DAVID SOUL – "Don't Give Up On Us"

The mark’s about right there, I think; efficient but undemanding pop balladry (a late triumph for writer Tony Macaulay) just right for a female audience who I suspect had only recently grown out of David Cassidy but still wanted some of his angst, albeit a little more grown up, so that they could again say “oh TV star turned singer David you’re too BEAUTIFUL to suffer!”

An augur to a year of number ones which, on the surface at any rate, largely suggested business as usual.

Ah another singing cop!

I have to mention the Covered Man – if only because it was his first try at musical success…

SteveM did you do that Spoiler Bunny .gif?

In my infant mind –

Men wearing trainers driving fast cars through piles of cardboard boxes in back streets = interesting grown up stuff.

Men singing soppy love songs = boring grown-up stuff.

Although the adult Billy now spends far too much of his time puzzling out the messages of soppy love songs, I may even have been right in this instance.

This is one spoiler bunny

http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/02/rabbidcupcake.jpg

I find this perfectly pleasant, if unexciting. I might squeeze a mark more for David Soul if pressed, because I’m quite susceptible to this sort of thing.

The girls in my Year 8 class were absolutely besotted with David Soul. He is, of course, the reincarnation of David McCallum form ten years or so previously, except that he can sing a bit and he isn’t as good-looking. Not that I’m aware of ever hearing David McCallum singing, of course, and David Soul isn’t all that good at it.

I liked watching Starsky and Hutchy. Like LondonLee’s sister, though, I preferred Paul Michael Glaser.

I should add the that the girls (and boys for that matter) in my Year 8 class all had Hull accents so the three vowel sounds in David Soul’s name are all identical and as flat as the Holderness Plain.

I think “simpering” may be the right word – “understated” if you want to be charitable about it.

I had to dig this out and listen to it, as I really couldn’t remember much apart from the title line. It’s not really very good – his voice is weak, you can sense him building towards the sustained note on the final “through”, and then he gives up on it (no pun intended) after about three seconds, as the voice just isn’t up to it.

Even the middle eight starts out by hinting that he might try something, but he quickly thinks better of it.

I can’t conflate this with the Chicago #1 at all – to me it’s chalk and cheese, a professionally well-put-together piece of slightly maudlin but glorious pop (Chicago) vs. a rather poor celebrity cash-in.

Although David Soul was popular at this time, I didn’t think he was THAT popular. I think the timing of this release helped it, as most of the competition was on the way out after the Christmas period (obvious exception – the next #1)- this one went to number one after going from 11 over Christmas/New Year to 8 in the first “proper” week of ’77, before hitting the top the following week.

I hated this in 1977 but probably because you don’t hear it that much these days, time has mellowed my attitudes towards it. I’m still utterly amazed though that it was never covered by Boyzone, Westlife or another of those simpering stool-perching boybands of the 90s. It would have been absolutely perfect for them.

If I remember correctly, Hefner actually covered it on a Peel Session (in 2000) but they wrote on the sleeve that it seemed funny at the time.

The picture’s not loading here. Am I missing anything?

I do remember DSoul singing “Black Bean Soup” on Starsky and Hutch, some ‘party’ back at one of their places – presumably Hutchinson’s.

This didn’t do much for me, since I was the wrong gender, but why do I know it was on Private Stock?

Ditto Undertones/Sire/Good Vibrations.

This is the first #1 in a long time that made a real impression on me as a teen listener in America. I was a big “Starsky & Hutch” fan, and I found this surprisingly likable for a style of song that wasn’t my cup of tea. Had I known at the time that it was written by the same guy who wrote “Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes,” I would have understood the source of the record’s pop appeal.

This is a case, I believe, where the singer’s lack of vocal firepower actually helped the record. If Soul had the chops to really clobber the tune, the record would lose most of what charm it possesses. His modest vocal instrument is the right vehicle for his modest request.

I have an extremely slight after-the-fact connection to this song: a good friend of my band’s lead singer wrote “Kansas City 1927,” another quiet ballad sung by Soul on the album that contained this song. Of course, I wouldn’t meet my band’s lead singer for another twelve years after this song made #1, but what the heck.

I actually like all 5 of David Soul’s British hit singles and as someone said probably the best most classy tv spin off stuff there’s been. Especially like the two number ones, decent production, nice lyrics and adequate voice. i even like this as an 11 year old. Nice memories of listening to the Capital Radio Hitline in front of my dad’s radiogram in December 1976 when this seemed feature for ages sort of occupying a similar vibe as the also very good If You Leave Me Now by Chicago a few weeks before…

I think this is (as said above) one of the few “TV star turned singer” incidents that actually worked; Soul was good-looking, he could play the guitar, he could sing (reasonably), and the song was strong enough to have been a hit in anyone’s hands.

ooh, want some.

Boring, boring, BORING. Would it have got anywhere without the “Husky and Starch” connection? Halving the score would still be over-complimentary.

He was popular with the girls at school, I was 14 then, they were just past David Cassidy and the Rollers, S & H were at their peak then, can remember Mike Yarwood impersonating both of them together where he starts singing this tune and Starsky says what do you call that?
“some would call it singing”
“what about the people who ain’t deaf?”

as a fan of Starsky and Hutch I was disappointed with how soppy this sounded – it definitely sounds like David Cassidy revisited and David Soul does an efficient job of enunciating the words clearly like the actor he is but with little sense of emotion