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:: The Greatest Love Affair ::

In the past we’ve posted songs sung by TV game show hosts, and in the spirit of continuing that occasional tradition, I give you – the music of Chuck Woolery. Woolery hosted the heinous The Love Connection dating show in the ‘80’s, but he’d actually started out his career in the late ‘60’s as a musician. He hit the U.S. Top 40 briefly in 1968 with his band, The Avant-Garde, and a song called “Naturally Stoned.” I just downloaded that one off of Soulseek, and it isn’t too bad if you like soft, billowy country rock. He followed it up with a handful of solo releases between 1969 and 1971. I believe “The Greatest Love Affair” was originally released in ’69 on Columbia, though my copy is a promo from 1980 on Epic, by which point he was hosting Wheel of Fortune. I hadn’t known until today that he was the original host of that show before Pat Sajak took the helm. I really do gather up bits of trivial minutiae while doing lazy, half-assed research for these little music posts.

If you choose to download, I recommend that you stick with it and listen until the end. I say this because I picked this record up over a year ago, listened to the first incredibly boring minute or so, took it off and chucked it into a box of junk vinyl. Over the weekend, I put it on again and listened to it all the way through. I don’t want to ruin the experience for you by giving anything away, but there’s a bit of a twist and Chuck treats us to a big, soulful payoff beginning around the three-minute mark. And by that I mean this song sucks on a completely different level than how it starts out sucking.


Phil

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 01, 2006 at 5:48 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.