Although you probably know this by now, Dwight Twilley has passed. The power pop artist, best known for his Top 20 hit singles “I’m on Fire” and “Girls”, had a massive stroke while driving and crashed his car into a tree on Saturday, October 14, 2023. He died four days later in the hospital.
Twilley is known for his collaboration with the late Phil Seymour, with whom he formed the Dwight Twilley Band. The two met in 1967 in a theater in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was playing a double feature with The Beatles’ A Hard Days Night as one of the movies. They continued their partnership over the next several years under the band name Oister.
In the 1970s, Twilley and Seymour went to Memphis, where they stumbled into Sun Studio, where they met, according to Twilley, “some guy named Phillips.” Eventually, they went to Los Angeles to find a label, and signed with Tulsa-based Shelter Records. They made several recordings at The Church Studio, an episcopal church converted into a music studio, including “I’m on Fire”.
That song became their debut single and received little promotion, largely because the band was in England recording its first album. Nevertheless, the single peaked at #16 on the Billboard charts in 1975. Unfortunately, by the time their new album was ready to be released, the distribution deal that Shelter had with MCA Records had collapsed, and it would not be released until Shelter switched to ABC Records for distribution. When the resulting album was finally released (“Sincerely”, released in 1976), it was a relative commercial failure, peaking at #138.
The second Dwight Twilley Band album, “Twilley Don’t Mind”, was also a commercial disappointment, peaking at #70 on the Billboard album charts. Disappointed at the band’s failure, especially compared to labelmates Tom Petty, Phil Seymour left the band and launched a solo career, where he enjoyed some success before his death in 1993.
By now, Shelter had switched distribution deals again; this time, they partnered with Arista Records. Twilley continued as a solo act, keeping Bill Pitcock IV on lead guitar and Susan Cowsill on harmony vocals. He released Twilley in 1979, which was not very commercially successful (U.S. #113). Twilley recorded another album, Blueprint, which was unreleased.
Twilley signed with EMI America for his next album, Scuba Divers (1982) (US. #109). His next album, Jungle (1984), produced a second national hit single, “Girls”, featuring a counterpoint vocal by Tom Petty. Twilley left EMI America for Private I Records, a label started by radio promoter Joe Isgro. When Isgro was implicated in a payola scandal, Private I Records collapsed, and the album, called Wild Dogs, was released by Epic’s CBS Associated label, where it sank quickly. Thus, Twilley had dissipated the momentum from his hit single and, as the 1980s drew to a close, found himself without a record label.
The 1990s found Twilley unable to secure a record deal (even though he had recorded an album), although The Great Lost Twilley Album, a compilation of previously unreleased material recorded between 1974 and 1980, was released in 1993. The second wave of power pop began to take off in the mid-1990s, and by then EMI issued a 21-song Twilley compilation called XXI in 1996, followed by reissues of the two Dwight Twilley Band studio albums in 1997. The rise of the Internet meant that a major label deal was less of a priority, and thus Twilley released another rarities collection, Between the Cracks, Vol. 1, on Not Lame Records. He released his first new album in 13 years, Tulsa, in 1999.
In 2001, he was able to release The Luck, which was recorded in the 1990s, on Big Oak Records. He signed with Digital Musicworks International, and released an EP (Have a Twilley Christmas) and two albums (47 Moons and Live: All Access).
In November 2014, Twilley released his album Always through Big Oak Records. It was the last album released before Twilley’s death.
