Debuting this week "Satin Sheets" by Jeanne Pruett, which went to #1 on the country charts. It made it up to #28 on the pop charts, which is actually pretty high considering it's a very classic/traditional country sound and performance. Pruett's vocal sounds much stronger in this TV clip than it does on the record.
County music was in a big state of flux at this time, Lynn Anderson's "Rose Garden" being the primary match to light that fire, and we had this on the cover of Newsweek, the week of June 18, 1973.
This country phase during this time did not only bring the "Countrypolitan" sound into the top 40, but as with "Satin Sheets" above, showed that flat out country would crossover to some degree as well. A few years before, you'd never think a song such as this would even make the Hot 100, but it did at #81, with all it's associated twang (#4 country chart)
I have never liked Tie a Yellow Ribbon either, although it's one of those songs that you can't really put your finger on anything specific that's annoying, just the song as a whole is. Nor did I ever care much for Candida or Knock Three Times, although I'm slightly more favourable toward them these days. I'll bet the former is still the only #1 hit named after a yeast infection. I just gave Summer Sand a listen; it's well produced and I've certainly heard worse. I'm not sure if I've ever heard it before. I really like some of Tony Orlando's '60s stuff like Bless You (which I only came across a decade or two later) and Make Believe by Wind. But then that was the '60s, which was the best decade musically. I'm listening to Chills as I type; passable but not nearly as good as these two.
I doubt that Phil Spector invented that. The Raindrops did something similar on The Kind of Boy You Can't Forget a few months earlier, for starters ...
I generally preferred the Country ballads to the twangier hoedown stuff though that's not a hard and fast rule. Charlie Rich began his Pop chart life in '73 with this soothing little ditty that reminded me of another favorite - For The Good Times. We'll officially anoint Charlie here in a year or so. Chart time that is.
I always liked Mohair Sam I just realized that that little drum roll under the second syllable of "mohair" is identical to the one that kicks off See You in September by the Happenings ... or pretty close.
"No man had the right to say what he said about you..." That remark might be the "incident" right there.
Yes, and the narrator should have kept a lid on his emotions and lived a happy life with his girl instead of spending the remainder of it in jail without her.
Oops! I left out - in the 70s. I am aware he had a couple of Top 30 hits in the first half of the 6os but aside from a lower chart placing in 1970, his Pop chart life was more of a success after Behind Closed Doors.
Well, Midler's album The Divine Miss M had come out in '72, so she got on that bandwagon early, cutting earlier versions of "Superstar" and "Delta Dawn" in addition to the blatantly Tin Pan Alley-retro "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy". In fact, I wonder if Midler's success prompted Orlando or his producers to put such an intensely retro spin on "Ribbon", or if it had been intended that way from the start.
Yeah, the co-writer of the song can claim whatever he wants, but the guy in his song is actually the one who mentions still being in prison. He'd also said he'd "done my time I'm coming home". That's not how a POW would would phrase his situation, but it's certainly how a convict would. Notably, they'd first offered the song to Ringo Starr, but Al Steckler of Apple records described it as "ridiculous". Ha! Ringo could have had a massive hit with this one, although frankly fronted by his voice it might have been a cheeze overload. At least Orlando is a good singer...
Yeah, the contrypolitan hits were great stuff, the best being Ray Price's cover of Kristofferson's "For The Good Times". Charlie Rich scored twice with big crossover hits in the same genre - for awhile there it looked like he'd become a pop superstar.
Of this batch, in my collection would be #3 - 9, 11 - 14, 16, 18, 20, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32 - 35, 41, 43, 46, 49, 50, and 86.
As @Grant would say, that'd be jumping ahead, but: That record, issued as Bell 45,620, has the dubious distinction of being the last single Bell ever released, before Clive Davis inaugurated his Arista label. (It also foreshadowed the group's direction from that point on - but again . . . ) There was, on CBS Pitman pressings of Bell's 45 swan song, an interesting error that's one of those "as if" scenarii . . . (I speak, of course, of the British Magnet label whose logo is at right - and which I don't think Mr. Orlando and his ladies had anything to do with, nor producers Medress and Appell.)
Early 1973 was when 1050 WHN in New York changed to a country format, and actually had a degree of success with it, staying the course up to 1987 when it adopted a sports format and changed calls to WFAN (this, more than a year before it moved to the 660 dial - in the process, knocking WNBC-AM off the air forever).
Probably the worst Aussie chart of the 70s this week weeks Title Artist weeks in highest pos. 1. 2 1 2 DAISY A DAY Jud Strunk 9 1 2. 3 4 5 THE MORNING AFTER Maureen McGovern 9 2 3. 1 2 1 TIE A YELLOW RIBBON ROUND THE OLE OAK TREE Tony Orlando And Dawn 9 1 4. 7 8 9 MY LOVE Paul McCartney & Wings 7 4 5. 4 3 4 HEAVEN IS MY WOMAN'S LOVE Col Joye 9 3 6. 5 6 3 TWELFTH OF NEVER Donny Osmond 10 2 7. 6 7 10 SUZIE DARLING Barrie Crocker 7 6 8. 8 5 6 GET DOWN Gilbert O'Sullivan 11 4 9. 11 11 19 YOU ARE THE SUNSHINE OF MY LIFE Stevie Wonder 6 9 10. 13 14 31 BOOGIE WOOGIE BUGLE BOY Bette Midler 4 10 11. 10 9 11 VENUS Jamie Redfern 6 9 12. 14 28 40 GIVE ME LOVE George Harrison 4 12 • 13. 15 21 15 SING The Carpenters 8 13 14. 12 16 34 STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU Stealers Wheel 9 12 15. 9 10 8 DANIEL Elton John 10 6 • 16. 20 35 20 YOU GAVE ME A MOUNTAIN/STEAMROLLER BLUES Elvis Presley 6 16 • 17. 33 31 33 NEVER NEVER NEVER Shirley Bassey 4 17 • 18. 21 19 23 CUM ON FEEL THE NOISE Slade 10 18 • 19. 23 17 12 NEITHER ONE OF US Miss Linda George 10 12 20. 17 12 7 ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA Deodato 13 2
Agreed. There was a slough of "older-sounding" or nostalgic-based songs during this period, which is good. Perhaps the artists felt the older sound was better than much of the contemporary sounds. You're Sixteen, that great 1960 song Ringo Starr re-recorded, topped the charts the next year (1974) Chicago's 2 hit singles from Chicago VIII (in 1974) were Old Days and Harry Truman, both of which recalled the past. Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, which was about to hit around this period (a No. 2 chart single), was nostalgia-based. Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me used members of the Beach Boys for the song's harmonies, which recalled the 1960s. Later, Abba's I Do I Do I Do also has that older vibe. Even Queen went back to the past with Crazy Little Thing Called Love, a rockabilly and Elvis-sounding No. 1 at the start of the following decade. There were other rockabilly-sounding songs as well.
I was reading the Wikipedia for Killing Me Softly and didn't realize there was genuine controversy about the authorship of the song. One of the credited writers, Charles Fox, had said a few years ago that Lori Lieberman, who is also credited as a co-writer, in fact had nothing to do with the writing of the song, and that it had nothing to do with Don McLean. For his part, McLean has supported Lieberman's version of this story. She scored a big victory when articles written at the time were unearthed that completely supported her version of the story. One even quoted Norman Gimbel, the other co-writer, as saying: "She [Lori Lieberman] told us about this strong experience she had listening to McLean ('I felt all flushed with fever / Embarrassed by the crowd / I felt he had found my letters / And read each one out loud / I prayed that he would finish / But he just kept right on'). I had a notion this might make a good song so the three of us discussed it. We talked it over several times, just as we did for the rest of the numbers we wrote for this album and we all felt it had possibilities."
Love Train Another good song reaches the top of the charts. Just a few comments. I have always thought this was intended to be a riff on People Get Ready (I think the same thing about Peace Train by Cat Stevens). When we were kids, for some reason we would always sing this song as though Dracula were doing it. "People... all over.... da vorld.... Joooin in... It's the looooove train". (sometimes the 'blood train' when we were feeling really silly). For some reason this struck us as really funny, although why we only did this for this one song I have no idea. Anyway, a really good tune IMO.
Another great group of the early 70s that went in for the "nostalgia" sound (and is seemingly forgotten today) was Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. Of course Hicks had been in the Charlatans, the early San Francisco band. The Hot Licks got lot of play on FM radio in California and I really liked their droll humor ("How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away"). Another song I recall and always thought was excellent was the somewhat somber "Moody Richard": " Moody Richard " Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks
