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
    I echo that sentiment. If I never hear this song again, I'd be good. I much prefer Free Ride and for a complete change of pace there's this:

     
  2. george nadara

    george nadara Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    At the time of its chart success, Casey Kasem said "Frankenstein" took longer to reach #1 than any hit in chart history. Don't know if that distinction still holds.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2018
  3. tommy-thewho

    tommy-thewho Senior Member

    Location:
    detroit, mi
    Love Frankenstein.
     
  4. Dougd

    Dougd Forum Resident

    Location:
    Fla.
    Wow. What a beautiful song.
     
    Tim S likes this.
  5. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    No, I don't think so. I think "I Go Crazy" by Paul Davis held that distinction for awhile, as did "Chariots of Fire" by Vangelis. Right now the record holder is, believe it or not, Los del Rio with "Macarena".
     
    Grant likes this.
  6. EdogawaRampo

    EdogawaRampo Senior Member

    Free Ride is great! Hugely popular in my junior high school when the a-side was a hit.
     
  7. Grant

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

    Always a treat to hear this song. My favorite part is when the saxophone kicks in.

    It's called "Frankenstein" because of all the edits they performed on the master tape to get the finished product.
     
  8. EdogawaRampo

    EdogawaRampo Senior Member

    Wow...I had completely forgotten that one but it's great! Had the album in the '70s but went the way of the '80s vinyl purges...
     
  9. Tim S

    Tim S Senior Member

    Location:
    East Tennessee
    very, very nice song. I remember listening to it a lot. My sister bought the album. This song struck me in part because I fell in love that summer - a 13-year-old's version of love, anyway - and then in the Fall, she had to go back home to Maryland. I'd listen to this over and over and sigh and moan about the cruelty of fate .

    Also, I didn't have many albums yet - I had a couple of Led Zep albums, a couple of Hendryx, Sly and the Family Stone, and maybe one or two others, and that was it. We had a box full of 45's but I was pretty tired of them. My Mom actually had a good many albums, but they were mostly jazz, which I didn't dislike, but it was a real chore to dig through there for what seemed like hours to find something that I could really get into.

    Anyway, I loved "Frankenstein" and it made me happy that such a heavy song got on top 40 radio. I remember feeling angry that top 40 almost seemed scared to play songs with big, heavy riffs and rhythms - I just didn't get it, and apart from some outliers like "Frankenstein" and "Hocus Pocus" top 40 remained way too tame for way too long. I still liked a lot of the songs, but it pushed me further into FM, too. To this day, no idea what they were so scared of.
     
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  10. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    You're right about heavy rock songs and the upper reaches of the Singles chart. Elton John is a great example. Starting with Rocket Man through Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word, he almost had an uninterrupted run of 16 Top 10 singles except for 2 songs - Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting and Grow Some Funk Of Your Own both of which were the hardest rocking songs in that line-up excepting The Bitch Is Back. The first was doubly surprising since it was his first new single preceding the monster album that was to come.
     
    pablo fanques likes this.
  11. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    That's the LP version, folks. There were actually two single releases - and two edits - of this track. It was originally issued in January as 5-10945 . . .
    [​IMG]
    . . . initially the B side of "Hangin' Around," but this side charted from Point Go. Unfortunately this edit (which didn't even include the 3/4 tempo section) can't be found on YewToob. Then with another re-editing - the one that topped the charts - it came out as 5-10967:
    [​IMG]
    This is more or less the edit as heard on this issue:
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2018
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  12. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    And as "Free Ride" was mentioned, hardly anyone plays this unique 45 mix anymore:
     
  13. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    First-pressings of 3DN's version were among the last to feature the "blocks" label:
    [​IMG]
    There was also, B.T.W., no proper stereo mix ever attempted, thus it has always been "rechanneled," faux "stereo." Here's how it was meant to be heard - in mono:
     
    pablo fanques likes this.
  14. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    "SNAFF" was also one of the first singles on MCA cut by former Columbia Hollywood tape op / lacquer cutting engineer Don Thompson. He went from cutting the likes of Percy Faith, Ray Conniff, Santana, the Spiral Starecase, and the Raiders, to cutting not only Mr. John but also their country stable, many of whom were Decca holdovers (Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, Brenda Lee etc.). He replaced Darrell Johnson ('DWJ' in the deadwax) who left MCA at that time for another studio (JVC, I.I.N.M.).
     
  15. Mylene

    Mylene Senior Member

    The album version of Frankenstein kills both single edits. They played the album version on AM radio here and people were mighty upset when they played the single.
     
  16. EdogawaRampo

    EdogawaRampo Senior Member

    The Flamin' Groovies Slow Death b/w Tallahassee Lassie UK UA 1972 STEREO

    Shoulda been the band's break out record. I can remember customers rocking out to it when I played in the record store I worked in in around 1978. When the record ended -- at the part where they mimic Jagger and Richards during the "yeah-yeah" s, one guy came up all puzzled and asked, "What Rolling Stones record is this?"

    In another Flamin' Groovies episode, maybe around 1996 or so, I played the I'll Have a ... Bucket of Brains comp for a colleague much younger than myself (and a part time rock musician) and after hearing it he said he couldn't decide whether Slow Death or Shake Some Action was the greatest rock 'n roll record he'd ever heard.

    [​IMG]
     
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  17. Victor/Victrola

    Victor/Victrola Makng shure its write

    I like Frankenstein a lot and the music really does call to mind the image of Frankenstein's monster lumbering around with the stiff legged walk. "The Frankenstein" could have been the world's easiest dance step, if it had caught on. :D

    Like others, I also think Free Ride should have been the bigger hit - it's a better single - even though Frankenstein is a really fun record.
     
  18. Endicott

    Endicott Forum Resident

    So nice to have a legitimate hard rocker at the top of the singles charts. These would get rarer and rarer as the decade wore on. You'd think that with AM radio steadily losing listeners to FM they'd be more open to playing the music that was pulling all these defections to the other side, but instead AM did the opposite -- which hastened its ultimate marginalization.

    "Frankenstein" is a monster of an instrumental, and it's great to see a guitarist as talented as Edgar Winter get some mass exposure (and royalties). Looking back I thought its popularity was related to the Mel Brooks movie, but I'm off by a year....
     
  19. Black Thumb

    Black Thumb Yah Mo B There

    Location:
    Reno, NV
    The horn part on "Frankenstein" was probably the most Zappa-esque bit of music ever on a #1 record.
     
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  20. SITKOL'76

    SITKOL'76 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Colombia, SC
    I tend to have a budding interest in instrumental tracks that make it to the top of the charts but I don't really care for Frankenstein. I tend to like the slower more subtle and relaxing rock music of the 70's (think 'Hotel California', 'Angie' etc.). I'm not a fan of hard rock music for the most part.
     
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  21. Grant

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

    Nope. If you think back and remember how it really was, the top 40 stations were also moving to the FM band. By the late 70s's about the only stations found on the AM band was country, news, sports, and an occasional adult contemporary station. Rock wasn't the only music on FM.
     
  22. tmoore

    tmoore Forum Resident

    Location:
    Olney, MD
    I have read that for members of the Edgar Winter Group, they have stated that even the album version is a very much chopped up version of what they were used to playing (which was the inspiration for calling it "Frankenstein"). Guess it is all relative to what you know.

    One thing I do remember about this LP, is that at the point not far before the end of "Frankenstein", where it sounds similar to crickets chirping, the sound becomes remarkably in sync with the 33 1/3 RPM rotation of the turntable, and this occurs for several rotations (say 10-15 seconds) -- when I first saw this, I thought my turntable was malfunctioning.

    I happen to like "Free Ride" more at this point. Since this song doesn't hit #1 later, I'll say here that it took me over 20 years to realize that the different mix I was hearing from time to time on the radio was a 45-only mix.

    I've intentionally not used the term "Frankenstein-ian" earlier on this thread, despite great temptation to, since it would be jumping the gun. But now that we are here ---
    "Frankenstein-ian" is the name I give to all those AM edits of longer songs in the early '70s (Won't Get Fooled Again, Layla, Roundabout etc.). As I don't like those edits, I tend to use that term with a negative connotation.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2018
  23. tmoore

    tmoore Forum Resident

    Location:
    Olney, MD
    I'm still only 6 years old at this point, so for some of these songs, I have fewer frames of reference than the rest of you do (wasn't listening to AT40 then, don't have occurrences in my life that are tied to this song [or at least not any that would be interesting to you]). I could give you my impressions of what I thought when I first heard this song in 1978 or so, but I don't think that is relevant.
     
  24. tmoore

    tmoore Forum Resident

    Location:
    Olney, MD
    "I Go Crazy" only got to #7 in Billboard. I do remember some statement about "I Go Crazy" taking a long time to climb the charts being made on AT40 --- it may have had something to do with longest time to reach peak position --- but that peak position wasn't #1. (EDIT -- the earlier statement I am referencing specifically stated "longest time to hit #1")

    I do remember that statement being made wrt "Chariots of Fire" when it hit #1.

    That's remarkable about "Macarena" if it was true. Because I think it also spent 14 weeks at the top. 1996 was after I stopped paying attention to the charts. I don't know what Hot 100 chart behavior was like at that time.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2018
    sunspot42 likes this.
  25. Joey Self

    Joey Self Red Forman's Sensitivity Guru

    I don't remember the details now, but I do recall I got this single from the jukebox at the local pool hall. I can't recall if I had to pay a quarter or something for it--that sounds right--or if it was given to me when I was in the joint when the jukebox was being changed. Either way, the single edit is what I learned first, and still like to hear it now and then. I also liked the flip side "Undercover Man."

    JcS
     

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