Thursday, November 3, 2011

Ray Parker, Jr. - "Jamie"

Jamie - Ray Parker, Jr.: Greatest Hits

(Debuted November 17, 1984, Peaked #14, 16 Weeks on the Chart)

When "Jamie" came out, I was in the seventh grade. At that time, I was starting to see the way some of my friends and classmates would start getting jealous over girls, even those who'd told them to buzz off. Though I wasn't yet learning the lessons of jealousy yet from a personal point of reference (that would come along about one year later), a song like "Jamie" made perfect sense to me at the time. Today, a man singing the words of this song may be called a stalker and slapped with a restraining order.

"Jamie" was Ray Parker, Jr.'s follow-up to the smash hit "Ghostbusters," which may have helped propel it a little higher than it may have otherwise finished. However, it was as high as he would ever get on the charts from that time forward. A lawsuit over plagiarizing the Ghostbusters theme would keep him busy and eventually sidetrack Parker's career. He managed to get a couple/ more singles into the Top 40, but neither would rise very high. For all intents and purposes, "Jamie" was his last decent hit song.

It's a shame that a guy who made his name playing guitar for Stevie Wonder, Barry White and Freda Payne and then enjoyed several hits as the force behind Raydio would be silenced due to a business matter. However, it may have seemed odd that the person who sang about leaving his "property" alone would be accused of plagiarizing, too.



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