Blackjack (Michal (Bolton) Bolotin, Sandy Gennaro, Jimmy Haslip, Bruce Kulick)

Blackjack (Michal (Bolton) Bolotin, Sandy Gennaro, Jimmy Haslip, Bruce Kulick)

80s R&B hitmaker Michael Bolton went through a rock phase early in his career.  After a couple of failed singer-songwriter solo albums in the mid-1970s, Bolton gave hard rock a try as the frontman of Blackjack, a four-piece unit that also featured future KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick.  Bolton (then going by his real name Bolotin), and Blackjack released two albums on Polgram; their self-titled 1978 debut and “Worlds Apart (1980), but never found much success other than the single “Love Me Tonight”, which hit #62 on the Pop Singles chart in 1979.

Promo Film for Blackjack

Rarely seen promo film produced for Blackjack gushes with praise for the band and features  performances of “Love Me Tonight” and the Bad Company-sounding “Without Your Love”.

In 1983, Bolotin christened himself “Michael Bolton” and released another solo album in the hard-rock/AOR genre with the help of Bruce Kulick and his brother Bob. “Fool’s Game” was released as a single as the album climbed to #89.

Fool’s Game:

“Fool’s Game” was more in the pop-rock vein, complete with prominent keyboards and hand claps.  As a result, it was a moderate success on the charts, hitting #27 on the Mainstream Rock chart, and #83 on the Pop Singles chart.

Everybody’s Crazy:

The harder-rocking single from Bolton’s 1985 album “Everybody’s Crazy” was the title track, which hit #38 on the Mainstream Rock Chart.

Minor success on the rock charts was not enough for Bolton, so he shifted gears again, releasing “The Hunger” in 1987, on which he collaborated with Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain of Journey.  Bolton’s more R&B/Pop-oriented approach on “The Hunger” scored him two Top 20 hits with his overwrought cover of Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ on the Dock of The Bay (#11), and “That’s What Love is All About” (#19). Bolton’s career went through the stratosphere, and he has sold 53 million albums to date.