Keeping with our color-in-the-title theme, today’ classic colorful song of the day is “Midnight Blue” by Melissa Manchester. Released as a single in April of 1975, this track went to #6 on the Billboard Hot 100, #7 on the Cash Box Top 100, and #1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart. It was Ms. Manchester’s first big hit and the second-biggest of her entire career; only “You Should Hear How She Talks About You” did better, reaching #5 on the Hot 100 in 1982.
Melissa Manchester wrote the music for “Midnight Blue” with Carole Bayer Sager supplying the lyrics. You may know Ms. Bayer Sager as the co-writer of such hits as “A Groovy Kind of Love” for the Mindbenders (and later covered by Phil Collins), “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)” for Christopher Cross, “Heartlight” for Neil Diamond, “Love Power” for Dionne Warwick and Jeffrey Osborne, “Nobody Does It Better” (the theme from the James Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me) for Carly Simon, “On My Own” for Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald, “When I Need You” for Leo Sayer, “You’re the Only One” for Dolly Parton, and “That’s What Friends Are For” for the conglomeration of Dionne Warwick, Elton John, Gladys Knight, and Stevie Wonder. She also co-wrote (with Peter Allen) another tune for Melissa Manchester, 1976’s “Don’t Cry Out Loud.”
“Midnight Blue” was Melissa and Carole’s first collaboration; they wrote the song way back in 1973, after meeting at a Bette Midler concert in June of 1972. Here’s what Manchester remembers about writing the song:
“It’s very conversational because all of our songs came out of conversations, and at the time we were young married women trying to navigate some stormy waters in our young marriages, trying to find language to help clarify our communication with our young husbands, and the way we would find clarity is through our songs.”
According to one version of the story, the two of them essentially sat on “Midnight Blue” for a few years until Manchester’s contract with Bell Records was fulfilled. (“Midnight Blue” was included on Manchester’s first album for Arista, 1975’s Melissa.) Another version of the story has Bayer Sager playing the song for producer Richard Perry, who then played the track for Arista president Clive Davis. Another variation involves the two songwriters pitching the song to Dusty Springfield, who summarily rejected it. However “Midnight Blue” came to be, the song and the recording are something special.
Melissa Manchester and Carole Bayer Sager continued to write together for a number of years, ditching their husbands-at-the-time along the way. Ms. Manchester, originally married to her manager/producer Larry Brezner, ditched him to marry Kevin De Remer, her tour coordinator, in 1982; they’re still married today, with two children. Ms. Bayer Sager, then married to producer Andrew Sager, later dumped him to marry legendary songwriter Burt Bacharach in 1982; they divorced in 1991 and, five years later, she married Robert Daly, former CEO of Warner Brothers and former chairman/CEO of the Los Angeles Dodgers. They’re still married today.
And here’s today’s daily bonus video of the day, Melissa Manchester performing “Midnight Blue” live in concert in 1980. “Whatever it is, it’ll keep till the morning…”
