Afternoon Delight

Well, Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew has been spinning a little number that always gets the bikes rolling and the heads nodding out on the open road. Afternoon Delight by the Starland Vocal Band is one of those tunes that sneaks up on you with those four-part harmonies floating over a gentle folk-rock groove, and it still feels like the perfect soundtrack for a long ride when the sun is high and the wind is in your face. The song comes from their self-titled debut album, and it hit the top of the charts back in the bicentennial summer of 1976, riding the wave of fireworks and that free-spirited feeling that was floating around the whole country. Bill Danoff, one of the core voices and the guy who wrote it, has told interviewers that the idea came to him while he was sitting in Clyde’s restaurant down in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. They had these little table tents advertising a happy-hour menu called Afternoon Delights, featuring things like spiced shrimp and hot Brie with almonds. He looked at his bandmate Margot Chapman and said it would make a neat title for a song. Then he went home and explained to his then-wife Taffy Nivert what the phrase ought to mean, and the seed was planted.

Danoff has been pretty clear in quotes over the years that he never set out to write an all-out sex song. He wanted something fun that just hinted at the idea of grabbing a little midday romance instead of waiting until the middle of a cold dark night. He worked on it over about six months, often on Sundays while watching Redskins football on television, because all that energy coming out of the tube got his creative juices flowing. He pictured it as a kind of fiddle tune that would give him room for a lot of neat syllables in rhyme, and he imagined how it would sound with four voices blending together. Taffy has chimed in during interviews that Bill never came right out and said he wanted to do anything explicit; the lyrics stayed subtle and sophisticated, which is why the song could slide onto the radio without getting banned. Kids used to think it was about some kind of snack treat, and even the synthesizer player Suzanne Ciani, who laid down those cool electronic touches, has said she had no idea it was about an afternoon romantic encounter when she was recording it. The group looked so clean-cut that the double meaning sailed right over a lot of heads.

The song sat at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 right around the time the country was celebrating its two-hundredth birthday, and the chorus about skyrockets in flight lined up perfectly with all the fireworks going off. It earned the band a pair of Grammy awards, including Best New Artist and Best Arrangement for Voices. Jon Carroll, who handled a lot of the arranging, has said in Songfacts interviews that he is proud of it even though it is not the kind of record someone who wants to be seen as a bad-ass rock and roller would brag about. He remembers the whole Starland run as a bit frustrating because people never quite took them seriously after that one big hit. The band even got their own short-lived variety show on CBS, and a young David Letterman showed up in some of the sketches. Taffy has noted that they kept telling the producers the jokes were not funny, but the network insisted they knew what would work on television. It only lasted a handful of episodes.

The whole story of how the band got started goes back to the late sixties folk scene in Washington, D.C. Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert began as an acoustic duo called Fat City. They wrote songs like I Guess He’d Rather Be in Colorado, which John Denver and Mary Travers recorded, and then they teamed up with Denver himself to finish Take Me Home, Country Roads during a late-night session after they met him at the Cellar Door club. That one became Denver’s signature hit and later an official state song of West Virginia, even though Danoff had never set foot in the state when he wrote the first lines. Fat City cut a couple of albums, then the pair started performing as Bill and Taffy and opened for Denver on the road. When they were making their second album as a duo, they brought in an eighteen-year-old singer and pianist named Jon Carroll. They were so impressed that they decided to expand the group, adding vocalist Margot Chapman, and the Starland Vocal Band was born. They signed to Denver’s Windsong label and put out the debut album that carried Afternoon Delight. Carroll and Chapman even became a couple and got married a couple of years later.

Danoff has said he was not really looking to put a group together at first, but once the four of them started singing together he realized the vocal blend was something special. The band recorded a few more albums after the big hit, but nothing else climbed anywhere near the top of the charts. They toured the clubs, concert halls, and festivals, and Taffy has reflected that being a one-hit wonder is actually what got their name on the wall at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. If they had scored another smash, that little honor might never have happened. The song has shown up in movies and television over the years, and it still gets people smiling whenever it comes on the radio or the turntable. Over at THE ZOO we like to keep those deep cuts and the stories that go with them spinning for all the Zoo Freaks out there.

If you want to dig deeper into the folks who made the music, you can check out Jon Carroll’s official site at joncarroll.org, where he keeps sharing his work as a performer, songwriter, and arranger long after the Starland days. There is also an active Facebook group called Fans Of Starland Vocal Band at facebook.com/groups/Starland1969 where people share memories of the music from Bill, Taffy, Jon, and Margot, along with the earlier Fat City and Bill and Taffy records. The members of the band have stayed connected to music in their own ways, writing songs that other artists have covered and playing with folks like Mary Chapin Carpenter. It is a long way from those Georgetown nights and the Redskins games that sparked the idea, but the harmonies and the feeling of that free afternoon still ride along with anyone who remembers the tune. So keep the volume up, Zoo Freaks, and enjoy the ride while the skyrockets are still in flight.