Daryl Braithwaite
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Daryl Braithwaite (born January 11, 1949 in Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian pop singer. Best known as the lead vocalist of Sherbet, Braithwaite has also sustained a successful solo career, placing 15 singles in the Australian top 40, including the #1 hits "You're My World" and "The Horses".
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early years
Braithwaite, along with his twin bother Glenn, was raised in a working-class family in Melbourne. As a child, he was for a time in the same Melboune school as Olivia Newton-John.
By the time he was in his teens Braithwaite was singing in various Sydney rock groups. In 1970, at the age of 21, he joined Sherbet, a band that had already released one single. Initially hired as Sherbet's second lead vocalist, within a few months Braithwaite became the band's only frontman when original lead singer Dennis Laughlin left.
Sherbet's second single ("Can You Feel It Baby") featured Braithwaite's gritty-but-polished lead vocals, and became an Australian Top 40 hit in 1971. The combination of Braithwaite's soul-influenced vocal style and Sherbet's pop songcraft was then heard on a series of singles and albums throughout the 1970s, and Sherbet ended up placing an additional 19 hits on the Australian charts from 1971-79. In the process, Braithwaite rose to national fame as the band's lead singer.
For further details about Braithwaite's career in Sherbet, please refer to the entry on Sherbet (band).
Braithwaite also forged a similarly successful solo career alongside his work in Sherbet. Working in largely the same pop/rock vein as that band, from 1974 through 1993 Braithwaite placed 15 solo hits in the Australian top 40.
[edit] Early solo career: 1973-1979
Already a budding star due to his work in Sherbet, in 1973 Braithwaite played the lead role in the Australian production of the rock opera Tommy. The following year, amidst unfounded rumours that he would soon be leaving Sherbet, Braithwaite began his official solo career with a cover of the ballad "You're My World", which went to #1 in Australia.
More hits followed throughout the 1970s, including a cover of The Small Faces' "Afterglow (Of Your Love)". An infrequent songwriter, Braithwaite's solo career has been dominated by cover songs.
Curiously for the 'album rock' era, Braithwaite's solo recordings from 1974-78 appeared only on 7-inch singles. A 'best of' solo LP was compiled in 1978, but Braithwaite's first original full-length album as a solo artist (Out On The Fringe) didn't appear until 1979, during a time when Sherbet had briefly broken up.
[edit] Solo career on hold: 1980-1987
By 1980, the members of Sherbet were back together and had renamed themselves The Sherbs. At this point, Braithwaite put his solo career on hold to concentrate on work with his bandmates. However, The Sherbs had only a very few minor hits and broke up in 1984.
For a period of time after the break-up, Braithwaite played regular gigs, but as of 1987, he had left the music industry and was working as a builder of footpaths for less than 200 Australian dollars a week.
[edit] Comeback: 1988-present
In 1988, Braithwaite recorded and released his comeback album Edge. This LP featured a somewhat more adult contemporary sound than Braithwaite's previous work, and spawned four hit singles that returned him to the Australian singles charts after an absence of nearly a decade. Two of these hits, "As The Days Go By" and "All I Do", were penned by Canadian songwriter Ian Thomas; a third, "One Summer", was a Braithwaite original.
Braithwaite went on to have a number of solo hits in the early 1990s, including the Australian #1 "The Horses", a cover of a Rickie Lee Jones recording written by Jones and Walter Becker. He also made his first US chart appearance as a solo artist at #57 with the 1991 single "Higher than Hope", a song he co-wrote with Simon Hussey. By the end of 1991, Braithwaite's Rise album had became Australia's biggest selling CD of the year, and Edge had become the best selling album ever released by Sony Music Australia to that time.
His comeback success was somewhat derailed by a 1992 lawsuit, in which his former managers sued Braithwaite for back payment of fees owing. The suit was successful, and Braithwaite essentially had to give up all the revenue he made from Edge and Rise, as well as a portion of the revenue from his next album, 1993's Taste The Salt. This last-named album was only moderately successful, and after a 1994 'best-of' collection was released, Braithwaite was dropped by his record company. He did not record another album for 12 years.
In the interim Braithwaite toured regularly, and in 1997 he returned to the musical theatre stage in the Melbourne production of Chess. As of 1999, he also resumed occasional touring with a reunited Sherbet.
Braithwaite's latest solo album. Snapshot, appeared in 2005. In 2006, he sang on two new Sherbet tracks specially recorded for a greatest hits compilation; they were Sherbet's first new recordings in 22 years.
[edit] Discography
[edit] Solo Singles
| Release date | Title | Chart Positions | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | US | ||
| October 1974 | "You're My World" | #1 | |
| August 1975 | "Cavalry" | #10 | |
| April 1976 | "Old Sid" | #5 | |
| February 1977 | "Love Has No Pride" | #4 | |
| October 1977 | "Afterglow (Of Your Love)" | #29 | |
| June 1978 | "If You Walked Away" | #14 | |
| January 1979 | "Why Do I Break It Up?" | #35 | |
| Sepetmeber 1979 | "Love Like A Child" | ||
| January 1980 | "Prove Your Love" | ||
| September 1988 | "As The Days Go By" | #10 | |
| November 1988 | "All I Do" | #12 | |
| March 1989 | "One Summer" | #8 | |
| June 1989 | "Let Me Be" | #26 | |
| December 1990 | "Rise" | #23 | |
| March 1991 | "The Horses" | #1 | |
| July 1991 | "Higher Than Hope" | #37 | #57 |
| 1991 | "Don't Hold Back Your Love" | #55 | |
| 1991 | "Scarred" | ||
| November 1991 | "Nothing To Lose" | ||
| October 1993 | "The World As It Is" | #35 | |
| 1993 | "Barren Ground" | ||
| 1994 | "Breaking The Rules" | ||
| November 1994 | "How Can I Be Sure?" | ||
| 1999 | "When The Flame Burns" | ||
[edit] Solo Albums
- Out On The Fringe (1979)
- Edge (1988)
- Rise (1990)
- Taste The Salt (1993)
- Snapshot (2005)
Compilations:
- Daryl Braithwaite...Best Of (1978)
- Higher Than Hope (1991) (An international release combining tracks from "Rise" and "Edge")
- Six Moons - The Best Of 1988-1994 (1994)
- Afterglow - The Essential Collection 1971-1994 (2002)
Note: Daryl also featured on the 1992 album "Company Of Strangers" with James Reyne.
[edit] Sources
Afterglow liner notes by Glenn A. Baker.
