Melba (1978 album)

Last updated
Melba
MelbaMoore selftitled1978.jpg
Studio album by
ReleasedSeptember 29, 1978
Recorded1978
Studio Sigma Sound Studios, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania & New York City, New City
Genre Soul, disco
Label Epic
Producer Gene McFadden, John Whitehead Jerry Cohen
Melba Moore chronology
A Portrait of Melba
(1977)
Melba
(1978)
Burn
(1979)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar half.svgStar empty.svg [1]

Melba is the eighth album by singer Melba Moore, released in 1978.

Melba Moore American singer, actress

Beatrice Melba Hill, known by her stage name, Melba Moore is an American singer, actress, voice actress, and entertainer. Moore is the daughter of saxophonist Teddy Hill and R&B singer Bonnie Davis.

Contents

Overview

Between 1975 and 1977, Moore had recorded four albums for Buddah Records, the last three of which had been disco-oriented with the title cut of her 1976 album This Is It providing Moore with her first glimmer of recording success. Moore's fourth album for Buddah, the 1977 release A Portrait of Melba , helmed by the virtuoso Philly soul production/songwriting team of McFadden & Whitehead - ie. Gene McFadden and John Whitehead - had been a commercial failure which ended Moore's tenure with Buddah. However Moore was expediently signed to Epic Records who assigned McFadden & Whitehead to again oversee Moore's recording sessions, with Moore's Epic debut album: Melba, recorded at Sigma Sound Studios and released in September 1978.

Buddah Records US record label

Buddah Records was an American record label founded in 1967 in New York City. The label was born out of Kama Sutra Records, an MGM Records-distributed label, which remained a key imprint following Buddah's founding. Buddah handled a variety of music genres, including bubblegum pop, folk-rock (Melanie), experimental music, and soul.

Disco music genre

Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene.

This Is It (Melba Moore song) 1976 Melba Moore song

"This Is It" is a 1976 disco song written by Van McCoy and performed by Melba Moore for her fifth album of the same name.

The album's lead single: "You Stepped Into My Life", ranked as high as #5 on the Billboard ranking of top disco songs which success translated into Moore's strongest showing on Billboard's Hot 100 and R&B charts with respective peaks of #47 and #17: Moore would have number of higher ranked R&B chart singles during the 1980s but "You Stepped Into My Life" would remain her final Hot 100 chart single. The Melba album itself would be afforded a Billboard 200 peak of #114: its second single: the McFadden & Whitehead original "Pick Me Up I'll Dance" was a moderate club hit.

"You Stepped Into My Life" is a song released by the Bee Gees in September 1976 on the album Children of the World. It was also released as the B-side of "Love So Right". Written by Barry, Robin & Maurice Gibb.

<i>Billboard</i> (magazine) American music magazine

Billboard is an American entertainment media brand owned by the Billboard-Hollywood Reporter Media Group, a division of Eldridge Industries. It publishes pieces involving news, video, opinion, reviews, events, and style, and is also known for its music charts, including the Hot 100 and Billboard 200, tracking the most popular songs and albums in different genres. It also hosts events, owns a publishing firm, and operates several TV shows.

The Dance Club Songs chart is a weekly chart published exclusively by Billboard in the United States. It is a national survey of the songs which are the most popular in nightclubs across the country and is compiled from reports from a national sample of disc jockeys. It was launched as the Disco Action Top 30 chart on August 28, 1976, and became the first chart by Billboard to document the popularity of dance music. Since its inception, several artists have set various records and garnered multiple achievements. In January 2017, Billboard proclaimed Madonna as the most successful artist in the history of the chart, ranking her first in their list of the 100 top all time dance artists and Janet Jackson being the second most successful dance club artist of all-time; Madonna also holds the record for the most number-one songs, with 47. Katy Perry holds the record for having eighteen consecutive number-one songs. Perry's third studio album, Teenage Dream (2010), became the first album in the history of the chart to produce at least seven number-one songs between 2010–12, a record it held solely until Rihanna's eighth studio album Anti produced eight chart toppers through 2016-17. Rihanna is the only artist to have achieved five number-one songs in a calendar year.

Despite the comparative success of the Melba album, Moore's followup album: Burn (1979), helmed by Pete Bellotte, showed a radical and commercially unsuccessful shift toward harder-edged dance music. Moore's musical focus subsequently shifted back to a softer sound, and throughout the 1980's Moore scored a handful of R&B hits without becoming a major star. McFadden & Whitehead would contribute as songwriters and/or producers to Moore's albums: Closer (1980) and What a Woman Needs (1981), and to the singer's 1988 album I'm in Love : also Gene McFadden would produce and co-write Moore's two #1 R&B hits: "Falling" and (with Freddie Jackson) "A Little Bit More" both from Moore's 1986 album A Lot of Love .

<i>Burn</i> (Melba Moore album) 1979 studio album by Melba Moore

Burn is the ninth album by singer Melba Moore, released in 1979.

Peter John Bellotte is an English songwriter, record producer and author based in England, most famous for his main body of work with Donna Summer alongside his partner Giorgio Moroder. Among his list of artists produced and written for are Janet Jackson, Elton John, Cliff Richard, Shalamar, Tina Turner, Mireille Mathieu, The Three Degrees and Melba Moore.

<i>Closer</i> (Melba Moore album) 1980 studio album by Melba Moore

Closer is the tenth album by singer Melba Moore, released in 1980. It was also her final album on Epic Records before moving to EMI in 1981.

Track listing

  1. "You Stepped Into My Life" (Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb, Maurice Gibb)
  2. "There's No Other Like You" (Gene McFadden, John Whitehead, Victor Carstarphen)
  3. "It's Hard Not to Like You" (Frankie Smith, Harold Preston, Gene McFadden, John Whitehead)
  4. "Together Forever" (Melba Moore)
  5. "Pick Me Up, I'll Dance" (Gene McFadden, John Whitehead, Ronald Rose)
  6. "Happy" (Gene McFadden, John Whitehead, Jerry Cohen)
  7. "I Promise to Love You" (Gene McFadden, John Whitehead, Jerry Cohen)
  8. "Where Did You Ever Go" (Dexter Wansel)

Charts

Chart (1978)Peak
position
Billboard Top LPs & Tapes [2] 114
Billboard Top Soul LPs [2] 35

Singles

YearSingleChart positions [3]
US US
R&B
US
Dance
1978"You Stepped Into My Life"47 (1979)175
1979"Pick Me Up, I'll Dance"8522

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References

  1. https://www.allmusic.com/album/r2173243/review
  2. 1 2 "Melba Moore US albums chart history". allmusic.com. Retrieved 2011-07-15.
  3. "Melba Moore US singles chart history". allmusic.com. Retrieved 2011-07-15.