Randy VanWarmer

Career

Randall VanWarmer came into the world in Indian Hills, Colorado, to Roger and Betsy VanWarmer. When he was 15, three years after his father died in a car crash, he and his mother relocated to Cornwall, England. His biggest hit, "Just When I Needed You Most," came out in February 1979 and landed in the top 10 in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In the US, it sat on the Billboard adult contemporary chart for two weeks that May, then climbed to number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 by June. The song spent 14 weeks in the Top 40 and earned a Gold record from the RIAA. It also reached number 71 on the Billboard country chart. Across the Atlantic, it hit number 8 on the UK Singles Chart that September. VanWarmer said the tune was sparked by a beloved old car that broke down on his way to work in Denver, Colorado, and by a "devastating" breakup with a girlfriend. He wrote it six months after they split, a full two years before it came out as a single. He originally cut the track in England for an album made for Bearsville Records' UK branch, then flew to the US to push the label's main office to release the album stateside. The album got remixed, and "Just When I Needed You Most" became the lead single. VanWarmer recalled that Bearsville wasn't keen on the song: "Nobody thought my version was an especially good version of the song, [which] a few other people were thinking of cutting. [...] Everybody just assumed mine was a demo for people to listen to who'd [later] cut the definitive version."

In the mid-1980s, according to Release, a now-defunct independent paper in Stanford, California, VanWarmer's wife, Suzi, mailed a song of his called "I Guess It Never Hurts to Hurt Sometimes" from his album Beat of Love to a friend at MCA Inc. That friend passed it to Ron Chancey, a producer for the Oak Ridge Boys, and the group put it on their next album. Other country artists also recorded his work: Charley Pride and Michael Johnson each cut one of his songs. VanWarmer eventually moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and the band Alabama took his song "I'm in a Hurry (And Don't Know Why)" to number 1 on the country chart. In a 1989 interview with Release, VanWarmer said that Albert Grossman, the head of Bearsville Records, wouldn't let him do TV or tour the United States—a strategy that didn't work out.