Ms. Reddy was a frequent guest on The Carol Burnett Show in the 1972-75 period. Even took part in some sketches (in one of Ms. Burnett's frequent skewings of commercials of the period, she played Kathryn Crosby to John Byner's Bing Crosby in a parody of Minute Maid orange juice ads - towards the end she poured an entire pitcher onto him).
That's what makes it so stumpy. The next actual native-born Aussie to have a solo U.S. #1 is Rick Springfield in '81, and I'd wager most Americans think he's a Yank.
I don't like I am Woman or anything by Helen Reddy much that I know of. I agree that perhaps the sentiment behind the song was important and necessary. Everything else I've heard by her has been much worse. The bizarre thing is that after the anthemic power of I am Woman, she put out several songs (Delta Dawn, Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress), Angie Baby) about incapable women with big problems. I didn't like any of them then, and I still don't.
'Angie Baby' is my favorite song by Helen Reddy's, and her defining song to me. I'm not the biggest fan of hers but she did have a great run in the earlier half of the 1970's. 3 #1 hits says a lot about her popularity during the time. Edit: Forgot to add that Helen also had a TV show, The Helen Reddy Show, apparently they handed them out like mad to everyone back in the 70's.
I was younger than you when it came out, and the message still mattered to me. Perhaps it's because I grew up in a home full of strong women who didn't take any crap from men. My mom divorced my father because he tried to lay that "man" crap down in the house.
That is a highly unusual label! This is the first time I have ever seen an ad right there on the label! Is this a country music thing? Another thing: Is that a repressing? I don't recall ever seeing a CBS Columbia label with that font and typeset! I didn't see that until 1975.
I had a good mom and dad where these kind of things never happened so I wasn't aware of that kind of crap.My life was simple and good in 1972,
Lucky. My mom got sick of his "I am the man, you are the stupid little woman. You do as I say." garbage. I understand a lot of people grew up with that dynamic, but I didn't. he ran the house like we were his platoon.
Just one more comment as I don't to sidetrack this thread too much.Its good you learned how not to be.Nobody wants to live like that.
Interestingly, when I think of this song I don't think of my hometown - where it was a #1 hit during our last December there - but of Phoenix, where we moved in August of 1973. I think this is probably the first hit that I associate with Phoenix. Why that is I have no idea. Maybe because Reddy's subsequent hits took place after we'd moved to Phoenix (although I have no memory of one of them from the time).
My parents were happily married (although my mother had a temper like a hand-grenade), but they did see to it that I learned men and women were equal and that feminism was only about gaining and maintaining that equality. My earliest memories are of the late '70s, and lots of my friends' mothers then had jobs (my mother was a lawyer who worked from home). I had no idea that particular social norm was brand new at the time, and I've often wondered how my perspective would have differed if I were, say, five years older or so. In any event, I wasn't familiar with "I Am Woman" until years later, but I never had a problem with it and I certainly hope I wouldn't have if I'd known it when I was younger.
The strange thing of it all is, while my father tried to run the house like the army, he also taught my sisters and my mom how to be independant and never depend on a man for anything...except for him.
That was original. It was around late 1973 that Pitman typesetters began laying out the side numbers on the right side of the label in 8 point Intertype Franklin Gothic Italic (from late 1971 until then, it was the same type - 8 point Linotype Trade Gothic Bold - as the cat. #, stereo designation, and matrix number. (If that's what you're asking.) But blurbs for what's included on the LP in the title, are usually associated with C&W LP's, for sure. But I'd meant to show how the orange in Columbia's said label design may well have been inspired by - and for all practical purposes, was identical to - that in Capitol's 45 "target" label.
Indeed, I thought "Peaceful" was the better record. I tolerated "I Am Woman" for awhile when it was on the radio, but got to the point I would switch the station after hearing it a few dozen times. JcS
A little jumping ahead, I see . . . but the last titled number is what I cite as being, in terms of its overall theme and content and mood, not too dissimilar to this recent one. In that sense, if nothing else, wouldn't Ms. Reddy be her era's equivalent of the current megaseller associated with the linked piece?
I'm not a Helen Reddy fan but this clip is fun. You can tell that she was in on the gag and having a good time.
Yes, that's what I was getting at. I just don't recall ever having seen that pre-1975. Also, for the song titles, all of my pre-1975 LPs had them indented straight left, while that one, and the ones i'm more familiar with until 1984, are indented and curved along the Columbia logo circumference. It also seemed that CBS started using the smoother labels as shown in your picture. I don't know the exact words or lingo to use, as you are the label expert here. As late as 1975, I think, Columbia was still using blurbs on the album covers for the country market, too. By the end of 1971, that had gone away for rock/pop/soul albums. These days, I see a few Columbia retro-style CD covers that advertise the song titles for contemporary artists. I never liked it, even back in the 60s. I think it looks gaudy. I never liked the hard-sell. As for the label you show, it makes no sense to have the blurb on the label. The track listing is already right there!
C&W albums of the era routinely had all or most of the song titles on the front cover, but I've only seen a few with a label blurb like that. Columbia clearly wanted you to know how hit-packed the album was.
For LP labels (designated "compression" as they were for vinyl pressings), Columbia generally used what in printer's lingo is 70 lb. C2S (coated 2 sides) gloss paper. Except for a period in 1972-73 when they were using 70 lb. dull coated or 70 lb. matte coated* (the latter of which was used throughout the latter part of the '70's and beyond by Capitol for their center labels). I have studied paper types and am fully aware of the differences in sheen, ink reflection and so on. I was informed the gloss paper was from a firm supplying exclusively to CBS. Styrene (heatseal) labels were 60 lb. C1S (coated 1 side). From my calculations, vinyl labels pressed onto the record lost about 0.5 - 0.6% of its original size. (I calculated by measuring a custom 45 '6 up' sheet of a big hit we'll get to in a long while, and comparing end-to-end measurements of certain points vs. the label on the 45 itself.) When Pitman began transitioning from hot-metal Linotype/Intertype to phototypesetting VIP fonts in mid-1974, the 'SIDE _' was set in Helvetica Bold Italic. * Matte coated paper, in caliper measurements, is a bit thicker than dull coated - ~.0043 for the former, ~0.0038 for the latter.
Correct. As late as 1974, i've seen country album covers by mac Davis and Charlie Rich that have the songs on the cover. Ugh! The last non-country artists on Columbia I recall seeing like this was O.C. Smith and Andy Williams in 1971. There are more, but I can't think of them at the moment. It seems to me that their audiences were used to the practice, so they kept it going for those genres they tended to buy. Motown also ended the practice in 1971, except for one Diana Ross album in 1975, and I think that was done because she had two S/T albums and the label wanted people to know there was a difference.
Are you sure? I have many RCA and Motown labels with the same glossy labels from the early 70s. (RCA pressed some Motown and Kirshner product) But, anyway, the glossy paper used by CBS in the mid-70s to the early 80s is my favorite. Anyway, this is getting too geeky! I'd be nice to have a thread all about labels.
I agree. But there were other paper mfrs. that did 70 lb. gloss. RCA (or whoever printed for them) got theirs from another supplier. And of course 70 lb. Kromekote (cast coated) C1S. (Many uncoated labels on Capitol were actually printed on the uncoated side of Kromekote stock, I know this from one sheet for an Apple LP.) But yeah . . .
I wished I could have been old enough to work at a pressing plant back in the day. A lot of thought went into labels. It's something few ever think about. I admire a well-created label.
