long island city love song

Vocals: Morgan Grace
Piano: Michael Johnson
Drums: Derrick Trost
Bass: Nate Halloran
Trumpet: Cory Gray

Recorded in 2002 at Type Foundry in Portland, OR. Engineered and mixed by Adam Selzer. Mastered by Michael Johnson and Chad Crouch.

A staunch polygamist and missionary, Edward Bell was also a songwriter who enjoyed some success in the early 70s. He had the reputation for meeting some of his wives while in other parts of the country, spreading the Mormon word. One record shows he had collected eleven wives at one point. This tune was written for his ninth wife, whom he met in Queens, New York, while strolling up and down Stienway St., the fashionable shopping promenade in Long Island City. “Pashmina shalls were all the rage that year,” Bell recalled in a 1978 interview, “What’s her name, my wife, the ninth one, she thought they were simply wonderful. I went in the store to buy one for her, and ba-bing! This guy smashes in one of the shop windows and starts ripping the clothes off the mannequins. You never saw such a commotion!” This event profoundly moved Bell and inspired his eclectic musical crime caper Window Shopping, about a mannequin who falls hopelessly in love with a cat burglar. Wife number nine, who played the title role, eventually moved back to Utah with Bell and birthed two children for him. Bell died of Cancer in 1980. A screening of Window Shopping at the Film Forum in 1982 created such a furvor, that the Bell estate became quite wealthy. Sadly, Bell's many children from various marriages squabbled bitterly over the family fortune. This led Bell's oldest son from his third marriage to burn his father's compositions in late summer two years later.