Reception
"Jackie Wilson Said" was released as a single in July 1972 in the US and August 1972 in the UK, with the rare and never again released song, "You've Got the Power" as the B-side. It peaked at number sixty-one on the US Billboard Hot 100. Thomas Ryan wrote in 1996 that the song was "denied its commercial destiny by never gaining entry to the upper echelons of the singles charts, a fact as unacceptable as it is inexplicable."
In reviewing the album for the BBC, James Young describes the song as "soulful and uplifting" and comments that "it's awash with lyrical hooks powered by his increasingly mellifluous voice, and backed with pumping horns and rhythm section. It also showcases his signature utterances and vocalisations, the do-de-de-doos and dang-a-lang-a-langs, which are pure homage to his soul and doo-wop influences."
Robert Christgau wrote in his review of Saint Dominic's Preview, "'Jackie Wilson said it was reet petite,' he shouts for openers, and soon has me believing that 'I'm in heaven when you smile' says as much about the temporal and the eternal as anything in Yeats."
Reviewer Scott Floman states that the song was the best of "four monumental tracks" on the album commenting that, "The joyous 'Jackie Wilson Said (I'm In Heaven When You Smile)' starts the album off with three minutes of pop perfection, thereby continuing his recent trend of beginning each album with a great concise upbeat number. This grand horn heavy homage to another great r&b performer is the best of the bunch."
Read more about this topic: Jackie Wilson Said (I'm In Heaven When You Smile)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
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“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
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