Make Your Move

Album review

In January of 1979, A&M Records had the last of eight Top 40 hits with Captain & Tennille after an amazing run beginning with the huge number one smash, 1975's "Love Will Keep Us Together." Just four years later, their final hit of the 20th century was another number one, "Do That to Me One More Time," ascending the charts in November 1979, and included on this very slick and very excellent outing, Make Your Move. The duo's Casablanca Records debut, Make Your Move should have yielded more hits, with players like Tom Scott, Lee Ritenour, Hal Blaine, Jim Gordon, and so many others lending their talents to the very precise production work by Daryl Dragon. Eight songs stretch across the two sides of the disc, most coming in at five-plus minutes, "Love on a Shoestring" and "No Love in the Morning" showing why Toni Tennille struck a chord with radio listeners, her voice just captivating on these opening tunes. "How Can You Be So Cold?" is the obligatory dance number for the disco era, but it is tempered for this couple's pop/rock audience. The tune works, especially with Tennille's breathtaking vocal, despite the arrangement not being the all-out assault that labelmate Donna Summer poured out on titles like "Bad Girls" and "Hot Stuff" that same year. Summer, in fact, hit number one with Barbra Streisand two weeks before Captain & Tennille achieved that same lofty perch with the memory-making "Do That to Me One More Time," which must have been swimming in the heads of young lovers toward the end of the '70s. It's fun to hear a cover of the Turtles' "Happy Together," while "Baby You Still Got It" gives Tennille yet another opportunity to put her expressive vocal tones on the fourth of her original compositions. She's an excellent songwriter, and it's too bad the couple didn't foster hit covers of this material. Neil Sedaka could've done a great job with "Baby You Still Got It" and returned the favor that was this band's terrific arrangement of "Love Will Keep Us Together." "Never Make Your Move Too Soon" is the closest thing to a title track, and it concludes a solid effort from the Sonny & Cher of the mid- to late '70s.

© Joe Viglione /TiVo