Okay, I was only three when this countdown aired, but we haven't travelled back to '74 yet, so it'll do.
40 - "You Got The Love," Rufus featuring Chaka Khan
39 - "Nothing from Nothing," Billy Preston
38 - "After the Gold Rush," Prelude
37 - "Cat's in the Cradle," Harry Chapin
36 - "Angie Baby," Helen Reddy
35 - "Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues)," Three Dog Night
34 - "Second Avenue," Art Garfunkel
33- "Sha-La-La (Make Me Happy)," Al Green
32 - "People Gotta Move," Gino Vannelli
31 - "Wishing You Were Here," Chicago
If you're a regular reader, bells should have gone off when you saw what was at #36. I'll get to it at the end of this section.
Plenty of R&B in this section. Rufus and Chaka Khan kick things off with a song that was a Top Ten hit but is much less famous than their previous single, "Tell Me Something Good," (wah-wah!). One of the contenders for the mythic title of "Fifth Beatle," Billy Preston was enjoying one more week on the chart with his former #1 celebrating the easiest math problem ever. Al Green is here again. I'm still not as up on him as I'd like to be, but this one definitely reminds me why I should hurry up and do it. And Montrealer Gino Vannelli became just the second white artist to appear on Soul Train on the strenght of this respectable stab at funk. No word if he made Don Cornelius and co. "shake (their) behinds like it's dynamite."
Folk-pop is also here in abundance. Britsh group Prelude had their only hit with a surprisingly effective a capella take on a Neil Young classic. Harry Chapin debuted this week with what is now practically a standard, which reminded a generation of parents not to take their children's childhood for granted because they grow up so fast! And Art Garfunkel contributes a decent but hardly earth-shattering breakup ballad. Oh yeah, he missed Paul.
Two of the decade's hit factories check in. "Play Something Sweet," was Three Dog Night's twentieth Top 40 hit. There would only be one more. You can almost hear them running out of steam. Speaking of downshifting, Chicago's entry here is a slow one, but the band's spirit is still audible. It doesn't sound like "You're the Inspiration" at all.
Okay, here it is, the song I've been pimping ever since I started this: "Angie Baby," the pinnacle of Helen Reddy's "Crazy Lady Trilogy." In it, Helen sings of a girl who's "a little touched," and seems to have an unhealthy obsession with the songs she hears on the radio. Then one day, when her parents leave her home alone, a neighbor boy whose been harboring his own obesession with Angie invites himself over to her house with "evil on his mind." But instead of having his way with Angie, he somehow finds himself being sucked into her possibly-magic radio. He disappears, and is presumed dead by everyone except Angie, who seems to end up using him as some sort of radio-bound sex slave. The moral of the story: "It's so nice to be insane/No one asks you to explain." It's just amazing. Yes, it wins this week's Uneasy Rider Award, but unlike most of the other winners, it's not just an oddity, it's a stone classic. Somebody, maybe Quentin Tarantino, needs to use this in a movie and introduce the next generation to its greatness.
30 - "Rockin' Soul," Hues Corporation
29 - "So You are a Star," The Hudson Brothers
28 - "Distant Lover (Live)," Marvin Gaye
27 - "Honey Honey," ABBA
26 - "When Will I See You Again?" The Three Degrees
25 - "I Can Help," Billy Swan
24 - "I've Got the Music in Me," The Kiki Dee Band
23 - "Love Don't Love Nobody," The Spinners
22 - "Longfellow Serenade," Neil Diamond
21 - "Love Me for a Reason," The Osmonds
Another strong showing for R&B. Hues Corporation, who earlier in the year had topped the chart with the early disco breakthrough "Rock the Boat," avoided one-hit-wonderdom with the similar sounding "Rockin' Soul." Marvin Gaye provoked screams on a sultry live version of a track from Let's Get it On. The Three Degrees are here with a terrific song that I remember being quite enamored of as a child. "Ahhhhhhh, oooooooohhhh, precious moments!" And the Spinners are here again with a great variation on the "I broke up with my girlfriend, therefore, love sucks," theme. Those guys were everywhere, and deservedly so.
Two brother acts are in this bunch, one much less famous than the other. Bill, Brett and Mark Hudson had a couple hits that just missed the top 20, including this one begging someone famous not to forget the people they left behind. Bill, despite being a part of a band that had both prime time and Saturday-morning TV shows, was eventually left behind himself by someone more famous. Yep, he's the reason why Goldie Hawn's daughter is named Kate Hudson. Meanwhile, the boys from Utah are back again with their last Top 10. A passable ballad, but I hope to someday be presented with one of their attempts at hard rock, like "Crazy Horses."
Two more very prolific pop acts are in the mix. ABBA join us for the second straight week with their second U.S hit (following "Waterloo"). This one isn't nearly as memorable, but it is notable for being one of their few hits to feature some lead vocals from one of the male members (the other one I can think of is "Does Your Mother Know" And Neil Diamond seems to be trying to woo some lucky lady with the man who wrote that famous poem about Paul Revere's ride in his entry here. At least I think that's what he's doing. Wonder how that worked out.
We end this half of the chart by looking at a one-hit wonder and a one-and-a-half-hit wonder. Billy Swan was a behind-the-scenes veteran of both the Memphis and Nashville music scenes when he finally decided to put out his own record. A rockabillyish number distinguished by his hiccupy delivery, "I Can Help" made it all the way to #1, but although he would crack the country charts several more times through the years, there were no more pop hits. And Kiki Dee and her eponymous band had decent success with the soul-rocker "I've Got the Music in Me" (another one I know I used to sing along to in short pants), but Ms. Dee is now best remembered as Elton John's duet partner on the chart-topper "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart."
So that's Part One. Tomorrow: a very 70s song, another song I've mentioned I hoped I'd get to write about, and once again, I battle technical difficulties.
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