Songoftheday 4/16/18 - All your friends are telling you you should have a fancy car and diamond rings, but girl you know all good things come in time...
from the album Private Line (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #37 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 1
Today's song of the day comes from Gerald Levert, who had fronted the R&B trio Levert during the 1980s with his brother Sean and friend Marc Gordon, and scored a top ten pop hit in the fall of 1987 with "Casanova". That single was from the group's third album The Big Throwdown, and even though they had landed eleven top ten R&B hits up to 1991, including five #1's, only that one had even made a dent on the pop Hot 100. Even though Gerald kept Levert active, he also started his own solo recording career, releasing his first album Private Line in October of 1991. The first single from the album, the groovy title track "Private Line", spent a week at #1 on Billboard's R&B chart, but missed the pop list completely. The second release from the record paired Gerald with his father Eddie, who has been a member of the classic soul group the O'Jays since 1958; in 1973 they topped the pop chart with "Love Train". The result of this father/son pairing would be the ballad "Baby Hold On To Me". Written by Gerald with producer Tony Nicolas, it would be his second soul chart-topper, but his first credited as a solo act. With a sound lifted from Atlantic Starr's ballad playbook, the music video featured the pair singing in between home movie snippets featuring Gerald's mother...
"Baby Hold On To Me" became Gerald's first (but not last) top-40 pop hit in March of 1992. The song topped Billboard's R&B chart for a week. The third release from Private Line, the retro-doo-wop of "School Me", spent two weeks at #3 on the R&B list, followed by the rhythmic "Can You Handle It", which peaked at #9, but neither of those reached the Hot 100 pop tally. The following year, he would return to Levert and release their Just Coolin' album, which sent five singles into the R&B top-20.
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Here's Gerald and Eddie performing the song on Arsenio Hall...
...and lastly, father and son on Motown Live...
Up tomorrow: Dance-pop legend is somebody's sole requirement.
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