Junior Vasquez - If Madonna Calls
Mar 9, 2019 1:38:42 GMT -5
Post by Ezekiel 23:20–21 on Mar 9, 2019 1:38:42 GMT -5
This song has quite a story behind it. It was released as a single on June 7, 1996, by Groovilicious Records in the U.S. It contains a sample of an answering machine message however it does not actually contain Madonna's voice as it has been reported. The original, unreleased version does have Madonna on it. The released one contains a re-recording by Kelly Bienvenue. It says, "Hello Junior?! This is Madonna. Are you there? Call me in Miami." The other male spoken vocals are by Franklin Fuentes and those were sampled from the intros to all the various tracks on an obscure record called "Work It Girlfriend" by Jack & Jill (released on Strictly Rhythm records). The "Hola Seniorita Cosa!" is from one of them and "If Madonna calls, I'm not here" is from another. The rest were recorded for the track. The song also contains a looped sample from 4th Measure Men's "4 You (MK Remix)".
Many stories have circulated about how it came in to existence and that it was the reason that Madonna and Junior had a professional and personal falling out. It is the reason they fell out. But the reasons for what really happened differed.
The public version that has been reported was that it was composed after Madonna allegedly failed to appear at one of Vasquez's performances at his Tunnel residency at the last minute. But knowing how much of a perfectionist Madonna is with her performances even something that is seemingly impromptu will be well-rehearsed so that is less likely.
Someone who was familiar with the situation says that it was actually THIS: Madonna would leave messages on Junior's answering machine that were funny and silly and she was okay with playing them over tracks during his sets and even encouraged it. The track was played in its original form at his club but when buzz about a release started, that's when the trouble began. Warner Bros. found out about it and attempted to stop Junior from negotiating with other labels to release it because they owned Madonna as artist along with property, image, voice, likeness, etc. Junior still insisted that he would despite Madonna's pleading for him to not release it. Though the original Madonna spoken parts were replaced with re-recordings by Kelly Bienvenue who sounded pretty similar, that didn't matter. They played with the controversy and credited Kelly as "Who's Dat Girl". Madonna was especially angry with Junior because he put her in the middle of this situation for his own financial gain despite her knowing him for as long as she knew Shep Pettibone because Junior worked with Shep. This destroyed their personal and professional relationship and she never commissioned him to remix any of her songs again. She did make an exception for "Hollywood" when Donatella Versace had him do the music for her show at the time and wanted "Hollywood" remixed so Donatella asked Madonna and they are friends so she allowed it as a favor to Donatella. Junior continued to do bootleg mixes of her songs using filtered and sometimes official acapellas and even the album versions.
The song reached #2 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart and #24 on the UK Singles Chart.
Many stories have circulated about how it came in to existence and that it was the reason that Madonna and Junior had a professional and personal falling out. It is the reason they fell out. But the reasons for what really happened differed.
The public version that has been reported was that it was composed after Madonna allegedly failed to appear at one of Vasquez's performances at his Tunnel residency at the last minute. But knowing how much of a perfectionist Madonna is with her performances even something that is seemingly impromptu will be well-rehearsed so that is less likely.
Someone who was familiar with the situation says that it was actually THIS: Madonna would leave messages on Junior's answering machine that were funny and silly and she was okay with playing them over tracks during his sets and even encouraged it. The track was played in its original form at his club but when buzz about a release started, that's when the trouble began. Warner Bros. found out about it and attempted to stop Junior from negotiating with other labels to release it because they owned Madonna as artist along with property, image, voice, likeness, etc. Junior still insisted that he would despite Madonna's pleading for him to not release it. Though the original Madonna spoken parts were replaced with re-recordings by Kelly Bienvenue who sounded pretty similar, that didn't matter. They played with the controversy and credited Kelly as "Who's Dat Girl". Madonna was especially angry with Junior because he put her in the middle of this situation for his own financial gain despite her knowing him for as long as she knew Shep Pettibone because Junior worked with Shep. This destroyed their personal and professional relationship and she never commissioned him to remix any of her songs again. She did make an exception for "Hollywood" when Donatella Versace had him do the music for her show at the time and wanted "Hollywood" remixed so Donatella asked Madonna and they are friends so she allowed it as a favor to Donatella. Junior continued to do bootleg mixes of her songs using filtered and sometimes official acapellas and even the album versions.
The song reached #2 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart and #24 on the UK Singles Chart.
