26 April 2023 - Barry De Vorzon & Perry Botkin Jr. - Cotton's Dream a.k.a. Nadia's Theme

How the hell did I come to post the theme to the daytime soap opera The Young and The Restless?

Well, if you read yesterday's post, you may have a clue, but it's not directly related.  You see, a different Mary J. Blige song - "No More Drama", which happens to be the title track to the album featuring "Family Affair" - heavily samples this song.  I was doing some research for a future post, and, well, I stumbled upon the history of this song, which is absolutely wild.

The song did not start off as a soap opera theme song, but rather as incidental music for the 1971 movie Bless the Beasts and Children. Barry De Vorson later extended his little piece of music for use on the soap opera.

Fast forward to 1976.  ABC's Wide World of Sports used the song as part of a montage of the gymnastics of Romanian Nadia Comeneci - you know, the first one to bring perfect 10s to the Olympics (in Montreal in 1976) and also six more? She is arguably the best known gymnast of all time, and certainly the best known of her generation.

The voice-over is by famed sportscaster Jim McKay, and it cemented the positive feeling for Comeneci throughout the 1976 Olympic Games.

  

Well, at this point, everyone was not only hyped up over Nadia Comenci, but also "Nadia's theme", as it came to be known.  I, at my very young age, knew her name - it was an effective piece.  

De Vorson and Perry Botkin responded by releasing the song as a re-titled single, which became a top ten hit in 1976, five years after its composition and initial recording.

Incidentally, Comeneci never actually performed to the song that ended up bearing her name.... except during a 1997 episode of Touched By An Angel, alongside her husband and fellow gymnast Bart Conner.  

This is more typical of her floor execises - this performance from the 1980 Olympics in Moscow that won Comenci her fifth Olympic gold medal (an event in which she only won bronze in Montreal).