''Balin'' is

Marty Balin Martyn Jerel Buchwald (January 30, 1942 – September 27, 2018), known as Marty Balin (), was an American singer, songwriter, and musician best known as a member of Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship. Early life Balin was born Martyn Je ...

's 1981 debut solo album. Two top-40 singles were released, " Hearts" (a U.S. #8 hit, and also his biggest as a solo artist) and " Atlanta Lady (Something About Your Love)" (U.S. #27). The album rose to #35 on the ''Billboard'' charts.

Track listing

CD releases

''Balin'' was released by American Beat on CD in 2008 and by EMI in 2009. Both editions featured the shorter, single version of "Hearts" rather than the longer album version. In March 2013 BGO reissued the album along with the follow-up release ''Lucky'' on one CD. Mastered by Andrew Thompson the BGO edition is the only CD version that features the full-length album version of "Hearts". In 2020, A&M alongside Universal Music Japan re-released the title as a part of the AOR Light Mellow 1000 series.

Charts

;Singles

Personnel

– lead vocals, acoustic guitar *

Pete Sears Peter Roy Sears (born 27 May 1948) is an English rock musician. In a career spanning more than six decades, he has been a member of many bands and has moved through a variety of musical genres, from early R&B, psychedelic improvisational rock ...

- Keyboards and synths * Mark Cummings – pianos, synthesizers,

vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''vo''ice and en''coder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder wa ...

, backing vocals * Johnny De Caro – guitars, backing vocals * Richard Bassil – bass, backing vocals * Billy Lee Lewis – drums, percussion, backing vocals

Additional Personnel

Michael Boddicker Michael Lehmann Boddicker (born January 19, 1953) is an American film composer and session musician, specializing in electronic music. He is a three times National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (N.A.R.A.S.) Most Valuable Player "Synthes ...

– vocoder (2) * John Jarvis – acoustic piano (4, 6) *

Neil Larsen Neil Larsen (born August 7, 1948) is an American jazz keyboardist, musical arranger and composer. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and grew up in Sarasota, Florida before relocating to New York and then, in 1977, Los Angeles. Early life Larsen was ...

– electric piano (9), synthesizers (9) * John Hug – guitars, string arrangements and conductor * Ken Watson – cymbalum (1) *

Bobbye Hall Bobbye Jean Hall is an American percussionist who has recorded with a variety of rock, soul, blues and jazz artists, and has appeared on 20 songs that reached the top ten in the Billboard Hot 100, ''Billboard'' Hot 100. Early career, work for ...

– percussion * Steve Forman – percussion * Harry Bluestone – concertmaster * Frank De Caro – contractor *

Bill Champlin William Bradford Champlin (born May 21, 1947) is an American singer, keyboardist, guitarist and songwriter. He formed the band Sons of Champlin in 1965, which still performs today, and was a member of the rock band Chicago (band), Chicago from 1 ...

– backing vocals (1) *

Rick Nowels Richard Wright Nowels Jr. (born March 16, 1954) is an American songwriter and record producer. He has co-written and co-produced over 90 hit singles with multiple artists,Greg Calbi Gregory Calbi (born April 3, 1949) is an American mastering engineer at Sterling Sound, New Jersey. Biography Greg Calbi was born on April 3, 1949, in Yonkers, New York, and raised in Bayside, Queens, New York. He graduated in 1966 from Bishop ...

– mastering * Bill Burks – art direction *

Richard Avedon Richard Avedon (May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004) was an American fashion and portrait photographer. He worked for ''Harper's Bazaar'', '' Vogue'' and '' Elle'' specializing in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion, theater and ...

– Marty Balin photography * Tom Gibson – other photography

References

{{Authority control 1981 debut albums Marty Balin albums EMI America Records albums