A Life Well-Lived
CHARLENE’S BEEN TO ‘ME’ – AND SHE’S BACK AGAIN
New music from the stars of Hitsville U.S.A.? Sure.
The Temptations? A fresh collection of songs, released this past January, including one written and co-produced by Smokey. Diana? An album of new material – her first in years – issued late last year, plus another track, “Turn Up The Sunshine” with Tame Impala, recently out and about.
Stevie? We should be so lucky. (OK, there’s that new duet with Elton, and there were those two 2020 tracks.) Smokey? An album is said to be in the works, while his duet with Rita Wilson, reviving “Where Is The Love,” just showed up.
New music, new hopes
And then there’s Charlene.
You remember her, right? The Hollywood-born songstress recognised for one of Motown’s biggest-selling singles of the 1980s – and equally known as a one-hit wonder. “I’ve Never Been To Me” was that million-seller, a huge success in the U.S. and the U.K. (in the latter, a chart-topper) and many parts of the world. Plus, it has a great backstory: a flop first time around, a smash when reissued five years later, during Jay Lasker’s presidential reign.
Oh, and it was a song which might instead have been forever associated with Mary (“Torn Between Two Lovers”) MacGregor. Of which, more shortly.
For now, Charlene wants back in the game via “Fairytale Life,” a new track created with Paul Stuart Davies, a British singer/songwriter who has his own Motown connections. It’s available on digital platforms, and may remind you of the melodic pop made by Charlene some 40 years ago, much of it with her then-partner, Ron Miller, one of Jobete Music’s golden guys.
Davies is familiar to many on Britain’s Northern Soul circuit. In 2014-15, he recorded versions of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” and Tobi Legend’s “Time Will Pass You By” for “the purpose of showing my love of soul music, and to reach a bigger audience.” Wigan Casino founder Russ Winstanley was among those impressed, Davies told me, and invited him to sing alongside Kim Weston at the annual “Northern Soul Survivors” weekend – where he also met Brenda Holloway and the Velvelettes, and in 2016, duetted with Chris Clark.
The following year, he met Gloria Jones, striking up a friendship and forging links between the latter’s Marc Bolan School of Music in Sierra Leone and the music school which Davies and Mark Bateson founded in the northwest of England. “The Darwen School of Music has grown slowly since 2003,” says Davies, “with more equipment being added along the way. We started with nothing. Now we have my own studio in the school building, which means that I can make records with minimal costs involved.”
Her third album at Motown
Davies’ connection to Charlene, he explains, began with “I’ve Never Been To Me,” which was Number One in the U.K. on the date of his birth in 1982. “I stumbled across her Facebook profile early in 2022, and decided to introduce myself. She was interested in my work with other Motown artists, and asked if I was also a songwriter, as she was looking for a collaborator on new material.” At that point, several thousand miles separated the pair, with Charlene in Fort Worth, Texas – where she, too, worked at a music school – and Davies in Darwen, Lancashire.
“I said to Paul, ‘I’ve got a song I’d love you to listen to,’” Charlene recalls, “and I sang it to him [over the phone]. He really liked it, and so I sent him the little track that I had. He started building the drum track – and it was brilliant – and then he came up with a sax player on it. I was so excited, I told him I hadn’t had a track like that for a long time.’”
“Fairytale Life” is the outcome, digitally released on September 23. This month, Davies and Oliver are due to meet for the first time when the Briton flies to Texas. The American is evidently looking forward. “He’s the answer to a prayer,” she says.
She’s had other fortunate experiences in the past, not least befriending music industryite Nancy Leiviska, who at the time was in a romantic relationship with Berry Gordy. “I met Nancy at a party,” remembers Oliver. “My ex-husband played guitar and I was just goofing around, singing. Nancy said, ‘I really like your voice, do you have any music?’ I gave her a cassette of ‘Sweet Sad Clown.’ It wasn’t that great of a song, but it got me signed.”
AN AUDITION IN THE COMMISSARY
What helped was Oliver’s subsequent vocal performance for the Motown chieftain himself during one 1973 lunchtime in the commissary of Warner Bros. Pictures. “Nancy wanted me to meet Berry. Of course, Diana was there. So was [Hollywood movie mogul] Barry Diller. I came in in my overalls, my cowboy boots – I was clueless and very young. Berry said, ‘I really love your voice, and I like that song, can you sing it for me?’ People all over the commissary were looking at me, and I sang ‘Sweet Sad Clown’ right through. Within two months, I was signed to Motown Records.”
Charlene became one of the family, she says, from her very first visit to the firm’s HQ on Sunset Boulevard and to the parties at Gordy’s Bel Air mansion. Contracted as a songwriter as well as a singer, she soon got to know the Jobete team. “They’d go, ‘OK, Charlene, we have a song for you, it’s called ‘At The Airport,’ it could be a demo for Michael [Jackson].’ I sounded just like Michael because my voice was high, I did that, and then ‘One Day In Your Life,’ which was going to be a song for me. It turned out they took my vocal off and put Michael’s on it. I did demo after demo after demo.”
The answer to a prayer? Paul Stuart Davies
Bob Gaudio and Frank Wilson were among the producers involved, and she says the latter was responsible for “Relove,” her Motown debut. “I loved working with Frank, he was brilliant. He did quite a few other ones on me.” Her husband, Larry Duncan, produced her second 45, “All The Love That Went To Waste,” released early in 1974.
Neither single sold significantly, and almost three years passed before Charlene’s third. “I was going through a really bad divorce,” she recalls, and meeting Ron Miller during that period seemed most opportune, personally as well as professionally. Miller co-wrote and produced “It Ain’t Easy Comin’ Down,” which marked Charlene’s (modest) debut on the Billboard Hot 100; he also produced most of her first album, issued in November 1976.
Then there was “I’ve Never Been To Me,” written by Miller and lyricist Ken Hirsch.” Its history is, if anything, too familiar: released by Motown in ’77 as a single with minor Hot 100 impact, re-released in ’82 after strong audience reaction to radio airplay in Florida, then aloft to chart heights at home and abroad.
By contrast, Jay Lasker’s early role is barely known. The late executive once recalled being pitched the song by Ron Miller as a potential follow-up to Mary MacGregor’s “Torn Between Two Lovers.” That reached Number One on the Billboard and Cash Box charts in February 1977 for Ariola America Records – which Lasker ran at the time. He claimed that MacGregor didn’t like the lyric of “I’ve Never Been To Me” and rejected the idea – except that she did record it, for a single shipped by the label in early 1978. It was not a hit.
Four years later, Scott Shannon (a former Ariola employee) at top-rated Tampa station Q105 gave Charlene’s version the airtime which prompted its reissue by Motown – by then, headed by Lasker. The singer’s own memories are of Miller explaining that Ken Hirsch’s lyrics were written from a male point of view, but that she was the inspiration for switching to a female perspective. “I told him, ‘The song is my life – please, I want to do this.’ And I put my whole heart into it.”
Charlene, and a gold disc from Down Under
That proved to be the peak of Charlene’s commercial success, despite her five-year relationship with Miller, and further Motown releases. One of those was “Used To Be,” a duet with Stevie Wonder, whom Charlene adored. “I was sitting, noodling on Ron’s piano, in one of the offices one day, and Stevie comes in with his entourage. He sits next to me and starts playing ‘I Only Have Eyes For You.’ Then he says, ‘I want you to hear a new song I just wrote called ‘Taboo For Love.’ He starts singing, and then says, ‘Charlene, grab a third above me.’ I’m hearing him and I’m going a third above him.’ ” It was, she adds, a magical moment of music.
At the other extreme was the failure of “Used To Be,” which stalled outside the Top 40, perhaps as the result of provocative lyrics. “That song was the kiss of death for me,” says Charlene. “One day I opened a magazine and there was my picture with Ron and Stevie. It said, ‘Charlene, the magnificent failure.’ It was so unfair. Those were my saddest times, which almost put me in an insane house. And Motown didn’t care.”
Invoking the company’s name stirs contradictions. After the first-time failure of “I’ve Never Been To Me” in 1977, she was dropped. Come the track’s second-time success in ’82, she was re-signed. “I was given a contract that was not quite fair. I kind of signed away everything. When you leave a record label, it’s a usually a write-off for them. Well, they didn’t write it off, they attached it to my new career.” Unrecouped expenses from the first contract – Charlene estimates them to have been around $250,000 – were applied to the second, reducing her earnings.
“But I can’t think about it too much. I’m known by so many, and I’ve realised how unbelievably fortunate I was, the people I’ve rubbed shoulders with, and the beautiful music. Thank you, Motown, thank you.”
Perhaps, just perhaps, the title of Charlene’s new release is truer than we think.
‘Me’ notes: as detailed above, Charlene contends that songwriter Ron Miller was inspired by her to have Ken Hirsch re-gender the lyrics of “I’ve Never Been To Me.” How, then, to explain another female version issued around the same time? Charlene’s Motown album (actually, on its Prodigal label) with “I’ve Never Been To Me” came out in October 1976 – the same month of release as Randy Crawford’s debut LP, Everything Must Change, which contained her take on the song. Since Miller is no longer with us, the truth may never be learned. And despite Jay Lasker’s recollection, Mary MacGregor did, indeed, record the song, just not as the follow-up to “Torn Between Two Lovers.” If she had…
Music notes: this WGB playlist includes Charlene’s first chart entry, “It Ain’t Easy Comin’ Down,” as well as “I’ve Never Been To Me” (the 1976 original and her 2013 re-recording), “Used To Be” and its follow-up, “I Want To Go Back There Again,” plus her new track with Paul Stuart Davies, “Fairytale Life.” For comparison, there’s “I’ve Never Been To Me” by Randy Crawford and the Temptations.