🎵 AotW Jeffrey Osborne - JEFFREY OSBORNE (SP-4896)

[LPJim]

Jeffrey Osborne
JEFFREY OSBORNE
A&M SP-4896

This is the first solo album from Jeffrey Osborne, who played drums and was lead singer for L.T.D. before going solo.

TRACKS:

New Love 4:10
Eenie Meenie 4:23
I Really Don't Need no Light (#39) 3:40
On the Wings of Love (#29) 4:00
Ready for your Love

Who You Talkin' To 3:51
You Were Made For Love 3:11
Ain't Nothin' Missin' 4:09
Baby 4:18
Congratulations 2:56

Jeffrey Osborne - vocals & percussion
Ernie Watts & Larry Williams - sax
Bobby Lyle - fender rhodes
George Duke - keyboards

Michael Sembello, Charles Fearing & David T. Walker - guitars
Bobby Martin - french horn
Paulinho Da Costa - percussion
John Hey & Gary Grant - trumpet

Steve Ferrone - drums
Louis Johnson & Abraham Laboriel Sr. - bass
Lew McCreary - trombone
Arif Mardin - orchestration

Released June 1982 and available on CD
Billboard Top 200 peak position: # 49

For discography, biography and current tour information, please visit the official site:

www.jeffreyosborne.com



JB

 

[A&Mguyfromwayback]

So funny that he never had a Top 10 pop hit - he hit #1 on R&B singles and Adult Contemporary but only got up to #12 on the Top 40.....I think all his stuff was produced by the late great George Duke, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[jfiedler17]

Yup, George Duke produced this one (as well as Osborne's next two discs, Stay with Me Tonight and Don't Stop.)
This one's definitely one of the best R&B albums A&M issued in the '80s. And this - with the sole possible exception of 1984's wildly-underrated Don't Stop (with is the album that first turned me into a Jeffrey Osborne fan) - is also arguably the best full-length Osborne ever made. "On the Wings of Love," of course, became an adult-R&B classic and "I Really Don't Need No Light" likewise became a modest hit, but there's a lot of really enjoyable cuts among the other material, especially "Eenie Meenie," "New Love," and the heartbreaking "The Worst That Could Happen"-esque ballad "Congratulations."
I'd have to agree that it's extremely odd and shocking to think that Osborne never had a Top Ten pop hit as a solo artist. He did come dangerously close twice (on his own with "You Should Be Mine" aka The Woo Woo Song and as Dionne Warwick's duet partner on the gorgeous Bacharach/Bayer Sager-penned "Love Power.")
What's even weirder is that he never even hit #1 on the R&B charts as a solo artist until 1988's "She's on the Left," which wasn't even a Top 40 pop hit. Go figure.

 

[Rudy]

So funny that he never had a Top 10 pop hit - he hit #1 on R&B singles and Adult Contemporary but only got up to #12 on the Top 40.....I think all his stuff was produced by the late great George Duke, if I'm not mistaken.

Even stranger, despite his lack of a steady stream of hits, he is a very well-known name. Others like him have bubbled under and disappeared.

 

[LPJim]

Jeffrey Osborne still performs and appears at charitable events. He entertained the Knoxville (TN) Urban League at its annual awards banquet on Oct. 15, 2009.

 

[mr J.]

"On The Wings Of Love" was probably the biggest A&M single of 1982.I remember in Fall 1982-you could hear that song on ten different stations at the same time.Top-40,lite FM and R&B stations were all playing it.

 

[jfiedler17]

The funny thing is that "On the Wings ..." pretty much remains his best-known and most-loved song (at least as a solo artist, anyway), and yet it didn't chart all that highly! If my memory serves me right, it just barely managed to crack the Top 30. You would've thought that song came much closer to the Top Ten on the pop charts than it actually did. I think I hear it much more often on the radio than I do most of his higher-charting songs (even L.T.D.'s "Every Time I Turn Around," which may technically be his highest-charting hit but is one I myself seldom ever hear on the dial these days.)

Wonderful song, though. "On the Wings ..." was actually one of the first pop songs I made a point of learning after I took up piano. I'm not sure I could play it now (I never had the sheet music to it and pretty much picked it up by ear), but that was always a fun one to play.

 

[Harry]

Correct. "On The Wings Of Love" only made it to a peak position of #29 in November of 1982, but it did get tons of airplay. Just six months later A&M's Sergio Mendes went to number 4 with the similar-sounding "Never Gonna Let You Go" with Joe Pizzulo singing lead.

"On The Wings Of Love" was played often at our adult contemporary station in Philly as it fit right in with that easy '80s style.

Harry

 

[Rudy]

This song is in a similar vein to "One Hundred Ways" and "Just Once" by James Ingram, although Ingram's two hits (under Quincy Jones' wing) charted in the Top 20. These two (especially "One Hundred Ways") are similar in that they are instantly recognizable and still get a lot of attention to this day.

The chart run for "On The Wings Of Love" in the Top 100 lasted only 18 weeks. I would have expected it to have a lot more legs than that.

 

[A&Mguyfromwayback]

Maybe just too much of a similar thing..both "On The Wings Of Love" and "We're Going All The Way" sound to me like "Just Once" put in a blender, shaken up and put out as a new song.....

BC

 

[Rudy]

You've got a point there Bill... There was that trend of smooth R&B songs back then, and I could think of quite a few other examples if given a few moments.