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      How Meat Loaf Made a Cult Favorite: ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’

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      The eight-and-a-half minute tale of sexual awakening features drums by the E Street Band’s Max Weinberg and vocals from Ellen Foley, who help recount how the unlikely song came together.The singer Meat Loaf, who died on Thursday, was a rock ’n’ roll anomaly: a portly force of nature whose theatrical musicality made him an unlikely but undeniable radio staple, and a standout presence in films like “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Fight Club.”Of his vital contributions to the American karaoke canon, the most potent may be “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” the eight-and-a-half minute opus to nascent sexuality that appeared on his multiplatinum 1977 debut, “Bat Out of Hell.” The story of a teenage couple about to consummate their relationship in a car, the song is built around a boisterous call-and-response duet between Meat Loaf and the singer Ellen Foley. The sexual act itself is narrated by the famous New York Yankees shortstop and play-by-play announcer Phil Rizzuto, over a rollicking barroom groove. (Sample dialogue: “Here’s the play at the plate — Holy cow, I think he’s gonna make it!”)“Meat got to act in that song, and he loved acting,” the bassist Kasim Sulton, who performed on “Bat Out of Hell,” said in a phone interview. “He did that with every song, but especially in ‘Paradise’ because it was indelibly linked to his whole life. He loved performing that song more than I could possibly tell you.”Like many of Meat Loaf’s best-known songs, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” was written by the composer Jim Steinman. Lifelong collaborators, the two met in New York City when Meat Loaf auditioned for Steinman’s 1973 musical “More Than You Deserve.” Not long after, Meat Loaf was cast as John Belushi’s understudy in a “National Lampoon” road show, and he found Steinman a job as a piano player on the tour.It was on that tour that “Paradise,” and many of the songs that would turn up on “Bat Out of Hell,” first took shape. “We were driving around the country in a little blue van, and wherever we would play the ‘National Lampoon’ show, Jim would find a piano,” Ellen Foley said in a phone interview. “I don’t want to be a shrink, but I think it was probably him working out his own teenage desires that he hadn’t done in real life, but was able to experience in this hyper-emotional material. He just wanted to create something that nobody had ever heard before.”In a 2021 interview with Rolling Stone, Meat Loaf discussed his uncredited contributions to Steinman’s writing process. “My input was more arrangement, methods, a word or two here and there,” he said. “My job was to make the songs focused, the same way you’d get a character focused. Every song was a character. I’d get Jim to add a word, change the melody.”Back in New York, the three were joined by the singer Rory Dodd, who met Meat Loaf in 1975 while working on the Broadway musical “Rockabye Hamlet.” “We would rehearse every day, singing the same songs and working out the arrangements,” Dodd said in an interview. As a quartet, they performed these songs at clubs across the city as Meat Loaf and Steinman went looking for a record deal.That was slow coming, as most record executives didn’t quite understand what they were hearing. But they picked up some admirers along the way. Max Weinberg, the drummer for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, recounted being told about Meat Loaf and Steinman by a mutual friend, and watching them perform in a rehearsal studio on 57th Street. “Right there, in this little 8-by-10 room, Meat Loaf and Ellen Foley delivered ‘Paradise’ full-bore,” he said. “I had a lot of experience with Broadway-type presentation, so the idea of going into a studio and listening to a show being put together — immediately, I got the theatricality of it.”One of those admirers was the artist Todd Rundgren, who, under the mistaken impression that Meat Loaf and Steinman had a record deal, agreed to produce “Bat Out of Hell.” (When the truth came out, he also agreed to fund the recording himself.) In the fall of 1975, the musicians convened at Bearsville Studio in Woodstock, N.Y., where they were joined by members of Rundgren’s band Utopia, as well as Weinberg and Roy Bittan, the piano player for the E Street Band.Sulton said the group “all had a hand” in how the songs were arranged. “My first time hearing ‘Paradise,’ I remember thinking ‘it’s obvious what the song is,’” he said. “It’s kind of a boogie-woogie shuffle, and then there’s the Phil Spector part, and then there’s a bit of ‘Thunder Road.’ The song laid itself out for us in its entirety with just Jim playing the piano, and Meat Loaf singing it live.”After rehearsals, the band recorded “Paradise” in sections, without vocals. Weinberg said Steinman pushed him to play “like an out-of-control teenager.” “Teenage drumming is overplaying and very histrionic; it’s like a spice, because it’s not something you want to do all the time,” he said. “But he would tell me to hit those things so hard they fall over, and you can hear it in ‘Paradise.’ By the end of it, I’m just slamming away at the cymbals.”Foley’s singing parts were recorded in one take. “I did my part individually, but I had Meat come into the room so that I could act, and sing at him,” she said. “We were both in character; he was that poor, frightened, horny guy.” Dodd, who was one of the few people in the room when Meat Loaf recorded his own vocals, said Meat Loaf also performed in character as he sang. The initial recording was originally longer, clocking in at around 11 minutes; Dodd said about three minutes of background vocals at the song’s outro were cut out.Even with a completed album, Meat Loaf and Steinman had difficulty finding a record deal. Dodd recalled the record executive Clive Davis telling Steinman “that he had to learn how to write rock ’n’ roll.” But the album was eventually accepted and released by the executive Steve Popovich’s Cleveland International Records, and it slowly gained traction upon its 1977 release. Its popularity was boosted by a promotional video clip for “Paradise,” in which Meat Loaf and the singer Karla DeVito — lip syncing over Foley’s vocals — performed onstage.In the 2011 book “I Want My MTV,” Meat Loaf said he secured the video placements before midnight showings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” “That is still the number one selling album in the history of Holland, and I never played there,” he said. “It’s all because of the ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ video.”DeVito, who replaced Foley for the initial “Bat Out of Hell” tour, said audiences “went nuts” when the band got to “Paradise.” For these shows, she was given free rein to create the character of what she called “the girl in white” — the innocent counterpart to Meat Loaf’s lascivious singer. “He just wanted to put on the best show possible every night,” she said. Over the years, performances of the song would sprawl to the 20-minute mark because “Meat would milk it for all it was worth,” Sulton said.Even as his health waned, Meat Loaf was intent on performing live. DeVito said that less than a month before his death, he called her about staging a tour. “I’m thinking, ‘How are we going to do this?’” she recalled. “He said, ‘I really don’t like the way I’m walking, anyway. So we’ll come out in a car, and then we’ll roll out, and when it gets to the kissing part in “Paradise,” everything will go black, and they’ll play the video.’ He really did not stop thinking, and this is the thing that kills me about losing him — he was always inspired to do more.”Weinberg said Meat Loaf, ultimately, was a truly devoted performer. “Whatever he did, he committed to it,” he said. “And in committing to it, he made it real for you.” More

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      A Knockout Country-Rap Crossover, and 13 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Nilüfer Yanya, Gayle, John Mellencamp and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Kidd G featuring YNW BSlime, ‘Left Me’There’s been an increasing amount of crossover between country and hip-hop in recent years, though often the relationship between the two influences can feel strained. But here’s a collaboration between two sing-rappers, both teenagers, that sounds utterly unforced: Kidd G, who’s making the kind of naturally syncretic music Nashville should be inching toward, and YNW BSlime, the younger brother of the incarcerated star YNW Melly. Kidd G taps into his Juice WRLD influences, with pitter-patter syllables and scraped-up singing, and YNW BSlime’s guest verse is chilling, and sung with disarming innocence: “Two years my brother’s been gone/And I’ve never/felt so alone.” It sounds like the No. 1 song of 2030. JON CARAMANICACharlie Puth, ‘Light Switch’A peppy song about romantic dyspepsia, “Light Switch” is a lightly manqué version of the sort of electric funk-pop that made Charlie Puth’s 2018 album “Voicenotes” so appealing. The singing is slightly less committed, and the lyric construction not buttoned quite as tight, and there’s a light hyperpop-esque treatment on the vocals that makes Puth sound like hes lamenting from the inside of the synthesizer. But the anxiety of the words is pointed, and the sugar-rush production scans as breathlessness. CARAMANICANilüfer Yanya, ‘Midnight Sun’Escalation suggests obsession in “Midnight Sun” from a new Nilüfer Yanya album, “Painless,” that’s due in March. “Maybe I can’t care too much/I can’t clean this up,” she sings. “Get me off this spinning wheel.” Both the acoustic guitar chords and the drumbeat feel looped, with more than a hint of Radiohead, but other sounds arrive — acoustic and electric guitars — sounding hand-played and offering possibilities of escape. It’s not clear whether she’ll use them. JON PARELESGayle, ‘Ur Just Horny’The quantum guitar-chord crescendo of grunge — quiet-loud-MUCH LOUDER — gets a full, furious workout in Gayle’s “Ur Just Horny,” the teenage songwriter’s follow-up to “Abcdefu.” As the stop-start guitars stack up, she spells things out: “You don’t wanna be my friend/You just wanna see me naked/Again.” PARELESEcco2K and Bladee, ‘Amygdala’Ecco2K and Bladee are members of the Drain Gang, a Swedish pop collective that has a sideline in fashion modeling. Their latest collaboration, produced by the German musician Mechatok, is a slice of pointillist hyperpop that treats voices and synthesizer tones alike as bits of blipping staccato counterpoint and computer-compressed nuggets of cosmic ambition: “Destroy and create, dreaming in the dream,” Bladee croons at the end, before the machines shut off. PARELESSofia Kourtesis featuring Manu Chao, ‘Estación Esperanza’Sofia Kourtesis makes songs that pulsate with the hope of a new day. “Estación Esperanza” is a master class in culling citations, opening with the chants of a Peruvian protest against homophobia before vocal samples of Manu Chao’s “Me Gustas Tu” glitch into focus, interspersed with vibrant bird calls and a steady horn. When Kourtesis’ own humming comes into focus, a single moment opens to infinity. ISABELIA HERRERAINVT, ‘Anaconda’The Miami duo INVT lets genres slip through their fingers on its latest track. A fever pitch dembow riddim lifted from Jamaican dancehall thumps to life. A vaporous echo and fleshy moan whisper under the production. There is the steady clang of a cowbell, the shake of a maraca. Is it reggaeton? Minimal techno? Does it even matter? HERRERAKey Glock, ‘Proud’Young Dolph, who was shot and killed in his Memphis hometown in November, had mentored and collaborated with his cousin, Key Glock. Key Glock’s tribute song, “Proud,” is the first single from the compilation “Paper Route Empire Presents: Long Live Dolph,” and it’s burly in presentation but the lyrics ache: “I can get it back in blood but still I can’t get back the time.” In the video, Key Glock raps his regrets at the site of the killing, a stark choice. CARAMANICAJohn Mellencamp, ‘I Am a Man That Worries’John Mellencamp stays grim and grizzled throughout his new album, “Strictly a One-Eyed Jack.” In “I Am a Man That Worries,” he’s worried about everything and belligerent about it: “You better get out of my way,” he growls. It’s a vintage-style blues stop with slide guitar and fiddle flanking his voice, and though he proclaims his bitter solitude, he has a crowd shouting alongside him by the end. PARELESDaniel Rossen, ‘Shadow in the Frame’Nervous energy courses through “Shadow in the Frame,” the first single from the solo album due in April from Daniel Rossen of Grizzly Bear. Rossen played every instrument except drums (by Grizzly Bear’s Christopher Bear) in the intricate arrangement, including strings and woodwinds. The song is a meditation on ephemerality and catastrophe — “You will watch us flash and fade and get torn apart,” he sings — carried by a restless, circling phrase that migrates among guitars and vocals, changing contour but never resolving, hinting at hope that keeps moving out of reach. PARELESUwade, ‘Do You See the Light Around Me?’The songwriter Uwade explores infatuation in “Do You See the Light Around Me?” It’s a single on Sylvan Esso’s label, Psychic Hotline, and as it cycles through four chords with voices and instruments arriving and disappearing, it echoes that group’s mixture of sparse electronic beats and human warmth. But Uwade brings her own personality, at once uncertain and embracing. PARELESJana Horn, ‘Jordan’The Austin-based songwriter Jana Horn keeps her voice small and whispery throughout “Optimism,” the debut album she releases this week. “Jordan” is the album’s eeriest, most exploratory, most determined song: a steady-pulsing march with electronics at the fringes, an enigmatic biblical narrative about a quest, an ordeal, a dilemma, a revelation. PARELESGui Duvignau, featuring Bill Frisell, ‘Tristeza e Solidão’The bassist Gui Duvignau begins his take on “Tristeza e Solidão” — a torch song by the Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell and the poet Vinícius de Moraes — unaccompanied, sounding plangent and contemplative as he lets low notes resound. The guitarist Bill Frisell, featured as a special guest, enters with the drummer Jeff Hirschfield, and trades the song’s somber melody back and forth with Duvignau. The track is overcast and melancholy and slow, lacking the quiet, motor-like samba groove of Powell’s and de Moraes’s original version but sounding just as haunted. This performance comes from Duvignau’s latest album, “Baden,” a tribute to the influential guitarist, who died in 2000. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOKiko Villamizar, ‘Sembrá El Maíz’Cumbia rhythms, carried on drums stroked by hands and mallets, lift up a reverb-shaken guitar and the sleepy-eyed voice of Kiko Villamizar. “Sembrá El Maíz” (“Plant the Corn”) is an original urging hard work and patience, even in the face of climate catastrophe. By the end he’s full-throated, trading call-and-response vocals with the band. A musician, educator and organizer now based in Austin, Villamizar grew up primarily on a coffee farm in Colombia and later traveled the country collecting songs. When Los Destellos and Los Wemblers de Iquitos started making Peruvian jungle-surf like this in the 1960s, it rang cosmopolitan; today, writing similar songs, a younger musician from the Colombian side is building on what’s become a tradition of its own. RUSSONELLO More

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      Meat Loaf, ‘Bat Out of Hell’ Singer and Actor, Dies

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      In his six-decade career, the singer, born Marvin Lee Aday, sold millions of albums and acted in films including “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Fight Club.”Meat Loaf, the larger-than-life rocker whose 1977 debut album, “Bat Out of Hell,” was one of the best-selling albums of all time, died on Thursday. He had given conflicting information about his age over the years, but was widely reported to have been 74.His death was confirmed by his manager, Michael Greene. A statement on the musician’s Facebook page said his wife was by his side and that his friends had been with him in his final 24 hours. A cause of death was not given.Meat Loaf, who was born Marvin Lee Aday and took his stage name from a childhood nickname, had a career that few could match. In six decades, he sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, the statement said, and appeared in several movies, including “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Fight Club.”“We know how much he meant to so many of you and we truly appreciate all of the love and support as we move through this time of grief in losing such an inspiring artist and beautiful man,” the statement said. “From his heart to your souls … don’t ever stop rocking!”Meat Loaf’s death came just a year after that of Jim Steinman, the songwriter who wrote “Bat Out of Hell,” a record that brought operatic rock to audiences at a time when, in the face of disco and punk, it couldn’t have been more unfashionable. The pair met when Mr. Steinman was commissioned to co-write a musical called “More Than You Deserve,” which ran at the Public Theater in New York in 1973 and 1974. Meat Loaf auditioned and later joined the cast.Jim Steinman, left, with Meat Loaf in 1978. Mr. Steinman wrote all the songs on Meat Loaf’s debut album, “Bat Out of Hell,” which became one of the best-selling albums of all time.Michael Putland/Getty ImagesLater, Mr. Steinman was trying to write a post-apocalyptic musical based on “Peter Pan,” but, unable to secure the rights for the tale, he turned the work into “Bat Out of Hell,” bringing in Meat Loaf to give the songs the style and energy that made them hits. The title track alone is a mini-opera in itself, clocking in at nearly 10 minutes and featuring numerous musical breakdowns. The album’s seven tracks also included the songs “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.”Meat Loaf and Mr. Steinman went on to have legal disagreements, but still worked together, writing a sequel to “Bat Out of Hell” in 1993 — “Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell” — which included “I’d Do Anything for Love (but I Won’t Do That),” Meat Loaf’s only track to top the Billboard 100 singles chart. The song also won him the 1994 Grammy Award for best rock vocal solo performance.“Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose,” released in 2006, also included some songs by Mr. Steinman, who created a musical based on “Bat Out of Hell” that premiered in England in 2017. Mr. Steinman died in April 2021 at age 73. Meat Loaf told Rolling Stone shortly afterward that Mr. Steinman had been the “centerpiece” of his life.Some critics could be sniffy about Meat Loaf’s music and spectacle. John Rockwell, reviewing a 1977 live show for The New York Times, started by remarking that “Meat Loaf is the rather graceless name that a large rock performer has chosen for both himself and for the band built around his singing.” Despite that, Mr. Rockwell was soon convinced that Meat Loaf was worthy of being the center of attention. “He has fine, fervent low rock tenor, and enough stage presence to do without spotlights altogether,” he wrote, adding that, “one had to admire the unabashed intensity with which he was willing to wallow in such soap‐opera silliness.”Meat Loaf ultimately released 12 studio albums, the last being “Braver Than We Are” in 2016.In addition to his music, Meat Loaf also appeared in dozens of television shows and movies, according to IMDb. His first major role came in 1975 in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” where he played Eddie. He also appeared in “Wayne’s World” (1992), “Spice World” (1997) and “Fight Club” (1999). More recently, he had a role in several episodes of the TV series “Ghost Wars” from 2017-18.Marvin Lee Aday was born and grew up in Dallas, the son of Orvis Wesley Aday, a former policeman, and Wilma Artie Hukel, an English teacher. “I stayed at my grandmother’s house a lot,” Meat Loaf wrote in “To Hell and Back,” his 1999 autobiography, adding that he did not know if those stays were because his mother was busy working or because she did not want him to see his father “on a bender.”According to his autobiography, Meat Loaf was born on Sep. 27, 1947, but news reports of his age varied over the years. In 2003, he showed a reporter from The Guardian newspaper a passport featuring a birth date of 1951 and later said about the discrepancy, “I just continually lie.”Meat Loaf at a news conference promoting his album “Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose” in 2006.Bobby Yip/ReutersAs an adult, Meat Loaf said he changed his first name to Michael from Marvin because of childhood taunts about his weight and, he said, the emotional impact of a Levi’s jeans commercial that had the slogan, “Poor fat Marvin can’t wear Levi’s.”He later cited the commercial when petitioning to change his name, which the judge granted it within 30 seconds, Meat Loaf wrote in his autobiography.Meat Loaf also told numerous stories about how he got his stage name, including one about a high school stunt in which he let a Volkswagen run over his head. Afterward, a child shouted, “You’re as dumb as a hunk of meat loaf.” But Meat Loaf wrote in his autobiography that the name came from his father: “He called me Meat Loaf almost from the time my mother brought me home.”Meat Loaf had health problems throughout his career. He had heart surgery in 2003 after collapsing onstage at Wembley Arena in London and told an audience in Newcastle, England, in 2007 that the concert was “probably the last show I’ll ever do” after another health scare.Meat Loaf performing in the Netherlands in 2013.Ferdy Damman/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 2013, he told The Guardian that he was definitely retiring from music after another farewell tour. “I’ve had 18 concussions,” he said. “My balance is off. I’ve had a knee replacement. I’ve got to have the other one replaced.” He wanted to “concentrate more on acting,” he added, since “that’s where I started and that’s where I’ll finish.”A full list of survivors was not immediately available. More

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      Fred Parris, Creator of a Doo-Wop Classic, Is Dead at 85

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      His “In the Still of the Night” (originally “Nite”), recorded with his group the Five Satins, came to define a sort of dreamy 1950s nostalgia.Fred Parris, who was a love-struck 19-year-old missing his fiancée while serving in the Army when he wrote one of pop music’s most enduring songs, the wistful doo-wop ballad commonly known as “In the Still of the Night,” and recorded it with his group the Five Satins in 1956, died on Jan. 13 in New Haven, Conn. He was 85.His current group, Fred Parris and the Five Satins, posted news of his death on its Facebook page, saying only that he had died after a short illness.Over the years Mr. Parris varied the story of his signature song a bit, but this was the gist of it: He had met the “girl of my dreams,” as he put it, at the Savin Rock amusement park in West Haven, Conn., in 1954, and by the next year they were engaged. On the train ride back to his Army base in Philadelphia after a particularly nice visit with her, he reminisced about their first night together and began thinking about lyrics and tunes.“When I arrived at camp, I went straight to the day room,” he told Smithsonian magazine in 2004. “There was a piano there, and I started playing the chord in my head and the words in my heart.”But soon he had to report for his shift. That’s when the song really came together.“Before I realized it,” he said, “it was time to go to guard duty. It was a cold, black night, and the stars were twinkling.”The result was a song that was originally titled “(I’ll Remember) In the Still of the Nite,” to distinguish it from Cole Porter’s “In the Still of the Night,” said Ralph M. Newman, an R&B historian who filled in some of the details of Mr. Parris’s life. In February 1956, again on leave from the Army, Mr. Parris and three pals, backed by some local musicians, recorded the song on a relatively primitive two-track system in an echoey, frigid basement room at St. Bernadette’s Church in New Haven.Somehow they captured acoustical magic.“Because we did it at the church,” Mr. Parris said in a 2013 interview with the Florida radio show “Doo Wop Revival,” “I think the song was blessed. And so was I.”Though it was originally only a minor hit, “In the Still of the Night” (as the title is now commonly rendered) achieved doo-wop immortality, thanks to cover versions by Boyz II Men, the Beach Boys and others; its use in “Dirty Dancing,” “The Irishman” and other movies; and its tuneful timelessness. Mr. Newman, a former editor of the R&B history magazine Bim Bam Boom and a former executive with Broadcast Music Inc., traced the record’s slow ascent in an email:“After this icon of vocal group harmony was recorded and first released by the local Standord record label in New Haven, the master was leased to the larger Ember label, which in 1956 landed it on Alan Freed’s nightly radio show on WINS in New York. There it became, for years, the No. 1 listener-requested song of the period, with which Freed often closed the show with a long list of dedications, and went on to become the perennial No. 1 song on oldies stations around the country.”Mr. Parris later in his career. In 1982 he and the Five Satins returned to the charts for the first time in more than 20 years with “Memories of Days Gone By.”Debra ReedMr. Parris kept writing, performing and recording for more than a half century with an ever-changing lineup, mostly under the Five Satins name. When the oldies boom hit, the song came to define the doo-wop era. The critic Greil Marcus included it in his 2014 book, “The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs.”“Though he continued to record new songs well into the 1980s,” Mr. Marcus wrote, “Parris and different versions of the Five Satins never played a show, whether in clubs around New Haven, for rock ’n’ roll revival concerts in New York, on PBS doo-wop fund-raisers, without ‘In the Still of the Nite’ being the reason the audience was there at all.”Mr. Newman said he once produced a show featuring the Five Satins on the excursion ship Bay Belle.“At that time I asked Fred whether he ever tired of singing that song, night after night, year after year,” Mr. Newman said, “to which he replied: ‘No way; I never stop loving doing that song for people who tell me that it occupies a special place in their lives. I consider it a privilege.’”The 1972 version of the Five Satins at Madison Square Garden. Mr. Parris once said of the group’s signature song: “I never stop loving doing that song for people who tell me that it occupies a special place in their lives. I consider it a privilege.”Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesFrederick Lee Parris was born on March 26, 1936, in Milford, Conn., to Ferdinand and Edna Parris, Mr. Newman said. He grew up in the New Haven area and attended Hillhouse High School. He was a decent baseball player; an entry on the Five Satins in Jay Warner’s “The Billboard Book of American Singing Groups: A History, 1940-1990” says he once had a tryout with the Boston Braves.Apparently he was a better singer than ballplayer, and he was in several groups before forming the Five Satins. One, which he formed with other Hillhouse students, was called the Scarlets, and in 1954 the group recorded “Dear One,” a song Mr. Parris had written, for the Red Robin label; it received some airplay in the New York market.The Scarlets cut several other records, but in 1955 military service split up the group. Mr. Parris ended up in Philadelphia and, during trips home to Connecticut, formed a new group. He had admired a doo-wop act called the Velvets and “liked the idea of something soft and red,” as the Billboard book put it; he chose the name the Five Satins.But despite that name, Mr. Newman said, there were only four Satins at the 1956 recording session: Mr. Parris, who sang lead on “In the Still of the Night,” Al Denby (low tenor), Eddie Martin (baritone) and Jim Freeman (bass). The group, usually with five members, continued on, even recording a minor 1957 success, “To the Aisle,” with Bill Baker singing lead because Mr. Parris, still in the service, was stationed in Japan. Two other records made the Billboard charts in those early years, with Mr. Parris as the lead singer: “Shadows” (1959) and “I’ll Be Seeing You” (1960).Mr. Parris, when telling the story of “In the Still of the Night,” usually didn’t identify the young woman who inspired the song, though in the Smithsonian article he said her name was Marla. In any case, there was no marriage; shortly after he wrote the song, he told The Hartford Courant in 1982, “she went to California to visit her mother.”“She never came back,” he said.Mr. Parris was married several times, most recently to Emma Parris, who survives him. Other survivors include three children, Shawn Parris, Rene Parris Alexandre and Freddy Parris, and eight grandchildren.“In the Still of the Night” endured, and for a time Mr. Parris and various versions of the Satins toured on the strength of it, but in the mid-1960s the British Invasion shoved the doo-wop era aside. He told The Courant that over the years he worked at the Olin and High Standard gun-making plants in Connecticut and delivered food at Southern Connecticut State University.“You do a lot of stuff to eat,” he said.But beginning in the 1970s he tapped into the rock ’n’ roll revival market, performing at oldies shows, and in 1982, for the first time in more than 20 years, he and the Satins landed briefly on the charts again with “Memories of Days Gone By,” a medley made up of snatches of “Sixteen Candles,” “Earth Angel” and other classics, including, of course, “In the Still of the Night.” More

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      What’s Left for the Weeknd to Conquer?

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherFollowing the Weeknd’s 2020 album, “After Hours,” which included the global hit “Blinding Lights,” it may have seemed as if he had nowhere else to go — that he’d finally reached the summit of the mountain he’d spent the decade climbing, starting out as a freaky recalibrator of R&B and ending up making unifying 1980s-style hits that need no translation.His new album, “Dawn FM,” suggests at least one future direction: leaning in on specific sections and subgenres of that decade and exploring ways to supersize the niche.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about making big tent pop in an age of the micro, and just how few options truly remain for the biggest mainstream pop star’s next moves.Guest:Rob Harvilla, senior staff writer at The Ringer and host of the “60 Songs That Explain the ’90s” podcastConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Gunna Beats the Weeknd in a Close Race for No. 1

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      In a tale of two surprise albums with striking cover art, “deluxe” versions and retail discounts, the Atlanta rapper’s “DS4Ever” won by a nose.Last week, two new albums vied for No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, with similar marketing arsenals and big fan bases set to click away on streaming services.The Weeknd’s “Dawn FM” and Gunna’s “DS4Ever” were both surprise releases, announced just days before they came out.Each LP had cover artwork featuring a striking treatment of its artist’s face. And each was filled with celebrity guest spots. Gunna, a rapper from Atlanta, had Drake, Future and 21 Savage; the Weeknd had vocals by Lil Wayne and Tyler, the Creator, along with narration by Quincy Jones and the comedian Jim Carrey.Both albums came out in “deluxe” versions with extra tracks, a common tactic these days to stir fan demand and drive up streaming counts. Their download versions were also heavily discounted online. And as last week came to a close, industry prognosticators expected a photo finish.In the end, Gunna won by a nose — a surprise, perhaps, given the enormous success of the Weeknd’s last album, “After Hours” (2020). “DS4Ever” had the equivalent of 150,300 sales in the United States, and “Dawn FM” had 148,000, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm.While “Dawn FM” sold more copies as a complete unit — 14,800, versus 4,700 for “DS4Ever” — streaming tipped the balance. Gunna ended the week with 193 million clicks, while the Weeknd had 173 million.The soundtrack to Disney’s “Encanto,” which topped the chart last week, falls to No. 3. Adele’s “30” is the No. 4 album — while her song “Easy on Me” marks its ninth week as the No. 1 single — and Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 5. More

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      Janis Ian Lets Her Music Speak Her Mind (One Last Time)

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      At 70, the singer-songwriter who has always been unafraid of difficult subjects is releasing a final album, “The Light at the End of the Line.”On a recent morning, Janis Ian spoke expansively from her work space in Florida about a 50-year career marked by literary lyrics, social activism and major hits. Just one subject brought her up short. When pondering younger artists who’ve publicly cited her as an inspiration, she paused and threw up her arms. “I can’t think of one. So many people say, ‘Joni Mitchell is my big influence,’” she said. “And I thought, wait a minute. Didn’t I influence anybody?”She might not get the loudest shout-outs, but there’s no denying that Ian has often served as a cultural clairvoyant.In 1967, she became one of the first fully self-determined female singer-songwriters in pop, having penned every track on her debut album, which was released one month before Laura Nyro’s, a year before Joni Mitchell’s and three before Carole King’s.The subjects she became most famous for writing about, outliers at the time, have since become ubiquitous. Her breakthrough hit, “Society’s Child,” written in 1965 when she was 14, was one of the first charting songs to center on an interracial romance. Her biggest score, “At Seventeen,” which reached No. 2 in 1975, confronted lookism and bullying with a candor that anticipated the work of contemporary artists including Billie Eilish, Demi Lovato and Lizzo. Ian was also one of the first gay pop stars to come out in the early ’90s, and she championed free downloads as a promotional device back when the industry did everything it could to shut them down.Ian had few role models for her self-determined path, citing only Nina Simone and Victoria Spivey, a blues singer and writer who made her first impact in the 1920s. Otherwise, she said, “everything was male-identified.”“Plenty of other artists have a gift for melody and vocals and great lyrics,” Ian said. “The only thing I think I do better is to talk about things that people have a hard time voicing. I give them a safe way to voice them.”Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesThe disparity between the world in which she carved her path and today has been on Ian’s mind lately because of a major decision she made in the last year. At 70, she will release her final album, “The Light at the End of the Line,” this Friday, followed by a valedictory tour. “I’m done,” she said, with a mixture of relief and anticipation. Ian said the wear and tear of serving as her own manager and song publisher, along with life as a touring musician, left little time for the thing she loves most.“I’m a writer first,” she said. “I care desperately about writing — any kind of writing.”That includes haiku, short stories and a novel she hopes to finish in her coming life. She’ll work on everything in a nearly completed addition to her home, on an island in Tampa Bay where she lives with her wife of 19 years, Patricia Snyder, a retired criminal defense lawyer.Her final songs have a summary mission. In the title track, an elegant acoustic ballad, she bids adieu to her fans. “Some of them have stuck with me for 56 years,” she said. “That’s longer than I’ve known most of my family.” In “I’m Still Standing,” the stalwart melody underscores lyrics that embrace the physical changes brought by time, which, Ian said, explains the white hair and lack of makeup she proudly sported in our interview. In the classically influenced piano piece “Nina,” she salutes one of the artists she most admires, her friend, Nina Simone, who cut a bracingly rueful version of Ian’s song “Stars” in 1976.“Nina was so complicated,” Ian said. “She could be the most astonishing friend and also the most horrible person. But, as a solo performer, she was the single best I’ve ever seen.”Some of the new songs are more expressly political. “Perfect Little Girl” extends the theme of “At 17,” while in “Resist” she repurposes the social protest of earlier songs with lyrics that, among other things, use raw language to capture the violence of female genital mutilation. As with “Society’s Child,” some radio stations have told her they won’t play it. “They said it’s too suggestive,” Ian said. “Is the song sexual in some way I’m not aware of?”Ian was reared to raise such questions. Her father, a music teacher, and her mother, a secretary at a college, ran a progressive summer camp in upstate New York. Because of her parents’ politics, the FBI tapped the family phone, tracked their activities and discouraged schools from hiring her father, which she wrote about on the 2000 album “God and the FBI.”Ian’s upbringing in the mainly Black area of East Orange, N.J., helped inspire her to write “Society’s Child” in 1965, one year after the Civil Rights Act was passed. Her producer, Shadow Morton, a key shaper of the girl group sound, had a deal with Atlantic Records that financed the recording, but the label declined to release it. Ian was never told why, though she said Jerry Wexler, the Atlantic president at the time, later apologized for the decision. Verve Records picked up the song and released it twice in 1966, without success.A major break came the next year when she was invited to appear on a CBS-TV special, “Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution,” for which the host Leonard Bernstein used his enormous cultural currency to lend legitimacy to the explosive new music of the ’60s. Ian said her song “wouldn’t have gone anywhere without the show.” Yet its focus on race scared off enough radio stations to halt its charge up the Billboard chart at No. 14.After “Society’s Child,” Verve released three more Ian albums that failed, but in 1973, Roberta Flack covered her song “Jesse” and scored a hit, which helped Ian get a contract with Columbia Records. “Janis Ian wrote songs that touch my heart,” Flack wrote in an email. “She tells stories in her songs that many of us can relate to — tender experiences that help us articulate what we feel about how the world treats us in so many ways.”Ian’s second album for the label, “Between the Lines,” featured “At Seventeen,” with lyrics capturing the naked shame Ian felt at being considered “an ugly duckling” with an honesty so brutal, it made some people uncomfortable — including its author. “That song was scary to write and scary to sing,” she said. “I would sing it with my eyes closed because I was so sure the audience would laugh at me. It was astonishing to me to realize, first, that they weren’t laughing. And, second, that it applied to boys too.”The song’s nuanced and erudite lyrics also accounted for the loss of self that can be suffered by women considered the most desirable — the very type who bullied Ian. “Their lives are an eternal beauty contest,” she said.Ian believes her willingness to write about uncomfortable subjects has become her métier. “Plenty of other artists have a gift for melody and vocals and great lyrics,” she said. “The only thing I think I do better is to talk about things that people have a hard time voicing. I give them a safe way to voice them.”Though Ian finds it distressing that the difficult subjects she has written about remain relevant decades later, as she prepares to leave the music business, she believes the world has changed considerably from when she started. “It’s too easy to fall down that rabbit hole of saying ‘nothing has improved,’” she said. “I can no longer be arrested in this country for being gay. That’s a huge difference. I firmly believe that things work out the way they’re supposed to. Whether that will be in my lifetime, I don’t know. But I do believe things will be better.” More

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      Rosa Lee Hawkins, Youngest Member of the Dixie Cups, Dies at 76

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      The singing group’s debut single, “Chapel of Love,” rose to the top of the charts in 1964, displacing the Beatles’ “Love Me Do.”Rosa Lee Hawkins, the youngest member of the musical trio the Dixie Cups, whose hit single “Chapel of Love” reached No. 1 on the Billboard 100 in 1964, died on Tuesday in Tampa, Fla. She was 76.The cause was internal bleeding resulting from complications during surgery at Tampa General Hospital, said her sister Barbara Ann Hawkins, who was also a member of the group, along with Joan Marie Johnson, who died in 2016 at 72.The Dixie Cups epitomized the harmonizing sound of the 1960s girl group. “Chapel of Love,” their debut single and most well-known song, quickly replaced the Beatles’ “Love Me Do” as No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 1964. It was later heard on the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam War film, “Full Metal Jacket.”Rosa Lee Hawkins was born on Oct. 23, 1945, in New Orleans to Hartzell Hawkins, a self-employed carpenter, and Lucille (Merette) Hawkins, a state worker who registered voters.While in high school in 1963, Barbara brought Rosa along to sing with her and Joan Marie in a high school talent show. The trio initially called themselves the Meltones, only to discover later that the name had already been taken. Since they were from the land of Dixie, and “cups are cute,” Barbara said in an interview, they came up with the name Dixie Cups (playing on the name of the popular paper cup).Joan later discovered that the Hawkins sisters were actually her cousins.While they did not win the talent show, a talent scout in the audience, impressed by their rich harmonies, invited the group, along with other Louisiana musicians, to perform for Red Bird Records. The Dixie Cups sang “Iko Iko,” a song that was traditionally sung during Mardi Gras and that was a favorite of the Hawkins sisters’ grandmother. They signed a recording contract soon after.The Dixie Cups received two Gold Records, for “Chapel of Love” and another hit, “People Say.” They were inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2007.The group recorded a total of four albums, their last in 2011. Ms. Johnson, ill with sickle-cell anemia and weary from touring, left the group and was replaced by a number of singers through the years. The Hawkins sisters remained, though, and kept singing just as they did in high school, with harmonies as vibrant as ever.“When the audience smiled and applauded, it made her happy because she knew she put a smile on their faces, if only for that time,” Barbara said of her younger sister.In addition to Barbara, Ms. Hawkins is survived by another sister, Shirley; a son, Eric Blanc; and two grandchildren. More