Billie Jo Spears - I Will Survive
At first I was afraid, I was petrified
Kept thinking I could never live
Without you by my side
But then I spent so many nights
Thinking how you did me wrong
And I grew strong
And I learned how to get along
But now you're back from outer space
I just walked in to find you here
With that sad look upon your face
I should have changed that stupid lock
I should have made you leave your key
If I had known for just one second
You'd be back to bother me
Go now go walk out the door
Just turn around now
'Cause you're not welcome anymore
Weren't you the one who tried
To hurt me with goodbye
Thought I'd crumble?
Thought I'd lay down and die?
Oh no, not I, I will survive
As long as I know how to love
I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my love to give
And I'll survive, I will survive
(Hey, hey)
It took all the strength I had
Not to fall apart
I tried to mend the pieces of my broken heart
And I spent oh so many nights
Just feeling sorry for myself
I used to cry
But now I hold my head up high
And you see me with somebody new
I'm not that chained up little person
That's Still in love with you
And so you felt like dropping in
And just expect me to be free
But now I'm saving all my loving
For someone who's loving me
Go on, now go walk out the door
Just turn around now
'Cause you're not welcome anymore
Weren't you the one who tried
To break me with goodbye
Thought I'd crumble?
Thought I'd lay down and die?
Oh no, not I, I will survive
Oh As long as I know how to love
I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
And I've got all my love to give
And I'll survive, I will survive
(Oh)
Go on now go, walk out the door
Just turn around now
'Cause you're not welcome anymore
Weren't you the one who tried
To break me with goodbye
Did you think I'd crumble?
Did you think I'd lay down and die?
Oh no, not I, I will survive
As long as I know how to love
I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my love to give
And I'll survive
I will survive, I will survive
Billie Jo Spears (born Billie Joe Moore; January 14, 1937 – December 14, 2011) was an American country music singer. She reached the top 10 of the country music chart five times between 1969 and 1977, her biggest being "Blanket on the Ground", a 1975 number-one hit. She also had a large following in the United Kingdom with two of her singles reaching the pop top ten.
Spears was born January 14th, 1937, in Beaumont, Texas to Myrtie (née Smith), a homemaker who worked as a shipyard welder during World War II, and Carl Wilson Moore, a truck driver. She made her professional debut at age 13 at a country-music concert in Houston, Texas. She cut her first single, "Too Old For Toys, Too Young For Boys", while still a teenager, the song was released by Independent record label Abbot Records under the name Billie Jean Moore. Spears has also performed on the Louisiana Hayride at 13. After graduating from high school she sang in nightclubs and sought a record deal. She began performing as Billie Jo Spears after her parents divorced: Spears was the surname of her older half-siblings whose father (also named Carl) had died in 1935, leaving their mother Myrtie a widow.
Beaumont, Texas
.jpg)
Beaumont, Texas
Houston, Texas
Downtown - The City of Houston in Texas.
Spears' early career was orchestrated by country/rockabilly songwriter Jack Rhodes. Working out of his makeshift recording studio, Rhodes took it upon himself to provide Spears with material and clout in her early years. Spears moved from Texas to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1964. She gained her first recording contract with United Artists Records and worked with producer Kelso Herston. Her first singles brought her little success. Soon her producer moved to Capitol Records and she followed; the label placed her under contract in 1968.
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
One of Spears' first singles for the label was "Harper Valley PTA", but her single release was beaten off the presses by Jeannie C. Riley's version, which became a monster crossover hit; Spears' failed to chart. Her first hit came in 1969, when her Capitol Records release "Mr. Walker It's All Over" reached #4 on the country chart. It also reached the pop charts at number 80. The song told of a secretary who quit a job where she was unappreciated for her skills and encountered sexual harassment. She gained four more top-40 country hits during the next two years, but by late 1972 she was off Capitol and had two years without a charting release.
Jeannie C. Riley
Billie Jo Spears ~ "You And Your Sweet Love"
Billie Jo Spears ~ '57 Chevrolet
I wish you only knew all the days I've made it through
Because of you and your sweet love
I wish that I could count the times peace and comfort filled my mind
Because of you and your sweet love
You're what keeps me going the sun that lights my sky
The rose that blooms in winter the rain that cools July
Never try to tell me that it wasn't God above that sent me you and your sweet love
[ steel ]
Almost every night it seems you come walking through my dreams
Precious you and your sweet love
And tonight though we're apart there's a fullness in my heart
Thanks to you and your sweet love
You're the rock I cling to the star I wish upon
The water in my desert the anchor in my storm
Never try to tell me that it wasn't God above that sent me you and your sweet love
That sent me you and your sweet love
The 1957 Chevrolet is a car that was introduced by Chevrolet in September 1956 for the 1957 model year. It was available in three series models: the upscale Bel Air, the mid-range Two-Ten, and the One-Fifty. A two-door station wagon, the Nomad, was produced as a Bel Air model. An upscale trim option called the Delray was available for Two-Ten 2-door sedans. It is a popular and sought after classic car. These vehicles are often restored to their original condition and sometimes modified. The car's image has been frequently used in toys, graphics including video games, music, movies, and television. The '57 Chevy, as it is often known, is an auto icon.
Come and look at this old faded photograph
Honey, tell me what it brings to mind
It's a picture of that '57 Chevrolet
I wish that we could ride it one more time
I still get excited when I think about
The drive-in picture shows you took me to
But I don't recall a lot about the movie stars
Mostly that old Chevrolet and you
They don't make cars like they used to
I wish we still had it today
The love we first tasted, the good love we're still living
We owe it to that old '57 Chevrolet
Remember when we used to park it in the lane
And listen to the country radio
We'd hold on to each other while the singer sang
And we'd stay like that 'til it was time to go
Now it makes me sad to think the good old days are gone
Although our love is still as strong today
But the world would have a lot more lovers hanging on
If they still made '57 Chevrolets
They don't make cars like they used to
I wish we still had it today
The love we first tasted, the good love we're still living
We owe it to that old '57 Chevrolet
We owe it to that old '57 Chevrolet
We owe it to that old '57 Chevrolet
We owe it to that old '57 Chevrolet
In 1975, Spears signed again with United Artists Records, now the home to some of country music's pop-based acts such as Kenny Rogers. She returned to the charts in 1975 with "Blanket on the Ground". The song had been previously turned down by Nashville producers who feared controversy due to the phrase "slip around", though the tune was not about adultery. The expected controversy never materialized, and it became her only number-one song. In the United Kingdom, the song climbed into the top 10 of the UK Singles Chart in August 1975, reaching number six. Her 1976 country top-five record "What I've Got in Mind" proved to be a second major British pop hit for her, peaking at number four, though it did not cross over to the American pop charts. Spears had a third British pop hit, albeit a lesser one, peaking at number 34 with "Sing Me an Old Fashioned Song", a track that was just an album cut in the US.
Billie Jo Spears was a steady presence on the American top-20 country chart for the remainder of the 1970s with such hits as "Misty Blue" (a remake of the 1960s Wilma Burgess classic), "'57 Chevrolet", "Love Ain't Gonna Wait For Us", and "If You Want Me". The 1981 cover version of Tammy Wynette's 1960's hit, "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad", was her last voyage into the American country top 20.
Tammy Wynette
Spears continued releasing albums in the United States into the 1980s. By the mid-1980s, her overall success had tapered off. However, she retained a following in the UK, and remained a popular live performer there. Spears recorded a number of albums for the British market that had limited or even no release in the US. This level of fame in the UK was summed up by the magazine, Country Music People, during the 1990s, when their article described Spears as "The Queen Mother of country music."
Billie Jo Spears -- Rainy Days And Stormy Nights
Country Club - Billie Jo Spears - Livin' In A House Full Of Love
Billie Jo Spears - All The Love I Have (I Give To You)
Billie Jo Spears Too Much is Not Enough
In 1990, Broadland Records produced an ill-fated experimental album where 'wannabe performers' could, for a fee, record the second part of the duet. She told BBC Radio Merseyside personality, Spencer Leigh, in 1994, "The album never got finished and I don't know what happened to the money. It's pathetic and I'm very disappointed." She recovered from triple bypass surgery in 1993 and continued to tour for more than 16 years. In 2005, Spears released the album I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, and toured with the Irish country singer Philomena Begley in 2011. After Spears' death, Begley recorded an original song in tribute to Billie Jo and her career. In later years, she made her home in Vidor, Texas, near her hometown of Beaumont, where she died of cancer on December 14, 2011, at age 74.
Philomena Begley
Billie Jo Spears - Angel In Your Arms
Billie Jo Spears - Big Stick Of Dynamite
Country Club - Billie Jo Spears - Seeing Is Believing
Carrie Lucas - Dance With You (Official Music Video)
Carrie Lucas (October 1st, 1945) is an American R&B musician, born in Carmel, California. In 1976 she was signed to Soul Train Records. Lucas made six albums over seven years with Soul Train and Solar Records. Lucas was married to Soul Train Records and Solar Records founder Dick Griffey from 1974, until his passing in 2010. "I Gotta Keep Dancing" and "Gotta Get Away From Your Love" were the two hit singles from Lucas's first album, Simply Carrie, released in 1977. "I Gotta Keep Dancing" peaked at number #64 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1977. Lucas second album Street Corner Symphony was released in 1978. It featured The Whispers as backing vocalists. A single from the LP, of the same name was a homage to the 1960s doo-wop groups. The album was released on the record producer Dick Griffey's Solar Records label.
The Whispers
In 1979 Lucas released Carrie Lucas in Danceland. Griffey bought in Jody Watley (Shalamar) for background vocals, Lakeside (co-producers and backgrounds) and Walter and Wallace Scott (The Whispers) for backgrounds. Organist Kossi Gardner (1941–2009) wrote (and played on) the hit "Dance With You", which propelled the album to #37 in the U.S. Dance Album Chart. "Dance With You" gave Lucas her only appearance in the UK Singles Chart, where it peaked at #40. 1980's Portrait of Carrie was less commercially successful, although it did spawn three modest hit singles. The first 12" was a reworking of her first hit, re-titled as "Keep Smilin'." This was followed by "It's Not What You Got (It's How You Use It)" and "Career Girl." Griffey shared production duties with Leon Sylvers and Gardner.
Images Above - Dick Griffey
Lucas' next release was in 1982 and entitled, Still In Love. It was recorded and released under the banner of Solar Records and distributed by Elektra/Asylum. The album produced two 12" singles, "Men" and the more successful "Show Me Where You're Coming From, Sheila E co-wrote the album's title track. Her most recent album was released in 1985. "Horsin' Around" spawned four 12" singles; "Charlie," "Horsin' Around," "Summer In The Street" and "Hello Stranger." Her cover version of Barbara Lewis' "Hello Stranger" reached #20 on the US Billboard R&B chart. Lucas' last known recording was an appearance on the 1990 soundtrack to Lambada: Set The Night On Fire. She performed the song "I Like the Rhythm." Lucas decided to retire from the music industry and concentrate on married life and her horses. Carrie Lucas is the mother of Carolyn Griffey and Lucas Griffey. Unidisc Records in Canada has released a Greatest Hits package that contains most of her 12" mixes in 1999. Carrie Lucas released her first single since 1990 on May 15, 2018. The new single is titled 'Some Things Never Change' and is written by Carrie Lucas and Nigel Lowis and has been released on Solar Records UK.
Carrie Lucas - Me For You
Carrie Lucas - Southern Star
Sheila E
Carrie Lucas - Sometimes a Love Goes Wrong (Official Music Video)
Carrie Lucas - Danceland (Official Music Video)
Sheila E
Manhattan Transfer Walk In Love TOTP 1978
"Walk In Love"
(originally by David Batteau)
Walk in love
A sandy beach, we're barefoot
We walk in love
A time and place so sacred
Only love will see the magic we can be
We came, we saw, we fell in love
Two birds as one above
No need to conquer love
We came, we saw, we fell in love
Two birds as one above
No need to conquer love
Talking hands
We walk in silence but we have talking hands
They speak of feelings like our words could never do
My love, I shine for you
We came, we saw, we fell in love
Two birds as one above
No need to conquer love
We came, we saw, we fell in love
Two birds as one above
No need to conquer love
Laugh to laugh
We take our clothes off
Moonlit to love (to love)
Ooh, to love (ooh, to love)
We spread the blanket, lie down rising with the waves
And falling like a star
We came, we saw, we fell in love
Two birds as one above
No need to conquer love
We came, we saw, we fell in love
Two birds as one above
No need to conquer love
Formed: 1969 in NY
Genre: Vocal
Styles: Jazz, Contemporary Jazz, Vocalese, Mainstream Jazz, Vocal Jazz, Harmony Vocal Group, Pop/Rock, Adult Contemporary, AM Pop
Instruments: Group, Vocals
Riding a wave of nostalgia in the '70s, the Manhattan Transfer resurrected jazz trends from boogie-woogie to bop to vocalese in a slick, slightly commercial setting that sometimes failed to gel with the group's close harmonies. Originally formed in 1969, the quartet recorded several albums of jazz standards as well as much material closer to R&B/pop. Still, they were easily the most popular jazz vocal group of their era, and the most talented of any since the heyday of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross during the early '60s. When the group was formed in the late '60s, however, the Manhattan Transfer was a hippie cornball act similar to the Lovin' Spoonful or Spanky & Our Gang. The lone LP that appeared from the original lineup - leader Gene Pistilli plus Tim Hauser, Erin Dickins, Marty Nelson, and Pat Rosalia - was Jukin', assembled by Capitol. An odd and hardly successful satire record, it was the last appearance on a Manhattan Transfer album for all of the above except Hauser.
After Hauser met vocalists Laurel Masse and Janis Siegel in 1972, the trio re-formed the Manhattan Transfer later that year with the addition of Alan Paul. The group became popular after appearances at a few New York hotspots and recorded their own debut, an eponymous LP recorded with help from the jazz world (including Zoot Sims, Randy Brecker, Jon Faddis and Mel Davis). Featuring vocalese covers of "Java Jive" and "Tuxedo Junction" as well as a Top 40 hit in the aggressive gospel tune "Operator," the album rejuvenated the field of vocalese (dormant since the mid-'60s) and made the quartet stars in the jazz community across Europe as well as America.
The Manhattan Transfer's next two albums, Coming Out and Pastiche, minimized the jazz content in favor of covers from around the music community, from Nashville to Los Angeles to Motown. A single from Coming Out, the ballad "Chanson d'Amour," hit number one in Britain. Though Masse left in 1979 for a solo career, Cheryl Bentyne proved a capable replacement, and that same year, Extensions introduced their best-known song, "Birdland," the ode to bop written by Weather Report several years earlier. Throughout the 1980s, the group balanced retreads from all aspects of American song. The 1981 LP Mecca for Moderns gained the Manhattan Transfer their first American Top Ten hit, with a cover of the Ad Libs' 1965 girl group classic "The Boy from New York City," but also included a version of Charlie Parker's "Confirmation" and a surreal, wordless tribute (?) named "Kafka." (The album also earned the Manhattan Transfer honors as the first artist to receive Grammys in both the pop and jazz categories in the same year.) The production on virtually all was susceptible to '80s slickness, and though the group harmonies were wonderful, all but the most open of listeners had trouble digesting the sheer variety of material.
The group's 1985 tribute to vocal pioneer Jon Hendricks, titled Vocalese, marked a shift in the Manhattan Transfer's focus. Subsequent works managed to keep the concepts down to one per album, and the results greatly improved. Such records as 1987's Brasil, 1994's Tubby the Tuba (a children's record), 1995's Tonin' ('60s R&B), and 1997's Swing may not have found the group at their performance peak, but were much more easily understandable for what they were.
John Bush (All Music Guide)
1980 "Birdland" Grammy Award for Best Vocal Arrangement for Two or More Voices, Janis Siegel
1980 "Birdland", Grammy Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance
1981 "Boy from New York City", Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance By a Duo or Group with Vocal.
1981 "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square", Grammy Award for Best Vocal Arrangement for Two or More Voices, Gene Puerling.
1981 "Until I Met You (Corner Pocket)", Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Duo or Group. \1982 "Route 66", Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Duo or Group
1983 "Why Not! (Manhattan Carnival)", Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Duo or Group
1986 Vocalese, Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Duo or Group
1986 "Another Night in Tunisia", Grammy Award for Best Vocal Arrangement for Two or More Voices, Bobby McFerrin and Cheryl Bentyne, performed by The Manhattan Transfer
1989 Brasil, Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.
1992 "Sassy", Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Performance, Instrumental.
1998 Vocal Group Hall of Fame.
The Manhattan Transfer - In a Mellow Tone