TOGETHER [1979]

Last time out, HERC presented Reflections, a 1979 collection of "today's love hits".  This time, he's back with Together, which as you can see from the cover glimpse above is yet another collection of "today's love hits".  It's not a coincidence that the two albums are being presented back to back as all indications point to them being released that way back in 1979.  And by "all indications", HERC means that they have nearly sequential catalog or matrix numbers; in fact, there was only one album issued between Reflections and Together in 1979 - a movie soundtrack for a film entitled Hometown U.S.A. (back cover, below) that featured twenty "oldies", songs from the Fifties and the Sixties.  Overall, the movie and the soundtrack both look like American Graffiti copycats.

Together has sixteen tracks that HERC would be willing to guess were all Top 10 on the Adult Contemporary chart, home of "today's love hits".  Two of those sixteen rank among the top slow jams of all time: Peaches & Herb's "Reunited" and Heatwave's slow burning "Always & Forever". HERC's favorite songs on Together are "Three Times A Lady", another fantastic slow jam, and Bobby Caldwell's severely underrated "What You Won't Do For Love".  After listening through the album, HERC thinks that most if not all of the songs might have been Top 20 Pop hits as well but we'll see when we run the tracklist through the K-Tel Scale. Together needs a score of at least 30.74 to crack the Top 10 on the leaderboard.

Together [1979]		K-tel Scale:				30.09
		Billboard Top 40s
		Pop	R&B	COU	AC	CB	WLS
Reunited	Peaches & Herb	1			4	1	1
I Just Fall In Love Again ‎	Anne Murray	12		1	1	11	33
Three Times A Lady	Commodores	1	1		1	1	1
We're All Alone	Rita Coolidge	7			1	5	5
Always and Forever	Heatwave	18	2		33	12	19
Sharing The Night Together	Dr. Hook	6			18	4	14
Don't Cry Out Loud	Melissa Manchester	10			9	10	13
Love Is The Answer	England Dan & John Ford Coley	10			1	13
Lady	Little River Band	10			7	10	7
You're A Part Of Me	Gene Cotton & Kim Carnes	36			6	35
What You Won't Do For Love	Bobby Caldwell	9	6		10	10	26
I Just Wanna Stop	Gino Vannelli	4	21		4	2	9
Just Remember I Love You	Firefall	11			1	9	4
Change Of Heart	Eric Carmen	19			6	19
How Much I Feel	Ambrosia	3			11	2	8

Holy cow!  Together comes up just .65 short of cracking the Leaderboard.  How'd HERC do on his predictions?  Three songs missed the Top 10 on the AC chart while only one missed the Top 20 on the Pop chart.  Not too shabby.  (Of course, the definitive word on Together will come from the man with a PhD in slow jams, the soft rock kid™.)  Collectors should note that the album was also available on 8 track and cassette tapes, as illustrated below.

Before we get to the Together playlist, HERC just wanted to let folks know the next album to be featured on the K-Tel Kollection will be 1979's Disco Nights, featuring non-stop disco hits from 1978.