Rick Clark's Music I Love Blog - Artist: Jesse Belvin / Song: "Goodnight My Love"

Memphis had four great AM stations during the ‘60s, WHBQ-AM, WDIA-AM, WMPS-AM and WLOK-AM. I had this big old AM radio record player positioned at the head of my bed on a wall bookshelf. When I turned out the lights and got in bed, I would put album jackets on either side of the mono speaker and position my head on the pillow just right to capture the full sound and pretend it was stereo. I’d close my eyes getting lost in the sounds being mysteriously transmitted over the air. I sure miss that player.

It is hard to explain to those who weren’t around at that time in the 50’s and 60’s just how utterly magic radio was then. It baffled me that all this talking and music would travel over the air and this box would capture it, when I turned the dial just right, I would hear something special sometimes far far away, like Chicago, Tulsa, Nashville, New Orleans, etc. I didn’t have to know the how and whys of airwaves and all that. The mystery was the thing. The amber light behind the big dial made it even more magic. 

Even now, I look for those stations that have that vibe that didn’t care about national consultants, those stations where deejays sounded like they were turning you onto something that mattered. When I find those station like that, I will let it take me where it wants to go. Even though it isn’t AM, WMPR-FM 90.1 in Jackson, Mississippi feels like the spirit of the old radio stations I loved in Memphis, like WLOK-AM or WDIA-AM. I always dial that one in when I’m in Central Mississippi. Bobby Bland, Little Milton, Al Green, Denise LaSalle, etc and loads of funky ads for nightclubs, hair salons and what have you. 

Like many of us, I will never forget when The Beatles hit the airwaves. It was like an overnight sea change. One day it was The Beach Boys, Del Shannon, Al Martino and Elvis Presley and then it was like 24/7 Beatles and “British Invasion.” I couldn’t get enough, but there was one song I heard every night when WHBQ’s George Klein (part of Elvis’s “Memphis Mafia”) signed off from his show. It was Jesse Belvin’s “Goodnight My Love.” 

Jesse Belvin’s “Goodnight My Love” embodied the intimate dreamy sweep of the greatest r&b/doo-wop ballads. Even now the song conveys an enormous comfort. I love his tender delivery, those otherworldly background vocals and the sweep of the strings.

Most producers and engineers today, no matter how technically great they might be with the latest stuff, would know how to capture something so transcendently dreamy as this, which certainly required nothing more than a handful of mics, some analog distortion and an actual performance that required talent.

I readily admit that I can be a total emotional pushover at times and this song still brings tears to my eyes. Every time I listen to “Goodnight My Love,” I’m taken to those magic moments where I faded away next to that amber light and my window cracked by the bed and was transported to a world that still touches me to my core. As much as I hate “desert island” songs lists, this is one of them. 

I would be interested in hearing what “that” sending you off to sleep or comfort-food song was that transported you growing up and listening to the radio at night. 

Artist: Jesse Belvin - Song: “Goodnight My Love”