Skyy ~ Call Me 1981 Funky Purrfection Version

This was the first song on a mixtape called "Damian's Dirty Disco" and had a picture of Sandra Bernhard on the cover that my friend Damian made just for me. It caught my attention right off and I fell for it so hard, the song is so crazy! He gave it to me at a dinner party I hosted and it really rocked the house that Saturday night. I had a one bedroom apt and just when the party was winding down to the last few guests, a good friend of mine brought his party over and injected it with new energy of a dozen of his friendly friends with him. I ended up partying until the sun came up, went to breakfast and then went to bed. Ahhh, youth!

Skyy is a Manhattan NY based group of eight that came together from two groups; Dilara, composed of Denise Dunning Crawford, Dolores Dunning Milligan and Bonne Dunning Bario and three men signed to Salsoul, Anibal "Butch" Sierra on guitar, Gerald Lebon on bass, Tommy McConnell on drums and Larry Greenburg on keyboards.

Producers Randy Muller who gave Brass Construction (Movin') their signature sound and Solomon Roberts Jr put the them together. They chose the name Sky, because "sky evokes all kinds of moods, cloudy, stormy, sunny, calm and it described everything we felt about ourselves conceptually. Then we decided that we wanted to give it a little something extra, so we stuck an extra "y" on it". To avoid confusion with a UK group with the same name, they were known as New York Skyy in the UK.

Once that was in place they set about claiming the R&B charts with "First Time Around, #20 1979, "High" #13 1980 and then topped the R&B chart with "Call Me".

The record came about when Ken Cayre, President of Salsoul Records decided that a bit of lyrical controversy would be good for the band and told Muller "Let's come up with something nasty, watch a soap opera and come up with something".

That something nasty turned out to be a "crazy" song about a less than ideal romantic relationship that was written on a napkin during a flight to New York from California. He wrote the bass line in the taxi on the way home and went into the studio to flesh out the song. Solomon came up with the idea to add the telephone conversation to the song and while it added to the drama, the song did not feel complete.

Once it was recorded, Muller listened to the whole song and picked up the phone to make a call when he realized that the touch tone dialing was what was missing.

The song was released on November 14, 1981 and peaked at #1 R&B, #3 disco/dance and #26 on the Hot 100.