🎵 AotW Leslie, Kelly & John Ford Coley (SP-4841)

[LPJim]

Leslie, Kelly & John Ford Coley
LESLIE, KELLY & JOHN FORD COLEY
A&M SP-4841

John Ford Coley - keyboards, guitar, vocals
Kelly Bulkin & Leslie Bulkin - vocals
Steve Lukather - guitar
Michael Boddicker - synthesizer
Herb Alpert - trumpet

TRACKS:

Without You (Coley-L&K Bulkin)
Is it any Wonder (Bob Gundry & Michael Kelly)
American Boy (Gundry-Simon Waltzer)
Go for the Heart (Boddicker-Danny Poore-Richard Rudolph)
Somebody to Love (Stephen Freelight)
There's a Love (J.P. Pennington)

Long Distance Telephone (Michael Leeson-Peter Vale)
Come Back to Me (Coley-Kerry Chater)
Let's Go to the Movies (L&K Bulkin)
Love Has Got to Start with Us (Coley-L&K Bulkin)
Don't Wake Me Now (I'm Dreaming) -- Coley, L&K Bulkin
Children's Prayer (Coley & Abdu'l-Baha)

Released 1981



JB

 

[Dave]

Hmmmmm..., ANOTHER "newly discovered" Herb Alpert appearance!

Anyone know which song he blows on here?


-- Dave

 

[Harry]

He's on "Is It Any Wonder". Easily found info in our Guest Appearances section of our discography.

Harry

 

[Dave]

He's on "Is It Any Wonder".

Harry

Ah, yes...! And sadly "Is It Any Wonder?" that even that can't even save this dismal old fashioned-sounding MOR affair, that Coley did better w/ England Dan Seals the first time around...!

(And doing the stuff that Seals & Crofts were already doing better, and at this time broke up from doing made this idea even more bad...!)

No surprise that the newly discovered Leslie & Kelly Bulkin who debuted on Dan & John's Dr. Heckle & Mr. Jive make this mostly their album, hence the female vocals carry the album in a friendly pre-Madonna (Ha! You notice the pun there?) sort of way...

The songs have enough commercial potential that at least if radio play was rapidly drifting away from an AOR format more and more at this time, onward, then at least a few singles such as 'Without You' and 'Come Back to Me' (both similar in the message, as they must have been in sounding alike) were worth a few tries, if they could hardly make any realistic dent above the lower reaches of the Top-40 Charts...

But the whole affair seemed like too much of a gamble that even a label like A&M constantly in the habit of taking their typical calculated risk (as they had done w/ England & Dan their first break in a recording opportunity, before moving onto Atlantic's Big Tree) just couldn't stomach another product at this late a date which really didn't sell, and naturally couldn't produce any follow-up...

You had The Carpenters, Captain & Tennille, and many others, who did this stuff better, if only because they were just fortunate to have been around at a better time...

Les' & Kel', afterwards, just simply moved on to being a Wendy & Lisa-type of duet, though w/o any "Prince", "Rick James", or any other "notable big artist" acting as any sort of "svengali", hence not gaining any sort of notoriety that Ms's Melvoin & Coleman would gain, even if their not-so-notable career would ever descend into the nature that served as prerequisite to get your work noticed... (That is, you had Vanity Six & The Mary Jane Girls, et. al. to fulfill that need...!)

A forgettable slab of mostly filler, with half of a merely recognized name, second fiddle to Seals & Crofts' more distinctive pop, trying to parlay newly discovered, but rather boring talent, compared to what was more zeitgeist in the way of marketability at the time...


-- Dave

 

[Captain Bacardi]

Can't say there was much I liked on this album. I bought it just for Herb's appearance but the rest was pretty forgettable for me.



Capt. Bacardi