The late Quincy Jones made memorable contributions to General Hospital in the early 1980s, providing songs that were used for not one but two of the show’s most popular pairings – Holly (Emma Samms) and Luke (Anthony Geary), and later, Robert (Tristan Rogers) and Holly.
Jones produced the song “Baby Come to Me,” which only hit No. 73 on the Billboard charts when it was first released in April 1982. Later, GH used it to introduce “widowed” Luke Spencer finding love again with the enigmatic Holly Sutton. The song, performed by singers James Ingram and Patti Austin, swept viewers into Luke’s romance with the English beauty.
While viewers heard the tune up to a few times a week by watching Holly and Luke, the actors didn’t necessarily hear it all as songs are added to scenes after they’ve been shot. “Music isn’t always played at the time of taping a scene,” Samms tells TV Insider. “Though sometimes a little would leak through the camera crew’s headphones, so we’d have an idea of what was accompanying our performances.”
“When I first started on the show, I would record the shows and watch back what I had done, so I was aware that ‘Baby Come to Me’ had been chosen as Luke and Holly’s theme,” Samms adds.
So very sad to hear the news about James Ingram.Here he was visiting the set of General Hospital to celebrate his song “Baby Come to Me” (Luke & Holly’s theme song) reaching No1.He was a really lovely man. #JamesIngram pic.twitter.com/PjKivigxhV— Emma Samms MBE (@EmmaSamms1) January 30, 2019
Even before Laura’s (Genie Francis) return in late 1983, which we firmly believe would have separated Luke and Holly, fate had already intervened. After Luke was presumed dead in an avalanche, his best friend Robert encouraged a pregnant Holly to marry him. They fell in love for real after she miscarried and became a bona fide supercouple in their own right, a dynamic that exists to this day.
Not surprisingly GH’s use of “Baby Come to Me” helped propel the re-released song in October 1982 to No. 1 on the Billboard chart for two weeks in February 1983. “Every time I heard it played on the radio, often with a reference to General Hospital and sometimes even with a reference to my character, Holly, it was a huge thrill,” Samms recalls.
While Samms, along with legendary GH executive producer Gloria Monty, and Geary met Ingram when he came to GH to record “Baby Come to Me,” she shares that she was not fortunate enough to meet Jones. “I know I would have loved to have had the opportunity to tell him what a huge fan of all of his music I was – and still am,” Samms says. “To have that skill and that range of styles…he truly was a genius.”
Holly and Luke moving on from one another didn’t mean the end of Jones’ influence in Samms’ on-screen relationships. GH heard the song “How Do You Keep the Music Playing,” for which Jones wrote the lyrics, used in the 1982 film Best Friends starring Goldie Hawn and Burt Reynolds, and thought it was perfect for Robert and Holly.
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“When Robert and Holly were given their own song, it was the stamp of approval from the powers-that-be,” Samms recalls with a smile. “It meant that we were doing something right. It’s a shame that due to, I assume, budget restraints, songs are not used in the same way on GH anymore.”
Samms is grateful that Jones’s music was used to help establish not one but two of Holly’s romantic tales. “Music is surely the most powerful tool to express the emotions of a love story,” she says. “A beautiful song like ‘How Do You Keep the Music Playing’ does more than accompany or enhance a scene, it instantly draws the audience into all the feelings that the writers and actors are hoping to convey, and I’m sure that Tristan and I will forever be grateful to Quincy Jones for the spectacular job he gave us with that!”
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