Classic Tracks: Jennifer Warnes’ “Right Time Of The Night”

“Right Time of the Night,” released in 1976, was all about firsts. It was the first hit by songwriter Peter McCann. It was artist Jennifer Warnes’ first hit single. And the record was Jim Ed Norman’s first production. But from the producer’s point of view, the road to the success of this career-changing song was quite rocky.

Before producing “Right Time,” Norman recalls, he was working as a tape copy boy and a sometimes string arranger and side musician in the studio for The Eagles, when the assistant in the tape copy room told him there was a call for him from Clive Davis. He thought it was a joke. He said, ‘Yeah, right,’ and kept on working. Seeing the blinking light on the telephone persist, he finally picked it up and said, ‘Yeah?’

“Is this Jim Ed Norman?” “Yeah.” “This is Clive Davis.” “Yeah, right.” “It really is. I got your name from Hank and Dave.” Davis had heard of Nor­man from producers Hank Medress and Dave Appell, with whom Nor­man had worked on an album for the Group With No Name.

“‘Hank and Dave said you want to be a record producer. Is that true?’” Davis said, according to Norman, who responded, “Yes I do, I want to be a record producer.”

They met, and Davis played Norman several songs. Norman wasn’t wild about most of them until he heard “Right Time of the Night.” “If you’re going to give me a chance to make a record for you, let it be with that song,” he told Davis.

The song had been written by McCann, who was then signed to a publishing deal with ABC. McCann told The Tennessean in a 2015 interview that the song was inspired by a beautiful day spent on the beach in Malibu.

“It was one of those perfect sunsets,” McCann said in the article. “I was there for the entire evening, and the sun went down and the stars came out…. Clive Davis, who was heading up Arista Records at the time, he had just signed Jennifer Warnes, and they needed a single for her.”

Davis then played Norman some demos by Warnes and asked whether he thought she could sing “Right Time of the Night.” Norman said, “Absolutely.”

Davis explained that she had already cut a record with producer Jim Price, but Davis didn’t hear a hit, so he was still fishing for one. Then he played Norman a song she had already cut, “I’m Dreaming,” and asked his opinion.

“I said, ‘I really like that song, but it could have a more romantic, orchestral and full arrangement,’” Norman says. Davis agreed and gave him his first shot at production, putting him in charge of cutting both songs.

However, convincing Warnes that he could do the job was not so simple; Norman says he spent an abundance of dinners trying to do so. She has since been quoted that she was not crazy about “Right Time of the Night” initially.

Norman says she was also upset by the fact that he was a first-time producer. “I remember having several meetings with her and explaining to her about what I wanted to do and how I was sufficient to the task. I used my most persuasive powers,” Norman laughs.

The job did not go smoothly, from the start. Norman thought he’d find a rhythm section that could go into Wally Heider Studios and cut both the songs. He knew some great musicians from having arranged publishing demos, and hired Reinie Press on bass, Richard Bennett on guitar, Alan Lindgren on piano and Dennis St. John on drums. While “I’m Dreaming” came out fine, “Right Time of the Night” did not; he had to re-cut the entire song.

“I didn’t capture the ethos of the song,” Norman says. “I had said, ‘If you’re going to give me a chance, give me that song,’ and I didn’t accomplish it with that track. I’m an arranger, so when putting the budget together, I put in to do strings as an arranging expense. I was all excited now as a producer—I was getting ready to hire my hero, Nick DeCaro. As I was listening, I was heartsick that I had blown it.” He would now have to do his own string arrangements.

Norman took a deep breath and figured it out. He enlisted friends to play: Matt Betton, Jr. on drums, Kenny Edwards and John Hug on guitar, Doug Livingston on steel guitar, Michael Bowden on bass, Brian Whitcomb on piano and Doug Haywood on backing vocals.

They went into North Hollywood’s Davlen Studios, which had a Trident B console, Studer multitrack machines for recording, and a Studer 2-track machine for the mix. Rhythm tracks were cut first, with Warnes singing a scratch vocal. Ultimately, Warnes’ final vocal was the most important element, Norman says. “The vocal had to sell the song and be expressive of the song,” he explains. “Jennifer had such a beautiful voice; sometimes I had her sing in harmony with herself.”

“Right Time of the Night” was engineer Eric Prestidge’s first project with Norman, and he recalls immediately thinking the song was a hit. Today, he’s not certain what mic he used on her vocals, but he guesses either a Telefunken 251 or a Neumann U269, a European version never released in the U.S. “The 269 is still my favorite microphone,” he says. “The Telefunken 251 is still maybe the overall best microphone ever made, but they were very inconsistent. I’ve kind of avoided the solid-state microphones for vocals.”

During tracking and mixing, Prestidge says, he used a lot of Teletronix LA-2A limiters, particularly on Warnes’ vocal. “I actually used two, back-to-back,” he explains. “I would use one coming in that limited, and then when I mixed, I would switch the LA-2A compression, which is a switch on the back of it, and run the vocal through it again in a compression mode and slightly compress it.”

Prestidge recalls using a Sennheiser 421 on the kick drum, AKG 414s on the toms, AKG 452s or 451s overhead, and “probably an SM57 on the snare or a Sony C500.” However, he says, it also may have been a Neumann KM 84 after he had a conversation with Ken Scott to find out what mic he used on Supertramp’s Crime of the Century.

On the acoustic guitar, Prestidge used AKG 452s or 451s. On electric guitars, he says, he used two different mics: “I would do a close miking with a Shure SM57 to get that funky, gritty sound, and use a Neumann U67 backed off from the amp for a fuller, fatter, more hi-fi sound to mix with the SM57.”

The bass was taken direct through a UA 1176 limiter, “compression setting of 4, medium attack, slower release,” Prestidge says. “The mic was a modified Neumann U87 with resistor R8 removed.” Steel guitar was recorded direct.

The day they went into Kendun Recorders in Burbank to cut the strings, the studio, which Prestidge recalls having an SSL console and Studer machine that had one problem after another.

“I just thought, ‘I’m doomed,’” Norman recalls. “They finally got the thing put back together, but sessions go in three-hour increments, and I was out of money after three hours. They got it fixed about two-and-a-half hours into it.”

With 30 minutes remaining in total, he spent the first 25 on “I’m Dreaming,” which left five minutes for “Right Time of the Night.” He said, “Roll the tape,” got one pass, and they were out the door.

When he listened back, Norman suddenly heard a big clash in the bottom end between the bass and the cello. “What in the world is that?’” Norman asked himself. Then a lightbulb went off: “When I had written the chart, I had been writing from memory,” he says, “and I wrote the chart to go with the first time I cut it. Fortunately, it was only noticeable in the bottom end.”

Of course, this was pre copy-and-paste days, so Norman turned the cello down when that part came by, but up came another problem.

He had written a modulation going out of the bridge and the violins were off. “I had written the violin notes in the new key on the run-up,” Norman admits. “You’re not at the new key yet. For some reason, I was writing in a hurry.” He put a loud guitar part on the modulation, but Norman says, “To this day, I can hear one violin note that sounds out of tune.”

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Norman says that he talks about making this record so people will learn. The project was definitely a learning experience for him, so he wants budding producers to see how he found himself in a tough spot, but he still managed to make it through and to have a career despite all the rough patches at the start.

While he was a fan of “I’m Dreaming” in particular, Davis ended up releasing “Right Time of the Night” as Warnes’ first single, and the song reached Number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. And because of that single, a few months later Norman got a big producing gig with Anne Murray and proceeded to make 10 albums with her. McCann went on to write Top 40 songs for Louise Mandrell, K.T. Oslin, Mickey Gilley and others. “It was the on ramp for all three of us to go on and do better things,” McCann said.

Norman doesn’t recall how Warnes felt about having to re-cut “Right Time of the Night.” “I probably blocked that,” he admits, “but I do know that after we got finished with the record, she was upset with me and didn’t want to talk with me for years because she was just unhappy with the whole thing.”

About four years after the sessions, though, Norman was living in Nashville and one day he was sitting on the floor going through a pile of tapes when the phone rang and it was Warnes. “She said, ‘Jim Ed, will you make records with me again?’” Norman recalls. “And in the end, everything was wonderful.”

This article first appeared in the January 2017 issue of Mix.