Night and Day

Making it

Jackson moved to New York after his marriage ended, and this is the sound of him taking in the city. He wrote for a guitarless band: his own piano, keyboards, saxophone and vibraphone; Maby on bass; Tolfree on drums and timbales; Sue Hadjopoulos on congas, bongos and flute; and Ricardo Torres on more percussion, with Ed Roynesdal adding violin and synth programming. They recorded at Blue Rock Studio in SoHo early in 1982, with Kershenbaum and Jackson producing.

The title is Cole Porter's, and the record is laid out like a twenty-four hours: the Night Side runs without breaks from Another World through Chinatown, T.V. Age and Target to Steppin' Out, and the Day Side opens with Breaking Us in Two and ends with the long A Slow Song. Jackson told the New York Times at the time that the music was for the moment, for 1982.

Reception

It was his commercial peak: number three in Britain and the Netherlands, number four in the United States and Canada, gold in the US and UK and platinum in Australia, Canada and the Netherlands. Five singles came off it, starting with Real Men in June 1982. Rolling Stone and Q gave it four stars; the Encyclopedia of Popular Music gave it five. Melody Maker and Record Mirror were cooler, and Christgau graded it B-minus. A 2003 deluxe edition added his demos of six of the songs.