If I Could Love You Forever 1975 - Roy C - Moon Traveller Blog Post 600

Roy C's If I Could Love You Forever starts with a classic CYO dance song chord (think Pacabel) progression. CLICK ABOVE AND IT SHOULD JUST START PLAYING. This is a slow one, it's clear pretty soon - some Memphis horns come in, underpinning  flighty oddly mechanical violins, and electrical clavier thing, and then comes a strange falsetto, an odd voice - it's Roy C. Hamond - something like I've Been Lonely Too Long. Like that song, too this was a flashback of 60s soul, that just managed to slip into the R&B charts of 1975. Music was getting more and more rote. But If I Could Love You Forever breaks through. Roy does an overdub - two voices - the falsetto.. He is not too well known but he forever can intone...

If I ...

oh I ....

Could Love You Forever ...

besies the falsetto, he appars in a more regular singing voice. Dubbed. It is just haunting thrilling and captivating. Like when someone else might have heard Heartbreak Hotel in the deep winter of Mitch Miller's tundra.  Roy drops into the soul rap style of the 60s too...

I often think about the way she kisses me .. I think about the way she loves me ... I think about the way she hugs me... it makes me want to scream...(high shrill falsetto dick stuck in a car door scream is heard)

About this time you may be saying.. this song seems to have some special meaning to Jack. well you could listen hard, but Al Green was not going to sing like they did at Stax - those days were gone. But I was looking for them. High hoping on Syl Johnson to succeed, or Johnnie Taylor to make a non-disco comeback. This song came over the radio like a dove from the Ark.

At that time, I dont think too many people were actually falling in love forever. The time horizon was a lot shorter. I'd been writing poetry like mad, just met a girl, J., and we got together - she was my college girl friend - but there was an obvious expiration date from the start - and the song evinced a lot for me. The song doesnt profess there was going to be some love forever ...it brings up the notion... asks 'if' -If I ...oh I ....Could Love You Forever ...

You didnt hear it that much on the radio. We're talking Boogie Nights, right? Here comes a story. I called up the MIT college station, late night DJ,(J.C.?) to request the song. He says ok..hold on.. I will put you on air.. and you say "J.C. is back and that's a fact." he puts me on hold for quite a while, and I start to think of this as an opportunity. And I pen a quick poem. I hear the chords of the song fading up, and say..


J.C. is back/ and that's a fact / tonight as I drive / past the laundromat. 


And without saying the word J.C. audibly goes 'oh shit.' After its brief charting, it faded away. I never saw it for sale. Heard it on the radio about 1988 - then there was static... and I almost drove the car into the wall in the Pru tunnel speeding to get out of the tunnel to hear the song. Then I found it on You Tube last week.

(I dont blame those White Sox fans for rioting on disco night. It started out so good, but then it became a goose step of Kapital overbearing. (Funny, but this song is a lot like Daddy Your a Fool to Cry by the Rolling Stones (falsetto, electric piano, big chords, talking part) released the following year of 1976 (though said to have been recorded in late 1974.)

This is 600 post on Moon Traveller Herald Dispatch with Report! -Jack Vaughan