Jennifer Warnes is the fourth album by American singer/songwriter Jennifer Warnes and her first credited as Jennifer Warnes: released in January 1977 as her inaugural Arista Records album, the disc generated Warnes' first Billboard Hot 100 single "Right Time of the Night" which also ranked on the Billboard hit listings of C&W and Easy Listening tracks, with "Right Time..." reaching #1 on the latter: a second single: "I'm Dreaming", also reached the Easy Listening Top Ten. Jennifer Warnes had been signed by Arista Records president Clive Davis in April 1975 on the recommendation of Jim Price, and from May 1975 Price oversaw sessions - at the Village Recorder in west-LA - for tracks intended for Warnes' inaugural Arista album. Price, producing Warnes sporadically as his work schedule permitted - " producing,...arranging, singing, engineering, playing horns and so forth " -, could not present Clive Davis with the completed tracks Price intended to comprise Warnes' inaugural Arista album until the summer of 1976. Davis' reaction to the intended album for Warnes was : "It was a good enough album but it didn't have anything on it that could give her the hit single she needs", and Davis resultantly recruited Jim Ed Norman to produce two tracks to supplement Price's work, with Norman overseeing Warnes' sessions for the tracks "Right Time of the Night" and "I'm Dreamin" at Davlen Sound Studios in July 1976. : "Clive picked 'I'm Dreaming' and 'Right Time of the Night', and he brought in Jim Ed Norman...to give those songs very explicit tracks"- Norman, who had been a member of Don Henley's pre-Eagles band Shiloh, having overseen string arrangements for the Eagles' albums Desperado and One of These Nights and also having arranged strings for Linda Ronstadt's version of "Desperado". :"Because of the amount of money Linda Ronstadt was making for Asylum Records|Asylum Arista pretty much saw me as ticket ." Clive Davis also assigned Val Garay to mix "Right Time of the Night" and "I'm Dreaming" and also remix Warnes' Jim Price-produced tracks: Garay had mixed the Linda Ronstadt albums Heart Like a Wheel and Prisoner in Disguise and around the time of his work on the Jennifer Warnes album was working on Ronstadt's album Hasten Down the Wind. The production costs of the Jim Price sessions with Jennifer Warnes had totaled $60,000: the recording of the two supplementary tracks: "Right Time..." and "I'm Dreaming", plus the expenditure for the Garay remix upped the production costs of the Jennifer Warnes album to a $115,000 total. After scheduling the Jennifer Warnes album for August 1976 release, Davis elected to hold back release until the new year, deeming Warnes' album likely to be lost in the holiday season sales boom: both the album and its lead single "Right Time of the Night" would in fact be released 1 January 1977 with the Jennifer Warnes album debuting at #189 on the Billboard 200 album chart dated 26 February 1977, which week "Right Time of the Night" entered the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 en route to a #6 peak that May with the Jennifer Warnes album peaking at #43 the same month.
