In the US, two singles were released from the record (Europe saw a third single-release with "You're My Angel"); the title track was a massive hit single, reaching the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1986. The other, "I Got The Feelin' (It's Over)" was an R&B hit as well, reaching number 5 on that chart. On the strength of the singles, the album went platinum; it reached that certification on February 2, 1987.
Gregory Abbott, was a Harlem native, and the son of two immigrants. (His mother was from Venezuela, and his father was from Antigua.) As a kid, Abbott played piano and sang in a choir, but he went on to spend his young adulthood in academia. Abbott got a BA from Boston University and a master's at Cal State San Francisco, and he also studied creative writing at Stanford, though he stopped short of earning his PhD. Somewhere in there, Abbott also had a stint teaching at Berkeley. And for three years in the late '70s, he was married to the singer Freda Payne, who was 12 years older than him. They divorced in 1979 after having a kid.
During all his years studying, Abbott sang with bands to earn money on the side. Somewhere down the line, Abbott met Marvin Gaye, and he says that Gaye showed him how a studio worked. In the '80s, Abbott moved back to New York and worked on Wall Street. He played his demo for some of the people who worked at his brokerage firm, and they loaned him enough money to build a studio. Abbott's uncle, a record execute, helped him get signed to CBS, and Abbott started releasing music when he was 32 years old. "Shake You Down," his first single, had a slow rise, making it to #1 on the Hot 100 after it had already topped Billboard's R&B chart.
Abbott wrote and produced "Shake You Down" himself, and he played keyboards and programmed the drum machines. Unlike a similarly titled single that will soon appear in this column, "Shake You Down" is not a song about blackmailing anyone, or about soliciting bribes. Abbott claimed that he'd "coined a phrase." Fred Bronson's Billboard Book Of Number 1 Hits, Abbott says that the song is his "attempt to express how men feel when they see a woman they like." No. This is wrong. It's a song about having sex. "When I repeated [the title] to a lady friend of mine, she definitely understood what I was saying."
"Shake You Down" was a passable adult-contempo smooth soul. Abbott had a nice voice, and he was capable of falsetto runs and chesty bellows, a midtempo digital groove, while Abbott sangs that he's been watching you from so far across the floor now, baby, and that he's glad that you picked up on his telepathy now, baby. Abbott goes into little half-spoken bits that sound maybe a tiny bit rap-adjacent: "I can’t stop thinking of the things we do/ The way you call me baby when I’m holding you." (A decade later, a song like "Shake You Down" would need a rap verse to be a hit.) Abbott has a rhythmic intelligence, an ability to ride his own breezy beat, but he doesn't have the presence of a true star. The video helped, of course. Director Dominic Sena, shot the "Shake You Down" clip to look like a roll of film, and various attractive women lip-synch the backing vocals on the hook. Abbott comes off as a grown man, which probably helps with the all-around sexiness of the enterprise.
In "Shake You Down," Abbott had a cross-format hit. It was an R&B-radio smash that also did big numbers on the adult-contemporary stations and got respectable levels of play in clubs. But "Shake You Down" did not announce the arrival of a major new star. After "Shake You Down," only one more Abbott single even sniffed the Billboard Hot 100. His "Shake You Down" follow-up "I Got The Feelin' (It's Over)" made it to #5 on the R&B charts, but it topped out at #56 on the Hot 100. Sadly, that song's title would prove prophetic, since Abbott never made the singles chart again. Critics were mixed althought some considered a record with smooth flow, quality vocals, light touching production and effervescent melodies with attractive attributes
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