B. J. Thomas - Hey Girl '2019

Tracks list

Tracklist
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01. I Get Enthused
02. Gone
03. Four Walls
04. Oh Me Oh My (Im a Fool for You Baby)
05. Crying in the Chapel
06. I Cant Help It (If Im Still in Love with You)
07. I Need You So
08. Hey Girl
09. A Fine Way to Go
10. Just as Gone
11. Are We Losing Touch?
12. We Have Got Our Ship Together


B.J. Thomas (born Billy Joe Thomas) straddled the line between pop/rock and
country, achieving success in both genres in the late 60s and 70s. At the
beginning of his career, he leaned more heavily on rock & roll, but by the
mid-70s, he had turned to country music, becoming one of the most successful
country-pop stars of the decade.
Thomas began singing while he was a child, performing in church. In his teens,
he joined the Houston-based band the Triumphs, who released a number of
independent singles that failed to gain any attention. For the groups last
single, Thomas and fellow Triumph member Mark Charron wrote Billy and Sue, which
was another flop. After Billy and Sue, Thomas began a solo career, recording a
version of Hank Williams standard Im So Lonesome I Could Cry with producer Huey
P. Meaux. Released by Scepter Records in early 1966, the single became an
immediate hit, catapulting to number eight on the pop charts. Although he had a
series of moderate follow-up hits, including a re-release of Billy and Sue,
Thomas failed to reenter the Top Ten until 1968, when Hooked on a Feeling became
a number five, gold single. The following year, he scored his biggest hit with
Burt Bacharach and Hal Davids Raindrops Keep Fallin on My Head, taken from the
hit film Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. It was followed by a string of soft
rock hits in the next two years, including Everybodys Out of Town, I Just Cant
Help Believing, No Love at All, and Rock and Roll Lullaby, which featured
guitarist Duane Eddy and the vocal group the Blossoms.
After Rock and Roll Lullaby, Scepter Records went out of business and Thomas
headed to Paramount. At Paramount, Thomas had no hits, prompting the singer to
pursue a new country-pop direction at ABC Records. (Hey Wont You Play) Another
Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song, his first single for ABC, became his second
number one record on the pop charts, as well as establishing a country career
for the vocalist. For the next decade, he continued to have hits on the country
charts, with a couple of songs -- most notably Dont Worry Baby -- crossing over
into the pop charts. During this period, he switched record companies at a rapid
pace, but it did nothing to slow the pace of his hits. Thomas hit his country
peak in 1983 and 1984, when he had the number one hits Whatever Happened to Old
Fashioned Love and New Looks from an Old Lover, as well as the Top Ten hits The
Whole Worlds in Love When Youre Lonely and Two Car Garage. Throughout the 80s,
B.J. Thomas recorded a number of hit gospel records for Myrrh concurrently with
his country hits, but his most prominent song was As Long as We Got Each Other,
a tune that served as the theme song to the sitcom Growing Pains.
At the end of the 80s, the hits began to dry up for Thomas, but he continued to
tour, and put out the occasional country and gospel record in the 90s. In the
new millennium, he concentrated primarily on Christmas and Christian recordings,
but in 2013 he returned with The Living Room Sessions, his first secular album
in years. This was a stripped-down collection of covers of his old hits,
sometimes performed as duets with such stars as Lyle Lovett, Vince Gill, and Keb
Mo; it debuted at 39 on the Billboard country charts. Also in 2013, the National
Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences inducted Raindrops Keep Fallin on My Head
into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2017, Real Gone Music released New Looks from
an Old Lover: The Complete Columbia Singles, the first thorough overview of his
80s recordings. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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