Poco – Heart Of The Night

Written In Twenty Minutes About New Orleans, Recorded By A Band That Was About To Break Up

Poco released “Heart of the Night” in May 1979 as the second single from their eleventh studio album Legend. The song peaked at number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent 17 weeks on the chart, becoming Poco’s second consecutive top 20 hit following “Crazy Love.” More impressively, it reached number five on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart and even cracked the Country chart at number 96—unusual for a country-rock band that had spent a decade being ignored by mainstream radio. In Canada, the song hit number 18. What nobody knew during those recording sessions was that the album wasn’t even supposed to be a Poco record—it was meant to be the debut of the Cotton-Young Band, a duo project born from a seemingly defunct Poco that ABC Records executives heard and decided to resurrect.

The single’s success solidified Legend as Poco’s commercial breakthrough. The album peaked at number 14 on the Billboard 200 in April 1979 and was certified gold for sales of 500,000 units—Poco’s first album ever to achieve this distinction after 11 years and 10 previous albums that typically sold between 200,000 and 300,000 copies. Lead single “Crazy Love” spent seven weeks at number one on the Adult Contemporary chart in early 1979—the biggest AC hit of that year—and peaked at number 17 on the Hot 100. The album’s cover art was designed by Phil Hartman, the graphic artist who would later become famous as a comedy actor on Saturday Night Live and NewsRadio. Poco performed “Heart of the Night” on television multiple times, including appearances on Solid Gold in 1982—the syndicated music show hosted by Rex Smith and Marilyn McCoo that featured lip-synced performances and the legendary Solid Gold Dancers in shiny Lycra.

Paul Cotton wrote the song in approximately twenty minutes, inspired by his love for New Orleans. Born in Alabama but raised in Chicago, Cotton had previously written about the city in “Down in the Quarter” from Poco’s 1975 album Head Over Heels. “I’m just drawn to the South,” Cotton explained. “Hey, I spent 25 winters in Chicago.” The lyrics reference Lake Pontchartrain—a word Cotton sang with deliberate emphasis that made listeners sit up and take notice. In an era when most Americans had never been to New Orleans and couldn’t tell you where Pontchartrain was, Cotton made the exotic place name feel essential to the song. He later wrote “Break of Hearts” as a follow-up, though that song contained no regional references. Cotton described “Heart of the Night” as a song that “kind of wrote itself,” capturing both the romance and mystery of the Crescent City in under four minutes.

The album was recorded between April and August 1978 at Crystal City Studios in Los Angeles and produced by Richard Sanford Orshoff. Poco had self-produced their previous seven albums, but Cotton and Rusty Young wanted an outside perspective for what they thought would be their duo debut. The song features an iconic alto sax solo by Phil Kenzie, the British session legend who’d contributed the memorable sax work to Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat” in 1977. Kenzie had met Cotton and Young when Poco opened for Al Stewart’s Year of the Cat tour, and Stewart’s drummer Steve Chapman and bassist Charlie Harrison also played on the Legend sessions. Chapman allegedly said right after they rehearsed “Heart of the Night” in the studio: “Man, that’s going to be a big hit.” When ABC Records decided to release the Cotton-Young recordings as a Poco album instead, Chapman and Harrison suddenly became full-fledged members of Poco—promoted from session players to tenured band members by executive decision.

In 1978, Poco appeared to be finished. Founding member and pedal steel guitarist Rusty Young and guitarist Paul Cotton—who’d joined in 1970 after Jim Messina’s departure—had watched bassist Timothy B. Schmit leave for the Eagles. Drummer George Grantham was out. ABC Records had cancelled the planned release of their live album The Last Roundup. Cotton and Young got a rehearsal hall, assembled a few songs including “Crazy Love” and “Heart of the Night,” and auditioned for ABC executives, who approved an album for the Cotton-Young Band. But by the time recording wrapped, ABC loved the material so much they decided to resurrect Poco instead. Keyboardist Kim Bullard joined in December 1978 just as Legend was being released. While “Crazy Love” climbed the charts, ABC Records was sold to MCA Records, and Legend was reissued on the MCA label.

A live performance of “Heart of the Night” appeared on the November 1979 multi-artist album No Nukes: The Muse Concerts for a Non-Nuclear Future, which featured selections from the September 1979 Madison Square Garden concerts by Musicians United for Safe Energy alongside Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, and others. The 2004 Poco concert album Keeping the Legend Alive, recorded May 20, 2004, at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, featured a live rendition with Phil Kenzie returning to play his original sax solo. AllMusic’s Bruce Eder called “Heart of the Night” “one of the most finely crafted songs in the group’s history” and noted how the addition of Chapman and Harrison gave Poco a harder-rocking sound similar to what the Eagles achieved when Joe Walsh joined.

For a band that had spent a decade as critics’ darlings with disappointing sales, Legend changed everything—then lightning failed to strike twice. Follow-up albums Under the Gun (1980) and Blue and Gray (1981) produced modest hits but couldn’t match Legend‘s success. Paul Cotton died on May 4, 2021, at age 78. Rusty Young died on April 14, 2021—just ten days earlier—at age 75. Both founding members passed within weeks of each other after spending four decades basking in the breakthrough they’d achieved with Legend. The song Cotton wrote in twenty minutes about a city he loved became his most enduring legacy—proof that sometimes the best songs really do write themselves when you stop overthinking and let the music flow like the Mississippi River through the French Quarter.