CoronaVinyl Day 365 (E): Night Flight by Yvonne Elliman

For an explanation of CoronaVinyl, click here.

Today's CoronaVinyl category is "E," and we're on our 365th installment of CoronaVinyl.  One full year's worth of records.  Granted, I took a month off both Octobers for Rocktober, and I don't do weekends, but that's still a pretty damn disheartening number to reach.  Remember when we thought it was only gonna be two weeks?  Thanks, assholes.  

Anyway, today's record was Yvonne Elliman's sixth studio album, 1978's Night Flight.  Hawaii native Elliman got her big break as the part of Mary Magdalene in the original audio recording of Jesus Christ Superstar in 1970.  By the way, Deep Purple lead singer Ian Gillian was Jesus on that album, and Murray Head was Judas.  Not bad.  

Elliman was then in the original Broadway production of the show, toured with the stage production for four years, and played Mary Magdalene in the 1973 film version, earning her a Golden Globe nomination.

All the while, she was releasing her own music here and there too.  She also sang backing vocals and harmonies on five Eric Clapton albums in the mid '70s.  She scored a couple Top 15 hits from her 1976 album Love Me:  the title track (#14) and "Hello Stranger" (#15).

Elliman is probably best known for her #1 hit "If I Can't Have You," which was written by the Bee Gees and was the fourth #1 hit from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, released in late 1977.  Building off of that success and the success of Love Me, Elliman released Night Flight -- which I keep wanting type as "Fright Night" -- in early 1978.  The album included "If I Can't Have You," but didn't feature any other charting song.  It's not as disco-oriented as I expected it to be, but more poppy and ballady.  It was her highest-charting album, though, reaching #40 on the Billboard album chart.  The album features dozens of musicians (thought it's not clear from the album cover who played on which tracks), including Steve Cropper from Booker T. & The MGs and Little Feat frontman Lowell George on guitar, former member of the Motown songwriting team The Corporation and disco songwriter and producer Freddie Perren on percussion and synthesizer (he also produced "If I Can't Have You"), Eric Carmen on keyboards, veteran session drummers Jim Keltner and Russell Kunkel, Little Feat drummer Ritchie Hayward, and Kiki Dee on backing vocals, among others.

She would release one more album, 1979's Yvonne, which featured her last Top 40 hit, "Love Pains," which went to #34.  After that, she stepped away from music to raise her children.  In 2004, she released an EP, and she has performed here and there since then.

The album isn't on Spotify or YouTube, so I just embedded a greatest hits album below. 

Favorite Song on Side 1:  "In a Stranger's Arms"
This is funky and gritty, and it's one of the more soulful songs on the album.  Listening to this song makes me feel like I'm having a night out on the town in New York in 1978, looking for some action, but it ain't too hard to find, if you catch my drift.

Favorite Song on Side 2:  "If I Can't Have You"
There's a reason this went to #1.  It's catchy as hell, like pretty much anything written by the Brothers Gibb in the late '70s.