Dobie Gray – HuffPost 4.18.13

[Note: This comes from an interview with my friend, the late Dobie Gray for his box set years ago.]

Mike R: In a weird way, you helped fuel others’ recording careers with yours.

Dobie Gray: Somewhere along the way there, I just developed a knack for choosing songs that were picked by other people and became hits by other people. So there were songs that I had in my shows, and that I had recorded that went on later to become famous songs. That’s the nature of the business. It was great with Infinity as long as it lasted. They had a great staff, but they were much too finite to be called “Infinity.” [laughs]

MR: It was a good ride, Dobie.

DG: It was a good ride. It was fun, and it was over much too soon. I went from that label to Capitol/EMI America, which was based in Nashville, and Jim Fogelsong was the head of the label. We produced “That’s One To Grow On,” and “From Where I Stand”–the first album for that label was called From Where I Stand. Then, there was a second album,Love’s Talkin’, and it didn’t do much, but my fans bought it, and there are songs on there that I still get requests to do. So I’ve had some success that is not widely known, but for the most part, I have had some records that people still recognize. There has been some movie stuff too–Casey’s Shadow, and “Uptown Saturday Night” was for the movie by the same name. I think Gene McDaniel was supposed to do that, but he was away, so I got to do it. Whenever I see that movie, I get a surge of pride.