Playing "Contact"

Edwin:

I had just finished an album with Lamont Dozier and for all intents and purposes we didn't have a single in the album, there was nothing that just jumped outa the album and made people aware of a strong piece of material. So, we went back into the studio, as a ace-in-the-hole so to speak...we cut "Contact" because when 20thCentury heard the album they were very disappointed in the fact that we didn't have a strong piece of material in there as a single. So for all intents and purposes they were prepared to let me go as an artist, right, 'cause they didn't have anything to come with.

Someone got wind of the song from the studio and told the record company about it and they called me in and said, "What's this song everybody's raving about ?" and we said, "What song ? What are you talking about?". They said, "This song everybody's talking about you just did in the studio.". And we said, "Well, we're outa the company" And the guy at the time, named Monkey Shepherd, said "you're not outa the company till I say you're outa the company" and he said "I wanna hear this song, I gotta hear this song" right. So we said "Well we're out of the company", he said "You're not outa the company, I wanna hear this song. So we played it for him and about halfway through the song he said "There ain't no way in Gods green earth you go' get outa here with this song. There ain't no way you're taking this nowhere! This is staying right here…right here, this is where it's staying" So we put it out and the rest is history.

We went to the disco awards, 'cause we won the award for the song, and I ran it to the O'Jays in the lobby of the hotel and they said "You must be paying every DJ in the world 'cause all we can here is "Contact", that's all we can hear, the records being played consistently, where d'ya get the money to pay all these DJs from". I said "We're not paying the DJs it's just a good record, everybody loves it".