Help Me Make It Through the Night | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | September 1970 | |||
Recorded | May 1970 | |||
Studio | Monument Recording, Nashville, Tennessee | |||
Genre | Outlaw country, country pop | |||
Length | 33:01 | |||
Label | Mega | |||
Producer | Jim Malloy | |||
Sammi Smith chronology | ||||
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Singles from Help Me Make It Through the Night | ||||
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Help Me Make It Through the Night is the debut studio album released by American country artist Sammi Smith. The album was originally released in September 1970 on Mega Records and was produced by Jim Malloy. The album was originally named He's Everywhere but was renamed Help Me Make It Through the Night due to the popularity of that track, which reached number one on the Billboard country music chart and the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The album comprised Smith's first recordings for the Mega label.
Help Me Make It Through the Night was recorded in May 1970 at Monument Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, United States [1] and included Smith's first recordings for Mega Records, after leaving the Columbia label in 1969. The album's style reflected the Outlaw Country sound, which was found in other artists such as Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. [2] The album was originally titled He's Everywhere, due to the single of the same name becoming Smith's first Top 40 hit on the Billboard country chart. When the title track became a major hit, the album was retitled with the same album number. [1] The album consisted of eleven tracks of new material. The release included a series of cover versions, such as Patsy Cline's "There He Goes", The First Edition's "But You Know I Love You", and Johnny Darrell's "With Pen in Hand". Two songs composed by Kris Kristofferson were also included: the Help Me Make It Through the Night and Johnny Cash's "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down". The debut record also contained five new tracks ("Saunder's Ferry Lane", "He's Everywhere", "Don't Blow No Smoke on Me", "When Michael Calls", and "This Room for Rent").
The album was originally released on an LP record, with six songs on the first side of the record and five on the opposite side. The album has never been reissued on compact disc. [3]
The lead single released from Smith's future album was the album's sixth track entitled "He's Everywhere" in July 1970. The single became Smith's first Top 40 and Top 30 single, reaching #25 on the Billboard Country music chart that year. In November 1970, "Help Me Make It Through the Night" was released and became Smith's biggest hit and signature song. It reached #1 on the Billboard Magazine Hot Country Singles chart, #8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #3 on the Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart in 1971. [4] In addition, "Help Me Make It Through the Night" also reached #1 on the RPM Country chart in Canada, as well as #4 on its Top Singles chart. [5] For the song's success, Smith would later win the Country Music Association's "Single of the Year" award and the Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance in 1972. [2] The album was released in September 1970 on Mega Records and peaked at #1 on the Billboard Magazine Top Country Albums chart and #33 on the Billboard 200 albums list. [6] It also went to #51 on the RPM Top Albums chart in Canada, Smith's only album to chart there. [5]
Chart (1971) | Peak position |
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U.S. Billboard 200 [6] | 33 |
U.S. Top Country Albums (Billboard) [6] | 1 |
Canadian RPM Top Albums [5] | 51 |
Year | Song | Peak chart positions | ||||
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US Country [4] | US [4] | US AC [4] | CAN Country [5] | CAN [5] | ||
1970 | "He's Everywhere" | 25 | — | — | — | — |
"Help Me Make It Through the Night" | 1 | 8 | 3 | 1 | 4 | |
"—" denotes releases that did not chart | ||||||
Kristoffer Kristofferson is an American retired country singer, songwriter and actor. Among his songwriting credits are "Me and Bobby McGee", "For the Good Times", "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and "Help Me Make It Through the Night", all of which were hits for other artists.
"Me and Bobby McGee" is a song written by American singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson and originally performed by Roger Miller. Fred Foster shares the writing credit, as Kristofferson wrote the song based on a suggestion from Foster. A posthumously released version by Janis Joplin topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971, making the song the second posthumously released No. 1 single in U.S. chart history after "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding. Gordon Lightfoot released a version that reached number 1 on the Canadian country charts in 1970. Jerry Lee Lewis released a version that was number 1 on the country charts in December 1971/January 1972 as the "B" side of "Would You Take Another Chance on Me". Billboard ranked Joplin's version as the No. 11 song for 1971.
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Jewel Fay "Sammi" Smith was an American country music singer and songwriter. She is best known for her 1971 crossover hit "Help Me Make It Through the Night", which was written by Kris Kristofferson. She became one of the few women in the outlaw country movement during the 1970s.
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You've Got a Friend is the twenty-eighth studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams, released in August 1971 by Columbia Records. The album bears a striking resemblance to the Johnny Mathis album You've Got a Friend released that same month. Besides sharing their name, the two albums are both made up of covers of easy listening hits of the time, with 11 songs each, and the two albums have seven songs in common that are positioned in a similar order.
You've Got a Friend is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on August 11, 1971, by Columbia Records. The phrase "Today's Great Hits" can be found above the title on both sides of the record jacket as well as both sides of the LP label as if to emphasize that this is essentially an album covering songs that were recently on the charts. This was a common practice of many vocalists of the period, so much so in fact that fellow Columbia artist Andy Williams also released an album titled You've Got a Friend in August 1971 on which he coincidentally covers seven of the 11 tracks that Mathis recorded for this album.
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