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\n <\/div><\/div> <\/p>\n The Dwight Twilley Band\u2019s \u201cSincerely\u201d flopped in 1976, but is now considered a lost masterpiece of power pop.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Next week marks the 50th anniversary of \u201cSincerely,\u201d one of the great overlooked records of the 1970s. Why it\u2019s overlooked is a story in itself.<\/p>\n Dwight Twilley and Phil Seymour were two Oklahoma boys who met in 1967 while watching \u201cA Hard Day\u2019s Night\u201d and became fast friends.<\/p>\n Oister, their garage band, became The Dwight Twilley Band after they signed to Leon Russell\u2019s Shelter Records in 1974.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m on Fire,\u201d their first single, was a hit in the summer of 1975. \u201cSincerely,\u201d their first LP, was finally released a year later. On July 1. Three days before the Bicentennial. It peaked at #138 on the Billboard Top 200.<\/p>\n Leon Russell and his business partner Denny Cordell bear the blame. They had a legal beef between themselves and a mutual one with their distributor, MCA Records. Cordell also shelved their single \u201cShark (In the Dark)\u201d because he feared the band would be a novelty after \u201cJaws.\u201d<\/p>\n Twilley and Seymour persevered anyway. Tapes recorded by them in London were scrapped, and the whole album rerecorded by the duo \u2014 who played every instrument \u2014 back in Tulsa.<\/p>\n What they created was a history of rock \u2019n\u2019 roll in song. Every tune on \u201cSincerely\u201d is a tribute to the musicians they loved. \u201cEngland\u201d sounds like T-Rex, \u201cSincerely\u201d like John Lennon, \u201cThree Persons\u201d like The Searchers and so on.<\/p>\n That\u2019s nothing new today. Fifty years ago it was unique, and \u201cSincerely\u201d seamlessly blends American and British styles with Twilley\u2019s stuttering rockabilly twang. \u201cThis does smell a little like a museum,\u201d Robert Christgau of The Village Voice noted in his favorable review.<\/p>\n In 1979, the band changed. Twilley moved to Arista. Seymour left for a solo career with Boardwalk Records. Guitarist Bill Pitcock replaced Seymour as backup singer. Susan Cowsill climbed aboard.<\/p>\n Tom Petty, their occasional bassist, declared bankruptcy that same year to escape his own Shelter contract.<\/p>\n It would take Arista three years before they released Twilley\u2019s next record, \u201cScuba Divers.\u201d They balked after his first single didn\u2019t chart.<\/p>\n \u201cGirls\u201d was Twilley\u2019s second \u2014 and final \u2014 hit in 1984.<\/p>\n \u201cSincerely\u201d was no fluke, and Twilley no two-hit wonder. Those first four records, and Seymour\u2019s solo debut, are among the finest power pop ever made.<\/p>\n And those are the tip of the iceberg. He and Seymour recorded hundreds of songs in the \u201970s, only a fraction of which ever saw wax, let alone airplay.<\/p>\n Some highlights of those that did:<\/p>\n \u201cDid You See What Happened?,\u201d the Jerry Lee-style B-side of \u201cI\u2019m on Fire\u201d that wasn\u2019t included on \u201cSincerely\u201d; \u201cFeeling in the Dark,\u201d which was on \u201cSincerely,\u201d and its bluesy, white boy funk; the moody \u201cThat I Remember\u201d and folky \u201cChance to Get Away\u201d (from 1977\u2019s \u201cTwilley Don\u2019t Mind\u201d).The Byrds-on-speed country rock of \u201cBetsy Sue\u201d and Bowie vibe of \u201cRunaway\u201d (1979\u2019s \u201cTwilley\u201d).Phil Seymour\u2019s Beatles valentine \u201cPrecious to Me\u201d and slow-burn cover of \u201cTrying to Get to You\u201d from 1981. The girl-group sound of \u201cDion Baby\u201d and whimsy of \u201c10,000 American Scuba Divers Dancing\u201d (from \u201cScuba Divers\u201d).<\/p>\n Twilley was too good for his own good, and his chameleon quality is probably why he had no following to speak of.<\/p>\n After all, how do you market a chameleon? Shelter and Arista didn\u2019t try very hard. Neither did EMI. The British company discontinued the CDs after buying the rights to \u201cShelter\u201d in the \u201990s.<\/p>\n Seymour fared even worse. Boardwalk Records folded in 1982 after owner Neil Bogart died of cancer, again leaving Twilley without a contract.<\/p>\n Phil Seymour died of lymphoma in 1993, Twilley of a stroke in 2023. At the time of their deaths, both had been forgotten.<\/p>\n Ironically, their greatest success has occurred recently. Two years ago Iconoclassic Records rereleased those first albums on CD, minus \u201cSincerely,\u201d with bonus songs.<\/p>\n They also presented \u201cLive From Agora,\u201d a long-forgotten Cleveland show at the Agora Ballroom from October, 1976. The sound was mixed by their old \u201cShelter\u201d engineer, and it\u2019s clear as a bell. If you want to know how good they were, listen to that recording.<\/p>\n Or \u201cSincerely\u201d \u2014 if you can find it. The DCC disc from 1989 is long out of print and expensive. So is the 1997 reissue.<\/p>\n The LP is also a collector\u2019s item. It was reissued once in 1980, just before Shelter Records went belly-up.<\/p>\n Dwight Twilley and Phil Seymour were major talents. So was Bill Pitcock, whose three songs for Phil Seymour were some of his record\u2019s best.<\/p>\n They were better than good. They were major figures in American music who were born at the wrong time \u2014 a decade too late for bubblegum and a decade too early for postmodern hipsterdom.<\/p>\n They deserved better than they got. And that\u2019s a fact.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Brian Hess<\/p>\n 69c3cdabec87b.image.jpg<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.daytondailynews.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Dwight Twilley Band\u2019s \u201cSincerely\u201d flopped in 1976, but is now considered a lost masterpiece of power pop. Next week marks the 50th anniversary of \u201cSincerely,\u201d one of the great overlooked records of the 1970s. Why it\u2019s overlooked is a story in itself. Dwight Twilley and Phil Seymour were two Oklahoma boys who met in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2476434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2476433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Forgotten-record-review-Dwight-Twilley-and-co-Entertainment-News.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2476433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2476435,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476433\/revisions\/2476435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2476434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2476433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2476433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2476433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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