My song today is, ‘Turn Your Love Around’. This R&B pop single was written by Grammy winners Bill Champlin of Chicago, Steve Lukather of Toto and Jay Graydon. The song was sung by George Benson and was a single on Benson's 1981 greatest hits album, ‘The George Benson Collection’. The song won a ‘Best R&B Song Grammy Award’ at the 25th Grammy Awards in 1983 for Champlin, Graydon, and Lukather as its co-writers.
‘Turn Your Love Around’ reached Number 1 on the soul singles charts and Number 5 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ singles charts in early 1982, as well as the top ten on the jazz chart. It is ranked as the 27th biggest hit of 1982. In Canada, the song spent two weeks at Number 10.
The inspiration for the song came to Graydon in the bathroom. He explained to Song Facts, "' Turn Your Love Around' was a gift, and it's the gift that keeps giving”.
The song was one of the first pop hits to use a Linn LM-1 drum machine that was programmed by the session drummer Jeff Porcatro (a kind of synthesiser).
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I was in my late thirties when this song was released, although I would be in my seventies before I first came across it. The title of the song instantly reminded me of my early years as a new Probation Officer working in Huddersfield between 1970-1990.
It was during the early 1970s when a new female officer arrived in Huddersfield to work alongside the other twenty Probation Officers that worked there. The very first time that my colleague, Keith Widdop and I saw the latest recruit enter our office, it was from the stairwell where we were having a conversation. She was stood with her back towards us and was being greeted by the Senior Probation Officer, Wilf Battye on the ground floor. As Keith and I looked on, neither of us needed to say a word to the other as to what was in our minds, and I am reasonably sure it was along the same thought trend.
The new recruit had one of the shapeliest bodies ever to walk through that big entrance door to the ‘Huddersfield Probation Office and After Care’ building. She was about 5 feet 9 inches tall and wore the most fashionable of clothes that fitted her body shape as though they’d been made for her exclusively. As Keith and I looked on (while pretending to be engaged doing something else), it was impossible not to notice her long black hair dancing gracefully towards her waistline, making her look the perfect princess awaiting rescue of her knight in shining armour. The colour of her hair was a natural silk-like black and it literally gleamed in the daylight, so much that it instinctively gave one the urge to secretly touch and run one’s fingers through it.
Then, Wilf noticed Keith and myself on the stairwell and kindly said to our new colleague, “Let me introduce you, L….., to William Forde and Keith Widdop who have offices next door to each other on the top floor”.
Our new colleague turned around to shake hands with us. Instead of being the young, beautiful thirty-year-old woman with stunning looks that we expected, L…… was a mature officer in her late forties or early fifties. She wasn’t unattractive in her appearance but neither would she ever have gained eligibility to the local beauty contest to compete for ‘Miss Huddersfield’. She was just a plain-looking married woman whose face bore the worry lines that any female approaching fifty might possess. Her hair was her most beauty attribute and crowning glory. It later transpired that her good figure was down to swimming and running twice weekly, a proper diet, yoga exercise and never having given birth to any children.
Over the years that followed, our Probation colleague turned out to prove herself to be a wonderful friend and a very competent Probation Officer who was a great asset to our clientele. During the years we worked together in Huddersfield, she revealed herself to be the most caring of officers in the Huddersfield office. Her beauty was less a feature of face; more a matter of fact, and it came from within and not without.
There was nothing cosmetic or artificial about her degree of compassion she oozed, nothing shallow about the depth of understanding she displayed, and the love she expressed towards both clients and colleagues was non-conditional. She had the capacity to accept the person from where they stood and who they were, without necessarily agreeing with them, and she automatically awarded respect before it had been earned, on the basis that respect received by all individuals was deserved. What a beautiful person she was, a colleague whose friendship I dearly cherished, a lovely person whom I’ll never regret knowing; an individual I will never forget.
Incidentally, just in case you have wondered, L…. did allow me to touch her beautiful black hair from time to time if I asked permission in advance, just like a pregnant colleague might allow a male colleague to stroke her big bump fondly. This song ‘Turn Your Love Around’ reminds me of my dark-haired colleague from Huddersfield.
As a man who was often prone to walk on the wrong side of life and the law during my youth and who eventually turned from poacher to gamekeeper when the thief became a Probation Office, it could be said that I ‘turned my life around’.
Also, as a young man, I was too full of myself and there was a narcissistic part of me that loved me too much. By learning to love other people more than myself in my adult life, it could be said that I ‘turned my love around’. I believe that my Huddersfield female colleague L…. had a significant part to play in this transformation through her example of goodness displayed.
Love and peace Bill xxx