20th Century 444
Producer: Barry White
Track listing: Mellow Mood (Pt. I) / You’re the First, the Last, My Everything / I Can’t Believe You Love Me / Can’t Enough of Your Love, Babe / Oh Love, Well We Finally Made It / I Love More Than Anything (in This World) / Mellow Mood (Pt. II)
October 26, 1974
1 week
In 1974, Barry White was happening as a writer, producer, arranger, and a star in his own right. Under the Influence of… by Love Unlimited, a group managed and produced by White, and featuring his wife, Glodean James, had just climbed to number three on the album chart. Another album, Rhapsody in White, by the Love Unlimited Orchestra, whose recordings were conducted and arranged by White, reached number eight.
White wasn’t doing too shabbily as solo artist either. I’ve Got So Much to Give, his 1973 debut, climbed to number 16 and spent more than a year on chart. The follow-up, Stone Gon’, reached number 20. However, these successes would pale compared to Can’t Get Enough.
“It was a very creative and explosive time,” says White. “I was very proud of work I was doing as a producer, writer, singer, and arranger.” Yet White’s involvement in other projects his own solo career put a strain on songwriter. “There was pressure to come up with songs for Can’t Get Enough,” White says. “I was coming off two hit albums, so I had to do everything I could to be consistent.”
As with White’s previous releases, love continued to be a favorite topic, but this time around he drew on his own personal experiences. “I just got through making love to my wife and she fell off to sleep, so I went into the kitchen and wrote ‘I Just Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe,'” White recalls. “It came to me instantly.”
To record the album, White chose Whitney Studios in Glendale, California, for a number of reasons. “I always like to go where no one else goes,” he says. “The only people that were recording at Whitney was Hanna-Barbera, for some of their cartoons, and different choirs, like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. And it was away from Hollywood. I used to love the scenic drive to the studio.”
While writing “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe” was easy, recording the track proved to be a challenge. “We had finished the track and I was the only one who wasn’t satisfied,” says White. “Everyone else thought it was a hit. But I knew that there was something missing in the song.” White listened to the track again and again for 30 minutes. “Then I told everyone to take a 15-minute legal union break and I sat down at the piano and I worked that bass line.” When White’s backing band came back into the studio, he taught bass player Wilton Felder the new riff. “When we recorded it that way, the record popped. What they thought was a great song turned out to be an incredible song.”
“Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe” turned out to be a Number One R&B and pop single. It wasn’t the only hit on the album, but it was enough to push Can’t Get Enough to the summit.
White also topped the R&B singles chart with “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything.” Co-writer Sterling Radcliffe had written the song 21 years earlier, before White added his own special touch to the song and agreed to record it.
Yet Can’t Get Enough was more than a showcase for a few hit singles — it was an album that introduced and concluded by a pair of appropriately named instrumental pieces, “Mellow Mood (Pt. 1)” and “Mellow Mood (Part II).” As White puts it, “The whole thing was structured.”
THE TOP FIVE
Week of October 26, 1974
1. Can’t Get Enough, Barry White
2. So Far, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
3. Back Home Again, John Denver
4. Welcome Back My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends — Ladies and Gentlemen, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Emerson, Lake & Palmer
5. Wrap Around Joy, Carole King