I’ve always liked this song and Tanya’s scratchy voice. Helen Reddy did a fine version of this also but I’ll take this treatment. It is the version I grew up with…I’ve always been a fan of Tanya Tucker.
When I was a senior in high school I had a job at a place called Tuckahoe Farms. It was Tanya’s farm but she had sold it by the time I worked there. They raised thoroughbred racing horses and it was huge. I was always hoping she would come back to visit but she never did.
It was written by former rockabilly star Larry Collins and country and western songwriter Alex Harvey. It was first recorded by Harvey in 1972. Tracy Nelson and Bette Midler put the song in their live repertoire before it became a country hit for 13-year-old Tanya. The melody and chorus are virtually identical to the Amazing Grace
Harvey says the tune is really about his mother, a heavy drinker who died in an apparent suicide by crashing into a tree when the songwriter was a teen. Harvey had just returned from a TV gig with his band…he had asked his mother not to go, worried she would embarrass him by drinking too much and making a spectacle. The guilt over his mother’s death stuck with him for years. A decade later, he was hanging out at Larry Collins’ house with a group of country musicians. Everyone fell asleep except for Harvey, who stayed up strumming his guitar. That’s when he saw his mother.
Alex Harvey:“I looked up and I felt as if my mother was in the room. I saw her very clearly. She was in a rocking chair and she was laughing,” he recalled. “My mother had come from the Mississippi Delta and she always lived her life as if she had a suitcase in her hand but nowhere to put it down. She was a hairdresser in Brownsville. She was very free-spirited, and folks in a small town don’t always understand people like that. She never really grew up.”
“I really believe that my mother didn’t come into the room that night to scare me, but to tell me, ‘It’s okay,’ and that she had made her choices in life and it had nothing to do with me. I always felt like that song was a gift to my mother and an apology to her. It was also a way to say ‘thank you’ to my mother for all she did.”
The song peaked at #6 on the Country Charts, #3 in Canada, and #72 on the Billboard 100 in 1972.
Helen Reddy would take the song to #1 on the Billboard 100 in 1973.
Barbra Streisand passed on the song after the backing track had been recorded by her producer without her prior knowledge.
Delta Dawn
Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you have on? Could it be a faded rose from days gone by? And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today To take you to his mansion in the sky?
She’s forty-one and her daddy still calls her “baby” All the folks around Brownsville say she’s crazy ‘Cause she walks dowtown with a suitcase in her hand Looking for a mysterious dark-haired man
In her younger days they called her Delta Dawn Prettiest woman you ever laid eyes on Then a man of low degree stood by her side And promised her he’d take her for his bride
Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you have on? Could it be a faded rose from days gone by? And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today To take you to his mansion in the sky?
Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you have on? Could it be a faded rose from days gone by? And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today To take you to his mansion in the sky?
Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you have on? Could it be a faded rose from days gone by? And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today To take you to his mansion in the sky?
Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you have on? Could it be a faded rose from days gone by? And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today To take you to his mansion in the sky?
In the late seventies, I borrowed a single from a friend…that was Wild Thing by the Troggs. I loved the raw sound. If there was ever a garage band that hit the big time…it was the Troggs. Wild Thing (1966) was a massive hit that sold over 1 million copies. Their other big hits were With A Girl Like You (1966) and Love Is All Around (1967). The B side to the single I had at the time was With A Girl Like You and I liked it better than Wild Thing.
The Troggs influenced a lot of Punk and Garage bands. Their songs could be played with a little practice. Almost every band starting out will play the 3 chord Wild Thing at least a few times.
Their songs have been covered by a countless number of unknown bands. Three more well-known artists have been Jimi Hendrix playing Wild Thing at Monterey and REM and Wet, Wet, Wet covered Love Is All Around.
The original members were Reg Presley, Ronnie Bond, Chris Britton, and Pete Staples. Reg Presley was the lead singer and wrote Love Is All Around which went to #7 and With A Girl Like You which went to #29.
The band is probably more known for a failed recording session which was leaked out more than they were for their hits. They are swearing and fighting with each other.
It is funny. If you are put off by swearing don’t listen but when you hear “Oh, we’ll put some fairy dust over it. I’ll piss over the tape”….it’s hard to resist. It was recorded in 1970 and leaked out in the early seventies on bootlegs called The Troggs Tapes...this became the inspiration for a few Spinal Tap scenes. I have some of it below in the videos.
After Love Is All Around in 1967 the band’s fame waned. They released some more singles but nothing approached their three big hits. REM made an album with the Troggs in 1992 called Athens Andover.
Reg Presley passed away in 2013. Chris Britton still plays some gigs with the Troggs today as the only original member left.
Wild Thing… like Louie, Louie was an important song in the history of Rock and Roll. It was much more important than the band that brought it to us…but you have to tip your hat to the Troggs. A garage band that is still being talked about in 2022.
This group was not one of the super British bands of the sixties, not even close. They will never be on anyone’s top ten, twenty, or higher best band list…but they left a few memorable songs, a large one, some influence, and a hilarious bitch session on tape for posterity…
Imagine a concert in 1975 with The Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, The Rolling Stones, The Who, and more. Well, it happened! Sorta. Rod Serling did all of the radio promos. It would be one of his last projects…he would pass away before it aired.
It was a 48-hour-long rock concert (Fantasy Park) that was aired by nearly 200 radio stations over Labor Day weekend in 1975. The program, produced by KNUS in Dallas, featured performances by dozens of rock stars of the day and even reunited The Beatles. It was also completely imaginary, a theatre-of-the-mind for the 70s.
The “concert” consisted of live and studio recordings by the artists with live effects added to make it sound legit.
The show had college students hitchhiking all over America hoping to get to Fantasy Park. In New Orleans when the concert aired, the IRS came knocking on the doors of WNOE trying to attach the gate receipts to make sure the Feds got their cut! Callers were asking where they could get tickets to this amazing show.
The show was so popular in Minnesota that they played it again in its entirety the next year…now that people knew it wasn’t real and weren’t looking for tickets. The greatest concert that never was. Fantasy Park had their own emcee and special reporters covering the weekend event giving you the play-by-play details along with some behind-the-scenes updates.
The concert would always be halted due to rain on a Sunday morning to allow the locals to get in their regular (usually religious) programming. The whole event ended promptly at 6 pm on Sunday.
Now people look for the full 48-hour tapes of the show. They are a hot collector’s item. Rod Serling passed away on June 28, 1975.
Bands at Fantasy Park
Chicago Elton John Led Zeppelin Joe Walsh Cream Shawn Phillips Pink Floyd Carly Simon James Taylor (& Carol King) Poco Alvin Lee Eagles Linda Rondstadt Dave Mason Steve Miller John Denver Beach Boys War Grand Funk Yes Deep Purple Rolling Stones Cat Stevens The Who Rolling Stones Moody Blues Marshall Tucker Band Allman Brothers Band Seals & Crofts America Joni Mitchell Doobie Brothers Loggins and Messina Crosby/Stills/Nash/Young Bob Dylan Beatles
I’ve always liked B-Sides… Let’s listen to some Liverpudlian Country Music.
I cannot hear this song without thinking of my grandmother. Her name was Sally and yes her last name started with G. She lived to the ripe old age of 96. I have posted about the A-side of this single Juniors Farm but never about this B-side that I like. I heard this song when I was 7 because my sister had this single and it’s been in my head ever since.
When I saw him in 2010 and 2014 I thought both times…hmmm he is in Nashville so Sally G surely will be played. Nope… Paul didn’t utter Sally’s name.
The song actually got played on the country stations in Nashville which looking back I can’t believe happened at that time. Nashville wasn’t exactly in love with rock performers.
Sally G was written and recorded in Nashville. In 1974 Paul McCartney came to Nashville. They rented a 133-acre farm just outside of Lebanon TN from songwriter Curly Putman (“Green, Green Grass of Home”) for $2,000 a week. They had requested a farm within 50 miles of Nashville that had horses and swimming facilities.
The band stayed at the farm for 6 weeks while the Putman family vacationed in Hawaii. When Putman and his wife returned to their farm, McCartney saw them walking up the driveway. McCartney and the band greeted them by playing “Green, Green Grass of Home.”
I have a cousin that lives in Lebanon around 5 miles from where he stayed…not a great picture but here it is today.
Lloyd Green, Bob Willis, and Johnny Gimble Willis contributed steel guitar, dobro, and fiddle respectively while adding legitimacy to McCartney’s country venture.
Paul playing guitar on “Junior’s Farm” in 1974
Sally G. and it peaked at #17 in the Billboard 100, #51 on the country charts, #11 in the Canadian Country charts, and #61 in Canada. Paul composed the song after visiting the nightlife in Printer’s Alley.
As his time in Tennessee came to a close, McCartney told a group of local reporters that he hoped to mount a U.S. tour the following year and that if it happened, Music City would definitely be on the itinerary.
McCartney didn’t come back until 36 years later in 2010 and I finally got to see him. Paul…you lied but all was forgiven when he took the stage.
I hardly ever point out a bridge in a song but in this one…it’s kept me listening for decades. It’s not the lyrics but the melody, backups, and harmonizing on the final “move along.”
Me and Sally took up, things began to look up, Me and her were going strong.
Then she started lyin’, I could see our love was dyin’. I heard a voice say, “Move along, move along”.
Paul McCartney:“Buddy Killen [studio owner and music publisher] took us out to Printer’s Alley, a little club district,” “I didn’t see anyone named ‘Sally G’ in Printer’s Alley, nor did I see anyone who ran her eyes over me when she was singing ‘A Troubled Mind.’ That was my imagination, adding to the reality of it.”
Musician gets to stay on the farm for 3 weeks.
Home movies of Wings in the studio in Nashville 1974
Sally G
Somewhere to the south of New York City Lies the friendly state of Tennessee, Down in Nashville town I met a pretty Who made a pretty big fool out of me.
And they call her Sally, Sally G, why d’you wanna do the things you do to me? You’re my Sally, Sally G took the part that was the heart of me, Sally G.
The night life took me down to Printers Alley, where Sally sang a song behind a bar. I ran my eyes across her as she sang a tangled mime, I used to love to hear her sweet guitar.
And they call her Sally, Sally G, why d’you wanna do the things you do to me? You’re my Sally, Sally G took the part that was the heart of me, Sally G.
Me and Sally took up, things began to look up, Me and her were going strong.
Then she started lyin’, I could see our love was dyin’. I heard a voice say, “Move along, move along”.
Well now. I’m on my own again, I wonder if she ever really understood. I never thought to ask her what the letter “G” stood for, But I know for sure it wasn’t good.
And they call her Sally, Sally G, why d’you wanna do the things you do to me? You’re my Sally, Sally G took the part that was the heart of me, Sally G.
This movie is a B movie all of the way…and it plays up that fact… It was released in 1990 and if you are wanting to watch something that spoofs the 1970s… This movie is for you. You will also learn the word tetrahydrozoline.
This movie stars David Cassidy, Lief Garrett, Carl and Rob Reiner, and Olivia d’Abo… Citizen Kane, it is NOT. It’s a fun film about the future where all is gray and they lost every record because of a magnetic storm including the US Constitution.
Adam-11 (David Cassidy) has built a time machine because he wants to go to a beach…beaches don’t exist anymore in the future. The government wants him to use the time machine to go into the past to 1776 and get a copy of the US Constitution so they can rebuild their society with it. To make it work he needs a chemical that’s rare in the future… tetrahydrozoline (the main ingredient to a very popular item in the ’70s… Visine).
The government agrees to give him some tetrahydrozoline but sends two more travelers Chanel-6 (d’Abo ), Heinz 57 (Geoff Hoyle) with Adam-11 to retrieve the document…but instead of going back to 1776 the time machine malfunctions and goes to 1976.
Devo makes an appearance as the “Ministry of Knowledge”…
It’s a corny movie but they have the 70s down in many parts of the movie. After meeting up with two teenage stoners (The group Redd Kross) they look for the constitution but lose the tetrahydrozoline. If you are looking for a second Gone with the Wind…don’t watch this but it’s funny and silly enough to entertain you.
You have to know a little about the 70s to get some of the jokes…Like David Cassidy’s character looking around a garage in 1976 asking “am I going to be stuck here forever?” while looking at a Partridge Family lunch box.
If you are bored, try this one. The trailer is below the complete movie is below that.
When I think of Cheap Trick, I think of a checkered pattern and the 5-neck guitar of Rick Nielson. I guess I should add power pop to that list that they carried on from bands such as Badfinger, The Raspberries, and Big Star.
I got to see Cheap Trick in 1984 at Opryland in Nashville. Opryland was a theme park that was foolishly closed in the late 90s so Nashville could have yet another mall. The concert was short…it was only an hour but they are one of the best bands I got to see. Cheap Trick has always been one of the hardest-working bands in rock. They seem to always be on tour since the 70s.
The band fits in with just about any type of band. They have shared the bill with John Mellencamp, KISS, Krokus, REO Speedwagon, The Who, Motley Crue, Kool and the Gang, Iron Maiden, The Oak Ridge Boys, and Willie Dixon. How much more variety does anyone need? When you go from the Oak Ridge Boys, Mellencamp, and Iron Maiden…you have ran the gamut.
The lyrics were inspired by women the band met in southern Canada. However, Rick Nielsen didn’t like the sound of “Southern Canadian Girls” in the hook, so he just left it as “Southern Girls.”
Rick Nielsen and Cheap Trick’s bass player Tom Petersson wrote the song.
The song was on the album In Color, you can find a review at John’s site (2 Loud 2 Old Music) …great info. The album was released in 1977 and was produced by Tom Werman. He took their sound and produced a more power pop radio sound than their debut album.
This is the album that paved their way to stardom in Japan and later on Live at Budokan that was their breakthrough in the US. Five out of the 10 tracks on this album ended up on the live album.
Southern Girls
I’ve been north, I’ve been east to the California beach There’s only one place I know where to find you And all you Southern girls got a way with your words And you show it You say hump and I’ll jump You say go and I’ll know Waste no time getting So close to you And you’ll never run way When you find out why I wanted to find you
Ooh baby need some brand new shoes Get out on the street You got nothing to lose You rock me and your crazy And everyone says it, yeah yeah Southern girls, you got nothing to lose Southern girls, you got nothing to lose
I’ve been up I’ve been down I’ve been weak I’ve been strong But I never met someone like you And you’ll never run away When you find why I wanted to find you You say hump and I’ll jump You say go and I’ll know Waste no time getting So close to you All you Southern girls Got a way with your words And you show it
Ooh baby need some brand new shoes Get out on the street You got nothing to lose You rock me and your crazy And everyone says it, yeah yeah Southern girls, you got nothing to lose Southern girls, you got nothing to lose
You think this boy, he loves you Southern girls You make it hard oh, so hard I’ve been north, I’ve been east to the California beach There’s only one place I know where to find you And all you Southern girls got a way with your words And you show it
Ooh baby need some brand new shoes Get out on the street You got nothing to lose You rock me and your crazy And everyone says it, yeah yeah
Southern girls, you got nothing to lose Southern girls, you got nothing to lose Southern girls Southern girls Southern girls
I remember this song most in Goodfellas in the scene where Henry is doing cocaine, then walking out the door, placing guns in the car trunk while a helicopter circles above. The song has a Stones feel to it. It would have not have been out of place on one of their albums.
The song was released in 1971 on his album Nilsson Schmilsson. It also contained the Badfinger cover Without You and Coconut. Jump into the Fire peaked at#27 in the Billboard 100 and #16 in Canada. This song was more rock than he usually released. From the man who wrote Coconut, Me and My Arrow, and the Puppy Song… this was a departure.
Harry’s voice was one of a kind. That is said a lot about singers but with Nilsson it was true. Just one listen to how he reimaged Without You tells you all you need to know. He was also a great songwriter on top of that. This song was the follow up to Without You.
The song featured Chris Spedding’s driving guitar, Jim Keltner’s drums and a cool bass solo by Herbie Flowers. The bass alone on the track is worth the price of admission.
In 1968 John Lennon and Paul McCartney were asked who their favorite American group was…they said “Nilsson.” John Lennon would later produce Nilsson’s 1974 album Pussy Cats.
Harry Nilsson: “I’ve had a lot of publicity out of the fact that the Beatles liked my album Pandemonium Shadow Show, and named me as their favorite singer. But I didn’t really like that. Obviously I was very pleased and very flattered – and now I’ve got to know John and Paul quite well, and we get on well together. They’re both very gentle people. But I wasn’t keen on getting all that publicity because of them. It made me feel that I was riding on someone else’s back – in other words it was because of them that I was being talked about, and not because of me. But I think the whole thing was blown up a bit out of proportion by the Press.”
Al Kooper:“I went to visit him at his home in L.A. That first day we smoked a lot of pot and just laughed. Then we went swimming in his pool, with our clothes on, for what was the first and only ‘Brian Jones Memorial Swim Party.’ Later on, we sat down at his piano and traded songs. His voice and songs were fantastic, some of the greatest I’d ever heard.”
He never performed before a live audience during his entire recording career. Shortly before his death, however, he did join Ringo Starr on stage one night during the ex-Beatle’s tour.
Here is the Goodfellas scene where Jump Into The Fire goes into a Stones song
“Jump Into The Fire”
You can climb a mountain You can swim the sea You can jump into the fire But you’ll never be free
You can shake me up Or I can break you down Whoa-o-o-o-, whoa-o-o-o-
We can make each other happy [4X] [Repeat entire 3 times more] You can jump into the fire [4X]
The riff in this song is ominous sounding. As usual Van Zant’s lyrics fit the music perfectly. This song seems strange knowing that many members had guns and were widely known as a wild band.
This song is about the cheap guns you could buy on the street for 20 bucks called Saturday Night Specials. Van Zant was advocating more control over the illegal ones that were so easy to get.
Lynyrd Skynyrd weren’t against legal guns. Many of them had them. Leon Wilkeson, the bass player, actually took to wearing a holster and a real gun onstage but it was only loaded with blanks. On one tour they were opening for Black Sabbath at Nassau Coliseum, Long Island. Black Sabbath fans apparently didn’t like them and rushed the stage with taunts.
When one fan got too close, Wilkeson drew his pistol and fired a blank over the heads of the crowd. Everybody immediately backed off and the show completed without any more trouble. Yep…they were a wild bunch.
The song peaked at #27 in the Billboard 100 and #63 in Canada. It was off of their Nothin’ Fancy album released in 1975. The album peaked at #8 in the Billboard Album Charts and #43 in the UK. It would be their last album produced by Al Kooper.
For this song, drummer Bob Burns had to take a break from touring and Artimus Pyle was brought in to replace him. Pyle was given just a couple of days to rehearse the song in a rented Atlanta club before they hit the road again.
This was the last album that Ed King appeared on with the original band. Ed was from Southern California and the only non-Southerner in the lineup. He said he felt like an outsider in the band. He was originally in the Strawberry Alarm Clock and joined Lynyrd Skynyrd just in time for their original album and played bass on that. He would soon switch back to electric guitar and would help write Sweet Home Alabama.
One night on tour in Pittsburgh King was fed up and left in the middle of the night. They had 4 weeks remaining on the tour.
Ed King:We had a show in Pittsburgh one night. (May 26, 1975) Ronnie and my guitar tech got thrown in jail the night before in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They were really late getting to the show. My guitar strings weren’t changed for the show. By the end of the night, I had broken two strings. All the way back to the hotel Ronnie was just raising hell about it. When we got back to the hotel, I just said that this is just really screwed up. This came at the very end of all kinds of stuff on that tour. I just didn’t need it anymore.
Despite this…. some people forget just how good live they were. They could go toe to toe with the Stones or any other touring band at the time.
Mick Jagger laid some ground rules at the 1976 Knebworth Festival for Lynyrd Skynyrd…they could do what they wanted except walk down the prop tongue part of the stage. That was a stupid thing to tell this band…they did exactly that.
The Stones played later but the day belonged to Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Gary Rossington:“It was a strong message that Ronnie was conveying, Those cheap handguns were no good for hunting or anything else – they were just made to kill people. And those guns were easy to find. We came from a rough part of town, the west side of Jacksonville. There were a lot of bad people there, and every week you’d hear that somebody got shot or killed.”
Although the song didn’t hit the top 20, it has remained a staple on classic rock radio for years.
This is a live version in 1976 at the Knebworth Festival after Ed left the band and Steve Gaines took his place. Gaines was probably the best guitar player they ever had.
Saturday Night Special
Two feet they come a creepin’ Like a black cat do And two bodies are layin’ naked Creeper think he got nothin’ to lose So he creeps into this house, yeah And unlocks the door And as a man’s reaching for his trousers Shoots him full of thirty-eight holes
Mr. Saturday night special Got a barrel that’s blue and cold Ain’t good for nothin’ But put a man six feet in a hole
Big Jim’s been drinkin’ whiskey And playin’ poker on a losin’ night And pretty soon ol’ Jim starts a thinkin’ Somebody been cheatin’ and lyin’ So Big Jim commence to fightin’ I wouldn’t tell you no lie Big Jim done pulled his pistol Shot his friend right between the eyes
Mr. Saturday night special Got a barrel that’s blue and cold Ain’t good for nothin’ But put a man six feet in a hole
Oh, it’s the Saturday night special
Hand guns are made for killin’ They ain’t no good for nothin’ else And if you like to drink your whiskey You might even shoot yourself So why don’t we dump ’em people To the bottom of the sea Before some ol’ fool come around here Wanna shoot either you or me
Mr. Saturday night special Got a barrel that’s blue and cold Ain’t good for nothin’ But put a man six feet in a hole
Mr. the Saturday night special And I’d like to tell you what you could do with it And that’s the end of the song
Happy Friday Everyone! Hope your week is going well. Lisa from Tao Talk did me an honor by posting an article I wrote on her site about Maria McKee from Lone Justice in her Women Music March series…she has had some great artists! Check it out if you can.
When Big Star comes up, when people think of a member…it’s usually Alex Chilton. That is not a bad thing but on their debut album Chris Bell was just as prevalent as Chilton. This song was off of their debut album named #1 Record. It’s the only album to feature Chris Bell along with Alex Chilton the entire album. They complimented each other perfectly.
After writing a post for Dave’s site about Badfinger (thanks Dave)…a band that I obviously like…I thought I would post about another band that is right up there. I hold Big Star’s music up with The Who, Beatles. and Kinks…they never had the sales but they did have a giant influence. They released this album as their debut in August of 1972. Whenever I write about this band, I always have to stop myself from gushing about them. Was it the mystique of them? Was it the coolness factor of liking a band that not many people know? No and no. It’s about the music. Mystique and coolness wear off and all you are left with is the music…We are fortunate to have 3 albums by Big Star to enjoy.
“Feel” leads off the album with a bang. Feel was written by Chris Bell and Alex Chilton and Bell takes the lead vocal. There are more hooks in this song than in a tackle box. This is what power pop is all about. If I had to introduce someone to power pop, I would ask them to listen to #1 Record by Big Star and Straight Up by Badfinger.
All three are in Rolling Stone’s top 500 albums of all time. For a band that never charted a record that isn’t too bad. When their albums were finally discovered by later bands, they influenced many artists such as The Replacements, REM, The Cars, Cheap Trick, Sloan, Matthew Sweet, KISS, Wilco, Gin Blossoms, and many more. They influenced alternative rock of the 80s and 90s and continue to this day.
Drummer Jody Stephens: “All of a sudden I’m playing with these guys that can write songs that are as engaging to me as the people I’d grown up listening to, so I felt incredibly lucky.”
Paul Westerberg: “I never travel far, without a little Big Star,”
Alternate Mix
Feel
Wondering what are you doing? You’re driving me to ruin The love that you’ve been stealing
Has given me a feeling
I feel like I’m dying I’m never gonna live again You just ain’t been trying It’s getting very near the end
I feel like I’m dying I’m never gonna live again You just ain’t been trying It’s getting very near the end
Wondering what are you doing? You’re driving me to ruin The love that you’ve been stealing Has given me the feeling
I feel like I’m dying I’m never gonna live again You just ain’t been trying It’s getting very near the end
Thanks to Max, aka “Badfinger” for giving me the chance to write something for his site today! He’s likewise written something cool about the band from which he took his screen-name, for my site, A Sound Day, (http://soundday.wordpress.com today) One of the best things about writing a blog, for about four years now, has been getting to know other bloggers with similar interests and read their posts. Of those, Badfinger has been a favorite of mine almost since I came to WordPress. I’m amazed that he and I are similar in age and have very similar tastes in music, and in baseball as well. So, needless to say he’s a pretty cool guy!
What I do at A Sound Day is post daily articles generally involving things which have happened on that calendar day in the world of music – album releases, records hitting #1, musicians having birthdays, that sort of thing. A simple enough idea, and one which I must admit wasn’t entirely original. A decade or so back, ex-Sex Pistol John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) ran a short syndicated radio bit called “A Rotten Day” which did the same basically, but in headline form delivered in his characteristically snarky persona. So, it’s not a unique idea, but I try to go beyond the headlines and tell a story. Make it interesting. For example, we pretty much all know the song “Midnight Train to Georgia”, but how many knew it was indirectly inspired by a Mississippi songwriter talking to Farrah Fawcett? Lots of us like London Calling, but do we know that the big hit single on it, “Train in Vain” wasn’t included on the track listing printed on the record because it wasn’t supposed to be on the album? How about an avant garde new wave rocker who has a successful second career writing books about archaeology? It’s the details that make the stories interesting and I try to find them… and remind people of some great music that they might have forgotten. Or introduce them to music I love that they might not have even heard. Grudgingly, I sometimes even cover music that, well, didn’t really get my motor running but was important in its own way, and try to listen to it with a fresh ear. If it was rock, or pop, or maybe even occasionally country, and it was from the ’60s to the end of the century, I’ve probably given it a look. That’s kind of an overview of what I do there, but let me tell you a bit about why.
Music has always been important to me. A big part of my memories… so much so that it can be an almost Rainman-like, frustrating ability. I can barely remember the names of my teachers or classmates from 1974, for example, but I can probably name two-thirds of the #1 songs of that year without ever looking to Google or Wiki. I couldn’t tell you the name of a girl I might have danced with at a junior high dance, but I can still recall the song was “Car Wash” by Rose Royce.
Mind you, there weren’t a lot of dances for young me. I was rather ill a lot of the time, and had by 1970s standards, a very over-protective mother…although by today’s standards, she was pretty lax. At least I walked or cycled to school myself instead of being driven to the door. But if it was raining, or cold, I probably wouldn’t be going out with friends to hang out on the weekend – “you’d get sick.” So I was home (with chain-smoking adults) and prone to lots of asthma attacks and bouts of pneumonia. Things like reading, looking outside at the birds coming to the feeder and music took on an import to me that many wouldn’t be able to relate to. Music especially.
Both my parents liked music, and every vague memory I have of being very young seems to have included music somewhere in the background. One of my first memories was listening to Sgt.Pepper and marveling in the weird but delightful sounds coming from the big wooden-cabinet stereo in the living room, while being dazzled by the funny-looking cover of the record. I can’t say whether it was my Mom or my brother who had the album… my Mom loved the Beatles and my older brother was a rocker as long as I can remember. One time just after he was old enough to drive, my Dad let him drive the car home most of the way from a family Florida vacation. He played Wish You Were Here on 8-track for almost the entire ride. It took some years for me to be able to listen to that with happy ears, I can tell you! Pop, Beatles, Glen Campbell, some old-school country now and again… there always seemed to be music on in the house when I was little.
Around when I was five, I was given a little transistor radio. Might have been for my birthday, might have been for Christmas. I can’t remember. What I do remember is that little black plastic, mono radio with its’ rotating dial and tiny earbud let me listen to my own music…and life was never the same. And here, I feel very lucky because I grew up near Toronto, Canada… so I got to mature listening to two of the coolest radio stations on the continent…CHUM when I was a kid, and CFNY as I grew towards adulthood.
The first station I seemed to find on that little transistor was 1050 CHUM. A Toronto “hits” station that was by far the most-listened to station in the entire country at the time. It had been around since, well about since Noah went looking for two giraffes and two hornets ( did you really have to take them…but I digress!) but one which had switched to rock and pop before the curve, in 1957. “All Shook Up” was the first song they played apparently, and their first #1 song. Madonna’s “Live to Tell” was its final one, 29 years later before it changed formats (the station still exists but is now talk sports apparently) so it covered my early school and junior high years. My tuner rarely swayed back then, even though my radios got better and better through the ’70s, to a big transistor with a big built-in speaker to one of those only-in-the-70s white, plastic stereos with rounded corners and a turntable on top. And I put that to use; while other kids were spending their allowances on chocolate bars or comic books, I was saving my coins til we went to the mall and I could buy “Chevy Van” or “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You” as singles. I still remember the first LP I bought – Elton John’s Greatest Hits. Nearly 50 years later, that still seems like a pretty decent place to start.
CHUM was a pretty conventional “top 40” station, even though it actually had a “top 30”. And a cool thing about that was they actually published it weekly… I’d stop by the basement of Eatons and go to the records and pick up a little folder with the top 30 songs listed inside, as the picture shows. And take a look at that, a fairly typical example of one. Rock – how ’bout BTO or Rick Derringer? Country, dare you say? Umm, Tom T. Hall, John Denver. Cool pop? Elton John, Wings. Disco? It’s there. In fact, CHUM let us hear pretty much everything that was hot in the decade from Motown to Meco to McCartney. It was one of the great things about the decade, its music (which Max nicely reminded us last week with his 70s AM Radio series) and radio before it became too formulated and narrow in playlists. Plus, it mixed in a fair bit of Canadian content. That helped the homegrown artists and let us hear even more of a range of music. The world knew Anne Murray and BTO but we knew Wednesday (from my hometown, their biggest hit being a cover of “Last Kiss”) and Edward Bear too. Years before he was writing “Black Velvet” for his girlfriend Alannah Myles, we knew Christopher Ward as a decent singer of soft-rock ballads (www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E1VgsoS6i4 ) thanks to CHUM.
One thing Toronto was great for – many say best in North America – was being open to new sounds and “obscure” British music. By 1980, CHUM’s list of #1 songs included some classic rock mega-names – Led Zeppelin, John Lennon, Pink Floyd – but also things like “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors and “Making Plans for Nigel” by XTC. That might have been inspired a bit by the second great station that I lived with – CFNY.
CFNY-FM was a station started in the late-’70s in “the little yellow farmhouse” in the outer suburbs. It’s reach was only a few miles at first; it’s nickname “the Spirit of Radio”… yes the one and the same name Rush wrote a song about. It concentrated on finding and playing great music other stations ignored. If you were going to hear the Damned, solo Peter Gabriel or Depeche Mode years before other people would in Canada, it was going to be on CFNY. As time went by though the station relocated, bought more powerful transmistors and was broadcasting to half a million regular listeners from the CN Tower. And making bands like the Psychedelic Furs and The Smths huge, arena-selling artists in Toronto. Such was their sway in the area that soon other stations began copying them to some degree. Not many hard rock stations were playing A Flock of Seagulls or “music at work” stations The Stranglers, but in Toronto they were. They had to to compete. Now, don’t get me wrong. I actually liked Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, even Madonna and I did hear them, once in awhile turning over to a hit station, or watching Much Music (our version of MTV) but by listening to so much CFNY I found incredible music by artists most elsewhere in North America never heard of – It’s Immaterial, Black (Liverpool singer Colin Vearncombe), (www.youtube.com/watch?v=koRT3HEmre4 )
Sinead O’Connor long before she flipped her wig and became a Saturday Night Live punchline. And as with CHUM, CFNY highlighted a lot of great Canadian acts. A couple of them went on to become national heroes with a lengthy string of platinum records at home… while remaining anonymous outside the Great White North. Blue Rodeo and Tragically Hip. The latter had very Canadian-oriented lyrics that made them so endeared the Prime Minister attended their final concert… which was televised nationwide on the national network! The former mixed country and rock seamlessly to create a great music that at the time defied labels – alt country? Country rock? Later it would probably be described as one of the early examples of “Americana” music (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqa4YzKPrFw ), following the traditions of The Band before them. Something we took to by the millions up there… but wouldn’t likely have ever heard were it not for that one station championing them in the early days. See an example of one of their year-end charts below.
When I was six or seven, and coughing and my parents were fighting, I could be in my room listening to Jim Gold or the Doobie Brothers on that transistor radio…and feel kind of happy. A decade or so later, I didn’t fit in that well in many places but when I went to the indie record store and picked up the latest import 12” Depeche Mode single, I was everyone else’s equal… the equivalent of a Sheldon in Stuart’s comic book shop on Big Bang Theory. Music was my friend.
It still is, and I feel priviledged to be able to help you discover some of it, and make some human friends all the while doing so. Thanks again Max, for giving me this space today.
This is a cool funky instrumental by Billy Preston from 1972.
This instrumental was a track from Billy Preston’s sixth album, I Wrote a Simple Song, his first for A&M Records. Preston had faith in the song but A&M placed it on the B side to I Wrote a Simple Song. The same old story here…when the disc jockeys turned the single over they played it more than the A side.
I Wrote a Simple Song,” only peaked at #77 on the Billboard 100 Chart. I’m sure Billy Preston felt good about that.
Like Stevie Wonder was using at the time, Preston used a Clavinet for this song.
Three years before this, Preston played with the Beatles on the Let It Be album. John even suggested that they add him to the band. George Harrison kept working with Preston, using him on his 1970 solo album All Things Must Pass. When Harrison embarked on his only solo tour in 1974, Preston was in his band, but a big enough star in his own right to get some of his own songs in the set, including Outa-Space.
Preston was a top session keyboardist in the 1960s. He ended up backing artists such as Little Richard, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, the Everly Brothers, Reverend James Cleveland, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
The song won the 1972 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.
This was used in several movies, including the 1973 TV movie Go Ask Alice, Muppets From Space, Rush Hour 2, and The Look of Love.
From Wiki: Preston had suffered kidney disease in his later years. He received a kidney transplant in 2002, but his health continued to deteriorate. He had voluntarily entered a drug rehabilitation clinic in Malibu, California, and suffered pericarditis there, leading to respiratory failure that left him in a coma from November 21, 2005. Preston died on June 6, 2006, in Scottsdale, Arizona.
To wrap 1970’s AM Radio Gold week up…I had to include this one….so I hope you have a happy Sunday…in your Chevy Van or whatever you drive. This song takes me back to being a kid hearing on a car radio at night. I try not to repeat songs on my blog…but with this theme…I just had to include this one. For me when I think of AM radio…this is the first one that comes to mind. I posted a small post about this song 4 years ago…hope you don’t mind.
Sammy Johns re- released Chevy Van back in 1975 and it peaked at #5 in the Billboard 100,#7 in Canada and #2 in New Zealand. It is pure AM 70’s pop and it caught my imagination as a youngster.
I remember vans in the seventies…painted with all kinds of designs until the minivan came and ruined the whole damn thing. We went from this:
to this…in a blink of an eye. No place to hide in this one.
The musicians that back Johns are the famous Wrecking Crew from Los Angeles. The song has been covered by many Country artists and most recently by Eric Church.
John’s compositions have also been recorded or covered by other artists such as Waylon Jennings, Sammy Kershaw, Conway Twitty. Jennings sang John’s composition “America” on a nationally broadcast ceremony to mark the restoration done on the Statue of Liberty. This led to the success of the single which went gold and was even nominated country song of the year.
Also this song was the theme song to the movie The Van (which yea…I have) released in 1977. It was the first movie Danny DeVito was in. I thought I would include a movie trailer to The Van. It won’t be confused with The Godfather at anytime but it’s a fun B 70s Movie.
Thank you for reading this week!
Chevy Van
I gave a girl a ride in my wagon She rolled in and took control She was tired and her mind was a-draggin’ I said get some sleep and dream of rock and roll
‘Cause like a picture she was layin’ there Moonlight dancin’ off her hair She woke up and took me by the hand She’s gonna love me in my Chevy van And that’s all right with me
Her young face was like that of an angel Her long legs were tanned and brown Better keep your eyes on the road, son Better slow this vehicle down
‘Cause like a picture she was layin’ there Moonlight dancin’ off her hair She woke up and took me by the hand She’s gonna love me in my Chevy van And that’s all right with me
I put her out in a town that was so small You could throw a rock from end to end A dirt road Main Street, she walked off in bare feet It’s a shame I won’t be passin’ through again
‘Cause like a picture she was layin’ there Moonlight dancin’ off her hair She woke up and took me by the hand We made love in my Chevy van And that’s all right with me
We just got 2-3 inches of snow last night…Summer Breeze is just what we need.
I’m probably the only one out there that always thought it was “Seals and Croft” not a plural Crofts. Other than me not paying attention all my life to that…this song IS the 70s. No song I can write about represents AM Gold better than this one.
Jim Seals and Dash Crofts were from Texas. They belonged to a later version of The Champs…The Champs had a hit “Tequila” in 1958. When the group dissolved in 1965, they worked with several other artists including Gene Vincent. In 1969 they released their first album as a duo. “Summer Breeze” was the first hit single, appearing on their fourth album in fall 1972.
“Summer Breeze” almost went nowhere. By the fall of 1972 the album Summer Breeze had been out for a couple of months, but the title single…the song the duo had worked so hard to perfect had barely charted, and their label informed them it would do no more promotion. While they were on tour in Boston, their manager convinced them that while they were there, they should show up to one of the city’s most popular radio stations and play “Summer Breeze” for a DJ.
The DJ ended up liking it. After listening to it, he looked up and delivered the news… Summer Breeze was going into rotation. The song quickly caught on in Boston and other markets like Philadelphia and Dallas, soon followed. When they got back to L.A., they heard Summer Breeze on the car radio.
Jim Seals is the brother of Dan Seals, who was “England Dan” in the duo England Dan and John Ford Coley. They had several hit songs in the ’70s.
The song peaked at #6 in the Billboard 100, #6 in Canada, and #14 in New Zealand in 1973.
I’ve always liked a 1974 cover by the Isley Brothers also, featuring much livelier guitar. It peaked at #16 in the UK. Some of the other artists to cover it include Johnny Mathis, The Main Ingredient, and Jason Mraz.
Jim Seals:“A very simple song about a man coming home from work and hearing the dog barking and things like that, and to a lot of people the song’s about looking for security. Our meaning goes further than that, for a prison can be the prison of self and a person can become insecure and paranoid if he doesn’t have a direction in his personal life.”
From Songfacts
“Blowing through the jasmine in my mind”? Long before it was a Disney princess, jasmine was a kind of flower that blooms in the summer. Also good for tea, Seals & Crofts use it to bring about feelings of contentment and harmony in this song, which is a feel-good classic about enjoying some simple pleasures in life with the ones you love. Jim Seals explained in 1972: “We operate on a different level, we try to create images, impressions and trains of thought in the minds of our listeners.”
Seals & Crofts were devoted to the Baha’i faith, and believed that by writing about life itself, many meanings would emerge for the listener.
Type O Negative released a very foreboding cover of “Summer Breeze” in 1993 that was used in the 1997 movie I Know What You Did Last Summer. Other movies to use the song include:
Rock Odyssey (1987) King of California (2007) Land of the Lost (2009) Vacation Friends (2021)
It also appears in these TV shows: Freaks and Geeks (“Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers” – 2000) How I Met Your Mother (“Matchmaker” – 2005) Girls (“The Return” – 2012) Family Guy (“Yacht Rocky” – 2019) The Blacklist (“The Protean (No. 36)” – 2021)
Summer Breeze
See the curtains hangin’ in the window, in the evenin’ on a Friday night A little light a-shinin’ through the window, lets me know everything is alright
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind
See the paper layin’ in the sidewalk, a little music from the house next door So I walked on up to the doorstep, through the screen and across the floor
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind
Sweet days of summer, the jasmine’s in bloom July is dressed up and playing her tune And I come home from a hard day’s work And you’re waiting there, not a care in the world See the smile a-waitin’ in the kitchen, food cookin’ and the plates for two Feel the arms that reach out to hold me, in the evening when the day is through
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind
The Jackson Five had some great pop songs in the seventies. Most of the early songs were full of energy and infectious. They called their music bubblegum soul. This was the first Jackson 5 single released by Motown Records (they released a single on a local label in Gary, Indiana, in 1968). It launched their career and went to #1 in the US, as did the next three releases: “ABC,” “The Love You Save” and “I’ll Be There.”
The song peaked at #1 in the Billboard 100, #2 in Canada, #2 in the UK, and #12 in New Zealand 1969-1970.
Motown had set up offices in Los Angeles, which is where the Jackson 5 relocated and where this song was written and recorded. The top songwriting/production team at Motown, Holland-Dozier-Holland, had left the label to get better terms, so there was a huge void that many Motown writers were trying to fill.
Their first three songs were written and produced by a Motown collective known as “The Corporation”: Freddie Perren, Deke Richards, Fonce Mizell, and Berry Gordy Jr. Gordy was head of the label and assigned them that name, which kept the focus on the team instead of the individuals within it – if one member deigned to leave, he could replace him.
The Jackson 5 found a winning formula early. Michael Jackson sang the lead and his brothers added vocals in the song. It also opened the door for family groups with young lead singers, notably the Osmonds and the DeFranco Family.
It has gained popularity because of being included on the 2014 soundtrack Guardians Of The Galaxy, which was a #1 hit in America for two weeks.
From Songfacts
The Jackson 5 were a family group from Gary, Indiana, that were auditioned to exhaustion by their father, Joe, before signing with Motown Records in 1968. Joe made sure the youngest brother, Michael, was out front – his voice, dance moves and stage presence were the star of the show. When “I Want You Back” was released in October 1969, Michael was just 11 years old, but by that point he had so much training he could handle the promotional appearances and rigorous schedule. The entire group was media trained by Motown, and for a while they were ordered to tell a story about how Diana Ross discovered the group. For the most part, they came off as a regular family, with Michael citing basketball and catching lizards as hobbies. They described their sound as “bubblegum soul,” a term that explains their appeal to both black and white audiences.
This song tells a tried-and-true story about a guy who took his girl for granted and now desperately wants her back now that she’s left him. Making it work from the perspective of an 11-year-old boy took some doing, but the upbeat track takes the weight off, so it sounds more like a schoolyard crush. There are also lots of answer lines in the lyric (“Let you go, baby…”) that give the other members of the group a chance to chime in.
“I Want You Back” started as a song Freddie Perren, Fonce Mizell, and Deke Richards wrote for Gladys Knight & The Pips called “I Want To Be Free.” Perren and Mizell were childhood friends from New Jersey who moved to Los Angeles and teamed up with Deke Richards, a producer at Motown. When Berry Gordy heard the song, he decided it could be a good fit for the Jackson 5 if it got a rewrite. Michael Jackson reminded Gordy of Frankie Lymon, another teenage star, Gordy suggested they write it as if it were for Lymon. They reworked the song, changing the storyline so it’s about a young kid trying to get his girl back, and they fashioned a lively track to underline it.
When the song took off, Perren, Mizell, Richards and Gordy became the songwriting/production team that powered the Jackson 5. Stung by the loss of his marquee team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, Gordy branded this new team “The Corporation,” which is how the songwriting credit was listed. This kept the writers’ names off the record, ensuring they would remain anonymous. They became the first West Coast songwriting team to make a big impact at Motown.
The musicians who played on most of the ’60s Motown hits were members of their Detroit house band, the Funk Brothers. The Jackson 5 recorded in Los Angeles with a new group of session players. On “I Want You Back,” they included Louis Shelton and David Walker on guitars, Wilton Felder on bass, and Gene Pello on drums.
This song opens with an ear-catching piano glissando that was played by two of the song’s writers, Freddie Perren and Fonce Mizell.
Berry Gordy went out of his way to make this a hit, using all his resources at Motown to do so. With the ’60s coming to a close and Motown moving west, Gordy wanted to mint new stars at the label, and he knew he had a winner in the Jackson 5. One of his ploys was to claim the group was discovered by Diana Ross, and have her showcase the group for industry bigwigs. Ross was also in transition, having recently left The Supremes and launched her solo career. This bit about Ross finding the group proved a solid talking point and was propagated for decades. Nobody seemed to care that it was a ruse – there was a lot more to talk about concerning the Jackson 5 and their precocious lead singer.
Two popular songs sampled this in 2001: Jay Z used it on “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” and it was also used on Lil’ Romeo’s “My Baby.” In 1992, it was sampled on the Kris Kross hit “Jump.”
The sci-fi soul singer-songwriter Janelle Monáe covered this as a bonus track on the deluxe edition of her The Electric Lady album. She explained to A.V.Club that she chose this particular tune as it resonated with her. “There are so many amazing Michael Jackson songs from different stages of his career,” she said, “and that happened to be one of my favorite stages. It makes people happy, and I love the tone, and musically, it has a lot of places to go for our orchestra. It has a lot of odd instrumentation.”
“The version I did does not sound like the Jackson 5 original recording,” Monáe continued. “I wanted to interpret it my way and record it differently, while continuing to pay homage to him, but I saw it in a different light. I’m really excited to let you guys hear it because you’ll get a chance to hear that song from my perspective. I had a dream about it and how I wanted it to be recorded.”
This song appears in the films Now and Then (1995), Drumline (2002), Daddy Day Care (2003) and Friends with Benefits (2011).
I Want You Back
When I had you to myself, I didn’t want you around Those pretty faces always make you stand out in a crowd But someone picked you from the bunch, one glance is all it took Now it’s much too late for me to take a second look
Oh baby, give me one more chance (To show you that I love you) Won’t you please let me back in your heart Oh darlin’, I was blind to let you go (Let you go, baby) But now since I’ve seen you it is on (I want you back) Oh I do now (I want you back) Ooh ooh baby (I want you back) Yeah yeah yeah yeah (I want you back) Na na na na
Trying to live without your love is one long sleepless night Let me show you, girl, that I know wrong from right Every street you walk on, I leave tear stains on the ground Following the girl I didn’t even want around
Let me tell ya now Oh baby, all I need is one more chance (To show you that I love you) Won’t you please let me back in your heart Oh darlin’, I was blind to let you go (Let you go, baby) But now since I’ve seen you it is on
All I want All I need All I want! All I need!
Oh, just one more chance To show you that I love you Baby baby baby baby baby baby! (I want you back) Forget what happened then (I want you back) And let me live again!
Oh baby, I was blind to let you go But now since I’ve seen you it is on (I want you back) Spare me of this cost (I want you back) Give me back what I lost!
Oh baby, I need one more chance, hah I’d show you that I love you Baby, oh! Baby, oh! Baby, oh! I want you back! I want you back!
Bread was one of the first bands I found out about. My sister loved them because every time she started to date someone or broke up with someone…out came the Bread albums. She is 8 years older than me so I was just 6 when she was 14 but I knew the dating cycle of a teenage girl rather well at that time.
My sister now…(she will kill me if she finds out I posted this)
Bread was a soft rock band that later on I probably would have never claimed that I liked…but I did…and still do. I called them a guilty pleasure (the guilt-o-meter peaks) for a while but hell…I like them. When I hear the opening guitar in this song, it’s the early seventies again.
The song peaked at #4 in the Billboard 100 and #6 in Canada in 1971. It also peaked at #1 in the Easy Listening chart in America and Canada. The song was on the album Mana that peaked at #21 in the Billboard Album charts and #16 in Canada.
David Gates was the writer who wrote most of the hits. Gates is a very good singer songwriter who knows how to write a good pop melody. In this song there is no chorus to speak of but it works well.
David Gates:“I wrote that one night at the dining room table, after my kids and my wife had gone to bed. It took me about an hour and a half, with an extra verse left over. If you look at it, there’s a few bizarre lines in there, like ‘you and I would simply fly away’ – that’s kind of an unusual thought. When I was done, I said, ‘That’s the best song I’ve ever written and probably will be the best song I’ll ever write.’ For me it’s really held up over time, more than any of the others.”
One odd fact about this song… Kojak actor Telly Savalas recorded a spoken-word version that went to #1 in the UK in 1975.
If
If a picture paints a thousand words, Then why can’t I paint you? The words will never show the you I’ve come to know. If a face could launch a thousand ships, Then where am I to go? There’s no one home but you, You’re all that’s left me too. And when my love for life is running dry, You come and pour yourself on me.
If a man could be two places at one time, I’d be with you. Tomorrow and today, beside you all the way. If the world should stop revolving spinning slowly down to die, I’d spend the end with you. And when the world was through, Then one by one the stars would all go out, Then you and I would simply fly away
PowerPop... An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture 