12 More Secret Pop Records of TV and Movie Stars

Back in May, we dug up some of the most interesting lost celebrity albums of the 1950s and 1960s — both good and bad — that we could find. This time, we unearth some forgotten gems from the 1970s and 1980s that really do range from the sublime to the ridiculous and prove that some actors and actresses really could have had a second career as pop stars while others were better keeping their acting day jobs! Here are 12 of our favorites that we found from both stars of the big and small screens.

1) Goldie, Goldie Hawn (1972)

Before Hawn switched gears from bubbly comedian in Laugh In to Oscar-nominated dramatic actress in Spielberg’s Sugarland Express, she made a brief foray into music in 1972 with a surprisingly decent self-titled album covering everyone from Dolly Parton to Joni Mitchell (we would love to know what Mitchell made of her version of “Carey”). But her weirdest recording had to be the single-only release “Pitta Patta,” a lightweight reggae tune produced by none other than Van Dyke Parks, that couldn’t have had the reggae community at the time worrying too much.

2) Chris Knight & Maureen McCormick, Chris Knight & Maureen McCormick (1973)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtZzBT_wCYw

Better known to most as Marcia and Peter Brady from the classic TV series The Brady Bunch, Chris Knight and Maureen McCormick, aged 15 and 16 at the time, released this cutesy pop album at the height of the show’s popularity. This wasn’t their first foray onto vinyl, having participated with the other Brady kids on four albums that were rushed out to rival the Partridge Family’s sudden musical success in the early 1970s.

By 1973, the record company decided they didn’t need all six kids and chose the two who got the most fan mail for this album of solo songs and a couple of duets (including, of course, a cover of the Davy Jones B-side “Road To Love”). McCormick fares best, particularly on a cover of Michael Jackson’s “Ben,” but apparently, Knight was a reluctant pop star and hated the album — particularly the cover photo, not surprisingly, where he looks especially dopey — and refused to promote it, ending the Bradys’ short career on vinyl. The Knight/McCormick album has never been released on CD and now can go for big bucks when it pops up on eBay.

3) America, Why I Love Her, John Wayne (1973)

The song most likely to be on Donald Trump’s playlist has to be this flag-waving ode to the US as only the drawling cowboy could deliver. The Duke gave us an album worth of patriotic speeches over stirring music on his 1973 album America, Why I Love Her. Released during the midst of the Watergate scandal, it may well have been the Nixon-supporting actor’s way of trying to reassure himself that everything was going to be alright with the good ole US of A.

The title track was actually written by another actor, John Mitchum, best known for playing the amicable detective Frank DiGiorgio in the Dirty Harry films and is fairly poetic stuff as he proudly proclaims, “You ask me why I love her, I’ve a million reasons why.” It was obviously inspiring enough to earn Wayne a Grammy nomination and incredibly sell over 100,000 copies at the time.

4) Telly, Telly Savalas (1974)

William Shatner may well have been the king of cheesy speak-singing but Telly Savalas, who became a household name as the bald, lollipop-sucking NY detective Kojak, surely gave him a run for his money in the 1970s. Despite his lack of singing talent, Savalas actually had some success on the charts and even went to #1 in the UK with his version of Bread’s “If” in 1974. Maybe not so bad to inspire a cult following for his music like Shatner, Savalas at the very least had enough charisma to charm fans into buying no less than six albums worth of his dulcet tones.

5) Donny Most, Donny Most (1976)

Better known as Ralph from Happy Days, Most attempted to become the ginger Barry Manilow with his self-titled debut (and only) album. The first single, “All Roads (Lead Back to You)” managed to scrape the Billboard Top 100 but when the follow-up singles flopped, it was (thankfully) the end of Most’s pop career.

6) Moi, Fleur Bleue, Jodie Foster (1977)

Jodie Foster has to be one of the most unique child actors of the 1970s (if not all time), not just for her talent, but also the way she was able to be both a family-friendly Disney star one minute and then serious, gritty actress the next in adult fare such as Taxi Driver and The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane.

Having attended a French-speaking school in LA and fresh off her success in Freaky Friday, she went to live in France for almost a year in 1977 and, aged just 15, appeared in a rather creepy-sounding French film about a girl trying to lose her virginity to an older man called Moi, Fleur Bleue. As well as starring, she also recorded the soundtrack, singing a mixture of love songs and disco tunes both in French and English. The groovy but bizarre single “La Vie C’est Chouette,” complete with Serge Gainsbourg-inspired speak-singing and whispered lines, is almost as wrong-sounding as the film itself and you can understand why in the end Foster quickly left behind her short career as a French pop star.

7) Cheryl Ladd, Cheryl Ladd (1978)

Long before she replaced Farrah Fawcett on Charlie’s Angels, blonde beauty Cheryl Ladd had been attempting to make it as a singer and actually had a little success playing the singing voice of Melody in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Josie & the Pussycats. No surprise, then, that she used her newfound fame as an Angel to finally launch herself as a pop star, releasing three albums and even managing a hit single with “Think It Over” which made it all the way to number 34 on the Billboard chart.

8) Portrait, Lynda Carter (1978)

At the height of her Wonder Woman fame, former Miss World USA winner Lynda Carter attempted to show the world she was a superhero who could sing, releasing the album Portrait, a mixture of pop ballads, soft country rock, and even a little disco thrown in for good late-’70s measure. Carter even co-wrote four tracks on the album, two of which a whole episode of Wonder Woman, “Amazon Hot Wax,” was written around.

In it, Diana Prince goes undercover as a singer to stop an extortion ring in the record industry and of course ends up in the studio to record her above homage to The Wizard Of Oz. Carter proved she had a pleasant enough voice and after Wonder Woman ended recorded a number of TV variety specials. But despite unforgettable moments such as singing a Kiss song with dancers dressed as Gene Simmons et al, it took Carter 30 years before she recorded another album.

9) Josephine Superstar, Phylicia Rashad (1978)

Before she was Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show, actress and director Phylicia Allen (as she was known then) released a concept disco album based on the life of Josephine Baker called Josephine Superstar. Allen was married at the time to Victor Willis, best known as the original lead singer of the Village People, who she met while starring on Broadway in The Wiz and Willis, along with Village People writer and producer Jacques Morali masterminded the record about “the first black female international star” (as per the spoken introduction on the album). Apparently, Rashad now refuses to talk about it, but as disco albums go, it’s certainly one of the most unique.

10) Scott Baio, Scott Baio (1982)

The Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachie star Scott Baio was such a huge teen pin-up in the early ’80s, it was inevitable he’d end up with a microphone in his hand. Despite the cute feathered hairstyle and “dreamy” brown eyes, Baio really couldn’t sing. That didn’t stop teenage girls from buying up enough copies his debut album to keep it on the charts for four weeks, but by his second album, The Boys Are Out Tonight, his fans had wised up that watching him on TV was probably a lot better than listening to him sing. The album was officially a flop and, thankfully, his music career was kaput.

11) Hangin’ Up My Heart, Sissy Spacek (1983)

Easily one of the best musical offerings on this list, Sissy Spacek followed up her Oscar-winning turn playing country legend Loretta Lynn in 1980’s Coal Miner’s Daughter with her own country album, Hangin’ Up My Heart, in 1983. Spacek had already proved she was a great singer and with the superb Rodney Crowell as producer she managed to have three hit singles on the country charts. Sadly, Spacek never followed up its success leaving the singing to her daughter, singer-songwriter Schuyler Fisk.

12) Heartbeat, Don Johnson (1986)

For some reason, people seem to have forgotten that Don Johnson, then one of the biggest TV stars in the world thanks to his role as Sonny Crockett on the hit show Miami Vice, had a huge hit with the soft-rock masterpiece “Heartbeat” in 1986. With his Ray-Bans, blonde-highlights, and pastel-colored suits (always worn with a t-shirt of course), he rode the wave of cool into a sea of soft rock cheese that somehow proved irresistible to the then-all-powerful MTV.

The video itself is the ’80s at its finest, with Johnson looking serious while rocking out with a guitar-welding Dweezil Zappa, intertwined with some nonsensical storyline involving Johnson playing some kind of cameraman doing photo shoots in an unnamed war-torn country. Listen out for the key-change near the end where Johnson goes into falsetto; it will change your life for the better.

Sharon Lacey

Sharon Lacey has spent most of her career as a home entertainment journalist, but has always loved writing about music ever since her first pop review was published in a UK mag at age 15. She lives in London and still loves going to see live bands, old and new, which she writes about on her blog The Boho Dance.