Player ~ Baby Come Back 1977 Soul Purrfection Version

"Baby Come Back"...I so remember the first time I heard this on WXYZ in Detroit with Dick Purtan in the mornings getting ready to graduate my senior year in high school. It was a nice way to start the day with something gentle and warm to go along with the coffee to go and the snow on the road. Peter Beckett and John Charles Crowley met at a party and agreed to jam together when they found shared musical interets. During the jam session, the duo agreed it was time to put together a band, taking on drummer John Friesen, keyboardist Wayne Cook and bassist Ronn Moss. The production was handled by veteran writer/producers Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter agreed to produce Player. The production duo were responsible for the sound of the #1 pop hit Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy" and Tavares "It Only Takes A Minute", two disparate songs that display the range they were capable of. "The best love songs were written with a broken heart" sings Karen Carpenter and this gloriously arranged song is proof of that. Beckett and Crowley also bonded because both men had just broken up with their women and used this experience to write "Baby Come Back", which came together on a hot summer night rehearsal in Crowley's Los Angeles garage. The band was accused of appropriating the sounds of Hall & Oates, who were incidentally in a slump at the time. Beckett countered that they obviously had not listened to the entire album. The official follow up was "This Time I'm In For Love" a #10 Hot100 hit. At the time, the run of #1 was like this, 11 weeks of Debby Boone "You Light Up My Life" gave way to Bee Gees "How Deep Is Your Love" starting December 24, 1977 for three weeks. Now, the Bee Gees were on RSO Records and so was every #1 Hot100 hit that followed, "Stayin' Alive" for four weeks, Player for three weeks, Andy Gibb "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" for two weeks, Bee Gees "Night Fever" eight weeks and finally Yvonne Elliman's "If I Can't Have You" for one more week, setting a record breaking run at #1 for an amazing 21 weeks, setting several probably will never be broken records like six consecutive #1 singles, the fourth consecutive hit written by Barry Gibb (who broke Lennon-McCartney's 3 consecutive #1's), and the fourth #1 single from the same soundtrack. Man, we were riding quite the wave back then, RSO was not finished either, they added another ten weeks at #1 with Andy Gibb "Shadow Dancing" for seven weeks, John Travolta & ONJ "You're The One That I Want" for a week and finally Frankie Valli "Grease" for two weeks. Whew! that was one hell of a hot summer that carried all the way through to the end of 1979. Player continued recording and releasing albums on a variety of labels, Casablanca, RCA and then River North Records in 1995. They released their last LP "Too Many Reasons" in 2013.