go somewhere and we had to be there at a particular time, Richard was the last one.  But once he got there, he was serious about what it was he was there for.”

  Jeanie Scott: “Richard used to come by the house and visit us sometimes after Smitty got sick and was out of the group.  Richie marched to the beat of a different drummer, you could say.  Just when they hit success, he dropped out of the group to become a Muslim and it was very confusing for Kenny and the fellows.  Richard Taylor’s wife, Martha Taylor, was a songwriter.  She wrote a couple of the Manhattans’ songs.”  I Can’t Stand for You to Leave Me on DeLuxe in 1971 was one of those songs.

  Phil Terrell: “He was a very nice person.  He was a lot of fun also, but he was more to the point of things.”  Blue: “He has three kids.  Everybody loved Richie.  He was very comical.  He had you laughing all the time – always doing cracks with people, fooling and joking with somebody.  On depressing days he would help us realise how far we had come.” 

  “On the day Kiss and Say Goodbye was released and we reached the top-10, he retired for religious reasons.  The longer we went and the hotter we became as far as travelling abroad and doing bigger things, he seemed to pull more in different direction.  He didn’t want to deal with the riffraff, the crazy things happening in the music business.  He was sort of pulling away, like being a minister more or less.  He didn’t want to sing anymore.”

  Richard left the music business altogether, and he passed away on December 7 in 1987 in Kansas City.  Blue: “We were told it was cancer.  We were in Japan, and we got a phone call from one of his brothers, who told us he had just died.  Before any of his family could get out to Kansas City, being a Muslim, they had buried him already.”

                      I KINDA MISS YOU

  Written again by Blue, as the next single in late 1976 they released another beautiful gem of a ballad called I Kinda Miss You, almost like a sequence to Kiss.  Blue: “It was like a follow-up, like an apology: I changed my mind.  I still miss you.  If I could get you back...”  This elegant song landed at # 7-soul and # 46-pop.  On the flip they had Sonny’s song called Gypsy Man.  Sonny: “It was mainly about the everyday life of being on the road as an entertainer.”

  In January 1977 the Manhattans performed at the Inaugural Ball at the White House for President Jimmy Carter.  Sonny: “What an honour! Not everybody gets to play for the President.  I had the pleasure of doing it twice, later at Christmas 1999 for President Clinton.”  Gerald: “That was great.  They had a lot of ball that night.  It was a big shot in the arm, and it was an honour for us.  We were the only one to perform there.  I think they had a jazz band or something before us, but basically it was us.”

  Blue: “Quite an experience!  Just to be considered for an Inaugural Ball was quite a privilege... one of the highlights of my career.”

 

                       IT FEELS SO GOOD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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In early 1977, the title song of the Manhattans’ next album, which had hit the streets already a month or so earlier, was released as the next single.  A tender soul ballad named It Feels So Good to Be Loved So Bad was again produced and co-written by Teddy Randazzo, and it raced to # 6-soul and # 66-pop.  Gerald: “That’s one of my favourite tunes, because that’s one of the songs that Teddy produced.  I loved working with Teddy.  Teddy played practically every instrument.” 

  “I remember one time, when I went to get the copy of a song to take to Bobby Martin, Teddy had an orchestra in his house.  He had a studio in his house, and he had an orchestra sitting right there in the living room.  They were putting strings and horns that night on a demo, finishing it up.  I remember when we gave it to Bobby Martin.  He said ‘what you want me to do with it’, because basically it was already done.”

  On the b-side they put Kenny Kelly’s pretty ballad titled Up on the Street (Where I Live).  Kenny: “It came from an experience of riding up on the street where I live.  I was in the manhole area and I was looking up the street, and I saw signs.  Everything in the song is related to me being in that manhole, looking at what I saw.”  Although in one article at the time it was printed that Kenny produced this song in Ohio on another group, he doesn’t agree with it.  Kenny: “If it’s produced on somebody else, they have done it without my knowledge.”

  Besides that title tune, the rest of the tracks on the It Feels So Good album were produced and arranged by Bobby Martin.  The Manhattans used the familiar pattern of their own group, Little Harlem, cutting the demo rhythm tracks and then Bobby arranging them for MFSB.  Sonny: “Great LP, and it felt so good, when we got a gold record out of it.”  Again decorating the album charts for about half a year, it crept to # 12-soul and # 68-pop.

  Sonny wrote Let’s Start It All over Again, a light and gentle slowie, which one could interpret as another chapter in the Kiss & I Kinda Miss You story.  Sonny: “It was just about being in and out of love, relationships.  I never meant it to be a sequence, but maybe it comes across like that.”

  Blue’s uptempo It’s You is a very pleasant and melodic, feel-good song.  Blue: “... had a little country flavour to that one, too.”  In the U.K. this song was released as a single, and it landed at # 43 in April 1977.  Blue also wrote a truly beautiful and haunting waltz called I’ll See You Tomorrow.  Blue: “that was a country song.”

  Sonny penned It Just Can’t Stay This Way, a slightly dramatic soul ballad.  Sonny: “There comes a time, when things aren’t going the right way.  You either live it, or change it.  But whatever you choose, it just can’t be like it was.”

  Another haunting and soothing gem of a slowie is Gerald’s and Sonny’s We Never Danced to a Love Song, one of Gerald’s favourites.  Gerald: “We wrote that in England. We were on a promotional tour.  I went to Sonny’s room one night, and again Sonny pulled out his guitar and started playing some melodies, and we wrote it in his room that night, came back home and recorded it.”  As a single in the summer of 1977 the song bounced up to # 10-soul and # 93-pop.

  Jeanie: “I remember when the Manhattans were rehearsing We Never Danced to a Love Song.  I was in the studio, where they practiced in Jersey City above the State Theater.  Another day, while I was over Kenny’s house chatting with him, I asked him about the change of direction.  He told me they were going a little for the country as Kenny Rogers had so much success with it at the time.”

  Blue’s Mind Your Business is a bit messy funk number and a big contrast to the rest of the program on the album.  Blue: “This was a message to people who get in other people’s business, who start bad rumours.  Columbia did the choosing of the songs, and they decided to put that on.”

  The closing slowie, Too Much for Me to Bear, was written by R.S. Riley, Sr. and it offers one of Gerald’s most impressive vocal performances on record.  Blue: “Bob Riley was our promotion man.  We would take his lyrics and put our own melodies to it.  He’d bring the song to us, just as a poem, and we would make the melodies for his songs.  I don’t think we took credit for writing on this, but a lot of times that’s what happened.  Bob passed many years ago.”

  Although a matter of taste, this writer feels that It Feels So Good is even better than its predecessor and considers it as one of the most romantic soul albums ever.  Almost all the melodies are written by the group members, there are a lot of Blue’s soothing recitations and to set you in the right late-night mood there are as many as eight slow songs on display.

                       AM I LOSING YOU

  In 1977 the group wrote songs for two movie soundtracks, “The Class of Miss MacMichael” and “Moving.”  Blue: “We went on a tour to Europe, and when we got to Germany they wanted to do a movie about a tour roadie.  They gave us the concept, and one night I just wrote the song Moving.  It was an overnight thing - real quick, as fast as I could - and they liked it, I guess, and put it on the soundtrack.  It was a national hit, only.”  Silvio Narizzano directed the ’78 comedy about Miss MacMichael, a teacher played by Glenda Jackson.  The composer/music score credits go to Stanley Myers.  A Manhattans song called The Closer You Are from that movie was released on their 1980 album.

  The very same year the Manhattans also received NATRA’s award, Outstanding Group of the Year, together with the Commodores.  Blue: “It was quite an honour again.  In fact, we were riding so high in 1977, it was unbelievable.  It was like a dream come true.  It was something that we, these high school guys, never visioned in our wildest dreams.”

  The group was also a popular live act, and throughout the years they had polished their stage performance.  Gerald: “We used to do white gloves and black light.  When you turned the lights out, all you could see is our hands going through the air.  We would do a choreography thing that we called ‘figure-8’.  It was very exciting, and the audience loved it.”

  Alvin Fields, Barbara Morr and Douglas Stender wrote the next classy ballad for the group - actually already 7th slow single in a row – called Am I Losing You.  The name Barbara Morr pops up later quite often in writer credits on songs for the Manhattans and Gerald Alston.  Blue: “It’s a terrific song.  We still get a lot of requests for that song now.”  Gerald: “After we finished that song, Barbara and I started writing together.”  In early 1978 the song flew in at # 6-soul and # 101-pop.  It was backed with Blue’s sweet, smooth and sentimental song named Movin’, from the German TV movie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        THERE’S NO GOOD IN GOODBYE

 

  The Manhattans’ early ’78 album, There’s No Good in Goodbye, wasn’t certified gold anymore and on Billboard’s album charts it peaked at # 18-soul and # 78-pop.  It was produced by Bobby Martin and the Manhattans and recorded at Total Experience Sound Studios in Hollywood, California.  Mixing was still done at Sigma in Philly, though.

  The title song, a powerful ballad with rich orchestration, was composed by Teddy Randazzo and Roger Joyce.  Gerald: “Teddy did the title song.  It never got play in this country.  It was one of those songs that Columbia just didn’t push.  It was a very big song for us in Europe, Far East, South Africa, Jamaica, all over Caribbean countries, but they never released it as a single.”

  Blue: “As sensational producer and arranger as Teddy was, he didn’t want to interfere with the marriage that we had with Bobby Martin, so a lot of times on things he had written he let Bobby hear his arrangements and collectively they would do it together.”

  On the album the title song was followed by a cover of the Casinos’ early ’67 hit, Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye.  This memorable tune was written by John D. Loudermilk, and on this version towards the end of the song the Manhattans burst into a fast and gospelly delivery.

  Tomorrow, a melodic slow song, derived from the musical Annie and it was a minor hit (# 74-soul) for Cissy Houston on Private Stock in ’77.  Blue: “She’s a very good friend.  We love her very much.  In Jamaica and the Islands they love that song, Tomorrow.”

  Share My Life is a smooth, middle-of-the-road slowie.  Gerald: Glenn Rockwell and Lloyd Donnelly wrote it.  Glenn was our percussionist at that time and Lloyd played bass for us.”

  The only fast track on the album, the sparkling Happiness, was written by Blue, and it was followed by one of Gerald’s favourites again, a tender and sweet serenade called You’re My Life, composed by Teddy Randazzo, Victoria Pike and Roger Joyce.  This is the only song on the album, where Teddy is credited as an arranger.  Bob Riley’s Goodbye Is the Saddest Word is a poignant ballad.  Blue: “Again, we put the melody to that.  He gave us the lyrics, and we put it together the best we could.”

  The final song on the set was chosen as their next single, but it only floundered to # 65-soul in the summer of 1978.  The song was a cover of Billy Joel’s Everybody Has a Dream, which derives from Billy’s platinum album called Stranger in ’77.  Gerald: “It was a big hit in the south, but not nationwide.  A lot of people down south loved it.  We were big in the South-East.”  The group took the song to church.  On the album the running time of their powerful and impressive delivery is 7:05.

  Blue: “When Billy Joel sent his rendition of it, we just added JFK and Martin Luther King.  We felt like we should honour our leaders in that particular song.”  Gerald: “I remember recording Everybody Has a Dream, and my voice cracked at one point and I told Bobby Martin ‘I want to do it again’, and Bobby said ‘no we’re gonna leave it just like it is because of the feeling you have on there.  You’ll be never able to recapture that feeling’... and it worked!”

  There’s No Good in Goodbye sounds almost as good as its magnificent predecessor.  It may take a little more time to absorb, but on this set there’s not a dud on display.  Gerald: “That’s the album that Columbia lost.  They didn’t remember that we recorded it (laughing).  That was one of our greatest albums, too.”  Sonny: “I like that LP.  We did a few Broadway songs, like from the play Annie.  That was a change as far as what we had been doing.  You like to challenge yourself sometimes.  I think it’s good for your craft as an entertainer.”

  Kenny: “I just felt that that album was too over the edge.  I think they were pushing to group too fast to the pop side and leaving the roots of what got us to where we were.  I think that album could have been laced with more things that sounded like the Manhattans.  You could have peppered some of those things into our albums later on, but at that particular junction I just thought the whole project was too pop.”

  At that time there was also talk about the group cutting a doowop album, but – although the Manhattans call themselves “progressive doowoppers” – that project never materialized.

          HERE COMES THE HURT AGAIN

  A beautiful and melancholic ballad called Here Comes the Hurt Again was released as a single in early 1979, but for some strange reason this gem escaped the hot-100 altogether and appeared on Billboard’s soul chart only, stalling at # 29.  This was the second Frank Johnson song the group recorded.  Frank: “Here Comes the Hurt Again was pitched to the Manhattans, from Wishbone Productions in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.” Frank used to work as a staff writer at Wishbone.

  The b-side, Kenny Kelly’s Don’t Say Goodbye, didn’t appear on any album.  Kenny: “It’s a ballad, and it never really got any exposure.  I wasn’t mad, but I just felt that maybe somewhere on the line somebody could have played it.”

 

                            LOVE TALK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three production units worked on the Manhattans’ final 70s album titled Love Talk (# 20-soul, # 141-pop), but no Bobby Martin in sight this time.  Gerald: “By that time Bobby had moved away.  He was already in California, when we did the last album with him, There’s No Good in Goodbye.”  Blue: “We were then finished with Bobby Martin.  Bobby became very religious and he moved away from Philadelphia and the riffraff of Philadelphia and the Sigma Sound Studios.”  Bobby was working in California for A&M and was busy with L.T.D.  Already their first joint album in 1977, Something to Love, was certified gold and after that they reached the platinum level with both Togetherness (’78) and Devotion (’79).  Another group that Bobby concentrated on those days was Tavares (e.g. Madam Butterfly on Capitol in ’79).

  Released in March 1979, on Love Talk the Manhattans had the Sweethearts of Soul backing them again.  Blue: “They were sensational.  We did our version first, and they came in and did their part.”  Gerald: “Those ladies were awesome.”

  Bert deCoteaux and the Manhattans produced together and Bert arranged two songs that they cut in New York.  The opener, After You, is a melodic and smooth ballad, which some of you may remember as Cissy Houston’s gorgeous rendition on her Think it over album on Private Stock a year earlier.  I Just Wanna Be the One in Your Life, on the other hand, is a lighter and more poppy song, which the Waters had cut on Warner Bros. two years earlier.  Gerald: “Mickey Eichner brought a lot of cover songs to the group.”

  Scorpicon Music, Inc. produced three tracks, which were cut at Sigma.  Blue: “I’m a November guy and Gerald’s a November guy, so in astrology we’re Scorpios.  That’s our sign.  Sonny and Kenny were Capricorns, so we combined the two names.  It was our production company back then.”  Dennis Harris was the arranger on one and Mike Foreman on two tracks.  Bobby Eli: “Michael ‘Sugar Bear’ Foreman was a bass player, who played in the studio with us.  He passed away some years ago.”

  Dennis arranged Sonny’s “crying clown” ballad named That’s Not Part of the Show.  Sonny: “On stage the public sees you one way, but at the end of the day you’re just a human being like everyone else.  You go through everyday life situations.  That’s what I wanted the song to project.”

  Mike had his hand at the title song, Blue’s toe-tapper, what you could even call a neo-doowop dancer.  Mike’s second contribution was a medley of The Way We Were & Memories.  Sonny: “Nobody does it like Barbra Streisand, but we had a beautiful arrangement on those songs that we felt the public would like to hear.  So we did it and it really turned out good for us.”

  The Way We Were was a gold record for Barbra in 1973, and Gladys Knight also used it in her ’75 medley of The Way We Were & Try to Remember.  Egbert Van Alstyne and Gus Kahn wrote the tender Memories as early as in 1915.  Released as a single in the summer of 1979, the medley struggled to # 33-soul.  Blue: “We got a good response from that.  It didn’t do good sales-wise, but it’s one of the most requested songs on our show back then.  We did it live.  Mike Foreman, one of the guys in the MFSB band and a bass player for the Blue Notes for a long time, co-produced it and he tried to get that live effect.”

 

                          WE TRIED

 

 

The third production team consisted of Jack Faith and the Manhattans, and the tracks were cut at Sigma.  Jack did the arrangements.  Gerald: “Jack was good.  You had a chance to express yourself as well.  He let you do your thing.”

  The Right Feeling at the Wrong Time is a beat-ballad, which had charted (# 58-soul, # 65-pop) for the group Hot on the Big Tree label in 1977.

  Devil in the Dark is a Mighty Three Music song, which verifies Philly quality of highest order.  This very slow and soft, moody song was written by Talmadge Gerald Conway, Allan Felder and Cary Grant Gilbert (you can read my feature on T.G. Conway in our printed paper # 3/2005).  Gerald: “Allan Felder and Jack Faith brought that song to us.” 

  Bobby Eli: “I remember Devil in the Dark.  I played on that.  My favourites among the Manhattans recordings?  I would have to say definitely Kiss and Say Goodbye.  Don’t Take Your Love is another favourite.  I guess Hurt would be the next.  We Never Danced to a Love Song is another one.  I like the way they did Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye.  That’s a good remake of a classic song.”

  New York City is Blue’s perky disco dancer, and as a closing track there’s another tune from Blue, a passionate and intense deepie called We Tried – arguably the cream cut on the album.

  Although the group had earlier threatened to release a disco album, they luckily stuck to their own smooth and sweet style on Love Talk, which contains actually only two fast tracks.  Sonny: “That album was a very nice combination of songs – medium tempo and ballads.  We had fun with the song Love Talk.  You can hear us reminiscing about how we would sing in the bathroom for the echo sound.  That was our effects back then, hah-haa.”

  Kenny: “I don’t think the album did what it could have done based on the fact that it was again too poppish.  I understand that the people, who were behind it, tried to take us over to where the money was, but then again you can’t throw a kid in the water that doesn’t know how to swim and tell him to swim.  A lot of decisions were made above our heads.  We had to go along with those decisions based on the fact that it wasn’t our money that was spent.”

  Gerald: “Love Talk was a good album.  It was showing our progression, because CBS wanted to keep us in the ballad thing, and it was a different side of us.  We were, of course, a balladeer group and that was a major part of our success that we stayed true to what we were doing.  We wanted to try the disco stuff, but it was refused by CBS.  They wanted us to do just what we’ve been doing, and through the whole disco era we continued to sing our ballads.”

  In the 70s the Manhattans had nine top-ten songs on the soul charts - One Life to Live, There’s No Me without You, Don’t Take Your Love, Hurt, the platinum Kiss and Say Goodbye, I Kinda Miss You, It Feels So Good To Be Loved So Bad, We Never Danced to a Love Song and I’m I Losing You.  Add to that still two half-a-million selling albums – The Manhattans and It Feels So Good – and you can talk about a golden decade for the group.  But that wasn’t the end of it.  There was still a huge hit waiting just around the corner...

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