Songoftheday 1/7/14 - I call my baby up on the telephone I got connected to a freaky zone, the conversation was strictly void said if you don't join the party go home...

Midnight Star - "Operator"
from the album Planetary Invasion (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #18 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8

Today's Song of the Day is by the funk/soul band Midnight Star, who came together from students at Kentucky State University and their friends at the end of the 70s. Their first album, appropriately titled The Beginning, scored them a minor R&B hit off the bat with "Make It Last" (#85). Their second effort put them in the soul top-40 with "I've Been Watching You" at #36 the following year. They didn't catch their big break until 1983 when their fourth set, No Parking On The Dance Floor, placed two singles in the top-ten on the R&B chart, with "Freak-A-Zoid" nearly topping the list at #2 and giving them their first minor club hit at #44. The other, "Wet My Whistle", did even better in the disco, reaching #15 at the end of the year (it also was their first overseas success hitting #60 in the UK).

In 1984, the band released their fifth album Planetary Invasion. The first single, the infectious "Operator", was written by producing bandmember Reggie Calloway along with lead singer Belinda Lipscomb and keyboardist Bo Watson, and it became their sole venture into the pop top-40...

"Operator" went to the pop top-20 in February of 1985, after topping the R&B chart for five weeks and reaching #15 on the dance club play list in Billboard.

The band would soldier on, placing a few more minor hits on the pop chart, the latest being "Midas Touch", which just missed the top-40 at #42 in 1986.  The Calloway brothers left the band shortly after, forming their own self-named band and having a huge pop hit in 1987 with "I Wanna Be Rich". Meanwhile Midnight Star would have more R&B hits, with "Snake In The Grass" making the top-10 as late as 1988. Two years later came their most recent top-40 soul hit, "Do It (One More Time)". That single's follow-up, "Luv-U-Up", so far is their latest appearance on the R&B chart at #58.

Up tomorrow: Reggie is into inert gasses.