Yesterday, I complained about how Glee uses music, so it's a nice trick of the random shuffle that Barry White shows up today. I'm not a big fan of White, but his music was important to a television show that, like Glee, made a lot of use of music, and split the audience between those who found it adorable and those who found it cloying. I'm speaking, of course, of Ally McBeal.

Ally McBeal ran for five seasons, beginning in the fall of 1997, and was an instant "water-cooler" program (nowadays it would be a Twitter favorite), although its ratings weren't all that high. It was a very quirky show … the title character was watching her biological clock, and would often hallucinate the "Dancing Baby" that was an Internet hit at the time. The law firm where Ally worked had a unisex bathroom where characters would meet to converse and further the plot. Everyone had their little … well, I hate to use the word "quirk" again, but there's no better way to describe the lawyer with a fetish for the neck skin of an older woman, or the judge who liked to examine the teeth of people in his courtroom, or … you get the idea.

Ally McBeal made frequent use of music. Some of it served as a soundtrack, but there was also a local bar where everyone met after work … at this bar, Vonda Shepard sang r&b covers, and occasionally one or more of the cast would climb onstage to belt out a number (in particular, Lisa Nicole Carson and Jane Krakowski were legitimately fine singers).

So, why am I going on at length about Ally McBeal, when the topic is supposed to be Barry White? John Cage, a partner at the law firm, had a lot of his own quirks … one of them was a Barry White fixation. He used that fixation in a positive way, channeling his inner White in order to gather strength in public. "You're the First, the Last, My Everything" was the go-to song, leading to the famous Barry White Dance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQN1COeI75E

This culminated in an episode with the gang at the bar for John's birthday, when his girlfriend gave him the ultimate present:

What was it about Barry White that made him the perfect fantasy for a show about post-boomer yuppie lawyers? While White had been in the music business for many years, he really broke out when "Love's Theme" hit #1 in 1974. An instrumental credited to The Love Unlimited Orchestra, it featured a large orchestra and a wah-wah guitar, sounding a bit like Mantovani gone disco. It was somehow both harmless and irresistible. White spent most of the remainder of the 70s cranking out one hit after another.

His voice sounded like sex … not fucking, though, more like a nice long evening that culminated in lovemaking. There was nothing dangerous in White's vocals, which probably contributed to his enormous crossover appeal. He also became famous for his "raps," long spoken introductions that set the romantic stage for what was to follow. "You're the First" was a classic example, with White's smooth bass voice asserting:

We got it together, didn't we? We definitely got our thing together, don't we, baby? Isn't that nice? I mean really, when you really sit and think about it, isn't it really really nice? I can easily feel myself slipping more and more away to that simple world of our own. Nobody but you and me. We got it together, baby.

Amazingly, "You're the First" started out as a country song written by Peter Radcliffe twenty-one years earlier. White changed the lyrics, gave it disco instrumentation, and voila! A #1 hit!

White went down easy (I'm not sure if I mean that as a double entendre or not). You could ignore him, but he was hard to hate. He came by his crossover appeal honestly. When he was 11 years old, he played on Jesse Belvin's hit, "Goodnight My Love." In the mid-60s, he was an A&R man for the Bobby Fuller Four. Then he moved into songwriting and production. He was a career music biz man who finally starting singing his own songs.

And I still haven't figured out why he was the right choice for Ally McBeal. Or The Simpsons, for that matter … he appeared in three episodes of that show, as well. There was something about Barry White that made you think he could easily be turned into an object of ridicule … only it always turned out you didn't want to make fun of him after all. When you first saw your geeky friend doing The Barry White Dance, you thought he was, well, geeky. Then you found yourself tapping your toe. Then you joined in the dance. You couldn't help yourself.

And you never know who'll show up when the Maestro's in town: