On This Day In R&B History. On July 7, 1963 the number one cut on the R&B chart was Hello Stranger by Barbara Lewis, which spent two weeks at number one on the R&B singles chart in Billboard, crossing over to #3 on the Pop chart. Hello Stranger is on my top 10 cuts of all time. A great song that has been covered over 50 times and Ive never heard a bad version. The History: Hello Stranger was written by Barbara Lewis herself, who was originally inspired to write a song with that title while working gigs in Detroit with her musician father: “I would make the circuit with my dad and people would yell out: ‘Hey stranger, hello stranger, it’s been a long time’. The song is notable because its title comprises the first two words of the lyrics but is never at any point repeated throughout the rest of the song. Lewis recorded Hello Stranger at Chess Studios in Chicago in January 1963. The tracks producer Ollie McLaughlin recruited the Dells to provide the background vocals. The arrangement by Riley Hampton - then working with Etta James - featured a signature organ riff provided by keyboardist John Young. The track was completed after thirteen takes. Lewis would recall that, on hearing the playback of the finished track, Dells member Chuck Barksdale kept jumping up and down and saying, ‘It’s a hit, it’s a hit.’...I didn’t really know. It was all new to me.” McLaughlin flew to New York City to pitch Hello Stranger to Atlantic Records, who had picked up Lewis previous two singles for national release. Atlantic optioned Hello Stranger but then had second thoughts on the viability of releasing such an unusual track. The ascendancy of Our Day Will Come by Ruby & the Romantics to the top of the Pop and R&B charts in March 1963 motivated Atlantic to release Hello Stranger that month; Entering the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1963, the track took another month to reach the Top 40. Impelled by its #1 status in St Louis MO, it entered the Billboard Top Ten that June for a five week stay. Other versions In 1966 Ollie McLaughlin had the group the Capitols - who he discovered at a local dance headlined by Barbara Lewis - record Hello Stranger to be the B-side of their #7 hit Cool Jerk. Hello Stranger was also a 1969 single release by Darius before returning to the charts in 1973 when it became a regional hit for Fire & Rain, a folk rock duo comprising veteran Tucson musician Manny Freiser and Patti McCarron, Freisers then-wife who sang lead; their version, which featured Michael Omartian on keyboards, was arranged by Ben Benay who also played guitar. Benay had also been guitarist on the version of Hello Stranger by Darius. Manny Freiser would recall: Mercury [Records] released Hello Stranger as a single against our wishes. It became a legitimate hit at easy listening radio...Mercury then tried to cross it over to Top-40 radio...We started picking up major markets, mostly in the southeast...The single precariously bubbled under the Hot 100 on Billboards charts in spring 73: #106 one week, #105 the next, and so on entering the Billboard Hot 100 that June at #100 where it remained for three weeks and then dropped off the charts. Freiser - Although it had sold 70,000+ copies, Hello Stranger had basically been a turntable hit at Top 40 radio -- one that got played a lot, but didnt break. It thus became Billboard Magazines lowest-ranked Hot 100 single of 1973, ranking #573 out of 573 singles that made the Hot 100. In October 1976 studio group New York Rubber Rock Band recorded a dance version of Hello Stranger for the Brooklyn-based Henry Street Records; Colleen Heather was the vocalist on this version which reached #31 on the Dance charts. The most successful incarnation of Hello Stranger since the Lewis original has been the Yvonne Elliman version produced by Freddie Perren for Ellimans 1977 Love Me album; both Elliman and Perren deliberately sought to capture the sound of the original. Hello Stranger was released as the follow-up single to Ellimans #14 hit Love Me and was similarly successful on the Pop charts reaching #15; Ellimans Hello Stranger also charted R&B at #57 and was most successful on the Easy Listening chart where it was #1 for four weeks. Ellimans Hello Stranger was also released as a single in the UK; despite the precedent Love Me having reached #6 UK Hello Stranger was much less successful reaching #26. In the UK Hello Stranger did not have the cachet of being the remake of a golden oldie as the Barbara Lewis original was overlooked both in its 1963 UK release on London Records and in a 1968 reissue on Atlantic with Lewis hit Baby Im Yours on the flip side. Elkie Brooks first single, released in 1964, had featured a version of Hello Stranger although that singles A-side had been Brooks cover of another US R&B hit: Etta James Somethings Got a Hold on Me (not a chart item for Brooks). The Capitols version of Hello Stranger was also issued in the UK as the B-side of Cool Jerk three times: in 1966, 1969 and 1971 (the last two reissues credited to the Three Caps) with the single falling short of the charts each time. Yvonne Elliman did take Hello Stranger into the Top 20 in the Netherlands (#20) and also New Zealand (#12). In the US, Ellimans version went to number one on the Easy Listening chart and number fifteen on the Billboard Hot 100. In 1985 Carrie Lucas remake of Hello Stranger - which featured the Whispers - was a Top 20 R&B hit. The Supremes & The Four Tops recorded a version for the album Dynamite! in 1971. Other versions of the song have been recorded by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas for their Heat Wave album, by Queen Latifah in 2004 for her The Dana Owens Album, and by Diane Marino (featuring saxophonist Wycliffe Gordon) for her 2008 60s covers album Just Groovin. — with Alice Jacobs
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 21:34:59 +0000
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