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Todd Ireland
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| Posted: 27 March 2009 at 12:10pm | IP Logged
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Around Christmas time in 1987, I very clearly remember Powersource's "Dear Mr. Jesus" getting a lot of airplay when I was living near the Dayton, Ohio area. It's a powerful and moving song about child abuse that gained popularity when 6-year-old Shannon Steinberg of New York City was killed by her adoptive father, Joel Steinberg. According to a the music publishing company ASCAP, "Dear Mr. Jesus" was "one of the most requested songs in the history of radio" and it was reported that some stations had received literally thousands of requests for it a day.
I bring this up because I remain quite perplexed that the song never achieved higher than a #61 peak on the Billboard Hot 100. In late 1987, a little over a year before I started following the Billboard Top 40 religiously, I would've assumed at the time that "Dear Mr. Jesus" was a Top 10 or even a #1 hit given all the exposure I'd seen and heard for the song, including an in-depth article in Time Magazine. I've always been very curious about the low chart peak on Billboard and am wondering if anyone can help offer an explanation for it? Did the commercial single only get pressed in very limited quantities? Was national radio airplay somehow not fully reported to Billboard, or was the song in reality only played in heavy rotation by a small number of Top 40 stations nationally?
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torcan
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I know what you mean...this song seemed all the rage at the time but petered out quite quickly.
Odd thing is...this still gets played as a Christmas record. It's in rotation when the station I listen to most often (WTSS) switches to all-Christmas late in the year. Odd thing is...it's not really a Christmas record when you listen to the lyrics. In fact, one of the DJs at this station doesn't even know where the group came from. He's said they got the song off a reel-to-reel tape and he even thought they might be Canadian! (I guess he doesn't have a Billboard chart book!)
According to some price guides I've seen, the 45 appears quite hard to find.
Edited by torcan on 27 March 2009 at 1:29pm
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crapfromthepast
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This was a very local hit. I don't remember it being played at all in the New York City area or in Rochester, NY, where I was going to school at the time.
Years later, I found a copy of the 45 for cheap, and picked it up on a whim not knowing what it was. I used it as torture for my audience (my show is called "Crap From The Past", after all), and it did indeed get more phone response than any other song I've ever played, but the callers were overwhelmingly negative. "That was blood-curdling", "Make it stop!", "Please don't ever play that song again", and so forth. Pure gold, as they say.
Not to detract from the intent of the song, but the over-the-top execution pushes the song into self-parody for me. From the line "Please don't tell my daddy but my mommy hits me too" to the woefully inappropriate Mike Reno-esque ad-libs at the end of the song, it has all the earmarks of a holiday classic of "Don't Worry Be Happy" stature.
I only found out that it was a hit in some smaller markets when I played it for friends, and some could sing along with it! Yikes! I still spin it about once a year on the show, when I need to grind things to a complete halt. It's become a running punchline and is probably my go-to song of choice for threats, as in "Don't make me play Dear Mr. Jesus..."
Much as I dislike "Dear Mr. Jesus", the B-side is even more over the top, featuring Sharon speaking over a light instrumental bed for the whole track. I tried but I couldn't get through it on the air, and had to apologize halfway through the song. I don't think the B-side is on the album.
I found a copy of the Powersource LP, and my pressing is on colored vinyl. And not just a single color, but a gorgeous multi-colored pattern that radiates outward from the center. It's probably the most beautiful piece of vinyl I own, oddly enough, and it's never touched my turntable.
Edited by crapfromthepast on 27 March 2009 at 2:05pm
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 27 March 2009 at 2:56pm | IP Logged
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I remember hearing it a couple times on the radio, but that was it. Then I think I heard an excerpt on the news, and that some people were objecting to it as a bit morbid.
I think it was a very short-lived novelty hit that was primarily regional. It didn't appear on the top 40 airplay/sales breakdown in Billboard at the time, so it couldn't have been that big nationally.
Gee, you don't think the news media would actually exaggerate something, do you?
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 27 March 2009 at 3:04pm | IP Logged
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By the way, the Powersource LP was issued on CD... but it's out of print now!
http://www.songtracker.com/dmj_cd.htm
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Todd Ireland
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| Posted: 27 March 2009 at 3:14pm | IP Logged
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crapfromthepast wrote:
| This was a very local hit. I don't remember it being played at all in the New York City area or in Rochester, NY, where I was going to school at the time. |
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That's interesting because, according to the Time Magazine article (amazingly, I found it online!), it was Scott Shannon at New York City's WHTZ-FM who helped break the record nationally. I have the song on Powersource's Shelter from the Storm CD and on the back paper tray insert, it has the aforementioned ASCAP statement about being "one of the most requested songs in the history of radio" along with a quote from Dan Rather of CBS Evening News saying: "Americans can't seem to hear it enough" (not that I ever regarded Mr. Rather as a very credible source in general), so I'm having a difficult time understanding how "Dear Mr. Jesus" could've been a "very local hit". Yet the #61 chart peak seems to suggest otherwise, so it's certainly possible the airplay generated in the Dayton market wasn't representative of national response.
torcan wrote:
I know what you mean...this song seemed all the rage at the time but petered out quite quickly.
Odd thing is...this still gets played as a Christmas record. It's in rotation when the station I listen to most often (WTSS) switches to all-Christmas late in the year. Odd thing is...it's not really a Christmas record when you listen to the lyrics. In fact, one of the DJs at this station doesn't even know where the group came from. He's said they got the song off a reel-to-reel tape and he even thought they might be Canadian! (I guess he doesn't have a Billboard chart book!)
According to some price guides I've seen, the 45 appears quite hard to find. |
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That's funny, torcan, because I too thought "Dear Mr. Jesus" was promoted as a Christmas record at the time (even though none of the lyrics suggest a holiday theme) because it got a lot of airplay in the weeks leading up to Christmas, but I don't remember hearing another spin at radio after December 25 had passed.
Brian W. wrote:
I think it was a very short-lived novelty hit that was primarily regional. It didn't appear on the top 40 airplay/sales breakdown in Billboard at the time, so it couldn't have been that big nationally.
Gee, you don't think the news media would actually exaggerate something, do you? |
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Point well taken!
Edited by Todd Ireland on 27 March 2009 at 4:02pm
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Todd Ireland
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| Posted: 27 March 2009 at 3:19pm | IP Logged
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** Deleted - Duplicate Post **
Edited by Todd Ireland on 27 March 2009 at 4:01pm
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jimct
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None of my local record shops in CT carried this 45 in late 1987. Although there was defintely a "buzz" about this song at the time, none of it was coming from my neck of the woods. I had numerous retail 45 connections all over the state. But being a Hot 100 charter and all, I asked my "go-to" retailer to special order it for me. And they tried to do me the favor, but soon reported back that their usual distributors didn't have it/carry it. So, chart completionist that I was, I was getting desperate. I didn't want to use my "radio connections" and mislead PowerSource, because we weren't ever gonna play the song on-air. So, for one of the only times in my life, I obtained an address for PowerSource Records somewhere (P.O. Box 916, Bedford, TX 76021 - just got it off my 45!), wrote them a letter, ordered 10 45 copies (to make their responding to me worth their while) and also included a "guess-estimated", generous money order. I soon got a return parcel, which also included a "bonus" LP. This certainly wouldn't be the first time where patchy distribution channels affected a song's ultimate chart position. I seem to recall that this was a situation where the "points" the song generated in order to appear on the BB Hot 100 were garnered 99% through sales. ANY airplay was, I suspect, due to the "wow/publicity/novelty" factor, and, Scott Shannon's push notwithstanding, "Dear Mr. Jesus" obviously sold best in areas where it was both supplied to radio, and more easily purchased by consumers than it was for me up here in the Northeast. (I'm betting at least half the 45's were sold right in Texas!) Perhaps our buddy Chuck from Mediabase has old radio info on this song, and could confirm my memory on this. And, despite the religious tone of the song, and the fact it was out during the 1987 holiday season, I don't recall at the time that it was considered to be a "Christmas" record (and my Whitburn book has no "X" (holiday record designation)) next to it. We never did get a copy of this 45 sent to us at our radio station when it was current, and no "indie" record rep ever called us about the song (and we were always a R&R/Billboard, etc. "reporting" station that got great record service from the labels.) FYI, the ONLY other time in the 80's that I remember having to write a label in order to obtain a stock 45 back in the 80's, was just 11 months before Powersource, when I had to personally write "Oak Lawn Records" in early 1987 to obtain the #80 hit by Uptown, "(I Know) I'm Losing You".
Edited by jimct on 27 March 2009 at 11:13pm
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eriejwg
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At a local top 40, we played the song briefly around Nov/Dec 1987, so that's where the Christmas connection might be. Although, there were no all Christmas stations that I know of.
It got played for such a brief run, I don't recall the source, whether it was CD or cart.
I seem to remember it was labeled in our studio as by Sharon Batts...
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jimct
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At the bottom of my 45 label, below the group name "PowerSource", it also says in a pretty large font, (solo: Sharon). And since there was primarily a young female voice heard throughout the record, I'm not the least bit surprised that your station would've opted to use her name as the "artist", instead of "PowerSource", John.
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aaronk
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I actually own both the LP and 45, because I asked for it as a gift when I was a kid. Probably one of the reasons it was nationally known was because there was a television ad running constantly---one of those direct mail TV offers. That's how I knew about it, as no radio stations in my area played it.
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bwolfe
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The station I worked for had switched from AOR to CHR in the fall of 1987.
Our owners had us play it.
I remember not being able to find it either.
We had to cart it from a Scott Shannon "Rockin' America"
countdown show.
I do remember how he would feature the song in the holidays of 1987.
Maybe his Mr. Leonard character would have done a better job?
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cmmmbase
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Jim -
I could never find the 45 in Massachusetts in 1987 either. The jukebox operator I worked for in the 1990s had a copy which is how I would up with one. Unfortunely I can't access info that far back with mediabase...
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aaronk
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Bump
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Aaron Kannowski
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PopArchivist
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Todd Ireland wrote:
| I have the song on Powersource's Shelter from the Storm CD |
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I've been looking around and can't even find this CD. Makes it impossible to assemble a 1988 Hot 100 digitally without it. You are lucky to have gotten it then.
Was available for sale at one point, just a tad bit too late for me to get it...
http://www.songtracker.com/dear-mr.-jesus.html
Edited by PopArchivist on 14 September 2020 at 9:48am
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eric_a
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This is so fascinating - I have no memory of this song despite listening
to Rockin’ America religiously around ‘87-88. This led me down a
rabbit hole - it turns out the tv show GLEE referred to this song a few
years ago. Jane Lynch’s character apparently came up with a worst-
songs-ever setlist including a Corey Feldman single, “Justified and
Ancient,” and yes, “Dear Mr. Jesus.” Guessing the reference was lost
on most of the audience.
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PopArchivist
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eric_a wrote:
This is so fascinating - I have no memory of this song despite listening
to Rockin’ America religiously around ‘87-88. This led me down a
rabbit hole - it turns out the tv show GLEE referred to this song a few
years ago. Jane Lynch’s character apparently came up with a worst-
songs-ever setlist including a Corey Feldman single, “Justified and
Ancient,” and yes, “Dear Mr. Jesus.” Guessing the reference was lost
on most of the audience. |
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If I didn't need it for the Hot 100 in 1988 for completion purposes, I honestly would rank it at the bottom of the list of collectible songs....
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BSharp
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God, this song was awful (typical of many Scott Shannon
"discoveries". The video was even worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quG-Q7iKfn0
Edited by BSharp on 18 September 2020 at 9:04am
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PopArchivist
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BSharp wrote:
God, this song was awful (typical of many Scott Shannon
"discoveries". The video was even worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quG-Q7iKfn0 |
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I share your sentiments.
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PopArchivist
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cmmmbase wrote:
Jim -
I could never find the 45 in Massachusetts in 1987 either. The jukebox operator I worked for in the 1990s had a copy which is how I would up with one. Unfortunely I can't access info that far back with mediabase... |
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Just an update, Aaron provided me a TM Century rip and it leaves A LOT to be desired. Clearly from vinyl with the first 30 seconds and the fade out clearly crackling with authentic sound lol. Its compressed and as most of us know on the board that period of time often sounds terrible for TM rips.
I ask, if anyone, including Todd Ireland has the CD release from 22 years ago or has this song on CD somewhere please PM me. Hope is fading but it would be nice to have 1988 entirely from CD source. Thanks!
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Top 40 Music on Compact Disc : Chat Board
Topic: "Dear Mr. Jesus" - Powersource
