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| A vinyl collector would scream... |
The Hit
Eddie Holman hit it big in 1969 (or 1970; I hate when sources don’t agree) crooning “Hey There Lonely Girl” in a shy, pleading falsetto. In this classic, tender soul slow-jam featuring bedroom horns and an intimate swing, Holman plays the lonely boy making warm promises to a lonely girl. A newly-lonely girl, actually. One he’s been pining about for a while. We’ve all been there, right, guys? And we probably handled it just as badly…
The song’s actually a cover - Ruby sang it to a lonely boy with the Romantics backing her up about seven years earlier - but Holman’s rendition went higher and thus became the standard. (Holy...Ruby and the Romantic's version just went straight to the next playlist...that bossa nova swing...)
The Rest of the Story
Holman grew up in New York with a great voice and a mother who strongly encouraged his love of signing. Holman speaks of her in glowing terms and the path she put him on, one that started when he won an amateur night at the Apollo Theater. He got plugged in pretty well after that - Jackie Wilson mentored him through a couple tours - and Holman liked where things were headed enough to earn a bachelor’s in music. When it comes to pop bands, college typically only comes up as the place where the members meet, but his career looked like must working musician’s does from there: writing songs, working to get them in people’s ears.
He came up in Philadelphia after college, putting out a string of singles - one of them, “This Can’t Be True,” hitting No. 17 on the Billboard (again…help…that’s two hits…what does “one-hit wonder” even mean? Also, good tune...). It took “Lonely Girl” for Eddie Holman to go international. The single peaked way up at No. 2 on the 1970 Billboard. Also, and this is very important, the song hit No. 4 on the UK charts four three-four years later.
Once the “Northern Soul” crowd started passing around original vintage vinyl of Holman’s recordings (documented in this micro-doc), Eddie Holman could find a room to sing for his supper for the rest of his life. To put that in perspective, all the loving quotes I found on Holman came from English sources. This, for instance:
“Eddie Holman's voice, an astonishing precision instrument which can leap octaves with the speed of mercury and bend notes into shapes unimagined by lesser singers, has assured its possessor a place in soul history.” (Tony Cummings, a Brit)
Or, from that mini-doc:
“So, everything is orchestrally hammering out this beat that makes you want to feel good, and the reason that you feel good, is that the musical chords behind the beat are giving you a kind of wistful, upbeat, optimistic kind of music behind the sledgehammer beat, and therefore creating quite unique and different.”
Apart from love for his voice - and, honestly, “astonishing precision instrument” isn’t wild hyperbole - Holman doesn’t have much history as a performer. In the longest piece I read about him - a 2014 interview with a(nother) UK source (a blog, which is nice) - Holman comes off as your every-day professional performer. He shows up, he sings (and well), he gets paid, he goes back to his ministry; boring for a famous person, but also quietly refreshing. He sat down for that interview while touring the north of England, so he was still active in 2014. If he’s still going today (NOTE: “I’m still thankful, take good care of myself, and don’t even have a wrinkle. I don’t even look 45 – even if Hey There Lonely Girl has been around for 45 years!”), I’m confident there’s a room that will still have him.
About the Sampler
Holman put out a total of four albums, but I only had access to three of them - I Love You (1970), A Night to Remember (1977), and Love Story (2007) - and only listened to two of them. My only defense is that, the difference I heard between I Love You and A Night to Remember had more to do with broad changes in popular sound/production than any "fresh spin" from Holman. His voice was the star and surrounding with something to make things more beautiful the primary mission. Holman comes off as an artists more committed to doing one thing well - soul/R&B, Philly-style - as opposed to artistic growth/expression.
For what it's worth, I enjoy A Night to Remember more, personal experience may vary. That almost certainly follows from a loose/yet-consistent preference for 70s sound/production, and the strong whiffs of disco influence don't hurt either…yet I noticed that all the songs selected for the sampler open with a similar stumbling drum-roll. Most of the selections take off into a 70s-style, big-sound trot from there - e.g., “Time Will Tell,” “This Will Be a Night to Remember,” and “Somehow You Make Me Feel.” I pulled couple slow jamz from the album as well: the slower, brooding (and rather different) “Immune to Love,” and “It’s Over” (which includes flute trills, guitar shimmers, and other, delightful production excesses.)
The songs from I Love You have sound closer to crooner material, the pop standards musical underpinnings that you’d hear from Sinatra, but touches and vocals borrowed from soul. I count “Four Walls” as his best swing at (frankly, my interpretation of/) a signature interpretation of that sound, with the tormented “I Love You” coming a close second. After that, I mostly included “I’ll Be Forever Loving You” and “It’s All in the Game” to showcase the range and clarity of his voice.
Holman's famous hit made the sampler as well, obviously, but this is one of those cases where I’m happy I went past it. It didn’t do much for me, really, not even after a half-dozen listens. He’s got some good songs, though, and, as I learned this week, they do grow on you.
Source(s)
It looks like I’m back to embedding links in the posts, but I did source a fair chunk of the meats-‘n’-bones of Holman’s career from Wikipedia, and that’s my final source.
Eddie Holman hit it big in 1969 (or 1970; I hate when sources don’t agree) crooning “Hey There Lonely Girl” in a shy, pleading falsetto. In this classic, tender soul slow-jam featuring bedroom horns and an intimate swing, Holman plays the lonely boy making warm promises to a lonely girl. A newly-lonely girl, actually. One he’s been pining about for a while. We’ve all been there, right, guys? And we probably handled it just as badly…
The song’s actually a cover - Ruby sang it to a lonely boy with the Romantics backing her up about seven years earlier - but Holman’s rendition went higher and thus became the standard. (Holy...Ruby and the Romantic's version just went straight to the next playlist...that bossa nova swing...)
The Rest of the Story
Holman grew up in New York with a great voice and a mother who strongly encouraged his love of signing. Holman speaks of her in glowing terms and the path she put him on, one that started when he won an amateur night at the Apollo Theater. He got plugged in pretty well after that - Jackie Wilson mentored him through a couple tours - and Holman liked where things were headed enough to earn a bachelor’s in music. When it comes to pop bands, college typically only comes up as the place where the members meet, but his career looked like must working musician’s does from there: writing songs, working to get them in people’s ears.
He came up in Philadelphia after college, putting out a string of singles - one of them, “This Can’t Be True,” hitting No. 17 on the Billboard (again…help…that’s two hits…what does “one-hit wonder” even mean? Also, good tune...). It took “Lonely Girl” for Eddie Holman to go international. The single peaked way up at No. 2 on the 1970 Billboard. Also, and this is very important, the song hit No. 4 on the UK charts four three-four years later.
Once the “Northern Soul” crowd started passing around original vintage vinyl of Holman’s recordings (documented in this micro-doc), Eddie Holman could find a room to sing for his supper for the rest of his life. To put that in perspective, all the loving quotes I found on Holman came from English sources. This, for instance:
“Eddie Holman's voice, an astonishing precision instrument which can leap octaves with the speed of mercury and bend notes into shapes unimagined by lesser singers, has assured its possessor a place in soul history.” (Tony Cummings, a Brit)
Or, from that mini-doc:
“So, everything is orchestrally hammering out this beat that makes you want to feel good, and the reason that you feel good, is that the musical chords behind the beat are giving you a kind of wistful, upbeat, optimistic kind of music behind the sledgehammer beat, and therefore creating quite unique and different.”
Apart from love for his voice - and, honestly, “astonishing precision instrument” isn’t wild hyperbole - Holman doesn’t have much history as a performer. In the longest piece I read about him - a 2014 interview with a(nother) UK source (a blog, which is nice) - Holman comes off as your every-day professional performer. He shows up, he sings (and well), he gets paid, he goes back to his ministry; boring for a famous person, but also quietly refreshing. He sat down for that interview while touring the north of England, so he was still active in 2014. If he’s still going today (NOTE: “I’m still thankful, take good care of myself, and don’t even have a wrinkle. I don’t even look 45 – even if Hey There Lonely Girl has been around for 45 years!”), I’m confident there’s a room that will still have him.
About the Sampler
Holman put out a total of four albums, but I only had access to three of them - I Love You (1970), A Night to Remember (1977), and Love Story (2007) - and only listened to two of them. My only defense is that, the difference I heard between I Love You and A Night to Remember had more to do with broad changes in popular sound/production than any "fresh spin" from Holman. His voice was the star and surrounding with something to make things more beautiful the primary mission. Holman comes off as an artists more committed to doing one thing well - soul/R&B, Philly-style - as opposed to artistic growth/expression.
For what it's worth, I enjoy A Night to Remember more, personal experience may vary. That almost certainly follows from a loose/yet-consistent preference for 70s sound/production, and the strong whiffs of disco influence don't hurt either…yet I noticed that all the songs selected for the sampler open with a similar stumbling drum-roll. Most of the selections take off into a 70s-style, big-sound trot from there - e.g., “Time Will Tell,” “This Will Be a Night to Remember,” and “Somehow You Make Me Feel.” I pulled couple slow jamz from the album as well: the slower, brooding (and rather different) “Immune to Love,” and “It’s Over” (which includes flute trills, guitar shimmers, and other, delightful production excesses.)
The songs from I Love You have sound closer to crooner material, the pop standards musical underpinnings that you’d hear from Sinatra, but touches and vocals borrowed from soul. I count “Four Walls” as his best swing at (frankly, my interpretation of/) a signature interpretation of that sound, with the tormented “I Love You” coming a close second. After that, I mostly included “I’ll Be Forever Loving You” and “It’s All in the Game” to showcase the range and clarity of his voice.
Holman's famous hit made the sampler as well, obviously, but this is one of those cases where I’m happy I went past it. It didn’t do much for me, really, not even after a half-dozen listens. He’s got some good songs, though, and, as I learned this week, they do grow on you.
Source(s)
It looks like I’m back to embedding links in the posts, but I did source a fair chunk of the meats-‘n’-bones of Holman’s career from Wikipedia, and that’s my final source.
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