Barbara Lewis one of several performers at annual Love Affair concert

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Here’s a twist: The most romantic song audience members will hear at the sixth annual 98.5 KLUC Love Affair concert Saturday wasn’t even intended to be any sort of serious love song.

The song is “Hello Stranger,” the iconic 1963 hit written and performed by Barbara Lewis that reached No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart.

The song’s title is based on an everyday greeting Lewis heard while growing up in a small Michigan town, she explained during a phone interview last week.

Lewis — whose other hits include “Baby I’m Yours” and “Make Me Your Baby” — will be one of the performers at Saturday’s concert, which also will feature The Delfonics (“La La Means I Love You”), Rose Royce (“Car Wash”), Deniece Williams (“Let’s Hear it For the Boy”), Bloodstone (“Natural High”), The Persuaders (“Thin Line Between Love and Hate”), Tierra (“Together”) and Sly Slick and Wicked.

The show begins at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Orleans Arena.

Lewis recalled that she wrote “Hello Stranger” while living in a small town about 40 miles from Detroit. “It wasn’t a town. It was a little village,” she noted. “They still don’t have a stoplight.”

“When I wrote it, I was living in the country, and people used to say: ‘Hello stranger. How are you doing?’ That was just the saying.”

While the song does contain hints of long-ago romance — “Please don’t treat me like you did before/because I still love you so …” — she didn’t consider “Hello Stranger” to be any sort of heavy-duty love song.

Nonetheless, Lewis suspected that, when the song was released in 1963, the Vietnam War was beginning to heat up and listeners were drawn to the subtle, melancholy tune and lyrics that tell of reacquaintance after a long separation.

But, whatever the reason, Lewis said, “they all took it for a love song, and it’s been a love song ever since.

When “Hello Stranger” was released, Lewis recalled that her aunt “went to a dime store in the next town six miles away to pick up a copy.”

And, she agreed, fellow townspeople probably were surprised to hear the greeting they used every day, used in another, slightly different context, as the title of a best-selling record.

Lewis also offered up another fascinating bit of music history: While “Hello Stranger” is the most popular song from her body of work in the western United States, that distinction goes back East to another of her hits, “Baby I’m Yours.”

“I think that’s very interesting,” Lewis said. “I don’t know why.”

Lewis also remembered doing multiple takes of “Baby I’m Yours” in the studio and being dissatisfied with every one of them. Finally — and feeling, she admitted, a bit ticked off — she agreed to do one more. “That’s the one they took.”

“I was 19 and, I guess, not very bright,” Lewis joked. “But I didn’t want to do that song.

“Now that I’m older, I think what I disliked about it is, I didn’t think I could sing it as well as it was presented to me (on the demo). I think the person who sang it did a better job than I was going to do, so I didn’t like it.”

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@review journal.com or 702-383-0280.