TIL Robert Goulet did not sing The Love Boat theme
Jack Jones died before I learned his legacy.
I didn’t know any of his Songs except Impossible Dream. A show tune from Man of La Mancha. Jones covered it in 1966.
Jones was Nominated for 5 Grammys and won 2! I should be more familiar with his music.
I’m looking up his most successful songs on YouTube and will comment later.
Hill could SING. What a powerful voice.
The Rolling Stone headline declares his legacy, which is quite a specific song. I demand a link to a live performance.
There is a live version on YouTube. But the vocal is muted.
There’s also a long 3 min version. Double the length used in the shows opening.
I understand the headline uses the TV theme because the rv show is remembered.
I don’t like it myself. It’s almost a parody of lounge singing.
My parents went to a Jack Jones concert on one of their first dates, in Los Angeles, ~1961.
Jack reminds me of Sinatra on this song.
Great performance. It’s unfortunate this Genre is mostly forgotten today.
Didn’t he guest on The Love Boat once too? Maybe it was the poorly considered musical episode.
He did, as I recall. It was a show that also had his real-life father in it, who was also a lounge singer. His acting talent left a little to be desired, but his singing talent was just fine.
Jack Jones was one of a lost breed of all-around “entertainers” who flourished in the 1950s and 60s and had careers that stretched over decades. We have few people like that today.
At that time, there was a sharp divide between “Top 40” radio stations and “Middle-of-the-Road” radio stations. Top 40 stations focused on teens and young adults, while MOR stations targeted people who were in their 30s and above. Performers like Jack Jones were the staple of MOR stations and occasionally crossed over to score a Top 40 hit. Artists like Mr. Jones (and Ray Conniff and Percy Faith and Herb Alpert and dozens of others) sold millions of records over long periods of time and were often bigger stars than the “one hit wonders” elsewhere on the radio dial.
My wife said to me yesterday “Jack Jones Died”.
My reaction was “Who?”
I had no idea that he sand the theme to The Love Boat, and I had no idea of what else he had done.
I can’t not hear the South Park “The Catholic Boat” when I hear that song.
Thank you for the information.
I’m older now and find myself seeking out Jack Jones style of music. Show tunes and vocalists with orchestras are very soothing.
I still like country and rock. Depends on my mood.
I lived in a small Midwest town, and Friends and Lovers was unavoidable on the radio. That, and Dreams of the Everyday Housewife. I’d fire both songs into the sun if I could. How I hated them.
I first learned who Jack Jones was when Mad Men played his “Roses and Lollipops” over the closing credits in the episode “The Gold Violin”.
I had long liked his version of “Wives and Lovers”, a wonderful song with lyrics that haven’t aged well.
I was coming here to mention that. For some reason that episode is clear in my mind although no other ones are in my memory.
Even back in the day, we high school kids mocked “Wives and Lovers” mercilessly! We thought it was SO stupid anc cringey… I can’t help but think of ‘Mad Men’ - poor Betty Draper waiting for her man to come home from that office of women and ‘men will always be men’. Lotta good being a trophy wife did her!
The story I was told (under the category “What a Jerk Louis B. Mayer in the Dewey Decimal System) about his father Allan was that Nelson Eddy had gotten big-headed, whereas Mayer only needed a singing male mannequin for Jeannette MacDonald. Alan Jones filled in for one movie, and Nelson Eddy came back to eat crow, but did gain one concession: Alan Jones had to be kicked off the lot.
There was a sort of second tier of singers like Jack Jones, Vic Damone, Al Martino, etc. who were all over the TV variety shows. They weren’t up there with Tony Bennett or Sinatra but they weren’t bad either.
I have a Jack Jones story-- I actually saw him perform live.
It was the 80s. I was putting myself through college working as a food and beverage cashier in the hotel inside Detroit’s Renaissance Center. It held a lot of conventions that hosted musical acts, and I’d often work drink ticket sales (they didn’t trust the bartenders with cash, so people would have to buy drink tickets from me first).
So I got to see several former Vegas or Broadway singers perform. And many of them were not happy to be at a point in their career where they were working some anonymous convention for dentists or whatever in Detroit, Michigan (I also have an unhappy Andrea McArdle story I’ve told on this board a couple times).
So Jones comes on stage and is disappointed in the quality of the stage setting, including a beat-up old piano the hotel supplied. He starts out by telling a story of playing a gig in some one-horse hick town where they said “if you want, Mr. Jones, we’ll paint the piano for you!”. He pauses for comedic effect, to let the idea settle in that painting a piano is a ridiculous idea.
“Well this piano…” he says… “could use a paint job!”
I think of him as a journeyman singer, skilled, but without a lot of personality to give his recordings or performances something extra (I say this never having seen him perform live). He always struck me as the type to perform in 2nd-tier venues in Las Vegas, and that he would appeal mostly to older folks, even when he was pretty young and doing contemporary songs.
Hell, they were pretty squiffy at the time. At least I thought so, at the ripe age of 14. My mother worked full-time and did all the cooking, laundry, and most of the other housework. If anyone had said those words to her, I think she would have slugged them.