FLOD Spotlight - Issue 5

Your work in pop music is extensive,
but one track invariably comes up on a
regular basis —“It’s Raining Men,” the
delirious disco classic featuring Martha
Wash and Izora Armstead, performing
as The Weather Girls. So give me the
rundown on the background of this
megahit.
It’s sort of a long story, but in the ’70s, when I was just getting
started in the music business in New York, having arrived
from Canada in 1974, and simultaneous to doing SNL, I
was becoming a studio musician and arranger. A producer
named Ron Dante, who had produced Barry Manilow’s first
albums, hired me to arrange a track—they were still calling it
disco back then I guess—for a new dance artist named Paul
Jabara. This guy had been in the cast of Hair on Broadway,
and he had written his own musical, which had opened and
closed. He was now trying to be a pop recording artist, and I
arranged a song for him called “One Man Ain’t Enough.” We
made the record (though it wasn’t widely heard), and it was
very cute and danceable—it already had a bit of that sense
of humor which he applied to “It’s Raining Men.” This record
had strings and horns and was, I guess you’d say, an early
disco experiment. Now Paul—his career hadn’t taken off
as a recording artist—so he moved to Los Angeles, and he
wrote “Last Dance” for Donna Summer and won an Oscar.
I was so proud to know him and to have worked with him
earlier.
He came back to New York around 1981 and called me up.
He told me I did such a great job arranging “One Man Ain’t
Enough,” and [he had] an idea for a song for Donna Summer
that he wanted me to compose with him. He thought this
would bring her around—after a long string of hit records,
I think her career had cooled a little bit. He asked me what
I thought of the title “It’s Raining Men.” I said, “I’ll be right
over!” It’s true—I went right over to his apartment on the
upper east side and we wrote the song in one afternoon. He
was all ready to go with many of the lyric ideas—lines about
ripping off the roof and staying in bed. He had that ready to
go, including the reference to Mother Nature being a single
woman. He was loaded and ready. All I had to do was put
these things to music. But really, he had the content all in
his head already.
Unfortunately, when he played it for Donna Summer, she
hated it. I believe she had become a born again Christian
by this time, and she thought it was blasphemous, and she
refused to do the song. Paul was the kind of guy who had
established friendships with all the great divas of that era—
and he played it for all of them. Diana, Barbra, Patti Labelle—
none of them wanted to do it. He was undaunted—he knew
this song would be a hit. Then he remembered the girls
who used to back Sylvester, who were working under the
name Two Tons O’ Fun. Martha Wash and Izora Armstead.
4 FLOD SPOTLIGHT | 2018 SPRING ISSUE | FIRSTLADIESOFDISCOSHOW.COM