Golden Hits Radio and GHR-2's Everything Oldies......your hometown Oldies news team!
- A vigil is held for an ailing Queen
- Tom Jones reveals his latest album is a tribute to a hero
- Billboard lists the 100 Hot Holiday Songs chock full of artists you hear every day on Golden Hits Radio and GHR-2!
- A group of music legends are "Happy Again" and are headed out on the road in 2011
Oldies on TV
Cher - Late Show with David Letterman (repeat) - CBS
Where In The World Is......Gloria Loring?
In the 80s, brand new sources began to emerge for creating hit songs. Rick Springfield had become a bona fide music superstar thanks to daytime TV soap operas. His role as Dr. Noah Drake on General Hospital was largely responsible for the ultimate success of "Jessie's Girl", which had become a #1 smash! That opened the floodgates for other soap actors who moonlighted as singers, including Jack Wagner ("All I Need"), Michael Damian (covering David Essex's classic "Rock On"), and a woman who had quite a bit of musical experience before she ever set foot on a soundstage of a soap opera, Gloria Loring.
Born Gloria Jean Goff in 1946, Gloria Loring became musically inclined at a young age. By 14, she was a member of a folk group called "Those Four". She went solo in 1968 and released her first album on MGM Records, "Gloria Loring, Today". It was not a hit, but her acting skills kept her in the limelight, with a range of TV appearances as varied as The Carol Burnett Show and the Academy Awards ceremony.
Two more albums were also unsuccessful, but Gloria Loring would soon become a household name thanks to her marriage to another prolific TV icon, Canadian actor/TV talk show host/composer Alan Thicke. Thicke had written many of the most recognizable theme songs for TV shows in the 70's. When he needed someone to perform the theme song for a sitcom theme he'd written, the theme from "The Facts of Life", he didn't have to look any further than the other side of the bed. Gloria Loring's rendition of that song was heard every week, and remains an oft-sung song by Generation X long after the show ended. In 1980, she joined the cast of the daytime serial Days of Our Lives, which would finally bring her musical success.
In 1985, she performed a song recorded as a duet with Carl Anderson on Days, "Friends and Lovers". It sat on the shelf for more than a year due to legal hassles, but once it was dusted off, it became a smash on the Pop charts. It hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the Adult Contemporary Charts. A Country version of the song with the alternate title "Both To Each Other" was a hit around the same time for Eddie Rabbitt and Juice Newton. Gloria Loring was a TV star and music sensation!
Shortly after the success of "Friends and Lovers", she left Days, and perhaps as a result, she never had another chart hit. The end of chart success certainly didn't mean the end of a career for Gloria Loring, however. A look at the bio on her official website demonstrates how prolific Gloria Loring has been in both music, live theater, charity work, and even the instruction of Yoga! Between TV, the stage, books, and other ventures, the answer to "Where In The World Is......Gloria Loring" is.......multiple places at once these days.
From her brief run on the charts in 1986..............
Golden Hits Radio and GHR-2's Burning Question of the Day
A while back, we mentioned that Billy Joel's album 52nd Street was the first to be released commercially on CD, but it was NOT the first to actually be dubbed to CD. Which album holds that distinction?
Check back @ Everything Oldies Monday (12/6/2010) for the answer, and leave a Comment here with your best guess!
Yesterday's Burning Question (and Answer) of the Day
Which album generated the most #1 singles?
Answer: Michael Jackson's "Bad" -- with 5 #1 songs -- "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", "Bad", "Dirty Diana", "The Way You Make Me Feel", and "Man In The Mirror"
