Posted on 04/11/2023 6:01:22 PM PDT by SamAdams76
Maybe if his name was something a little flashier and show-business friendly like Billy Thunderman, Bill Quateman might have been much bigger than he was.
What if Elton John stuck with his original name Reginald Dwight? Would he have been the star that he was?
Sometimes it's all in a name.
Anyhow, fifty years ago at this very time, the spring of 1973, a 21-year-old singer named Bill Quateman burst into the Billboard HOT 100 with a song called "Only Love".
Bill Quateman - Only Love (1973)
Discovered and signed to a recording contract by Clive Davis, then the president of Columbia Records, Quateman was positioned to become one of the major recording acts of the 1970s. After all, Clive had also signed up acts like Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Chicago, Janis Joplin, Sly & The Family Stone, Santana, and many others, so Bill Quateman was certainly on a fast track to stardom.
His debut album was very well received by most critics but only got scant airplay in certain markets such as Kansas City, Wichita, and Chicago. Therefore the album bombed.
Quateman would go on to record a second album titled "The Almost Eve Of Everything" but had the plug pulled on the project when Clive Davis got jettisoned from Columbia later in 1973.
When Quateman refused to go along with Columbia's new direction of turning him into a "Tony Orlando" style act complete with female backup singers, he was dropped from the label and that was that.
I think a contributing factor was his awkward name, but that's just my opinion.
Anyway, give a listen to this rare track, which ended up peaking at #86 on the Billboard HOT 100 in the spring of 1973 - a half century ago. It's got a Steven Stills feel to it.
It should have been a much bigger hit.
I was very much into pop music in 1973, but this does not ring a bell at all. It’s possible that it didn’t get any airplay in the Los Angeles area where I grew up, but I also don’t think it’s the kind of music I would have liked anyway even if I had heard it.
I don’t know…never heard of him or this song and I listened to a heck of a lot of radio in the DC and Bay Area then. Awkward name? That didn’t seem to hinder Todd Rundgren.
He’s new to me.
Bill has a good voice, one good for ballads.
Nice melody, but the entire song sounds like a refrain.
I think he’s singing in a minor key
There is no lead in, there is no hook or noticeable bridge.
He would have done well with Gordon Lightfoot type of songs.
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