Song of the Day - I stopped by to look around for things I left behind...

Eddie Rabbitt - "I Don't Know Where To Start"

from the album Step By Step (1981)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #35 (one week)

weeks in the top-40: 4

Today's Song of the Day is by country singer/songwriter Eddie Rabbitt, who travelled down from New Jersey to Nashville to find a career in music.His big break came when Elvis Presley recorded his song "Kentucky Rain" back in 1969, which was a top-20 pop hit the following year.  Rabbitt also penned Ronnie Milsap's first #1 country hit, "Pure Love" in 1974.

That same year, Rabbitt's first charting single, "You Get To Me", made the US country top-40. Two years later, he had his first of 17 #1 country hits with "Drinking My Baby (Off My Mind)". As cosmopolitan country and soft pop began to merge at the end of the 70's, Rabbitt's music found a home at mainstream radio as well, and his theme to Clint Eastwood's monkey flick Every Which Way But Loose became his first top-40 pop hit.

By the beginning of the 80's, Eddie broke through in a big way, having a #1 pop hit with "Driving My Life Away", one of his four top-10 pop hits. "I Don't Know Where to Start" was the third single off his Step By Step album, and while it graced the pop top-40 for a month, it hit #2 on the country chart and #9 on adult contemporary (soft-rock) chart.

The single would be has last top-40 solo hit, though he would have his biggest hit of the year on his duet with Crystal Gayle, "You & I". Rabbitt succumbed to lung cancer in 1998 at the age of 1956, and was inducted into the Nashville Songwriter's Hall Of Fame.

Up tomorrow - Check in with Martha Davis.