Randy Barlow

Born in Detroit during 1943, Randy Barlow attained his greatest commercial success as a singer and songwriter toward the end of the 1970s. He took up guitar with local R&B ensembles at age ten and turned professional at fourteen. After withdrawing from college in 1965 he headed to California hoping to work as a Hollywood stuntman, yet instead joined Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars, handling promotion, emcee duties, and both musical and comedy performances.

His first single, “Color Blind,” appeared in 1968 without charting. After prolonged club work he earned another recording chance in 1974 and turned it into the minor hit “Throw Away the Pages.” Additional modest successes followed, culminating in a 1976 Top 20 entry with his reading of “Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa,” the same song that had reached the Top Ten for Gene Pitney in 1963.

Four consecutive number-ten singles arrived between 1978 and 1979—“Slow and Easy,” “No Sleep Tonight,” “Fall in Love With Me Tonight,” and “Sweet Melinda”—while the albums Arrival (1977), Fall in Love With Me (1978), and his 1979 self-titled LP also drew attention. Later efforts, among them the 1981 album Dimensions, met little commercial or critical response, and Barlow’s final chart single, “Don't Leave Me Lonely Loving You,” stopped at number 67 in 1983.