I don't care what anyone says to the contrary: the 70s was a fantastic era for R&B for many reasons. The 80s, in contrast, was not.
Agreed.In my opinion the 70s R&B was much more true to what the original concept had grown.The 80s R&B was good but not to the same level.It took a different twist that did not appeal to the the same degree.It became more mainstream and pop oriented.Just my take on it.
Indeed! And, we will definately get into that once both charts hit the 80s. Oh, and BTW...the next #1 single is... You Don't Have To Be A Star (To Be In My Show) - Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr. Week ending November 20, 1976, 1 wk The insult after being unceremoniously dumped by Clive Davis from his Arista label finally paid off for The 5th Dimension's lead husband and wife vocalists. The quintet signed with ABC Records in 1974, but husband and wife Billy and Marilyn used that contract to launch their career. The duo hit it big with this surprise single, and it was a biggie! It sounded perfect on the radio, too.
I do remember it being edited for 45 release, which I prefer (I had heard the LP version on some radio stations). Another winner from the producer Don Davis (I presume no relation to Billy) with help from veteran R&B arranger Horace Ott. But I seem to remember The 5th Dimension going to ABC in 1975 . . . and Ms. McCoo and Mr. Davis leaving the group (and going solo) before the "Love Hangover" debacle.
That's why I presented the 45 version in the video. But, the only differences between the 45 and LP is that on the 45, the intro is edited, and the fade comes earlier. Yeah, I meant 1975. I wrote '74 by accident. But, since they all found their way to ABC, it could be that they left the group after they signed.
Anyway, since the last couple of singles got no traction here... Next #1: Dazz - Brick Week ending November 27, 1976 4 wks THis was another biggie! Where I lived, this song was extremely popular. One thing to note is that we are now into an era where a lot of R&B youngbloods were getting hit singles. The guard wasn't totally changing, as a lot of vets like Aretha Franklin, a reinvigorated Bar-Kays, and Johnnie Taylor were still getting hits, but as I was growing up as a high school teenager, I definately felt the vibes. A new brand of funk and R&B was here, and it was spearheaded by bands like Brick, Parliament/Funkadelic, Bar-Kays, Con Funk Shun, Bootsy's Rubber Band, Commodores, Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly, and others. Great sounds were still on their way. This is also a time when a lot of the rock fans started to tune out. I don't know why, as the funk of the late 70s were actually closer to rock music than the R&B and funk we had earlier. I didn't know there was a shorter edit of "Dazz" until it started showing up on CD in the 90s. The single I had, and all I had ever seen or known was the same as the album. I have come to realize that a lot of people on the east coast heard the edits, while we out in the west were more likely to hear the album versions on the 45. Right or wrong, that's what i've picked up from lots of internet discussion over the years.
This one seems kinda forgotten today, but I always loved it, and them. They had an extremely high profile on television, considering they didn't have many hits after this (at least on the pop charts). Their 5th Dimension cred I guess got them in the door in Hollywood, along with the big success of this hit, but they certainly sparkled on the small screen, and Marilyn would enjoy two stints as the host of the Solid Gold music countdown TV series ('81-'84, '86-'89).
You need to give them more than a few hours. I'm barely keeping up with the hot topics around here - there are two dozen in my backlog I haven't been thru in weeks...
No memory of Dazz from the time. I'd heard of the song, but didn't actually hear it until a few years ago. It's OK, but not particularly memorable.
I suppose we'll be hearing a lot of it tomorrow, among other tired romantic songs, if you go out in public. I have been posting one song every few days, very little to no traction except for you and W.B.. In fact, I let the other thread move ahead and I am now making the effort to catch up. There's one more song to post for 1976 before we move into 1977. There will be a lot of crossover in '77 for #1s. The other chart just posted their last song of the year a couple of days ago. My experience is different. My local Fry's (Kroger) grocery store even has this in constant rotation.
I do remember "Dazz" - oh boy, do I remember it. In this case, what was being reinvigorated was their label, Bang Records (Paul Davis' first big hit was a year's off, but inapplicable to this chart), which was more or less in hibernation since 1967-68 when Neil Diamond left for Uni, Van Morrison for Warner Bros., and main founder Bert Berns for a position either six feet under or as ashes; his widow Ilene was running the show at Bang by this point, and since 1973 had relocated from its original New York base to Atlanta, GA. On the East Coast, most of the pressings were by North American Music Industries in Scranton, a plant which until mid-1973 was owned and operated by Capitol Records. When NAMI assumed control of the plant in November-December 1973, they resumed use of the "anvil / lathe" symbol in their deadwax which, in that particular form, was only used from about 1950 to late 1960 (and again for brief spurts in early 1963 and spring 1965). Some pressings from that plant - which retained, for 45 presses, the 360 interlocking serrations around the label area that were a hallmark of Capitol pressings since August 1968 - had the usual 3.625" diameter center label, but most I've seen (including pressings that I have) shrunk it all to 3.3125". I'm from the East Coast, but I may've heard "Dazz" unedited on the radio. Can't tell if I heard the shorter version. I guess it depended on which station played what. Also, I don't mind the accelerated pace so much of bringing up the next singles, given how the pop and my own country music #1 singles threads have come to the end of the line for '76.
I don't know if you were still living in the Phoenix area in late 1976, but most R&B music there shifted to urban radio, which was starting to proliferate in major cities across the nation. Me? I was listening to a top 40 syndicated station by then. So, I don't know what Phoenix top 40 was playing. The only time I did listen to Phoenix top 40 was on Sunday night when American Top 40 with Casey Kasem aired.
Wow, I forgot about this thread, and like the one on the Billboard Hot 100, it doesn't show up on my alerts, even though I have it "watched." So, I decided to go back and do those from late August, 1976, which was my first semester of my sophomore year. I wasn't dating anyone steadily, having just come out of a long (by my standards--8 months) relationship as my freshman year ended, and was still seeing that young lady now and then; we had a bit of a hard time breaking up! But I started the semester seeing a different gal for a couple of weeks, and then moved to another for a few weeks, and then another, while my old girlfriend met and then married her next boyfriend. As such, I don't have a lot of contemporary memories of hearing these songs with someone as I did the songs a year before. I started another relationship on November 1 (I know that because we broke up on February 1 of the next year, our "three-month anniversary"), and think we danced to a couple of these at the Snowfall Ball in December. Anyway, the quick thoughts: "Getaway" was one I really liked. I bought the EWF GREATEST HITS album when I saw it in the Columbia Record Club a few years later, and it has since been one of my favorite albums. I still enjoy hearing this song when it comes on the radio or on my MP3 player. "Who'd She Coo" is something I've not heard in thirty years or more--maybe closer to 40--and it was nice hearing it today. I suspect the reason I didn't buy it at the time was that it was just too repetitious--at least that is my opinion now. It wears out its welcome long before it ends. "Shake Shake Shake" was one I got so tired of in '76--I know it was featured at the after-football game dances if it was a DJ, and was all over the radio except the AOR station in Little Rock that I listened to frequently. I'm a bit more receptive to hearing it now if I've not done so in a year or so, but I still can't say I like it. "Play That Funky Music" was also played at the dances, and I didn't warm to it too much then. These days, I turn up the radio when it comes on. My nephews are in a cover band (and have been for over 30 years, on and off), and last time I heard them, they played a passable version of this. "Just To Be Close To You" was one I couldn't recall until I played the video clip, and then it came back too me. Not my cup of tea then or now--I liked "Brick House" and "Easy" much more. "Rubberband Man" was a favorite then and now. I have a Spinners compilation on CD, and I know I've put this on my MP3 player for random play. "Message In Our Music" did not ring a bell with me when I listened to it today, and I didn't listen long. Pretty pedestrian stuff, I'm surprised it topped the charts. "Love Ballad" did nothing for me then or now. "You Don't Have To Be A Star" was one I'd actively avoid at the time, and listening today, I still don't care for it much. And then, we come to the cream of the crop after "Getaway"--I bought the single "Dazz" while it was on the chart, making it the only one of this list that I paid money to own in '76. I don't hear it enough on the 70's station on XM. All in all, a very mixed bag for me. JcS
I lived in Phoenix until 1995. But I don't think I was listening much to the local R&B station - it was whatever my uncle was into. Which was disco, but also Fleetwood Mac and the like. I think we were still listening to AM while on the road. We didn't listen to the radio much at all at home. My uncle mostly played his albums and singles, and he was buying a dwindling number of singles.
That's what I thought! By this point, The O'Jays were way off my radar and I wouldn't really pay attention to them again until that single in the future.
I love this one. And I love that cover version, too. Dull is so far off the mark as far as I'm concerned but we hear what we hear right?
I liked Dazz a lot, too. The opening kinda reminded me of that Chackachas song Jungle Fever. It still sounds good today, no doubt due to it's not being overexposed like so many others. Since it's coming in the next day or so, I'll save my comments for YDHTBAS for the Pop thread.
I don't hear anything closely resembling "Jungle Fever" in the opening of "Dazz." The second half of the long instrumental break, however, has in some spots a similarity to an instrumental transition near the end of Eddie Kendricks' "Boogie Down" to my ears.
Last #1 on 1976: Car Wash - Rose Royce Week ending December 25, 1976, 2 wks Ah! The days when R&B bands typically had 9+ members. That's a lot of royalties to divvy up! I think this was Norman Whitfield's first production on his own Warner Brothers distributed label after leaving Motown, and he hit it out of the ballpark. I like to post Soul Train videos on occasion. In many major cities that did air the show, they insultingly put it on after midnight on Sunday where almost no one would see it. Many other cities didn't show it at all. Many R&B songs were suddenly regulated to Black/urban radio if a city even had one. The pop audience would still hear the big hits, but miss out on a lot of top 10 singles. Fortunately, I had KTTV out of Los Angeles, where they taped the show, so I got to see it every Saturday afternoon at 1 PM when it wasn't pre-empted by a Dodgers game.
Love Car Wash! The movie as well as the song. In fact, I watched the film again a couple of months ago. Forgot the Pointer Sisters make a cameo.
WNEW-TV in New York aired Soul Train mostly on Saturday afternoons, so New Yorkers would've seen this performance "way back when." Fortunately, sports were divvied up between WOR-TV (Mets, Knicks, Nets, Rangers) and WPIX (Yankees), so Channel 5 didn't have those "preemption blues" that KTTV viewers would have had. (Soul Train was also one of the three most successful first-run syndicated shows of the '70's, the others being Lawrence Welk and Hee Haw; very few markets aired all three on one station, and WNEW had Soul Train and Welk while WPIX ran Hee Haw.) But while Mr. Whitfield may've established his own label under Warners' distribution during this period, "Car Wash" (and its immediate follow-up singles by the group) were issued on MCA Records which put out the soundtrack to the film of the same name. This song was one of many butchered by a soundalike group that appeared on not one but two different albums, each issued by a different company. The East Coast label T.E.J. put out the version by hack group "Dimensional Sound" (whose "sound" was more one-dimensional, if that) as part of a compilation called Muskrat Love And 24 More Big Hits! But when I was in school, at one point they had another LP with this exact soundalike, Disco Gold #2, on the West Coast-based United label (as in United/Superior, part of the Bihari brothers' empire). Because a few future #1's are on this LP, I'll hold off on putting up the ad for the Muskrat Love one until the proper time. (@Grant, commenting on one of the other "soundalike" LP compilations, noted how a cover of one Stevie Wonder record was "hilariously whitebread" or something like that.)
(I can't seem to insert quote containing a video, if I'm also including a video.) How is "Turn The Beat Around" - Vick Sue Robinson here? Song didn't reach #1 on Billboard charts. It peaked at #10. - Am I reading thread(s) too literally? - Elegant lady/beautiful vocals: Anita Baker: Giving You The Best That I Got. Billboard #1 = 2 weeks 1988. Release date: September or October 1988:
On this thread, we do not jump ahead. We are at the end of 1976. The video you posted was from twelve years later. Please do not go further than the songs being discussed.
