"Arms of Mary" | ||||
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Single by Sutherland Brothers and Quiver | ||||
from the album Reach for the Sky | ||||
B-side | "We Get Along" (US/NZ B-side: "Love on the Moon") |
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Released | March 1976 | |||
Format | 7 inch single | |||
Recorded | 1975 | |||
Genre | folk rock | |||
Length | 2:40 | |||
Label | CBS Records | |||
Songwriter(s) | Iain Sutherland | |||
Producer(s) | Howard and Ron Albert | |||
Sutherland Brothers and Quiver singles chronology | ||||
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"Arms of Mary" | ||||
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Single by Chilliwack | ||||
from the album Lights from the Valley | ||||
B-side | "I Wanna Be the One" | |||
Released | June 1978 | |||
Format | 7 inch single | |||
Recorded | 1978 | |||
Genre | folk rock | |||
Length | 2:59 | |||
Label | Mushroom Records | |||
Songwriter(s) | Iain Sutherland | |||
Producer(s) | Ross Turney, Bill Henderson, Marc Gilutin | |||
Chilliwack singles chronology | ||||
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"Arms of Mary" is a 1976 hit single by the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver; group member Iain Sutherland wrote this mid-tempo ballad whose singer reminisces about the girl with whom he had his first intimate encounter.
Iain Sutherland would recall writing "Arms of Mary" at the family farmhouse in the Stoke-on-Trent village of Stockton Brook, adding: "The stuff about 'the lights shine down the valley' [the opening line], I was looking down through Endon basically", citing the village of Endon situated in the Churnet Valley. "Arms of Mary" was introduced on the September 1975 album release Reach for the Sky which marked the debut of the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver on CBS Records: Iain Sutherland would comment: "The main reason we left [previous label] Island [Records] was because they wouldn't distribute singles from our albums in the United States." (In fact the group had reached #48 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1973 with the Island release "(I Don't Want to Love You But) You Got Me Anyway".
Subsequent to the unsuccessful lead single release from Reach for the Sky: "Ain't Too Proud", "Arms of Mary" had a spring 1976 single release in both the UK and the US affording the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver their UK chart debut; a Top of the Pops performance broadcast 8 May 1976 helped boost the track ten notches to #6 on the UK chart dated 15 May 1976 with a #5 peak reached the next week. "Arms of Mary" was also an international success most notably in Ireland and the Netherlands - in which territories the track was #1 for respectively four and three weeks - with the track also spending two weeks at #1 on the Dutch charts for Belgium.
However "Arms of Mary" did not afford the Sutherland Brothers the American hit in hopes of which they'd moved to CBS Records: the track did debut on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1976 but failed to accrue enough interest to rise higher than #81.
In 1978 Canadian band Chilliwack remade "Arms of Mary" for the group's seventh album release, which was entitled Lights from the Valley after the song's opening lyric. The album's lead single, "Arms of Mary" was recorded by Chilliwack at the suggestion of Marc Gilutin who had been recruited by Mushroom Records to co-produce the group after Mushroom had rejected two distinct sets of tracks - self-produced and self-penned by Chilliwack - which the group had submitted for potential release as their seventh album: Lights from the Valley would be the only Chilliwack album not entirely self-produced by the group, and "Arms of Mary" would be the first (and it would prove only) non-original song to serve as a Chilliwack single release since the band had been rebranded from "The Collectors" (Chilliwack would only ever record one other song not penned by a group member: "In Love With A Look" (Myers/ Jalananda) also featured on Lights from the Valley).