The Manhattan Transfer - Twilight Zone/Twilight Tone (1979) - Discotheque Version

Barry from Sauquoit, Ny once said: On March 1st 1980, the Manhattan Transfer performed "Twilight Zone/Twilight Tone" on the ABC-TV program 'American Bandstand'... One month later on April 13th it entered Billboard's Hot Top 100 chart at position #84; and on June 8th it peaked at #30 (for 2 weeks) and spent 12 weeks on the Top 100... It reached #25 on the United Kingdom's Singles chart...

Jay Graydon produced the Extensions album and wrote this song with Alan Paul of The Manhattan Transfer. The song was inspired by the famous TV show. Says Graydon: "Channel 5 in L.A. would play Twilight Zones every night. I loved it when I was a kid, and watching the stuff, I was thinking, what would it be like to take the Twilight Zone theme and turn it into another song? There were three different intros to The Twilight Zone over the years. There was an original, and then they changed it twice. Well, it was right in the beginning of VHS video home recorders, so I recorded the show every night until we got all of the three themes. Then I gave the stuff to Alan and he worked with the intro, which speech to use from which version. He probably combined a couple. And in the meantime I wrote the chord changes and most of the melody. I basically wrote the arrangement as I was going. This was a very difficult piece, there was a lot happening. It was 6-plus minutes. It was not an easy thing. And pretty much I had to write everything out. I remember the chart being pretty long, because there was a lot of sections. And of course Janis Siegel had to sing it, because it had to have that R&B edge. I was proud of that. That was a lot of work, and I humbly state I did a good job." (read more in our interview with Jay Graydon)