VIA PRESS RELEASE | 1977 was a whirlwind year for Melissa Manchester. The singer-songwriter toured North America’s arenas and amphitheaters that summer with Leo Sayer before launching a fall solo tour that attracted the attention of none other than Bob Dylan, who attended the Minneapolis date. Melissa played Carnegie Hall, appeared on network television specials, taped a commercial with Ella Fitzgerald, and released her sixth album, Singin’.
But that wasn’t all. On October 30,1977 at Gainesville, Florida’s Great Southern Music Hall, Melissa recorded her first live album. The electrifying double record captured her in front of an appreciative college audience, leading a smoking-hot, seven-piece band of rock, R&B, and jazz veterans including two KISS collaborators–saxophonist/ keyboardist Tom Saviano (Dolly Parton, Earth Wind & Fire) and bassist Bill Bodine (Van Morrison, Cher)–plus drummer Art Rodriguez (Rickie Lee Jones, Manhattan Transfer) and Melissa’s discovery Lenny Castro, now one of the most-recorded percussionists of all time.
Yet Arista Records shockingly consigned the album to the shelf, where it’s remained unheard…until now. Melissa Manchester’s Live ’77 makes its long-overdue debut from Real Gone Music and Second Disc Records as a deluxe 2-CD set. Its 21 songs–joyful, sensual, romantic, optimistic, soulful, spellbinding, and ultimately empowering—spoke directly to the thoughts and emotions of the young audience and have proven timeless over the ensuing decades.
These include her hits “Midnight Blue,” “Better Days,” and the song Bob Dylan admired, “Just You and I,” as well as the now-standard “Come in from the Rain,” fan favorites “We’ve Got Time,” “Happy Endings,” and “Caravan,” and spirited covers of such beloved tunes as “I Wanna Be Where You Are,” “Rescue Me,” and “Monkey See, Monkey Do.” Live ’77 also premieres Melissa’s only recording anywhere of the blues classic “Hi-Heel Sneakers.”
Deluxe booklet includes rare photos and liner notes by The Second Disc’s Joe Marchese, centered on a fresh, exclusive interview with the artist and with former Arista president and music industry legend Clive Davis. Appropriately, Melissa closed this concert of pop, rock, and soul sounds with “No One’s Ever Seen This Side of Me.” Now, in time for its 45th anniversary, you too can finally hear this thrilling side of Melissa Manchester.
