Welcome to the 100th post in Bobby Gloves Casey history. It was also scheduled to begin my last regularly scheduled 70s lookback, but I've looked ahead to next week's presentation and have decided to cover it along with next week's 80s show. So it'll be a transition week. Anyway, lets move ahead with this chart from the first days of the Ford administration.
40 - "Beach Baby," First Class
39 - "Time for Livin'," Sly and the Family Stone
38 - "Let's Put it All Together," The Stylistics
37 - "Rock the Boat," The Hues Corporation
36 - "Rock Your Baby," George McCray
35 - "Happiness is Just Around the Bend," The Main Ingredient
34 - "It's Only Rock n' Roll (But I Like It)," The Rolling Stones
33 - "River's Risin'," The Edgar Winter Group
32 - "You Haven't Done Nothin'," Stevie Wonder
31 - "The Air that I Breathe," The Hollies
We start with what I will call "rock." The First Class were an English group who were nowhere near California when they put together this homage to 60s surf music. It doesn't sound very authentic, but it still has a strange charm. The Rolling Stones are here with one of their best-remembered 70s hits, in which Mick Jagger offers to do multiple damaging things to his heart in the name of this supposedly trifling enterprise that he happens to enjoy. I like it, like it, yes I do. Edgar Winter and his group followed up the instrumental "Frankenstein" with this bevocaled (yeah, still making up words), environmentally conscious number. "The Earth is changin'...there'll be nothing remainin'," singer Dan Hartman informs us. It's a good thing we listened to them back then, isn't it. And The Hollies had their final Top Ten with this lush ballad in which the singer seems to declare that his only requirements to stay alive are oxygen and sex. He goes so far as to say "If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass." So what the hell does he do when he blows out the candles on his birthday cake? Oh wait, he doesn't eat either. This fuckin' guy.
A lot of soul here. Sly and the Family Stone had their final Top 40 with this cynical-sounding midtempo funk number. They apparently foresaw Nixon's resignation, but weren't too hopeful about the result ("Re-arrangin', leader's changin', pretty soon he might not give a damn."). The Stylistics are here with a typically pretty ballad on which they declare "lovin' is all there is." Tastes even sweeter after Sly's bitter pill. Cuba Gooding Sr. and co. surprise me again with yet another hit that isn't "Eveyrbody Plays the Fool." This one's a nice uptempo bit of positivity, but nothing special. And Stevie Wonder debuted on the 40 with his brash, funked-up anti-Nixon rant just over a week after the man resigned. I wonder if hearing that Stevie was about to be all over the radio trashing him for the next few months contributed in any way to the timing of his long-awaited capitulation? Hey, stranger things have happened.
We close with two similarly-titled, similar sounding #1 singles that are considered among the earliest disco hits. First we have Santa Monica, California's Hues Corporation, whose career path had included opening for Frank Sinatra and conrtibuting music to the movie Blacula before they recorded this dance smash comparing love to "a ship on the ocean." Meanwhile, in Florida, George McRae was making his own breakthrough with a future charttopper of his own, which was written and produced by one Harry Wayne Casey. If you've been following along, you surely know who that guy would become. Anyway, both of these artist would manage one more Top 40 each, but they'll always be linked by the fact that their biggest hits have blended together in so many people's minds, including my own.
30 - "Clap for the Wolfman," The Guess Who
29 - "My Thang," James Brown
28 - "Radar Love," Golden Earring
27 - "Rikki Don't Lose that Number," Steely Dan
26 - "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe," Barry White
25 - "Nothing from Nothing," Billy Preston
24 - "Rock and Roll Heaven," The Righteous Brothers
23 - "Hang On in There Baby," Johnny Bristol
22 - "Wild Thing," Fancy
21 - "Then Came You," Dionne Warwick and The Spinners
The rock parade begins with The Guess Who's last Top Ten, on which Burton Cummings is somehow thwarted in his attempts to get laid by the voice of Wolfman Jack on the radio. Hey Burt, did you ever consider, I don't know, changing stations? The Dutch band Golden Earring had their first American hit with this classic about some sort of mystic connection between a man and a woman that the man feels as he's driving home to see her an a Brenda Lee song plays on the radio. Oh, those crazy wooden shoe-wearers. Steely Dan had their biggest hit with this light, lyrically straightforward (for them) tune in which Donald Fagen hopes that the person he gave his phone number to will "have a change of heart" and decide to spend time with him after all. And Britain's Fancy had their only hit with a somewhat harder version of the Troggs' 60s classic. I like the female voice on this one, and the heavy breathing has its, um, charms, but the noodly, early-synthesizer solo is no match for the ocarina on the original. I'd rather they'd have just thrown in a generic guitar solo than that mess.
Another big R&B contingent is present in this bunch. The Godfather himself shows up with another of his numerous hits, On this "brand new funk," Brother James advises men interested in chatting up women to walk up to them, "put your hand on the lower level," and then give a speech that contains repeated utterances of the phrase "gimme my thang." Not sure if that would work these days, assuming it ever did. But it's James, so all is somehow forgiven. As it should be. Barry White scored his first and only Number One with this masterwork of seductive soul. The conceptions this song alone is responsible for must number in the millions. Billy Preston had his second and last #1 with this bouncer in which he declares "you gotta have something if you wanna be with me." I wonder if part of that something involves being able to write about him without using the phrase "fifth Beatle." If so, I don't have it. Ex-Motown staff writer/producer Johnny Bristol had his only Top 40 with what to me is a bald-faced ripoff of Barry White's style. But I just think his voice is a little too high to make me take come-ons like "sweet virgin of the world...let us touch that cloud that everyone dreams of" at all seriously. But he made it to #8, so what do I know? And Dionne Warwick had one high point in a ten-year fallow period when she teamed up with the fabulous Spinners for this gorgeous ballad about finally finding the right person. But apparently, she didn't like the song after she recorded it. Noticing this, producer Thom Bell gave her half of a dollar bill for her to sign. He signed the other half, and the two exchanged halves. Bell told Warwick that if "Then Came You" didn't go to Number One, he'd send her his half of the bill, but if it did, she'd have to send him hers. Long story short, Bell ended up with the whole dollar.
We finish with the only song in this half I'd classify as "easy listening." After eight years without a hit, the unrelated Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield came back with a song that pictures Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Jim Morrison, Jim Croce, and Bobby Darin all forming "a hell of a band" up in the Great Beyond. I don't know about you, but I think that combination would sound terrible. And the whole exercise seems a bit cynically calculated, like "Hey, remember us? We're not dead! But these people are! Weren't they great? They won't be making any new music, but we are, and we're singing about them! And that's as close as you're going to get, so buy it." Anyway, something seems off about the whole thing, and for that reason, I'm giving "Rock n' Roll Heaven" this week's Uneasy Rider. Not so righteous, brothers.
Thank you for being with me for all or part of these first one hundred dispatches from my pop-addled brain. I'd like to thank everyone who's ever even looked at one entry, as well as the good people at the American Top 40 Fun & Games message board for their direct and indirect assistance. I don't have a huge audience, I know, but it's enough combined with my enjoyment of writing these to keep me going. Merci beaucoup.
Tomorrow: a future air-freshener jingle, God goes reggae, and a guy who just can't get his girl to follow him no matter where he goes.
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