Hello Stranger

"Hello Stranger" was a 1963 hit single by Barbara Lewis which spent two weeks at number one on the R&B singles chart in Billboard crossing over to #3 Pop.

"Hello Stranger" was written by Barbara Lewis herself who was originally inspired to write a song with that title while working gigs in Detroit with her musician father: “I would make the circuit with my dad and people would yell out: ‘Hey stranger, hello stranger, it’s been a long time’".

Lewis recorded "Hello Stranger" at Chess Studios in Chicago in January 1963. The track's producer Ollie McLaughlin recruited the Dells to provide the background vocals. The arrangement by Riley Hampton - then working with Etta James - featured a signature organ riff provided by keyboardist John Young. The track was completed after thirteen takes. Lewis would recall that on hearing the playback of the finished track, Dells member Chuck Barksdale "kept jumping up and down and saying, ‘It’s a hit, it’s a hit.’...I didn’t really know. It was all new to me.”

"Hello Stranger" was remade in 1966 by the Capitols again with Ollie McLaughlin producing (McLaughlin recorded the Capitols on his Karen label after hearing the group perform at a local dance headlined by Barbara Lewis). "Hello Stranger" was also a 1969 single release by Darius before returning to the charts in 1973 when it became a regional hit for Fire & Rain.

Fire & Rain were a folk rock duo comprising veteran Tucson musician Manny Freiser and Patti McCarron, Freiser's then-wife who sang lead; their version, which featured Michael Omartian on keyboards, was arranged by Ben Benay who also played guitar. Benay had also been guitarist on the version of "Hello Stranger" by Darius.

The Supremes and The Four Tops recorded a duet version of the song in 1971 for their third duet album Dynamite!.

Manny Freiser would recall: "Mercury [Records] released "Hello Stranger" as a single against our wishes. It became a legitimate hit at easy listening radio...Mercury then tried to cross it over to Top-40 radio...We started picking up major markets, mostly in the southeast...The single precariously "bubbled under the Hot 100" on Billboard's charts in spring '73: #106 one week, #105 the next, and so on" entering the Billboard Hot 100 that June at #100 where it remained for three weeks and then dropped off the charts. Freiser - "Although it had sold 70,000+ copies, 'Hello Stranger' had basically been a 'turntable hit' at Top 40 radio -- one that got played alot [sic], but didn't break. It thus became Billboard Magazine's lowest-ranked Hot 100 single of 1973, ranking #573 out of 573 singles that made the Hot 100."

The most successful incarnation of "Hello Stranger" since the Lewis original has been the 1977 Yvonne Elliman version produced by Freddie Perren; both Elliman and Perren deliberately sought to capture the sound of the original and the resultant track reached the US Top 20. Elliman's version also charted R&B at #57 and was most successful on the Easy Listening chart where it was #1 for four weeks.

In the UK Elliman's version was less successful reaching #26. "Hello Stranger" did not have the cachet of being the remake of a "golden oldie" in the UK as the Barbara Lewis original was overlooked in its 1963 UK release on London Records and although Elkie Brooks' first single, released in 1964, had featured a version of "Hello Stranger" that single's A-side had been Brooks' cover of another US R&B hit: Etta James' "Something's Got a Hold on Me" (not a chart item for Brooks).

In 1985 Carrie Lucas' remake of "Hello Stranger" - which featured the Whispers - was a Top 20 R&B hit and in 2004 Queen Latifah remade "Hello Stranger" for her The Dana Owens Album.

Other versions of the song have been recorded by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas for the Heat Wave.