Don't Go Breaking My Heart (1976)

Performer: Elton John & Kiki Dee                         Writers: Elton John & Bernie Taupin
Highest US Chart Position: #1                              Label: MCA Records
Musicians: Elton John, Kiki Dee, Davey Johnstone, Kenny Passarelli and Roger Pope

I never really liked Elton John all that much. With the exception of Barry Manilow, I usually preferred guitar bands to those led by a pianist. For the first half of the seventies he saturated the Top 40 airways, but by the middle of the decade his hit streak began to diminish. Still, there are a couple of his tunes that will always be among my favorites. The first is from my all-important summer of 1973, “Saturday Night’s Alright.” The other is this song, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” from the summer of 1976. My father had nearly died the summer before, from cancer, and miraculously it went into remission. He and my mother had traveled somewhat before, but after surviving this scare they began to go regularly, several times a year. I’m pretty sure this was their first trip after his recovery, and they decided to take the whole family along with them to Hawaii. For me, it was the summer between junior high and high school. We probably went in July, and that’s just about when the song was released, entering the charts at an impressive sixty-six on Independence Day of that bicentennial year and working its way up during our time on Maui and Oahu. The duo took only four weeks to claim the top spot from The Manhattans and stayed at number one for the entire month of August, part of a twenty-week stay on the charts that wouldn’t end until mid-November, accompanying the start of my high school career.

The song begins on the downbeat, with future film composer James Newton Howard on the electric piano and Kenny Passarelli on the bass for two measures, then joined by the string section heading into the third measure. A measure later the cellos are pushed up in the mix and joined by Roger Pope on the drums, while a distinctive guitar lick by Davey Johnstone takes everyone into the first verse. Most duets follow fairly traditional structures of alternating verses and harmony on the chorus, but this one is unique for employing a call-and-response pattern throughout. Elton John opens the chorus by singing the title line, and Kiki Dee answers him after every line. At the end of the verse the band holds while the strings and drums lead the band into the bridge, which actually functions more like a chorus, while the chorus line at the end functions more like a bridge. The orchestration of the strings, also done by James Newton Howard, is very intricate on the chorus and, combined with the conga playing of Ray Cooper, makes for a wonderfully dense sound on the chorus. A variation of the intro, again heavy with cellos, leads into the second verse, with the strings playing a sort of harmony with the singers right into the second chorus. During the third verse Howard has the strings playing the solo section to good effect, and the vocals return for the third chorus with both singers taking liberties with the melody while background singers vamp on the title line throughout a lengthy fadeout.

As per usual, the song was written by Elton John and his longtime collaborator, Bernie Taupin, and though it was originally intended as a tribute to Motown’s duets featuring Marvin Gaye, the presence of James Newton Howard’s orchestrations make it something much more. The first choice for the female vocalist was Dusty Springfield, but she was too ill at the time and the offer finally went to British singer Kiki Dee, one of the only white artists to record for Motown on their subsidiary, Tamla, but was at this time signed with John’s label, Rocket Records. The two singers weren’t even in the same studio when the song was finished. John had actually recorded the track in Toronto, and then sent it back to London to have Dee put her vocals on afterward. One surprising fact about the song is that although Elton John had achieved a string of number one hits in the United States, this was the first time he had been able to reach the top spot on the British Charts as well. The duo also managed to reach number two in England seventeen years later with a Cole Porter’s “True Love,” but only made it to number fifty-six in the States. The B-side of the single is “Snow Queen,” which seems almost stripped down in comparison with the flip side. John sings the medium tempo verses himself, with just bass, drums and acoustic guitar accompaniment, and Dee harmonizing on the chorus. “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” was the number two song of 1976 in America and will always be associated with my first trip to Hawaii and my first year of high school.