Let the music play on
How “After 7” gave Johnny Gill his biggest hit
and “Flytyme” producers (Jimmy Jam &Terry Lewis)
convinced him it would be his biggest hit.
After the New Edition/Bobby Brown tour in 1989, Johnny Gill started the recording of his 1990 Album titled
"Johnny Gill", the production of the album was shared between two teams of super Producers LA & Babyface and the other team ( Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis).
New Edition + Johnny Gill
LA & Babyface during the mid eighties were one of the production teams to go to if you needed a hit, they had the charts filled up with so many records. They produced for Bobby Brown, Karyn White, Mac Band, Pebbles .
The late Jheryl Busby had been poached from MCA by Motown to become their President and Chief Executive, while he was at MCA he had promised Johnny that if he could join New Edition to record the Heartbreak album, he would give him a solo deal and that since he would be moving to Motown soon, he would take Johnny with him and promised him that he would make his album a chart buster. When Jheryl eventually moved to Motown he took Johnny with him and signed him as a solo Act, he got in touch with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and also Babyface and LA to share the production in between the two teams, during that period LA & Babyface had so many acts they were producing at that time and they had songs written for particular acts, on this occasion they had a song titled “My My My” written for a group called After 7 but it so happened that After 7 did not show up for their session to cut the track "My My My” and since Johnny Gill was around he was asked to jump into the booth to record the song, Johnny reluctantly did, the reason being that he did not like the song .
LA & Babyface
One day he had a session with Jimmy and Terry for the same album and they asked him how the session with LA & Babyface was going and he told them about a song which they made him record which he did not like, he then played them the song “My My My” and when Jimmy heard the first verse he told Johnny “this song was going to burn up the charts” and when the song got to the chorus Terry told him he would be nuts if he excluded the song from the album , that was how Jam and Lewis helped LA & Babyface convince Johnny to keep the song “My My My” which has become Johnny's signature tune and his biggest tune up till this day .
