Songfacts®:

• "Just Once" has one of the more memorable opening lines in music:
  
  I did my best
  But I guess my best wasn't good enough
  
  The song is about one of those frustrating relationships that just doesn't seem to work despite the best efforts of both involved. The song plays like a plea after yet another stumble, hoping that just once they could find a way to make their good times last.
• The song was written by the husband-and-wife team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who started writing hits back in the '60s for the likes of The Crystals ("Uptown"), The Righteous Brothers ("You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'") and The Animals ("We Gotta Get Out Of This Place"). They remained active into the '70s and '80s but often wrote separately with other collaborators. Weil co-wrote "He's So Shy" for The Pointer Sisters; Mann co-wrote Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch."
• "Just Once" is the song that elevated James Ingram from demo singer to solo star. He had been kicking around the music industry for a while as a keyboard player, songwriter and backing singer, and was singing demos when Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil needed one for "Just Once." Mann and Weil were pitching the song to Quincy Jones, hoping he'd have George Benson record it. Mann usually sang their demos, but they wanted someone more soulful in Benson's style for this one, so they asked around and found Ingram.
  
  When they heard Ingram's demo, they were stunned. "We nearly fell on the floor," Mann told Mike Ragogna. "We couldn't believe what we were hearing. He was so great. I stopped the tapes and said, 'You're just the greatest singer I've heard in the past thirty years!'"
  
  They sent the song to Quincy Jones, who was also startled by how good the singer was. Jones decided Ingram was the right man to record the song, so he asked him to sing it. As first, Ingram thought Jones was asking him to sing backup, but then he realized it was a much bigger offer - he was going to be the lead vocalist, something he was never striving for.
  
  With Ingram singing, Jones produced the song. It went on Quincy's 1981 album The Dude and was released as a single credited to "Quincy Jones Featuring James Ingram." The song was a hit, going to #17 and also landing on the R&B and Adult Contemporary charts. It launched Ingram's career and started his long association with Quincy Jones.
• According to Barry Mann, this was Cynthia Weil's favorite song she wrote. Weil died in 2023 at 82.
• With the rise of electronic dance music in the '00s, it became common for producers who doubled as DJs to release songs under their names, using an array of vocalists, but Quincy Jones was the only producer who could pull this off in 1981. His album The Dude includes four tracks sung by Patti Austin and three by James Ingram, including "Just Once" and his next single, "One Hundred Ways." The album also includes "Ai No Corrida (I-No-No-Ko-ree-da)," sung by Charles May, which became a hit. The album sold over a million copies.
• A year later, Quincy Jones teamed James Ingram with Patti Austin for the #1 duet "Baby, Come To Me." Ingram later sang on "We Are The World" (produced by Jones) and co-wrote (with Jones) the Michael Jackson song "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)."
• Ingram teamed up with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil to write the 1983 Pointer Sisters song "Baby Come And Get It," which went to #44 in the US.
• David Foster, one of the few producers who was as prolific as Quincy Jones, played piano on this song. Steve Lukather of Toto played guitar and Greg Phillinganes added synthesizer. Lukather and Phillinganes returned to work with Jones on Michael Jackson's Thriller album.
• Telma Hopkins sings "Just Once" in a 1982 episode of Bosom Buddies, a show that starred Tom Hanks as a guy who pretends to be a woman so he can live in an all-female hotel (really). Hopkins, who starred in the series and was later on Family Matters, was a popular backup singer in the '70s, when she sang on "Theme From Shaft" and "Disco Lady." For a time, she was a member of Tony Orlando's backing group, Dawn.