Before we start, a couple of housekeeping issues about "The Americans." I neglected to mention how old Gordon Sinclair was when he hit the charts (73). Also, Byron MacGregor did not originally read the editorial on the Windsor station, someone else did. He was recruited for the recording for his voice. Anyway, just wanted to clear that up.
They threw me off, so this week we get '75. No complaints though.
40 - "Never Let Her Go," David Gates
39 - "Sad Sweet Dreamer," Sweet Sensation
38 - "Lovin' You," Minnie Riperton
37 - "Don't Take Your Love," The Manhattans
36 - "Your Bulldog Drinks Champagne," Jim Stafford
35 - "You Are So Beautiful," Joe Cocker
34 - "Morning Side of the Mountain," Donnie and Marie Osmond
33 - "My Boy," Elvis Presley
32 - "To the Door of the Sun (Alle Porte Del Sole)," Al Martino
31- "Movin' On," Bad Company
Easy listtening dominates this section. David Gates had the first hit of his post-Bread solo career with a song that's pretty indistinguishable from his old group. He'd only have three Top 40s on his own, the biggest being the theme from the Neil Simon movie The Goodbye Girl. Britain's Sweet Sensation somehow managed to hit #1 at home with the very sleepy and inconsequential "Sad Sweet Dreamer." Minnie Riperton hits a high note on what is known as "the whistle register" on the memorable "Lovin' You." She would die four years later of breast cancer. And I just learned that she was the mother of actress/comedienne Maya Rudolph. The Manhattans had been hitting the R&B charts for over a decade before hitting the Top 40 this week. It's a nice little bit o' soul, but still pretty mild. And Joe Cocker would crack the Top 5 with this immortal Billy Preston-written, heart-on-sleeve ballad that Homer Simpson's secretary Karl once arranged for someone to sing to Marge on their anniversary.
There are three more MOR artifacts here, but I'm grouping them seperately because they all seem to come from an era of staid, almost formal pop music that was almost but not quite dead by this time. Donny and Marie return from our last visit to '75 with their fairytalish, mildly tragic tale of a matched pair who never meet because of geography. Elvis Presley was undeniably rock n' roll, but his image and career was as tightly controlled as any straitlaced crooner's, and he spent much of the seventies releasing dramatic, old-school ballads like "My Boy," a song about a father telling his son about his impending divorce. Richard Harris had just missed the Top 40 years earlier with this a few years earlier, and I'm thinking I should try to dig up that version someday. And Al Martino had bee n hitting the charts since 1953 with his crooner-pop, and was still basking in his first blush of acting fame from his role as Johnny Fontaine (the reason the horse's head ends up in Jack Woltz's bed) in The Godfather, when he charted with this showy ballad partly sung in Italian. I think I might have liked it a lot more if Casey had played the full version.
Oh yeah, there are two more songs. Jim Stafford's ditty about a peeping tom and the even-more-unusual-than-they-seem couple he spies on is back again. And Bad Company chip in some rock to the proceedings with a song about roaming, one of the major recurring themes in blues and rock. Never heard it before, don't need to hear it again.
30 - "Up in a Puff of Smoke," Polly Brown
29 - "Poetry Man," Phoebe Snow
28 - "Mandy," Barry Manilow
27 - "I Belong to You," Love Unlimited
26 - "Express," B.T. Express
25 - "Please Mr. Postman," The Carpenters
24 - "Big Yellow Taxi," Joni Mitchell
23 - "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You," Sugarloaf featuring Jerry Corbetta
22 - "Roll On Down the Highway," Bachman-Turner Overdrive
21 - "Lady Marmalade," LaBelle
We start with a couple female-fronted takes on the sound of 60s Motown. Polly Brown had seen success in her native Britain with the groups Pickettywitch and Sweet Dreams before scoring in the U.S. on her own with a sprightly bit of retro pop-soul about a guy who took her "higher than a kite, then dropped (her) like a light." Not sure I've heard that last expression before. And the Carpenters return with their Marvelettes cover. Not one of Karen's stronger efforts, but she's one of my "phone book singers," so listening to it is no chore at all
Three other solo acts are in the mix here. Phoebe Snow, who changed her last name from Laub to match the name of an adveritisng character used to promote the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, had her only Top 40 hit with a sultry ballad about a "bashful boy" who can be pretty damn eloquent once brought out of his shell. Barry Manilow had advertising connections of his own, having written several commercial jingles, including a couple (Band-Aid and State Farm) that are still used today, in his pre-fame days. He didn't write "Mandy," which made him as much of a household name as many of the products he used to pitch, but I can forgive him for that. "I Write The Songs," however... And after it failed to get past the 60s in its studio version, Joni Mitchell's early environmental anthem "Big Yellow Taxi" made the 40 in a version from her live album Miles of Aisles. They're still paving paradises and putting up parking lots, though.
Two girl groups in this bunch. Barry White's backup singers return with their second and last hit. For some reason, I find that they sound a lot like the backup singers on a James Brown holiday song I like a lot, "Let's Make This Christmas Mean Something This Year." I wonder if it was them on that track? And here are Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash, singing that fantastic, funky bumper about a guy who just can't forget his one encounter with a New Orleans lady of the evening. It was one of my favorites even at four, although that might be because when they sang "voulez-vous couchez avec moi," I thought that they were saying something involving "poo-poo" And as we all know, children find feces hilarious.
We close with three, um, "guy groups." B.T. Express had their second and final top ten with a semii-instrumental that I quite enjoyed, especially the train whistle. Bachman-Turner Overdrive had their next-to-last Top 40 with a driving rocker about...driving. And Sugarloaf (who now added "featuring Jerry Corbetta," even though Corbetta had always been there. Oh well, still better than Chocolate Hair) had a second hit after "Green-Eyed Lady" with this tale of a struggling young band who gets the runaround from record executives while on their way up, but then turns the tables on the suits when they get a hit. The song is funky and bouncy (love that deep-throated organ), and it's another one I really loved as a child. It also includes the sound of a touchtone phone dialing two numbers: one for a record company who had just turned them down, the other for the White House. Anyway, it's not all that odd overall, but because of its "too cool for school" vibe and the fact that I don't really want to give it to "Your Bulldog Drinks Champagne" again, "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" snags this week's Uneasy Rider Award.
Tomorrow: ELO, ONJ, what else do I have to say?
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