CoronaVinyl Day 255 (V): By Request: The Best of Billy Vera & The Beaters by Billy Vera & The Beaters

For an explanation of CoronaVinyl, click here.

Sorry for the one-day hiatus.  I was trapped in a room without a turntable for most of the day yesterday, so I didn't have the chance to listen to any vinyl.  COVID problems.  Today's CoronaVinyl category is "V," and my options are limited, but one of my recent acquisitions from that stack or records I got from my neighbor is Billy Vera & The Beaters' 1987 "best of" album By Request.

Back in February, I listened to Billy Vera's Retro Nuevo album and told you all about him and the song "At This Moment," which wasn't on Retro Nuevo, but is on By Request.  I'm not going to rehash everything I said there, but I'll tell you a little bit about By Request.

As I told you in February, "At This Moment" was originally released in 1981 and didn't make much noise on the charts, but then became a #1 hit in 1987 after it was featured in several poignant episodes of Family Ties.  Due to the song's success, Rhino Records cobbled together an album, By Request, which features songs that were all recorded in 1981, most of which are from the Billy & The Beaters album, which was a live album recorded at the Roxy in LA and was originally released in 1981.  Two of the tracks are from the Billy Vera album that was released the following year.

The live songs are certain the bread and butter.  Vera and The Beaters had a legendary standing weekly midnight show at the Troubadour in LA in the early '80s, which is interesting to me because this type of music -- kind of a mix of blue-eyed soul, pop, R&B, and country -- was certainly not the type of music that was big at that time.  While the live songs on By Request were recorded a mile north at he Roxy, you still get the feeling.  Vera, of course, was the lead singer, and also played guitar.  Joining him were Doobie Brothers alum Jeff "Skunk" Baxter on pedal steel guitar, session keyboardist Jim Ehinger, future member of Bruce Hornsby's backing band The Range George Marinelli on guitar, four (!) sax players (Bryan Cumming, Jerry Peterson, Lon Price, and Ron Viola), session bassist Chuck Fiore, and session drummer Beau Segal.

Thanks to the success of "At This Moment," the album reached #17 on the Billboard album chart.  Vera has continued to make music since then, and as I mentioned in February, has also written and sung various TV theme songs -- and several of the songs on By Request have kind of a TV theme song feel to them -- acted in movies and on TV, done voiceover work, written a couple books, and written liner notes for over 200 reissued albums and box sets (and won a Grammy in 2013 for his liner notes for a Ray Charles box set).

By Request isn't on Spotify, so again, I'm just going to give you a different "best of" compilation that is on Spotify (and is a different one than I posted in February).

Favorite song on Side 1:  "Millie, Make Some Chili"
As Vera explains when introducing this song, it's about a woman at a late night diner who makes a mean chili dog.  It's kind of a country-tinged rockabilly song.

Favorite song on Side 2:  "At This Moment"
Like I was going to pick another song.  For my diatribe about the song, see my post from February.