Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

This week’s theme is  “Freeze/Cold/Ice.”

A Lonely Man is the fourth studio album by The Chi-Lites.  Released in April of 1972, it was also the group’s most successful album, topping the R&B chart and peaking at No. 5 on the pop chart. It is frequently cited as the group’s best recording. AllMusic reviewer Craig Lytle describes the album as “flawless” and “exquisite”

The album opened with The Chi-Lites’ most successful single, Oh Girl, and ended with the eight-and-a-half-minute epic, Coldest Day of My Life.

FUN FACTS:

• The group was formed at the Hyde Park High School in Chicago in the late 1950s as the “Chanteurs”. The original members were Eugene Record, Robert “Squirrel” Lester, and Clarence Johnson. This quartet introduced themselves at the Hyde Park High School “Senior Varieties talent show. They later recruited Marshall Thompson and Creadel “Red” Jones from the Desideros to form the Hi-lites. Noting that the name Hi-lites was already in use and wanting to honor their home town they changed their name to “The Chi-Lites” in 1964.
• The Chi-Lites scored eleven Top Ten R&B hits from 1969 to 1974. They also charted 21 songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Chart, and had chart hits in Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Canada, as well as in the U.S.
• Eugene Record wrote or co-wrote (often with singer Barbara Acklin) a long series of hits for the group, including million-sellers, Have You Seen Her and Oh Girl.
• 76-year old Marshall Thompson is the last living original group member.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection on Nesie’s Place.

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I remember, oh yeah
The signs of springtime
There were birds, music
Everywhere, everywhere

Some of us played, oh yeah
And some of us cried
Can’t you see, oh, can’t you see
The tears in my eyes?

And what I had dreamed of, oh Lord
I thought it was here
10 feet tall, oh, I was riding so high
With eyes of a child, oh
Shining so bright, yes they were

Coldest days of my life
They were the coldest days of my life
I had to run for cover, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Cold, coldest days of my life
I thought there was no other, no, no, no, no

Lord, take away the pain
Oh, You know, You know
That it falls like rain
And it couldn’t be much worse

Down below, down below, down below
Low, down below
It just couldn’t be much worse
Down below
It just couldn’t be that bad