GC Cameron - It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday

**mysterysinger** · 04-02-2018, 07:32 AM

One of my fave Motown records of all......

**marv2** · 04-02-2018, 10:14 AM

This is perhaps the best use of a pre-recorded ,pre-released song in a film! It is also one of the saddest.

**mysterysinger** · 04-03-2018, 04:44 AM

I've never seen the film but I love the song.

**marv2** · 04-03-2018, 11:16 AM

Originally Posted by mysterysinger

I've never seen the film but I love the song.

I was 15 years old when me and a group of buddies went to see it just at the start of my sophomore year in high school. It had a big impact at that time where guys began to mimic the characters in Cooley High.

**arr&bee** · 04-03-2018, 11:30 AM

You're right marv about it being sad,maybe that's why i can't listen to it.

**marv2** · 04-03-2018, 11:48 AM

Originally Posted by arr&bee

You're right marv about it being sad,maybe that's why i can't listen to it.

I can't listen to Luther Vandross' "Dance With My Father".

**lockhartgary** · 04-03-2018, 12:06 PM

Yes indeed, a real tearjerker. I can still remember the buzz around this song when it came out.

**marv2** · 04-03-2018, 01:15 PM

Originally Posted by lockhartgary

Yes indeed, a real tearjerker. I can still remember the buzz around this song when it came out.

I remember it came out a few weeks after my Dad passed.

**RanRan79** · 04-03-2018, 02:17 PM

In addition to the song being played during a sad moment in the movie, I had heard this song sung at enough funerals and memorials, thus attaching it to death, that for years I hated it. Couldn't pay me to listen to it. Now I can tolerate it if I make it a point to envision the lyrics in the way they were probably intended when written: as a man coming out of a failed relationship, as opposed to people saying goodbye to dead loved ones.

**marv2** · 04-03-2018, 06:16 PM

I need correct something. I just learned that GC Cameron - It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday was written especially for the film "Cooley High". It had not been released prior to the film's soundtrack. Still it is one of the best songs attached to a specific scene in a film that I can remember.

**heikki** · 04-04-2018, 01:53 AM

Hi!

G.C. Cameron [[on the year 1972): "I knew there was a project called "the 7th Son." I was recording so many songs, when I became a solo artist. I recorded maybe 200-300 songs, and they were picking certain songs, I guess, for the 7th Son project. Then Willie Hutch had come in and started doing a lot of stuff on me, and it took my mind off the 7th Son project--- It was a very interesting concept. It was seven images of me on the surface of another planet. Earth would be on the background in the distance. And I AM the 7th son" [[with three sisters and six brothers in the family).
[[Soul Express: The Spinners Story, part 2).

Best regards
Heikki

**robb_k** · 04-04-2018, 03:26 AM

That film had a lot of memories for me. Cooley High was a real high school in Chicago, on The Near North Side, near The Cabrini-Green housing project, where Jerry and Billy Butler and Curtis Mayfield lived, and Otis Leavill Cobbs hung out. It was filmed in all the real places. And it came out only a couple years after I graduated from a heavily Black High School on The near South Side. So, a lot of the music in it had been out right at that time, or only 1 or 2 years before I graduated.

**RanRan79** · 04-04-2018, 09:58 AM

Originally Posted by marv2

I need correct something. I just learned that GC Cameron - It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday was written especially for the film "Cooley High". It had not been released prior to the film's soundtrack. Still it is one of the best songs attached to a specific scene in a film that I can remember.

Damn, that sucks. I'm still going to try to continue to interpret it the way I want, but this information makes it harder. GC is a helluva singer.

**marv2** · 04-04-2018, 02:32 PM

Originally Posted by robb_k

That film had a lot of memories for me. Cooley High was a real high school in Chicago, on The Near North Side, near The Cabrini-Green housing project, where Jerry and Billy Butler and Curtis Mayfield lived, and Otis Leavill Cobbs hung out. It was filmed in all the real places. And it came out only a couple years after I graduated from a heavily Black High School on The near South Side. So, a lot of the music in it had been out right at that time, or only 1 or 2 years before I graduated.

Hey Robb. I know that area. It's torn down now, but I remember visiting a relative that lived there and playing with all these kids in the playground near the Cabrini Green projects in the 60s. I remember everyone talking about "The Black Stone Rangers"etc.

**BritishTony** · 04-04-2018, 03:08 PM

This is truly a very moving song. ButMarv, I couldn’t agree more. That Luther song is one of the greatest everwritten & performed but every time I listen to it it leaves me in pieces.So much truth and emotion in a simple song. OK so not a Motown song but OtisWilliams sure talks a lot about Luther & clearly loves him dearly. But isn’tit strange how you can love a song so much yet hardly bear to listen to it!Another one for me is Eddie’s “This Used To Be The Home Of Johnnie May” andcoincidentally David’s “Drove By The Place We Used To Live”. I must be a suckerfor a good sad song sung beautifully.

**marv2** · 04-04-2018, 06:15 PM

Originally Posted by BritishTony

This is truly a very moving song. ButMarv, I couldn’t agree more. That Luther song is one of the greatest everwritten & performed but every time I listen to it it leaves me in pieces.So much truth and emotion in a simple song. OK so not a Motown song but OtisWilliams sure talks a lot about Luther & clearly loves him dearly. But isn’tit strange how you can love a song so much yet hardly bear to listen to it!Another one for me is Eddie’s “This Used To Be The Home Of Johnnie May” andcoincidentally David’s “Drove By The Place We Used To Live”. I must be a suckerfor a good sad song sung beautifully.

Thank you BritishTony. It is interesting that you mentioned Eddie Kendrick's "This Use to be The Home of Johnnie May". That song holds a special, personal significance for me that I will not discuss here, but it is as you say a good, sad song. Another one was by a group called "The Unifics". The song came out in 1969 and it got a lot of play in the Detroit area. The title was "The Beginning of My End". Sad, sad, sad!

**TomatoTom123** · 04-04-2018, 08:20 PM

I agree Tony "Dance With My Father" is such a sad and beautiful song, you can feel the emotion and sadness in Luther's voice, so real. And David's "Rode By The Place [[Where We Used To Stay)" is another beautiful song, David really sounds like he is revisiting old memories. Great one I didn't even think of.