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Born William Oliver Swofford on February 22, 1945, in North Wilkesboro, NC, Oliver's first big hit was a song from the Broadway musical Hair, also a source for a hit ("Age of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In") for the 5th Dimension. Released on Jubilee, "Good Morning Starshine" b/w "Can't You See" went to number three pop in spring 1969. A song written by Rod McKuen from the movie The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, "Jean," issued on Crewe, went gold, holding the number two pop spot for two weeks and going to number one adult contemporary on Billboard's charts in fall 1969. Both were included on the Good Morning Starshine LP that peaked at number 19 pop in fall 1969. He toured throughout the '70s, retired from the music business in the '80s, and worked in the construction and pharmaceutical fields. At the age of 54, Oliver died of cancer on February 12, 2000, in Shreveport, LA.
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Oliver's story has more than a few twists. Born William Oliver Swofford on February 22, 1945 in North Wilkesboro, N.C., he began his career in the early Sixties, during the height of the folk boom. He joined with some of his fellow University of North Carolina students to form a bluegrass band, the Virginians. The group recorded and toured, but national success eluded them. Then, in 1968, their manager brought them to a man who would have an immeasurable effect on Swofford's career: Bob Crewe.
By the time he met Swofford, Crewe's sparkling Four Seasons productions had earned him the admiration of everyone from Brian Wilson to Rolling Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham. He also had hits with many others, from Mitch Ryder's supercharged soul stomper "Jenny Take A Ride" to Lesley Gore's hauntingly beautiful "California Nights."
The Virginians changed their name to the Good Earth and made an album for Crewe's DynoVoice label, only to break up soon after its release. The album failed to hit, while Swofford was left with no band and no deal. Fortunately, he had a major booster in Crewe, who says today that he always had faith in Swofford's talent: "I loved his voice. It was pure, almost like a reed instrument; the clarity in his voice was wonderful. He'd be around the office a lot, and I said, 'One of these days, we're going to come up with a piece of material, and, if that be the case, I'd love to cut you as a solo artist."
Crewe had seen "Hair" and loved "Good Morning Starshine." One of his DynoVoice artists, Eddie Rambeau, recorded it, but it failed to hit. Nonetheless, Crewe was convinced of the song's potential. It was then that he thought of the young Southerner who hung around his office.
Crewe used the drum track of Rambeau's recording to build a new backing track, with Swofford playing guitar. As Swofford later recalled to Record World, others had also discovered the song, so they had to work fast. "We did it very quickly—I learned it on Tuesday and we recorded it on Thursday and Friday. It was the fastest release I was ever on."
Before the disc was released, Crewe decided that a new name was in order. But first he had to ask permission of his friend Lionel Bart, composer of the Broadway smash "Oliver!" "I said to him, 'I have this artist whose middle name is Oliver,'" Crewe recalls. "'How would you feel if I called him "Oliver"?' He said, 'Oh, that would be lovely.'"
The executives at DynoVoice were loath to release another "Good Morning Starshine," so Crewe went to Jubilee, which badly needed a hit. As any lover of pure pop knows, the label wasn't disappointed. Oliver's soaring vocals and Crewe's intricate arrangement took the song to #3 on Billboard's Hot 100 in the summer of '69.
Crewe's friendship with Rod McKuen led to Oliver's recording McKuen's theme to "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie." The first single on the producer's new label, modestly called Crewe Records, it did even better than its predecessor, reaching #2 on the Hot 100 and going gold. Oliver's debut album, Good Morning Starshine, followed closely on its heels, reaching #19 and staying on Billboard's album chart for an impressive 38 weeks.
When Oliver's follow-up singles failed to match "Jean"'s success, Crewe tried subterfuge. As the names of Oliver and another of his artists, Lesley Gore, were losing their chart cachet, he used their middle names to create a "new" duo: "Billy and Sue." Why their take on the Fleetwoods' "Come Softly To Me" failed to hit is a mystery. With the fascinatingly complex, multilayered vocals, Crewe accomplished organically what modern artists attempt via digital sampling. Lesley and Oliver's voices complemented each other perfectly and accentuated the song's haunting feel.
Oliver became less and less happy with his direction. "During the course of the popularity of 'Jean,' Bill—Oliver—;started to get a little bit aloof and pull away," Crewe recalls. "The problem was building because Bill, God bless him, was growing up emotionally and wanted to sing meaningful, cause-worthy material.
"One day, we were doing a Bacharach-David song," Crewe continues, "and he just stopped in the middle of it and said, 'Come on, I can't do this.' I said, 'What's the matter with you?' So I went out into the studio and we talked, and he said, 'I don't want to sing the word "love" again, ever!'
"I said, 'What ? You mean, ever?' Afterwards, I called the president of Crewe Records and said, 'Rocco, United Artists has been on our tail to buy Oliver. This is the time to sell.'
"With hindsight, of course he had to do what he had to do. He was growing up and evolving. But he was rebelling so definitely and I had so many things to do that the fighting just wasn't worth it."
Oliver began his UA career in early 1971 with a song that epitomized his desire for global change, "Light the Way." It was written by future Raspberries leader Eric Carmen, who also played piano and organ on it and wrote the string arrangement.
While "Light the Way" was a beautiful record, neither it nor any other one of Oliver's UA singles made the Top 100. By that time, pop music had polarized into teen acts and adult acts. Oliver was too old for the former, and his pop past made him anathema to the latter. As a result, although his UA album, Prisms (1971), is generally considered the best of his three long-players (the other two being the Crewe releases Good Morning Starshine and Oliver Again) and contains a number of strong originals, grown-up listeners refused to take him seriously.
Even though Oliver came from the same kind of folk music background as successful Seventies singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Stephen Stills, the rock establishment refused to forgive him for the fraction of his career that he spent making high-gloss pop music. Eventually he simply returned to playing the country-folk music he loved, as can be heard in "Why Have You Been Gone So Long," the rootsy B-side of his last UA single in 1972. At last report, he was still playing folk music, but now as Bill Swofford, Oliver no more. No doubt he is happier with that arrangement. But, as the songs on this collections show, his voice is too beautiful to be confined to a single genre. The folk world's gain is truly the pop world's loss.
William Oliver Swofford died three years after these notes were written died of cancer at the age of 54, on Saturday, February 13th, 2000.
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