It wasn't until a decade later, listening to a classic R&B station in Washington late one night, that I hear that same bassline, set to this slinky little groove, and a young woman shouting I know you not gonna sing THAT song! Being that this was pre-Shazam and smart phones, I had to keep an ear out, hoping that the DJ would announce the song and artist.
After 8 minutes of sweet soul emanating from the speakers of my car stereo while stuck in 1 am traffic on I-395, there it was: "Tonight is the Night" by Miami's Betty Wright.
And it was so much better than the New Jack knock-off.
The track, a re-recording of Wright's own 1974 single about a young woman making love for the first time, is a cut off her 1978 "live" album, simply called Live. Reason for my quotation marks is that it's not really a live album. It's pretty obvious it was recorded in a studio and overdubbed with canned crowd noise. The disc's sparse liner notes don't really say when/where it was taped. Also, if you listen closely, you can hear where the cheering loops, over and over, during her spoken word intro to "Tonight is the Night."
Amazingly, the gimmick doesn't hurt the track. Actually, it's oddly endearing and fun hearing Wright interact with the "crowd," telling the story of how the song came about via her producer stumbling across a poem in her private journal and her mother's infamous reaction when she heard her sing it for the first time.
The absolute pinnacle, though, is when Wright references her 1970 single "Pure Love" toward the end of the track, playing off her rhythm section with these little James Brown-esque "hits," stopping and starting the music with punctuated Ooh-ooh!'s.
It's the kind of performance that makes one wonder why she wasn't filling stadiums with thousands of screaming fans.
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