Wait, Roberta Flack and Lee Greenwood recorded a duet? About North Carolina?
In 1987, two hugely-popular musicians came together for the first time to sing about how great this state was. Why? Because a local television station in Raleigh needed some promos.
What if I told you that Roberta Flack and Lee Greenwood once recorded a duet together? And what if I told you that the full-length song was played maybe a single time, on a local TV station in Raleigh in 1987, and then spent basically the next two decades sitting in an archive, where practically nobody could listen to it? And… what if I told you that the song was a banger, waxed poetic about North Carolina, and comes complete with a three minute music video?
If that sounds highly improbable, then sit down, turn the volume up, and gird your loins for “We Mean a Lot to Each Other”:
I know I know, you all thought that North Carolina’s national anthem was “Raise Up.” You thought wrong.
This song floated into my feed earlier this week after someone at WRAL unearthed it and re-posted it. It was a way to honor Roberta Flack, the legendary singer who was born in Black Mountain and died on Monday at age 88. Since then, there’s been an outpouring of love and remembrances, almost all of which mention her most famous recording, “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”
None of them, however, mention the first and only time that she teamed up with Lee Greenwood, whose most popular song, “God Bless the U.S.A.” is now four decades old. Even so, some folks who have been around the Triangle for a long time instantly recognized the sounds of this tune, even though it may not have been broadcast in its entirety for nearly 40 years. I myself played it at four or five times before I decided I wanted to write about it. I couldn’t stop. It’s an earworm, folks.
The music video was shot over eight days in May 1987, and premiered on WRAL-TV’s “PM Magazine,” on Monday, August 24 of that year. It was a hit in Raleigh. “I remember it was a pretty big deal,” says retired photojournalist Jay Jennings, who helped edit the video. “It went over really well in the community.”
We’ll get to the details of how this thing came together a little later. First, though, let’s take a closer look at the song itself.
First off, I cannot think of a more odd pairing than an overly patriotic country singer and a woman whose soulful R&B stylings helped give rise to the quiet storm. Did they have … chemistry? Yes? Just look at the playful poke she gives him before the music starts.
Right away, though, the song wants you to know that these people are not, you know, in love love, but rather are just the very best of friends.
FLACK: I'm so glad you are a friend of mine,
’cause it takes two to make a poem rhyme.
GREENWOOD: You bring my life a certain harmony,
I know together, we are meant to be.
I have never heard of such a requirement for rhyming poems. I thought it merely took two to make a thing go right.
FLACK AND GREENWOOD: We mean a lot to each other,
and we share all the best you and me,
we mean a lot to each other,
and when we get together,
we make this the place to be.
The genius of this hook is that it’s vague enough to apply to any situation, but if you take it literally, it’s an ode to the raw, unrestrained power of a Greenwood/Flack hangout. Unfortunately, they never recorded a song together again, so we’ll have to mourn all of The Places to Be that never came to be.
There’s more. Flack leads a horse through a meadow and sings about how she prefers the mountains, while Greenwood likes the “sandy shores” and punts some sand while wearing some worryingly short shorts. There’s also a wedding, a spinning bi-plane, a graduation ceremony, and people waving at a hot-air balloon (Side note: This device is used in maybe the greatest local TV promo ever). There’s also a lot of on-air personalities in there, including long-time anchor Charlie Gaddy walking his dog past the state capitol and giving directions to a family with a moving van in tow. How convenient that he just happened to be there!
And then, good people, we hit the bridge, where Greenwood notes that they’re “exciting like the ACC,” and then whips around to make a big reveal:
If you pulled this move off in, say, any sort of sporting venue in North Carolina, you would get booed right out of the arena. Immediately.
But hey, we’re floating through a fantasy version of the Raleigh area in this video, so why not have Jim Valvano and Mike Krzyzewski embracing before flinging a basketball at an off-screen Dean Smith, who is clearly not ready for it?
Next comes Flack inexplicably sitting at a grand piano in front of the now-demolished Burroughs Wellcome building in Research Triangle Park. Is she actually playing it? Reader, she is not.
I could go on. But I know what you want. You want an ‘80s saxophone solo on the deck of a moving sailboat. And that, my friends, is what you’re gonna get:
At the end, the song devolves into a more blatant commercial for WRAL, which Greenwood and Flack musically note is “the CBS place to be.” Sadly, that probably rules out a return to the airwaves for this masterpiece, since WRAL switched its affiliation to NBC in 2016.
If this feels like a wildly ambitious project for a local TV station, well, you’re right. That said, it wasn’t unheard of. The 1970s and 80s were the golden era for local TV news theme songs, the G.O.A.T. being “Move Closer To Your World” from Action News in Philadelphia. The bongo-infused original version from 1970 is still being used today, 55 years later (The station tried to update it in 1996 and the move was so unpopular that it went back to the original track three days later). But that song, like many others, did not feel like a song you’d actually hear on the radio. This one did.
Plus, it was sort of in-character for WRAL, which has been locally owned since its inception and has a history of doing big things. “Our general manager John Greene was always like ‘what can we do that’s above and beyond?’” says Jennings, who worked at the station for 43 years. “Sometimes it was stuff like this.”
Jennings has no idea how WRAL landed Greenwood and Flack (both of whom he never met), and doesn’t know how much this thing cost to make, although he knows it was “a substantial number.” He thinks Flack did it because she was coming to town for the 1987 Olympic Sports Festival in July. Plus, she’d done a TV show sitcom theme song the year before for “Valerie,” which later became “The Hogan Family.” Jennings has no clue about Greenwood, though who was at the height of his “God Bless the U.S.A.” fame but doesn’t have a connection to North Carolina. I’m guessing the money helped.
The song itself was recorded at Monterey Studios in Los Angeles, and it was written and arranged by a company called VTS Productions in Asheville. The company had done music for a lot of TV stations since its founding in 1976, and was beginning to branch out. It brought in a veteran CBS and Disney producer named Bob Garner (not that Bob Garner) to plan and film the music video.
VTS flew Greenwood and Flack to North Carolina to film the scenes. “They shot like crazy,” Jennings says. “They had storyboards to cover all of the parts of the song they could.” They used the WRAL helicopter to get Greenwood to the coast, and shot scenes in Beaufort and Atlantic Beach. Other sections were filmed at Durham’s Brightleaf Square. Afterward, all of the film was transferred to 1-inch videotape, and then given to Jennings and editor Steve Childress, who not only had to match the lip-synced clips to the music, but also cut any number of :30 and 1:00 version to be used during commercial breaks. They worked on it for a week straight. “Fun and tedious, all at the same time,” Jennings says.
The whole production was big enough to make headlines in newspapers all around the South, and its debut got a lot of attention. “This song is really dedicated to North Carolina,” promotions director Sharon Malmstone said at the time. “It’s a celebration of where we live, our people and what we all mean to each other. We wanted to try and show how proud WRAL-TV is to be a part of this special community. Lee Greenwood and Roberta Flack have created a song and a sound that is beautiful and unique. We are delighted with the result and think the community will be very excited when they hear the music.”
The song itself was mostly heard in the shorter promo versions that aired over the next few years. Jennings thinks the complete 3:00 version may have only actually aired ONE TIME. That sounds wild, but it does fit the rich 80's sitcom tradition of multi-versed theme songs whose full versions were only ever played on special occasions. See: The 200th episode of “Cheers.”
I wanted to know a little more about the song itself and how it came together. That proved tough. A lot of former WRAL folks remember the song, but didn’t have anything to do with it. A publicist for Greenwood didn’t get back to me1. Hal Brown, who ran VTS, is also unavailable, given that he’s currently serving a 17.5 year sentence in federal prison for orchestrating a $22 million Ponzi scheme. Jennings himself said the only physical trace of it seems to be the sheet music, which is up on the wall somewhere in the TV station.
But the song’s resurfacing this week seemed to trigger something in a lot of peoples’ memories. That’s the power of repetition and memory and music. And of nostalgia. After all, a line like “All our rich tradition brings a charm to this place” may not sound like much, but it means so much more when it’s sung by a husky-voiced bearded man who’s riding in a horse-drawn carriage.
UPDATE (2/28): Lee Greenwood posted this video on Instagram with a note: “I was so sorry to hear about the passing of Roberta Flack. We worked together back in the 80’s. I was thrilled to see this video this week. I remember this recording well. She was an icon in this industry - beautiful, soulful and so talented! I am sending prayers of comfort and peace to her family and loved ones.”
I worked in the Elion-Hitchings building, I think its a shame it was demolished.
I worked for WRAL's lowly competitor, WPTF-28, who had just started their news operation in 1987. Even though we were no threat, our news crews were always treated with respect by WRAL crews. Jay Jennings, the chief videographer at the time was especially kind to this up-and-coming video journalist! Happy to see the old TV-5 gang (and the BW ziggurat! and Jimmy V! and Dean!) again!