Billboard Hot 100 October 30, 1971 - Post A Comment

How ironic that the Band were struggling in the bottom reaches of the chart with Life is a Carnival while Joan was near the top with her version of their Night They Drove Old Dixie down

 

I'm pretty sure it's a metaphor for sex.

 

#87! I heard it on the old Sonny and Cher show (again!) where they had made
a cute cartoon video to accompany Cher's singing. Off to YouTube, and, voila!



And I agree that it is totally about exploring one's new gift of sexuality as a teen!

 

I was an English major! Shout out to the University of Lowell!

It is, indeed, "Gypsies." Chalk it up to artistic license, I guess.

In a world where "Layne Martine" could be "Laying Martine"
anything was possible! Haha!

@SonyTek

 

OK, lots to talk about here!

First, the singer's name is Layng Martine! Not Layne, and not Laying! Wow!

Next, he wrote the song, not Ray Stevens. Stevens produced it.

Here is an excerpt from Layng's WikiLeaks:

James Layng Martine Jr. (b. 1942), an American songwriter whose compositions have
appeared on the country and pop music charts over a four-decade span beginning the late
1960s. In 2013, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Some of his
writing credits include Elvis Presley's million-selling "Way Down"; The Pointer Sisters' Top
Ten "Should I Do It" and Trisha Yearwood's "I Wanna Go Too Far". He was nominated for a
Grammy Award in 1993 for Best Country Song, for co-writing Reba McEntire's "The Greatest
Man I Never Knew." Martine's song "Rub It In", a number one country hit for Billy "Crash"
Craddock in 1974, became a long-running TV commercial called "Plug It In" for SC Johnson's
Glade Plug-ins air freshening product. This song was previously a #65 single on the Billboard
Hot 100 for Martine himself in 1971, whose version was released on Barnaby Records.

Aha! So "Layng" was his given middle name, probably a family name. And he was primarily
a songwriter, not a recording artist.




Here is his version:



And it is killing me that the intro sounds like another song I've heard a million times,
one that begins, "Bop shooby, doo wop, bop shooby, doo wop!" Damn!

Here he is:

 

We can dig it

 

You're absolutely correct, and believe it or not, I actually knew it was Layng - I wasn't paying attention when I typed that post (duh) and realized it a bit too late to change it. I used to have the 45 of this, and sold it along with all my other 45s about 10 or so years ago. Since I had all the songs I wanted on MP3, I didn't see the need to keep several hundred records around. So far, I haven't really regretted this decision - time will tell. This was a quirky song and unlike anything else on the radio then or now (and it does sound like something Ray Stevens would write - I assumed the BB chart credited the songwriter and not the producer).

Another favorite at the time, Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep (I also had this 45) just because it was different. I didn't know that Middle of the Road had a hit with it at the same time, and listening to both, they sound so much alike to me that it seems like they're the same group, although they're not. One thing I note about the lyrics, I personally believe the lyrics sites have it wrong. Here's one lyric site's words:

Where's your momma gone
(Where's your momma gone)
Little baby Don?
(Little baby Don?)
Where's your momma gone?
(Where's your momma gone?)
Far, far away

From the beginning, I hear the third and fourth verse as "Little Baby Gone", not "Don". Where would a bird get a name like Don? Doesn't make any sense.

Still another lyrics sites says this:

Where's your momma gone
(Where's your momma gone)
Little baby bird
(Little baby bird)
Where's your momma gone
(Where's your momma gone)
Far far away far far awayayay

If you listen to the song, there's no way they are singing "Little Baby Bird", not even close.

Anyone else want to weigh in on this oh-so-important topic?



OT: this song was released the same week my wife was born (yeah, I'm a bit older than her...)

 

I guess now that you've been put wise, it won't bother you to know that the actual content of the lyric was made more explicit when country singer Bobby G. Rice recorded his version as "Frieda Come, Frieda Go." It made a small dent in the country charts a few years after the original.

 

You beat me to it, as this was the song I had planned to comment on. I always really liked it, though it was only played on the radio for a very short time.

 

Where Did Our Love Go - Donnie Elbert

Loved The Supremes version and love this smooth, low-key cover, too.

 

I can instantly tell the difference between the Middle of the Road version of this song (which was the hit in the UK) and The Kissoons', and I believe Mac and Katie's is far superior.

I worked at a Top 4o radio station over the summer of 1971 (though doing news, not DJ-ing), and "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" was all over our airwaves that summer. I had left by mid-September of that year to return to college, so even though the song was on its way back down this October 30 chart as seen here, it still shows how far behind Billboard was in terms of what was actually being played on the radio as of the date of the issue.

In other words, this song would have been long gone from most Top 4o stations' airwaves by then. This was before the days of corporate ownership and the homogonization of radio nationwide — an era when most stations strove to be the first to jump on and "break" a song, rather than cautiously waiting to see what other stations would do.

 

#94 Midnight Man – The James Gang

Already on its way back down after only four weeks. Maybe because of Joe Walsh's connections to nearby Kent, Ohio, this song did a lot better in our market than it did nationally. It's always been my favorite James Gang song.

 

I actually looked this up after I saw your post - although it took me a few minutes to discover that it was "Freda", not Frieda. As for the lyrics, I see he changed them a little but not too explicitly (my imagination ran wild for a minute after I read your post, LOL). Here's the updated lyrics:

Freda Comes, Freda Goes
Bobby G. Rice

[Chorus]
Freda comes, Freda goes
Tells me yes and then she tells me no
Freda never stays long
Freda's moving along

When she wants, Freda stays
When she don't, she just runs away
Freda never stays long
Freda's moving along

Her daddy is a doctor, mother is a debutante
Pillars of society
Living in a mansion somewhere in the country
Say, she is so good for me

Freda is a rich girl
Daddy's little sweet girl
Pretty as a sunny day
Freda never does what she doesn't want to
Freda never has to pay

Freda comes, Freda goes
Tells me yes and then she tells me no
Freda never stays long
Freda's moving along

When she wants, Freda stays
When she don't, she just runs away
Freda never stays long
Freda's moving along

Hey, hey
Da, da, da, da....

Freda is her name
And freedom is her nature
Running all around the town
Everybody wants to
And everybody tries to
But nobody can hold her down

Freda is so kind
And Freda is so gentle
Love her little sexy ways
Freda, what would you do if I said I love you?
Freda, would you run away?

Freda comes, Freda goes
Tells me yes and then she tells me no
Freda never stays long
Freda's moving along

When she wants, Freda stays
When she don't, she just runs away
Freda never stays long
Freda's moving along

Freda comes, Freda goes
Tells me yes and then she tells me no
Freda never stays long
Freda's moving along

When she wants, Freda stays
When she don't, she just runs away
Freda never stays long
Freda's moving along

 

Just noticed the interesting order of these songs...

"I'm Leavin" - "I Will Return" - "Daddy, Don't You Walk So Fast".

Funny.

 

I think the key and roller skates are actually a metaphor for "young love" aka teenagers being "intimate."

Well, I got a brand new pair of roller skates
You got a brand new key
I think that we should get together and try them out you see
I been looking around awhile
You got something for me...

Uh huh.

 

Although I was only 14 at the time, even I could figure out what these "coded" lyrics meant the first time I heard the song!

 

Yes, I did post that they were metaphors for sex. I don't know where others got their interpretations from.

 

Musical, cultural, scientific, and technical pop perfection.

 

Brilliant post!
This is why I joined this forum in 2007!
This whole thread has been a fun read so far.
Civil, too! Carry on.

 

In this part of the world the version played was by the writer Lally Stott, from memory his version sqeaked into the Billboard Top 100 ? Always rememebr having a complete nerd of a teacher, to appear cool he let us bring some 45's to school. One kid bought along Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep. Fine to to that point, record starts playing, then to howls of derision from the class, this fool grabs his violin and starts playing it to the record, the screeching completely drowning the record out. Horrible enough but he then did the same to Me And You And A Dog Named Boo that a girl had bought along.

 

Wow! I can only imagine!

I had never heard "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" until a few years ago when I got it on a CD. The older collectors on another forum were always talking about it and I had never heard of the song growing up. So, when I got it, I thought the song was a joke. I recently came across the song again on You Tube and decided to play it. Yup. Still stinks. Hey! It's my opinion. If any of you like it, sorry.

This does remind me of those days in the early 70s when teachers would let students bring their 45s to class for those rainy days.

 

Lally Stott's version was the hit in Northern CA. where I lived at the time, got to #92 in Billboard but reached #14 on KFRC San Francisco. I thought it was inane back then, I kind of like it now!

 

I liked the non-LP b-side 'Keep On My Side'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dLd8gtfH-M

Darryl

 

20. "Easy Loving" by Freddie Hart

Another post adapted from the One Hit Wonders Trivia Quiz thread:

Sometimes in the music industry, miracles happen. "Easy Loving" was Freddie Hart's miracle.

Before "Easy Loving" became a huge hit, Freddie Hart had gone 11 years without even a Top 20 country single, when "The Key's in the Mailbox" peaked at #18 in 1960. His biggest hit had been in 1959, when "Chain Gang" (a Harlan Howard song and neither the Sam Cooke nor the Bobby Scott song) got to #17 country. Both of those had been on Columbia.

Hart started his recording career on Capitol in 1954. He then went to Columbia in 1956, where he stayed until 1963. After that, he did two singles for Monument in 1963-64 followed by some years with Kapp (1964-69). Capitol brought him back in late 1969. After his fourth single -- "California Grapevine," the first 45 from his second album for the label, also called California Grapevine -- stiffed by peaking at #68 country, Capitol cut its losses, deleting the album and dropping Freddie Hart from its roster. All of a sudden, Hart was unsigned, and at 44 years old and hitless for a decade was not likely to be picked up by another label, even though by all accounts he was one of the nice guys. That might have been why he had hung around for 17 years already without even a Top 10 country hit: one gets the impression that people wanted him to have a hit song because of his demeanor. Alas, it wasn't to be.

Then fate intervened.

According to Hart, a DJ named Jim Clemens at WPLO in Atlanta took a liking to "Easy Loving," a non-single (side 1, track 4) from California Grapevine, and started playing it as an album cut. It became huge there, and even though Capitol didn't have to do so, the label decided to release the song as a single. And the rest is history.

To add to the success, "Easy Loving" also unexpectedly crossed over to the pop charts, on which it peaked at #17. None of Hart's other singles made the Hot 100.

Capitol quickly re-signed Hart. As a holding pattern, it created an LP of 10 songs from his prior two albums for the label and called it Easy Loving. Once he got back into the studio, his immediate follow-up single, "My Hang-Up Is You," spent six weeks at #1 on the country charts in 1972, the most since "Daddy Sang Bass" by Johnny Cash spent six weeks at #1 in early 1969. Plenty of hits spent longer at the top before that, but long runs at #1 country were becoming increasingly rare. Only two other country hits of the 1970s matched that total ("Convoy" by C.W. McCall and "Luckenbach, Texas" by Waylon Jennings), and 27 years would pass until a song spent more weeks at the top ("Amazed" by Lonestar, eight weeks in 1999).

Hart almost dropped the line "so sexy-looking" from the song out of fears that no one would play a song with the word "sex" or a variation thereof on country radio. But he was wrong: "Easy Loving" was the first #1 country hit to have that word in it.

Back in 1971, I never heard "Easy Loving." I've heard it many times in the years since, usually on "classic country" stations. I think it's pretty good.