Melba Moore - Never Say Never (1983) [2011, Remastered & Expanded Edition]

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Melba Moore - Never Say Never (1983) [2011, Remastered & Expanded Edition]

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Melba Moore - Never Say Never (1983) [2011, Remastered & Expanded Edition]

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is the thirteenth album by singer Melba Moore, released in 1983. This album featured the hits "Keeping My Lover Satisfied", "Livin' for Your Love" and "Love Me Right". This album was notable for a remake of her 1976 hit "Lean on Me". The 1983 Capitol album reissued here, Never Say Never, represents Moore at the apex of her reach as a core artist of urban radio, and of her leadership of adult-oriented R&B as a New York-based music publishing and production entrepreneur. Five previous albums on Buddah and Epic had established her as a regular R&B album and singles chartmaker. Three Buddah albums, produced by Eugene McDaniels and Van McCoy in 1975 and 1976, brought out Moore’s strongest pop and soul qualities: she gave surprising backbone to Paul McCartney’s “The Long and Winding Road,” and then sang the daylights out of McCoy and Joe Cobb’s “Lean on Me,” instantly making it a signature song and R&B’s most operatic, aria-like standard, until Aretha Franklin sang the male aria “Nessun Dorma” at the 1999 Grammy Awards ceremony . Teaming with Philadelphia soul mainstays Gene McFadden and John Whitehead, Moore hit the R&B Top 20 with an unsurpassably elegant dancefloor cover of the Bee Gees’ b-side tune “You Stepped into My Life.” The early-80s release of Never Say Never on Capitol and its 14-week national album chart run coincided with the arrival of a streamlined, new and often technology-based approach to contemporary R&B that stretched from the ballads of Luther Vandross, Freddie Jackson, Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones to the pre-sampling electronic hip-hop band rhythm tracks typified in turning-point, globally influential hits by Shannon, Paul Hardcastle, Full Force, Tom Tom Club, and even the early street and video hits of Whodini, Grandmaster Flash and Run-DMC. Between 1982 and 1987, Moore’s most consistent hit run at urban radio was generated largely by the circle of songwriter-producers affiliated with Moore’s own Hush Productions management company; their credits were also to be seen prominently not much later on the platinum-selling international pop-soul crossover hits of Billy Ocean, Anita Baker, Moore’s management client, romantic balladeer Freddie Jackson, and the game-changing Whitney Houston, among others. Moore’s A&R strategy of bringing multiple songwriting and production talents to craft a diverse and balanced album was observed and followed with massive success by Tina Turner, Laura Branigan, Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Aaliyah, Usher, Brandy and many others, in later years and decades.Where, in the mid-Seventies, Moore candidly protested that her stylistic breadth led to being perceived, at once, as too black for pop ( and opera, a serious early pursuit) and not black enough for R&B, by 1983, Moore and her production/songwriting staff were running the table of the new pop-R&B from the top of the urban radio charts and, often, the national top 40. In the business sections of the daily papers, they called this in-house strength “vertical integration.” For this discussion, Never Say Never unmistakably reflects the justice served of an artist writing her own ticket, creatively. This is an official Funkytowngrooves release, authorized by EMI.

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Melba Moore - Never Say Never (1983) [2011, Remastered & Expanded Edition]

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