EVERY Billboard #1 hit discussion thread 1958-Present

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by alphanguy, Jan 29, 2016.

  1. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    They played Oh Happy Day fairly often here for awhile. I can't say I've heard it at all since.

    I was trying to remember the name of this series that was on in prime time in the late 60s and there it is - The Music Scene.
    They counted down the top hits of the week and when a song like Sugar Sugar was #1 for several weeks, they found different versions to change it up for the viewers.
     
  2. pickwick33

    pickwick33 Forum Resident

    She made gospel-INFLUENCED records, mostly. The only out-and-out gospel record she made for Atlantic was Amazing Grace. Even so, the gospel influence was pervasive both ways.

    Name names, because I can't think of any. Delaney & Bonnie???

    (And no, "Put Your Hand In The Hand" and "Spirit In The Sky" don't count.)

    Like gospel wasn't? The gospel singers were speaking to black folks just the same as the soul records were. There were tons of gospel acts who recorded social-consciousness tunes. The Staple Singers blurred all those lines.

    I should mention that not all black music was political during this time. The Delfonics, the Moments, the Originals, the Dells to name a few. That neo-doowop style of the seventies was just getting started in '68-69.

    Not true. Even though all three acts were funkifizing their sound, the church influence was always there to some extent. They didn't just take it off like a coat.

    You need to catch up then. This music has been reissued. I'm surprised you haven't filled the gaps by now.

    I should mention that even though the Stax label was going in several different directions (including gospel!) during this period, they were never far from that church groove. It's really obvious in groups like Ollie & the Nightingales and the Soul Children. One of their biggest sellers, Johnnie Taylor, was a former Soul Stirrer. The Staple Singers signed to Stax around '68, the Emotions were literally the daughters of a preacher man, the Maceo Woods gospel-soul cut I referred to in an earlier post was gospel all the way. Even moving into the seventies, they kept the gospel-soul fusion going with the Rance Allen Group. See, even if the subject matter was secular, the gospel influence in soul music was always in the picture, some kind of way. It didn't always have to be some superficial Jesus Christ, Superstar kind of deal.
     
  3. pickwick33

    pickwick33 Forum Resident

    Watching videos of the show, I always thought that was rather amateurish - repeating the same #1 song week after week. They should have just done like Solid Gold did in the eighties and just play a ten-second fragment to cut down on the monotony.
     
  4. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    The show didn't last very long anyway so it never got the chance to evolve like Solid Gold did.
     
  5. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    But you don't know whether an 'I' or 'H' is in the deadwax. However, @Mylene did mention that copies on Calendar labels had -3S dash numbers, as opposed to the Rockaway-pressed -1S's on Kirshner labels.
     
    Grant likes this.
  6. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    A number of factors, from what I could gauge, contributed to the failure of The Music Scene. One was its length (45 minutes, followed by another 45-minute-long show which likewise didn't last that long). The other was its being on ABC which was then "the third network," especially given its competition (including NBC's Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In - a show which, in the eyes of many, has not aged that well at all - and CBS's perennial Gunsmoke). And then, as @pickwick33 noted, there was the repetition factor. (Which reminds me, my mother spoke of the days of Your Hit Parade in the early 1950's when Jo Stafford's "Shrimp Boats" was in the Top 10 forever and, on TV, that show had to come up with different motifs every week when their resident singers did their covers of that.)
     
  7. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    I didn't mind the repetition if I liked the song and some of the variations were amusing but yeah, long stretches of the same old can be deadly. Imagine a show like that based on today's charts. Weeks go by with virtually no movement and songs remain on the charts for months on end.
     
  8. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Yeah, that's what I meant. When I just now re-read my post, I realized I missed a word.

    No, they don't. But "Day By Day", "Candles In The Rain (Lay Down)" and "Superstar" do count.

    You are forgetting that I am about the same age as you are. I grew up with all that music too.

    I know. I was around. The fact that I didn't hear any Black radio doesn't mean that I didn't hear some of that stuff.

    I have realized that you are 100% right about that. I had to think about it for a bit, but you know I have to fight it first. :D Everything from The Isley Brothers to Otis Redding to Fontella Bass to Marvin Gaye to the O'Jays...even The Supremes...yup...gospel influenced with secular lyrics! The majority of R&B artists came out of the church. That remains true to this day. But, that's a culture I was never part of. If this forum wasn't so restrictive on what we could discuss, i'd elaborate.

    For more than a decade, I have been a loud voice in the labels being slow as molasses in reissuing R&B/soul/funk music. But, now that it's out, and more t come, I am upset by the way it's been treated. U.K. companies reissue a lot of stuff, and it's all brickwalled and compressed to death. Wrong versions are used, wrong artwork is used, and the stuff doesn't stay in print for more than a couple of days. Japanese pressings are more expensive than the rent, all while we get hundreds of Elvis Presley titles that no one buys, and on our 100th reissue campaign of Fleetwood Mac and The Who in every configuration imaginable.

    Let me try to explain: My family listened to just about everything except gospel, easy listening like Doris Day or Ray Conniff, and country music. If I heard any of the latter two, it was from the radio or TV, or an occasional album my father bought. I heard plenty of "soul music up until 1970 because my older sister bought most of it at the PX, and my mom bought jazz.

    If I remember, you said grew up in , or near Detroit. Correct? That meant you grew up around lots of Black folk. You might even be one. My point is that, because of where you grew up, you were exposed to the whole culture. Me? I only tasted it through the "mainstream" filters. I was on the outer peripherals of Black culture. (My father saw this while he was in Viet Nam and tried to fix this.) I didn't become exposed to Black culture until my first trip to an all-Black area in a far away major city in the summer of 1971. The sensation was strange once I got back home and suddenly felt very out of place hearing Donny Osmond and Cher on the radio and at friends houses instead of The Dramatics and The Honey Cone. Of course, I readjusted, and radio out here slowly started playing more Black artists. I heard all the soul hits the next year because of another trip to the city, and we got TV stations from another one. And, yes, starting with the late 80s, I have been able to backtrack to all the stuff I missed. I'm up to speed now, but I still do not hear gospel influences in everything like you do.

    I know all that now, but I didn't know back then. But, you are also mentioning a lot of soul artists (I detest people calling musical artistas "acts"! They aren't acting!) I wasn't exposed to because they didn't chart on the pop chart, and top 40 didn't play them. I cannot help where I lived.

    Jesus Christ Superstar was modeled after popular shows like "Hair" and the rock opera "Tommy". The appeal was that it told the story in a new way. Again, my world was small-town White America. We didn't have a Black church, and, to this day, while I have seen them on TV, i've never been to one. So, other than going to a Southern Baptist church, those pop songs, and "Oh Happy Day", were as far as I got to gospel. Soul music was secular lyrics being done like gospel. It was deemed sacrilegious when Ray Charles pioneered it way back in the 50s, and gradually gained popularity in the age of The Beatles. But, don't take away my Partridge Family albums! I even owned some Osmonds records.:hide:

    About Jesus Christ Superstar: I certainly knew the single in 1971. I owned it! Two copies! It used to piss me off how warped 45s from Universal (Decca, UNI, Kapp) were.
     
  9. Hey Vinyl Man

    Hey Vinyl Man Another bloody Yank down under...

    I don't recall ever hearing "Oh Happy Day" on the radio (and I listened to oldies radio all the time from about 1987-1991 and fairly often for a decade or so after that). I knew the song because I had it on a compilation album I got somewhere.
     
  10. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    You would've probably hated the Lucky Strike Hit Parade show on radio in the 1940's when some songs were #1 on the charts for 10+ weeks.
     
  11. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I don't want to know if it was ever on oldies radio. I want to know if it was on the radio in 1969!
     
  12. pickwick33

    pickwick33 Forum Resident

    Like I said, if it made it to the Top 10, it had to have been on the radio. I'm too young to remember 1969, but I've certainly seen it on enough playlists.

    As for an eyewitness account...if it helps, an old coworker of mine claims that he got tired of "Oh Happy Day" because, and this is an exact quote, "they played it too much!" "They" meaning the radio. I don't think he ever owned a copy himself.
     
    Hey Vinyl Man likes this.
  13. pickwick33

    pickwick33 Forum Resident

    Has anybody explained why Calendar Records was changed to Kirshner Records in the first place?
     
  14. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    OK, that's what I want to know. Was it more regional, or was it national? I expect it to have done better in some rural areas in the south, and urban areas heavily populated with Blacks. But, what about, say, Springfield, IL, Seattle, WA, or Dover, MD?

    BTW, I guess I am older than you. I was already in second grade when the song came out.:D

    Where did he live back then?

    I can see some radio stations not wanting to play it simply because they didn't want top 40 listeners to turn the dial, hear it, think they stopped on a religious station, and look for something else. I wonder about other pop hits that sounded gospelly.
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2017
  15. pickwick33

    pickwick33 Forum Resident

    That early seventies "gospel rock" thing seemed too faddish and facile to be considered a legit outgrowth of gospel. To me.

    This is why I mentioned Delaney & Bonnie. Even though their music was on the secular side, you can tell that they both had Baptist Church influences.

    Funny you should say that. Even though the US has legit reissue labels keeping classic soul in the catalogues, I always thought the UK labels like Ace/Kent were doing an excellent job themselves.

    I actually grew up in Chicago, which is four hours away via car. But yes, not only did I grow up around black people, but I am black myself.

    I will say that there are a lot of artists I wasn't exposed to in real time because they were before my time. "Oh, Happy Day," for instance. I heard the song all the time growing up, but all that was residual. I would have been two years old when it was a hit. Since I can't recall anything before the age of four, I basically feel like I missed it. However, reading, the oldies station, and buying old records kinda got me up to speed, so I didn't have to use age as an excuse not to know.

    Well, as a man who owns both of the Osmonds' heavy metal LPs, I'm not judging. And I bought them in my twenties, mind you (by which time it was the 1990s).

    Even though that whole early 70s "rock opera" trend looks like a ton of malarkey, Murray Head's "Superstar" is a guilty pleasure of mine. I have the Decca single, which I bought in a used store somewhere. The vinyl is flat as a pancake - plays fine.
     
  16. pickwick33

    pickwick33 Forum Resident

    National. You don't make it to the pop Top 10 in Billboard magazine by being a regional hit.

    There's a site called ARSA which lists nothing but radio station playlists over the years. Nowadays, you have to register and log in to cross-reference these lists (ugh!), but it used to be you could type in the name of a song and see how well it did. I've never cross-checked "Oh Happy Day," but I've seen it on enough 1969 playlists while looking for something else.

    Chicago.

    Like I said earlier, the Top 40 was far more diverse back then. Remember, Henry Mancini raced to #1 that same year with an MOR piano instrumental. I'm quite sure that no PD banned him for not sounding like the Archies. SSgt. Barry Sadler had a freak hit in '66 with "Ballad Of The Green Berets." Even though he sounded nothing like ? & the Mysterians, it didn't stop him from shooting straight to the top.
     
  17. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    It was faddish, but 100% sincere.


    I'm thinking more about labels like bbr, Charley, and, yes, Kent. When I have the original vinyl, I know they screw things up.

    I started buying oldies CDs in the mid-80s, but I was still alive when the music on them came out the first time. I got into stuff made before 1963 via Time-Life CDs if we didn't already have the records. I remember the first time I heard the likes of Rosemary Clooney, Frankie Laine, and Doris Day on a CD I bought. I sat there wondering how people could like this stuff over Elvis or Chuck Berry.

    I remember playing "Go Away Little Girl" and "Yo-Yo" every morning before school! I had about a half an hour alone in the house before I had to leave, so I could blast the stereo and not annoy anyone. Later on, I bought a Three Dog Night and Michael Jackson 45. Those two didn't bother anyone. But, then I got a Partridge Family album. Don't judge me.
    It wasn't, and it served its purpose. In fact, I like all those songs...except for "Spirit In The Sky". My sister's favorite song of that genre was "Day By Day", influenced by her church youth group.

    I have yet to see a single 45 from that company that is flat.
     
  18. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Not quite so. Back in those days, radio, and record sales, were still somewhat regional. You could have a Billboard top 10 hit and still have markets or regions where it was never played. There are lots of top 10 hits in the 70s that I never heard of until the CD age.

    I almost signed up for it last week. They just want to track people so they don't misuse the data. That doesn't bother me. I just hate going through the sign up process, and getting spam mail and such.

    My father lived half of his childhood in Chicago. I have family there. He was living there when he bought the Jesus Christ Superstar album. That's how I acquired it. It was his, and he was an atheist! He liked it for the artistry, not the story. I discovered O.C. Smith through him.

    My family, and I, are big Henry Mancini fans. I'm one of the few people on this thread who like "Love Theme from Romeo And Juliet".

    Payola, in it's many alternative forms, was still rampant in the 60s and 70s.
     
  19. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    I really got into Jesus Christ Superstar despite being non-religious. I admired what they did, even did a report on it in high school and got an A! It was pretty big here as Yvonne Elliman is a native and thus, like Liz Damon's Orient Express hit 1900 Yesterday from the same time frame, was a drawing card here.
    Sorry to hear I'm detestable since I've used the term "act" as a description. It doesn't bother me in the least but I'll try to refrain from it in the future.
    Here's that Liz Damon song for those who don't know it:

     
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  20. george nadara

    george nadara Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    In Muncie, Indiana, WERK was the popular Top 40 AM station. On their 10 May 1969 WERK sheet (a weekly free chart), "Oh Happy Day" by the Edwin Hawkins Singers debuts at #6. On the 24 May 1969 chart, the song is at #2, with the Beatles "Get Back" at #1.

    Not only did "Oh Happy Day" get broadcast, it was broadcast with regularity. I was 14-years-old and according to my marking system on the WERK sheets, I liked the song. Still do.
     
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  21. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    May be why other labels changed their names - for the proverbial legal reasons, another label with the same name, etc.
     
  22. pickwick33

    pickwick33 Forum Resident

    I saw that. Misuse the data how? It's not like they invented the information.


    Same here. I haven't done it for fear that it would be a long-winded process that took all day.



    You can pay the DJs to play it, but not the public to buy it. Dick Clark used to tell a story about how he played a dud Tommy Sands 45 for something like an entire month to prove that point.​
     
  23. Tim S

    Tim S Senior Member

    Location:
    East Tennessee
    "Oh happy day" got played plenty on the top 40 stations I listened to. Agree with most salient point: if a song makes national billboard top 10, it's getting a lot of national play.
     
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  24. John22

    John22 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Northern Germany
    On the German Wikipedia website is a story about the song and the release and how radio stations helped that the song reached the Top 10. With 1,800 Dollar an album was recorded and 500 copies produced. Pavilion Records made another 1,000 copies. DJ Abe „Voco“ Keshishian got one copy and gave the song intensive airplay on radio station KSAN (FM) in San Francisco. Another radio station took the song in their playlist. Neil Bogart of Buddah Records heard the song.

    Oh Happy Day – Wikipedia

    The song was #1 in Germany which would not had happened without radio stations.
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2017
    Grant likes this.
  25. AppleBonker

    AppleBonker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    The Music Scene TV show included this rip roaring version of CSNY doing Down by the River. Introduced by David Steinberg.

     
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