"Turn The Beat Around"
In 1975, Robinson was providing vocals at a New York recording session for the album Many Sunny Places by Scott Fagan, a singer she had performed with in Greenwich Village clubs. Warren Schatz, a producer/engineer affiliated with RCA, was struck by Robinson's voice and saw her potential as a disco-oriented artist. Schatz invited Robinson to cut some demos including a remake of the Foundations' "Baby Now That I've Found You" which became Robinson's first solo release. Despite that track's failure, RCA green-lit Schatz's producing Robinson's debut album Never Gonna Let You Go. The title cut, a Schatz original, became a #10 disco hit but another album track, "Turn the Beat Around," began to build "buzz" and was expediently released as a single, topping the disco charts on March 20, 1976. "Turn the Beat Around" broke on Top 40 radio in Boston in May, almost immediately topping the charts there. Despite failure to crack the major markets of New York City and Los Angeles, "Turn the Beat Around" reached the U.S. Top 10 in August, spending around six months overall on the Billboard Hot 100 and propelling the Never Gonna Let You Go album to #49. "Turn the Beat Around" would chart internationally, reaching #14 in Canada, #44 in France, #11 in the Netherlands and #12 in South Africa. The track would earn Robinson a nomination for a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
In 1976, Robinson toured across the United States promoting her hit tune, "Turn the Beat Around." She performed on all the major TV shows such as The Midnight Special, Don Kirshners Rock Concert, The Merv Griffin Show, Mike Douglas, American Bandstand, and Soul Train. She also performed at the top venues around the country such as the Boarding House in San Francisco, The Starwood, in Los Angeles, The Bottom Line, Felt Forum, and Carnegie Hall in New York. The original touring band consisted of Dan Pickering on trumpet and flute, Bill Cerulli on drums, Wendy Simmons on bass guitar, Nacho Mena on percussion, Vernie "Butch" Taylor on guitar, and George Pavlis on keyboards. George Pavlis would be later replaced by Joey Melotti on keyboards. The touring band members recorded four tracks on Robinson's second album, Vicki Sue Robinson.
Read more about this topic: Vicki Sue Robinson
Famous quotes containing the words turn the, turn and/or beat:
“The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me. I have accepted fear as a part of life, specifically the fear of change, the fear of the unknown, and I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back, turn back, you’ll die if you venture too far.”
—Erica Jong, U.S. author. In an essay in The Writer on Her Work, ch. 13 (1980)
“The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne
Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them. The oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)