Songoftheday 1/6/13 - One day you're up next day you're down, she's got your head spinning around...

Jim Capaldi - "That's Love"
from the album Fierce Heart (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #28 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5

Today's Song of the Day is by the late British singer/drummer Jim Capaldi, who co-founded the great jazz/psychedelic rock group Traffic in the late 60s. In that band he and Steve Winwood would form a collaborative partnership that would last both their careers, pinnacled by the classic opus "The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys" (still one of my all-time favorite rock songs). In the early 70s, on a break from Traffic, Capaldi recorded his first solo album in 1972, and had a minor pop hit in the US with "Eve". Once Traffic broke up, his third set Short Cut Draw Blood produced his first top-40 single in Britain with "It's All Up To You", and the even-bigger followup, a cover of the Everly Brothers' "Love Hurts", which topped out at #4 on the UK charts in 1975. All these records featured Winwood on keyboards and backing vocals, as Jim had done for Steve on his first solo disc.

However the lack of a prompt followup left Capaldi dropped by his label, even after delivering a minor adult-contemporary hit in the States with "Good Night & Good Morning" in 1976. After switching to RSO (home of the Saturday Night Fever/Grease juggernaut), Capaldi dabbled in dance music, even scoring a minor club hit in 1979 with "Shoe Shine".

But after the huge success of Winwood's Arc Of A Diver album, Jim recruited him to more intensely collaborate on his 1982 album Fierce Heart, and the result, signified by the synth-driven first single, "That's Love", gave Capaldi his first solo top-40 single in America, with MTV playing the video featuring actor Eric Bogosian along with a cameo of Winwood and Capaldi...

"That's Love" spent over a month on the top-40 of the pop chart, but it was an even bigger adult-contemporary hit, staying at #3 for four weeks. It would be his last big pop hit, though in 1988 he had a #4 rock radio single with "Something So Strong".

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


Here's Jim on a TV appearance with inexplicable fencing from the 80s...It's gotta be Europe...

Capaldi continued on in music, reuniting with Traffic as well as co-writing hits for buddy Winwood as well as the Eagles' "Love Will Keep Us Alive". But unfortunate we lost Jim to stomach cancer in 2005. But this song and album is a nice companion to Winwood's best soft synth-rock.

Up tomorrow: Five soul siblings have a lot of romance waiting for you...