Rock the Boat (1974)

Performer: The Hues Corporation                       Writer: Waldo Holmes
Highest US Chart Position: #1                             Label: RCA Records
Musicians: Fleming Williams, Bernard St. Clair Lee, H. Ann Kelly and Wally Holmes

One of the undeniable occurrences in popular music happened in 1974, when the complete shift from the sixties ethos took hold and the seventies era in music was unofficially ushered in. To understand that change one only has to look at The Hues Corporation. The group had formed in late 1969 and consisted of three singers, Wally Holmes, Bernard St. Clair Lee and Ann Kelly, and three musicians, Joey Rivera, Monti Lawston and Bob "Bullet" Bailey. Their style at that time, to say the least, was raw. Though they had opened shows for some big names touring through Southern California, their big brake came when composer Gene Page of the Blaxploitation film Blacula hired them to sing for the nightclub scenes in the film. They wound up performing three songs, all of which were written by Wally Holmes, and this led to a recording contract and an eventual number one record in “Rock the Boat” two years later. The footage of the group in Blacula is almost painful to watch as they are clearly still under the sway of Sly Stone and similar groups mired in sixties excess. But between then and their chart topper, the more elegant style of Motown began to assert itself as those acts began to re-enter the charts, ushering in the disco era just a year later.

The song begins on the downbeat with a heavy piano part by Joe Sample of the fusion group The Crusaders, supported by strings and horns, and the drumming of Hal Blaine and the percussion of Gary Coleman playing a medium tempo loping rhythm that borders on reggae. The three vocalists enter after four bars with the chorus, holding out the last note while a soaring strings part takes them into the first verse. Beneath the vocals of Fleming Williams is Larry Carlton on guitar and Wilton Felder on bass, both of whom were also members of the Crusaders. Kelly and Lee join in on something of a short bridge that extends one measure to 7/4, urged on by the strings and horns before the chorus comes around again, all of which is preceded by a two measure break on the high hats and floor toms. Williams takes the second verse again, with the drum and piano backing. After another bridge the group comes in on the final chorus with the horns blaring and the strings doing downward slides, tambourines shaking and Williams singing the unforgettable line, “Rock on wit cha bad self.” By the time Larry Carlton comes in with some blistering lead guitar work the vocals drop out completely and the record slowly fades out.

Just looking at the promotional film that was made for the song, the group has come a long way from their Blacula appearance and the ecstatic movements and faux-African costumes that accompanied it. By 1974 they have elegant yellow jumpsuits in the Motown mold, and while their dancing is still energetic, it’s much more controlled, a signal of the disco era they were helping to usher in. The song itself is incredibly catchy, with a wonderful melodic hook, as well as the vivid metaphor of love as a boat that needs to be handled with care lest it be overturned. While the album was recorded and released in late 1973, the song wasn’t released as a single until February of the following year and it stiffed, going nowhere. It wasn’t until it became a dance club hit in New York City that radio stations began playing it and it entered the charts at the end of May at number eighty-three, reaching number one just five weeks later. And the song would stay on the charts nearly three months more until the end of September. The B-side, “All Goin’ Down Together,” is a clavinet-driven slow groove with the trio mostly singing together, and the individual members taking brief solo turns. Songwriter Wally Holmes credits the success of the song to the distinctive beat conceived by producer Tom Sellers, as well as RCA exec David Kershenbaum who chose the song as a single after seeing the reaction to it at the group’s live shows. While “Rock the Boat” may not be the first disco song, it is easily the most memorable, and remains as distinctive today as it was in the summer of seventy-four.

The Thrill is Gone (1970)

Performer: B.B. King                                             Writer: Roy Hawkins & Rick Darnell
Highest US Chart Position: #15                            Label: ABC Records
Musicians: B.B. King, Hugh McCracken, Paul Harris, Gerald Jemmott and Herbie Lovelle

By the time “The Thrill is Gone” became a chart hit for blues star B.B. King, it was already nearly twenty years old. The song had originally been composed in 1951 by Los Angeles blues singer Roy Hawkins, who released the song on Modern Records and saw it become a hit, going all the way to number six on the rhythm and blues charts. The song featured Hawkins’ piano playing, and his singing in a Charles Brown style, along with the saxophone of the great West Coast tenor Maxwell Davis. But Roy Hawkins saw himself become the Erskine Hawkins of rhythm and blues. In the same way that Erskine had his hits co-opted by jazz bands like Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman, Roy found his songs covered by the likes of Ray Charles, James Brown and, of course, B.B. King. King’s version most likely became a hit because of the departure of the sound from the tradition Memphis blues style he had been playing in since the late fifties. Producer Bill Szymczyk had been working as an engineer in the mid-sixties and took a pay cut to work for ABC Records in order to become a producer. He wanted to update King’s sound to appeal to a wider audience by adding strings and a more polished sound. He succeeded in producing the artist’s first ever, top 100 album as well as the biggest hit of his career, and one that would remain his signature song for the rest of his career.

The song begins just like any other ballad from the late sixties, with drums and electric piano. Herbie Lovelle plays a pickup on the drums that hits on the and of two, rests on three, and on the and of three plays sixteenth notes into the downbeat where B.B. King hits a ringing, single-string note. Underneath King’s unique blues playing, Paul Harris adds some licks of his own on the Fender Rhodes. King continues to play through a complete verse with some interesting chromatic runs, supported by Harris and the guitar of until Hugh McCracken, until the first vocal verse comes around. Bill Szymczyk managed to get some incredible separation on the production because all of the instruments, including Gerald Jemmott’s bass, can be heard very clearly as they work together. The progression is a straight, twelve-bar blues, but the minor key makes the turnaround feel as if it’s more unique than it actually is. On the second verse a small string section playing sustained chords is suddenly pushed up into the mix behind the vocals. When King’s solo section begins, the strings are pushed up even louder, this time playing quarter-note phrases that comprise something of a counter melody, all while the guitar’s vocal emulations strain to be heard over the top. A third verse is followed by a fourth with the instrumentation--especially the drums and a low McCracken guitar part--building in intensity to match King’s vocals. Then the song finally fades out across two verses of King’s guitar solo and the string countermelody.

There’s no chorus in the song. Instead the title line is sung at the beginning of each verse, with the rest of the verse explaining why the narrator no longer has the feelings he once had for his lover. The album version is slightly longer than the single, adding an extra minute and a half of King soloing over a vamp on the tonic and a much slower fadeout. The song entered the charts in 1969, a couple of days after Christmas, at the very bottom in spot number one hundred. A month later, at the end of January, it was halfway up the chart, and in another month it reached its peak position of fifteen on February 21st, where it stayed for another week. The B-side is “You’re Mean,” another song pulled from King’s album, Completely Well. The tune is a medium tempo number with King doing some blues shouting about his woman. Like the flip side, Paul Harris’s electric piano is prominent in the mix. I was too young to have heard the song on the radio, but I did have the pleasure of playing it in a blues band I joined in the mid-eighties. After playing pop and rock for years, I left music for a while to go back to school, but then I saw an advertisement in a music store looking for a sax player. Thrilled with the idea of not having to play guitar and keyboards and instead focusing on my first instrument, I joined the band shortly after and they were the best group of musicians I have ever played with. I may have been vaguely familiar with the song before, but B.B. King’s version of “The Thrill is Gone” would forever after hold a permanent place in my memory thereafter.

Every 1's a Winner (1979)

Performer: Hot Chocolate                                     Writer: Errol Brown
Highest US Chart Position: #6                              Label: Infinity Records
Musicians: Errol Brown, Harvey Hinsley, Larry Ferguson, Patrick Olive and Tony Connor

Back when I was listening to the radio in high school I wasn’t really aware of the distinctions between U.S. and British groups. In fact, other that those artists I knew to be British already, like the former Beatles or David Bowie, I’m pretty sure I assumed every song on the radio was by an American group. And I certainly didn’t know there was any difference between the U.S. and British charts. Hot Chocolate was known to me primarily as a one-hit wonder for their terrific single, “You Sexy Thing,” back in 1975. But what I hadn’t known at the time is that they were much more popular in England and had already recorded a string of hits by 1975. One of them was actually my favorite song of 1973, “Brother Louie” by The Stories. Before the American group covered it, though, it had been a top ten song in England, and the fifth of their top forty hits in their home country before achieving even greater chart success a year later with the number three “Emma.” While that song made it to number eight in the States, it wasn’t something I remembered hearing on the radio. I can remember vividly, however, in the middle of my junior year thinking that Hot Chocolate had made a nice comeback with their newest single, “Every 1’s a Winner,” when in fact they had never left the charts in Britain, continuing to write chart hits that included the number one UK single “So You Win Again” from the same album.

The song begins with a backward strum by Harvey Hinsley on the guitar that sustains while a pulsing bass and keyboard rhythm punctuate the downbeats of every measure, an effect similar to the one Don Henley would use four years later on “Dirty Laundry.” Then comes the unmistakable sound of Hinsley’s distorted guitar playing the signature sixteenth-note lick of the song over a grinding wash of keyboards in the background. After two times around, the equally distinctive singing of the song’s composer, Errol Brown, comes in on the verse. His vocals are heavily processed giving them a distant quality that, again, was wholly unique in pop music at that time. The background on the verse is simply the steady beat of Connor’s drums with the pulsing keyboard bass of Larry Ferguson and bass fills by Patrick Olive, along with the occasional backward strum of the intro by Hinsley. Beneath the chorus that includes the title line, the band hits on the first three notes of every two-bar phrase, but in a subdued way that isn’t jarring, allowing the dance pulse to continue uninterrupted. In the second half of the chorus, horns join the three-note accent, and female background vocals enter and hold into the next of Hinsley’s intro licks. After another verse, chorus and intro, the horns assert themselves and a lengthy vamp concludes with a short solo by Hinsley punctuated by the horns. This is followed by another chorus, and more improve from Hinsley that fades out the song.

The song entered the U.S. charts in mid-November of 1978 at number seventy-five, then made an impressively gradual climb to number twenty-two by the end of the year. It entered the top twenty at the beginning of January, and by the end of the month had edged into the top ten, finally peaking at number six in early February. The B-side of the single is Harvey Hinsley’s “Power of Love,” which retains the pulsing bass line of the A-side, but softens the sound by featuring the piano work of Larry Ferguson and leaving Errol Brown’s duskier vocals unprocessed. What’s interesting about the group is that, despite having a U.K. hit in every year of the seventies--a feat only equaled by Elvis and Diana Ross--the group was not well received critically and was for the most part ignored by the music press during the decade. “Every 1’s a Winner” was pulled from the album of the same name, and also released as a 12-inch dance version, which simply extends every aspect of the original tune to make it twice as long. For me, it was simply part of the soundtrack of my junior year, and wasn’t one of the few songs I purchased as a single. Nevertheless, it is now a song that seems essential to me and an example of a major hit that, while embracing the ethos of disco in order to gain popularity and airplay, eschews the clichés that had made the genre such an anathema, even at the time.

Ariel (1977)

Performer: Dean Friedman                                   Writer: Dean Friedman
Album US Chart Position: #26                              Label: Lifesong Records
Musicians: Dean Friedman, Rick Witkowski, Tony Levin, Rick Marotta and George Young

I’m not a big fan of wordplay in pop songs, especially of the John Lennon variety. But there are a couple of exceptions. The first is “Year of the Cat” by Al Stewart, which has one of my favorite lines of all time. The other is the far less sophisticated, yet still grin inducing lyrics of Dean Friedman in “Ariel.” My associations with the tune began, of course, by hearing it on the radio. Despite not cracking the top ten, it had a very impressive run of twenty-two weeks on the charts in the spring and summer of 1977. But it was probably a year later, when I was dating my first real girlfriend, that acquired a copy of my own. She and her younger sisters had the 45 in rotation on their giant console stereo in the living room and I borrowed it along with a bunch of other songs I didn’t own and recorded it on my 8-track tape recorder. I’m not really sure I noticed the lyrics at all at the time, however, as I’ve always been much more interested in melody. The distinctive chorus was the real draw and was absolutely captivating for me. The single was released in late April and debuted at number eighty-six, peaking two months later at twenty-six on June 25th after having sat at twenty-seven for the previous two weeks. Interestingly, after dropping down to forty-seven the next week it began to inch upward for the next five weeks until it reached thirty-two before taking another five weeks to drop off completely.

The song begins with a Ricky Marotta drum pickup on the and of three and four, Dean Friedman’s piano and the bass of Tony Levin entering on the downbeat with a repeated descending pattern. The lyrics begin with Friedman talking about meeting a girl who lives in Paramis, New Jersey, “deep in the bosom of suburbia.” Rick Witkowski’s guitar comes in on the second half, as she was collecting money for a radio station and Friedman sings, in the first nice turn of a phrase, “she was looking for change and so was I.” The first verse is followed by a second in which Tony Levin takes some liberties with the bass line. Friedman falls in love, invites her to hear his band, and when he picks her up he sings the classic line, “Hi, and she said, ‘Yeah, I guess I am.’” Then he launches into the wonderfully Frankie Valli-esque chorus that consists lyrically of simply the title sung over and over again and ends with three staccato beats and two beats of silence, In the third verse, which is only on the album version, the couple stops at Dairy Queen before the dance with some humorous background vocals that hold throughout the second half. The next chorus is followed by a great fifties style R&B George Young sax solo. Young also makes some well-place honks in the following verse with Friedman and his girl on the couch, “fooling around with the vertical hold,” and finally making love to the sound of fireworks on the television as it’s signing off for the night. The final chorus modulates and then, in the album version, oddly goes into the first part of the first verse before suddenly ending.

There was a bit of controversy over the song from Friedman’s label, Lifesong Records, but it wasn’t about the drug reference, or the fact that Ariel “wore a peasant blouse with nothing underneath.” Instead, they objected to the fact that she was a “Jewish girl.” The label demanded that Friedman remove the line, not because they were racist but because they thought that radio stations would use it as an excuse not to play the record. They also stuck a chorus between the first and second verse and removed the third because they felt the song was too long to be a single. Friedman was unhappy about the changes--though removing the first verse reprise from the end and fading out on the last chorus is a much more satisfying ending. Nevertheless, with assistance from the Jewish Defense League, Friedman was able to convince the company to leave his original version on the album, though the single edit remained. Lifesong was a small record label with limited distribution, and the reason for the song’s strange chart journey is that the label actually ran out of records, causing the song to stall in the mid-twenties. A fresh infusion of 45s was the reason for the uptick on the charts but by then it was too late for it to break into the top ten. The B-side, “Funny Papers,” has Friedman playing piano and singing with a jazz trio including George Mraz on bass and Mel Lewis on drums. “Ariel” is sometimes interpreted as a reminiscence of early sixties love, but it clearly reflects an early seventies sensibility and remains one of my favorite songs from 1977.

Don't Go Breaking My Heart (1976)

Performer: Elton John & Kiki Dee                         Writers: Elton John & Bernie Taupin
Highest US Chart Position: #1                              Label: MCA Records
Musicians: Elton John, Kiki Dee, Davey Johnstone, Kenny Passarelli and Roger Pope

I never really liked Elton John all that much. With the exception of Barry Manilow, I usually preferred guitar bands to those led by a pianist. For the first half of the seventies he saturated the Top 40 airways, but by the middle of the decade his hit streak began to diminish. Still, there are a couple of his tunes that will always be among my favorites. The first is from my all-important summer of 1973, “Saturday Night’s Alright.” The other is this song, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” from the summer of 1976. My father had nearly died the summer before, from cancer, and miraculously it went into remission. He and my mother had traveled somewhat before, but after surviving this scare they began to go regularly, several times a year. I’m pretty sure this was their first trip after his recovery, and they decided to take the whole family along with them to Hawaii. For me, it was the summer between junior high and high school. We probably went in July, and that’s just about when the song was released, entering the charts at an impressive sixty-six on Independence Day of that bicentennial year and working its way up during our time on Maui and Oahu. The duo took only four weeks to claim the top spot from The Manhattans and stayed at number one for the entire month of August, part of a twenty-week stay on the charts that wouldn’t end until mid-November, accompanying the start of my high school career.

The song begins on the downbeat, with future film composer James Newton Howard on the electric piano and Kenny Passarelli on the bass for two measures, then joined by the string section heading into the third measure. A measure later the cellos are pushed up in the mix and joined by Roger Pope on the drums, while a distinctive guitar lick by Davey Johnstone takes everyone into the first verse. Most duets follow fairly traditional structures of alternating verses and harmony on the chorus, but this one is unique for employing a call-and-response pattern throughout. Elton John opens the chorus by singing the title line, and Kiki Dee answers him after every line. At the end of the verse the band holds while the strings and drums lead the band into the bridge, which actually functions more like a chorus, while the chorus line at the end functions more like a bridge. The orchestration of the strings, also done by James Newton Howard, is very intricate on the chorus and, combined with the conga playing of Ray Cooper, makes for a wonderfully dense sound on the chorus. A variation of the intro, again heavy with cellos, leads into the second verse, with the strings playing a sort of harmony with the singers right into the second chorus. During the third verse Howard has the strings playing the solo section to good effect, and the vocals return for the third chorus with both singers taking liberties with the melody while background singers vamp on the title line throughout a lengthy fadeout.

As per usual, the song was written by Elton John and his longtime collaborator, Bernie Taupin, and though it was originally intended as a tribute to Motown’s duets featuring Marvin Gaye, the presence of James Newton Howard’s orchestrations make it something much more. The first choice for the female vocalist was Dusty Springfield, but she was too ill at the time and the offer finally went to British singer Kiki Dee, one of the only white artists to record for Motown on their subsidiary, Tamla, but was at this time signed with John’s label, Rocket Records. The two singers weren’t even in the same studio when the song was finished. John had actually recorded the track in Toronto, and then sent it back to London to have Dee put her vocals on afterward. One surprising fact about the song is that although Elton John had achieved a string of number one hits in the United States, this was the first time he had been able to reach the top spot on the British Charts as well. The duo also managed to reach number two in England seventeen years later with a Cole Porter’s “True Love,” but only made it to number fifty-six in the States. The B-side of the single is “Snow Queen,” which seems almost stripped down in comparison with the flip side. John sings the medium tempo verses himself, with just bass, drums and acoustic guitar accompaniment, and Dee harmonizing on the chorus. “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” was the number two song of 1976 in America and will always be associated with my first trip to Hawaii and my first year of high school.

Get Back (1978)

Performer: Billy Preston                                       Writers: Paul McCartney & John Lennon
Highest US Chart Position: #86                           Label: A&M Records
Musicians: Billy Preston, Larry Carlton, David Hungate and Jeff Porcaro

The summer of 1978 was the summer of two big musical films, Grease and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. That summer I went with my family on our second trip to Hawaii and both me and my brother were allowed to bring our best friends along. My friend and I wound up seeing Grease on a tiny little screen in Lahaina on Maui, but we also stopped for three days in Honolulu before heading home and saw Sgt. Pepper’s on a big screen. But while the first film has gone on to critical acclaim and classic status, the second has been relegated to an embarrassing footnote on the career of the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton. And while it is unarguably a horrible film, it holds a soft spot in my heart because of how and when I first saw it. For one thing, I was a huge fan of the Bee Gees at the time, and for another, it had the effect of putting those Beatle songs I had heard before into a single, unified context. What makes “Get Back” unique among the songs on the project is that Billy Preston had played the electric piano on the original recording by the Beatles for the album that would eventually become Let It Be. And of course he can be seen in the film of the same name. Their version of the single went all the way to number one in 1969 and Preston was given a rare performance credit on the record, something the group had done for no other artist.

Preston’s arrangement is exactly the same as the one on the Beatles record, though the opening is slightly different. Where the Beatles bring in the instruments together at a low volume and Ringo plays a shuffle, this version begins with repetitive eighth notes on all the instruments faded in until everyone accents the third and fourth beats heading into the opening chorus. Preston sings the title and pounds on the electric piano while the drums go into a shuffle. After a nice solo by Preston, he goes into the first verse, about Jojo leaving home. Preston harmonizes with himself on the next chorus, though it’s fairly low in the mix, and of course the distinctive accents on three and four are the only thing to break up the relentless nature of the shuffle rhythm. The guitar plays a sort of countermelody on the next verse about sweet Loretta Martin, and this leads into an extended third chorus and the false ending. A short drum fill then brings the band back in and Preston copies Paul McCartney’s ad-lib vocals from the original recording which then goes into a final extended chorus that ends with everyone hitting on the final note and fading. As on the original, George Martin produced the record, though in this instance he was in charge of a tremendous number of studio musicians who participated on the project.

In terms of the single itself, this is a strange record in a couple of ways. First, the Sgt. Pepper's soundtrack LP was released by RSO Records, Robert Stigwood’s record company, and yet the single came out on A&M. The second is that the B-side isn’t a song from the album at all, but an instrumental A-side by Preston that came out in 1973. Information on the single is difficult to come by, but there is a likely scenario for the odd nature of the release, which seems plausible. During this brief period in the existence of RSO, it was operating as an independent label and therefore had the ability to license its songs to whoever it wanted. At the same time, Billy Preston had been under contract to A&M for the entire decade. The fact was that Preston had only recorded the one song for the soundtrack and so it seems clear that A&M licensed the song in order to release it as a single by Preston and backed it with “Space Race,” which had been a number four hit in the winter of 1973. RSO would get the publicity for their film and the soundtrack LP, while A&M would take on the financial risk of distributing the single. Unfortunately for A&M, however, they waited until the summer was over to release the record and it stiffed. It entered the Hot 100 in October of 1978 at number 86, and was still stuck there the next week before dropping off altogether, making it the lowest charting single from the soundtrack. Nevertheless, Billy Preston’s “Get Back” is an exciting version of the song and, because of his relationship with the Beatles, it’s fitting that his performance closes both the film and the soundtrack album.

Dueling Banjos (1973)

Performer: Eric Weissberg                                    Writer: Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith
Highest US Chart Position: #2                              Label: Warner Brothers
Musicians: Eric Weissberg, Marshall Brickman, Clarence White and Gordon Terry

This is one of those incredible circumstances in which a song that has absolutely no business being on the Hot 100 becomes a hit by striking a chord in the American consciousness. In this instance it was the association with the film Deliverance, which featured Burt Reynolds and was a huge box-office success at the time. At the beginning of the movie, four friends are going out on a canoe trip in the backwoods of Georgia before the whole valley is flooded by the building of a dam. As Ronny Cox is tuning his guitar, an inbred boy with a banjo starts mimicking him and eventually the two of them launch into a rousing rendition of “Dueling Banjos.” The song is straight-ahead bluegrass and yet made it all the way to number two in the pop charts at the beginning of 1973 because of its infectious melody and its association with the film. Being very young at the time, I wouldn’t actually see the film until later, but I can vividly remember my dad’s friends being in complete awe at how well this mentally disabled kid could play and thinking he must be a musical savant--not realizing that it was just an actor, and on subsequent viewings it’s clear he’s not really playing the instrument. But those urban myths were just the kind of thing that helped to make the song, and the film, so popular.

The song begins with a couple of strummed notes by Marshall Brickman on the guitar, as if the tuning was being checked. Then Eric Weissberg on the banjo answers a half-note below and slides up to match the chord. This is followed by a bigger chord on the guitar and the banjo going an octave higher. From here the guitar individually picks out the six notes in the G chord, while the banjo answers with three. Finally, the guitar strums the distinctive five-beat call and answer, moving from a G chord to a C on the fourth beat, which the banjo repeats. This is played four times before the guitar picks out a descending melody, answered again by the banjo. Then a new melody is picked on the low notes of the guitar, and followed up twice by the banjo. When the same melody is picked up one string higher, the banjo repeats, before the call and response happens again another string up. The song is half over by the time the five-beat call and response chords happen again, and everything to this point has been slow and quiet. But now the pace picks up with the descending melody played on the guitar, the banjo playing underneath as well, before both descending into a loping version of the tune, the banjo picking out the melody and the guitar strumming beneath. Then the earlier melodies are picked out and echoed with the support of the other instrument before both of them launch into the full-speed version of the song with Weissberg playing a wonderfully intricate banjo solo. At the end of the song the guitar drops out and the banjo finishes with an extended series of licks and is joined on the last note by the guitar.

What’s so interesting about the success of this song is that this wasn’t the first time this had happened with a bluegrass tune, and it happened in almost exactly same manner. In 1967 the movie Bonnie and Clyde, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, was a box-office smash. In several spots on the soundtrack an old bluegrass tune by Flatt and Scruggs was used, “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” from 1947, and the song unexpectedly became a hit on it’s own, going to number fifty-five in the pop charts twenty years after it was first recorded. When “Dueling Banjos” came out the songwriting credits were listed as Traditional, meaning that the song was based on an old tune long in the public domain. But that wasn’t actually the case. It had been written and recorded in 1955 by the great guitarist, Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith and he successfully sued Warner Brothers for royalties on the new version. The song entered the charts in mid January and climbed all the way to the number two spot, where it sat for four weeks in March behind Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song” unable to reach the top spot. The B-side was an actual traditional number called “Reuben’s Train” from the Civil War period, and pulled off an album recorded by Weissberg and Brickman ten years earlier which Warners would shamelessly repackage as the Soundtrack to Deliverance. Nevertheless, “Dueling Banjos” remains an iconic bluegrass song, and part of the popular consciousness because of its unexpected success in the winter of 1973.

Go All The Way (1972)

Performer: The Raspberries                                  Writer: Eric Carmen
Highest US Chart Position: #5                               Label: Capitol Records
Musicians: Eric Carmen, Wally Bryson, Dave Smalley and Jim Bonfanti

Eric Carmen was one of the most distinctive voices on the radio for me in the mid seventies, but I had little knowledge of his previous work with The Raspberries earlier in the decade. Like a lot of groups at the time, the artistic dominance of Carmen in the group led to tensions and a natural division that led him eventually into a solo career. Half of the band split off to form the group Dynamite, while Carmen and the remaining members soldiered on, completing one more album before being forced to fold in 1975. The group had been formed in Cleveland from the core members of two late sixties bands, but even then it was Carmen who was the catalyst of their success. The style of the group’s music, which would eventually be coined “power pop,” had evidently been thought of by Pete Townsend to describe the music of The Who. It made sense, as The Who played a much harder brand of music than The Beatles or even The Stones, but they were also light-years from “pop” music, a tag that even the Fab Four had outgrown by 1965. The label eventually came to represent a style of music that took as its inspiration the early Beatles and added the harder edge of later groups like The Who and Led Zeppelin, while still maintaining a melodic, radio-friendly sound. Power pop was bubblegum on steroids.

The Raspberries’ biggest chart hit, “Go All The Way,” actually demonstrates this bifurcated musical style perfectly. It begins like a stadium rocker, the drums playing a heavy backbeat and the guitar crunching a riff that sounds as if it had been passed down for generations, with Eric Carmen yelling “Mama yeah, woo!!” after the second time through. The bass and rhythm guitar come in repeating the same note underneath for two more times through while the lead guitar changes up and plays a variation on the riff four more times before everyone hits and sustains the last measure going into the verse. But when the verse begins, it’s as if another group is playing it. Imagine Kiss playing the intro, and Bread coming in to finish the song, and that’s what it’s like. Though to be fair, the word verse is probably a bit of an exalted expression for the single line that precedes the chorus. The title line means exactly what it says, as the song is about a woman begging for the singer to go all the way, an innocuous enough sounding phrase but definitely pushing the boundaries for the early seventies. Musically, the chorus is a wonderful melodic phrase that is incredibly pleasing to the ear and an exemplar of Eric Carmen’s considerable skills as a songwriter. The chorus is backed by call and response vocals and a percussive guitar part throughout. And again, the one-line verse is little more than a respite before gliding right back into a second chorus.

Halfway through the song it returns to the intro riff, and this time Carmen sings a real verse the way he should have done in the first place, with the lead guitar filling in between, almost as though it were a different song. The bridge is a series of repetitions of the words “come on,” a direct allusion to The Beatles’ “Please, Please Me,” with the background vocals responding in kind before the song heads into the final chorus. The guitar interlude between this and the final intro riff is like something from the late sixties, picking on an electric 12-string. But it all works, remarkably well in fact, and the hook is so infectious that it couldn’t help but be a hit record. The song was released in July of 1972, entering the Hot 100 at number eighty-eight. It climbed the charts the rest of the summer and into the fall, finally topping out at number five for two straight weeks in the beginning of October. The B-side of the single is “With You In My Life” by guitarist Wally Bryson, a far more traditional love song for the time, heavy on the two and four and a barrelhouse piano prominent in the mix with Carmen doing a poor man’s Floyd Cramer on the solo. “Go All The Way,” on the other hand, is a finely crafted--if somewhat schizophrenic--piece of power pop that not only seems ahead of its time, but has stood the test of time as a classic of the genre.

How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You (1975)

Performer: James Taylor                                        Writer: Holland-Dozier-Holland
Highest US Chart Position: #5                                Label: Warner Brothers
Musicians: James Taylor, Danny Kortchmar, Clarence McDonald, Jim Keltner and David Sanborn

This is another song from that monumental summer of 1975 when my dad was in the hospital apparently dying of cancer. It’s probably the first real song by James Taylor that I was fully conscious of and I listened to it a lot. In fact, when we got home from the hospital and my dad was going to be okay--for a while, anyway--I purchased my first ever 45s at the department store in town. I bought three of them that day and one was “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You).” Of course I had no idea that the song had been a hit eleven years earlier for Marvin Gaye at Motown, going all the way to number six on the charts in 1964. The song was written by Lamont Dozier along with brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, the most formidable writing team at the label in the sixties. The title comes from the famous line by Jackie Gleason that he would use on his television show. But even before James Taylor covered the song it was remade by Gaye’s labelmates, Junior Walker and the All Stars in their typically raucous fashion, a number eighteen hit two years later in 1966. Taylor’s version hit the charts at the end of June, debuting at number eighty-six. Two months later it peaked at number five and held there for two weeks through the beginning of September in 1975.

The song begins with a pickup by Jim Keltner on the drums, a tight roll into triplets on three and four before the rest of the band enters on the downbeat. James Taylor enters on the second beat singing the chorus. Clarence McDonald’s piano is front and center in the mix, with Danny Kortchmar providing rhythmic accents on the guitar. The piano accents three and four again before the verse begins, again on two, with Taylor singing this straight-ahead love song. On the turnaround at the end of the verse a string section enters, and stops when Taylor sings the word, “stop” while the entire band stops after the second time he says it, Keltner filling while the rest of the band and the strings flow into the next chorus. This time Taylor harmonizes with himself in overdub, along with his wife, Carly Simon, and the song definitely seems as if it was being sung to her. The second verse has strings all the way through, and Simon sings harmony on the first half of the turnaround, with Taylor ad-libbing on the following chorus. Then comes the distinctive alto saxophone solo by David Sanborn on the first half of the verse, and Taylor takes up the second half with another stop going into the chorus. On the out chorus Sanborn plays fills, while Simon’s vocals are gradually pushed further up in the mix as the song fades out.

Though he had covered Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend” in 1971, this was actually the first of what would become many R&B songs that Taylor would remake through the years, the success of this song ensuring numerous others. In fact, the R&B nature of this song doesn’t really allow for Taylor’s signature acoustic guitar work. The single originally appeared on the album Gorilla, which went to number six on the LP charts, and also included the hit, “Mexico,” which would later be covered by Jimmy Buffett. The flip side of the single is in keeping with the family nature of the A-side. “Sarah Maria” was written about Taylor and Simon’s daughter who was born the year before. It’s a slow acoustic number with mandolins in the background that is less about their infant child’s personality than the inspiration she provided him. One of my favorite parts of “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” has always been the sax solo by David Sanborn. While Tom Scott may have appeared on more pop songs in the seventies, there is no one with a more distinctive voice on the alto as Sanborn. I don’t think I was conscious of him at the time because the first of his albums I ever purchased was Heart to Heart, and that didn’t come out until 1978. But the song certainly made an impression on me at the time, and remains easily my favorite James Taylor recording of all time.

An American Band (2004)

by Dan Peek

If had to choose a favorite band from the seventies, it would easily be America. I first became truly conscious of their work in the summer of 1975, when their two biggest hits were on the radio, “Sister Golden Hair” and “Daisy Jane,” both by Gerry Beckley. Two years later I received the LP History: American’s Greatest Hits as a Christmas present from my aunt and uncle, and after that I became a die-hard fan. I continued to purchase the band’s albums even after the departure of Dan Peek, as well as buying Peek’s Christian albums in the early eighties. In 2004 Peek wrote an autobiography of his early life and his time in the group. An American Band is the story of America from Peek’s perspective, and it is a fascinating one. Musicians will no doubt be frustrated by the almost complete lack of any musical analysis of the songs or albums, but as an oral history it is a very welcome look inside one of the biggest acts of the seventies. Unfortunately Dan Peek died in 2011, but that makes this record all the more valuable, especially since there is an extreme paucity of writing about the music and groups of that era. It is a very informally written book, but informative and entertaining nonetheless, and comes highly recommended.

Born in Florida to an Air Force family, Dan Peek had already lived in Greenland, North Carolina, Japan and New York by the time he was ten years old. Musical experiences were varied for him, being taught to sing three-part harmony with his brother and sister on car trips, piano lessons in Japan, and finally getting a guitar after the family had moved to Peshawar, Pakistan. Peek was in his first band at the age of 12, along with his brother and a couple of the other kids on base. They played at the Airmen’s Club and the NCO club for a year, until he and his brother were sent back to the United States to live with their grandparents in Missouri so that they could finish high school. The boys managed to put together another band, but after a year his dad was transferred to San Angelo, Texas, and so his family, now two boys, two girls, and mom pregnant with a fifth, packed up and headed south. Another year, another band, but this one was able to sign a contract to record some original songs, that is until Peek’s father was reassigned to southern Illinois, close enough to their grandparent’s farm that their mom bought a house in the very town where they used to perform so she could be near her parents. Finally, in 1967, a senior in high school, Peek’s father was transferred to London, and it was there that Peek met Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell, as well as his future wife Catherine.

One of the fascinating things about Peek’s early adventures was the attitude of other military brats that he got to know in each new base the family moved to. The most striking example of this was when he came to London, excited to be in the land of the Beatles and wanting to experience all the culture had to offer. What he found there, in the U.S. high school was something he was utterly unprepared for.

                  Every prior place we’d lived the other military kids had all moved frequently and lived in some fairly
                  exotic locals . . . These people were whining about not being able to see their favorite TV series or
                  that the beer was served warm and the place was so foreign. Let me tell you about foreign. Foreign
                  is when a person wipes their behind with nothing but their bare hand and then cooks your food.
                  That’s foreign. England was not foreign, it was different and charmingly so.

Beckley and Bunnell were very different, though. Where Peek and Gerry Beckley and battled each other with competing bands, to hear Peek tell it he didn’t even know that Dewey Bunnell was interesting in anything but sports. But for the moment, that was the whole of it, and Peek moved to Virginia the following fall after graduation. I had always been mystified as to why Peek had attended Old Dominion University. His book, however, makes that perfectly clear. He had fallen in love with a girl named Christine, and her father took a transfer back to the states, to Virginia. Peek was simply following her. But with her family keeping them apart, his experimentation with drugs, and dismal grades he decided to go back to England.

He was surprised upon returning that Dewey Bunnell had taken his place in Gerry Beckley’s band. But the two evidently had a falling out. It wasn’t until a few months later, at a party that the three of them attended, that they gathered in the kitchen and began to sing and play together, and it became clear there was something special going on between the three of them. Unlike a lot of acts in the states, the three had no trouble getting offers for a recording contract; they just had to make the right decision. They eventually settled on Warner Brothers, who made a tentative agreement with them based on the success of a first album. Nevertheless, they immediately put them on retainer so they could quit their days jobs, found them an agent, and had them playing all over London. When they finally got into the studio and recorded their eponymous first album, America, Warners didn’t like any of the cuts for singles, and made them go into the studio again to record four more tracks in the hopes of getting something they liked. From that session came Dewey’s big hit, “A Horse with No Name.” With no hit single on the LP, the record could only manage to make it to number 30 on the British charts. But the American release almost fell victim to the same thing. Before they realized it, Warners in the U.S. had distributed ten thousand copies without the single and quickly rectified the situation. America’s first album in the U.S. went all the way to number one.

Lured by the artists that David Geffen was managing--as well as the massive tax hit they were taking in England--Gerry and Dewey decided that the three of them should go to L.A. Geffen quickly severed their ties with everything back in London and got them a new deal with Warners in L.A. The band decided to record at the Record Plant in Hollywood and produced one of their best albums, Homecoming, named to commemorate their return to the United States. To back them on bass and drums they hired Hal Blaine and Joe Osborne, studio veterans who had played on hundreds of hit records. During that same time, Stevie Wonder was using the studio and aided in the production. The big hit this time was also by Dewey, “Ventura Highway,” and both made the top ten, the single at number eight and the LP at number nine. While Dewey got married shortly after the first album came out, Dan finally married Christine after the two of them had been separated for over a year. With Gerry still being single, the band was in a strange place and it was good to read that from Peek’s perspective this showed up in the third album, Hat Trick. There’s a bizarre energy to the music, with a lot of over production and songs that are, frankly, less than interesting. And it didn’t help that the band had completely produced the album on their own. In fact, the only hit was written by someone else, “Muskrat Love,” which Warners hated, but the band forced them to release. This time the band was helped in the studio by Joe Walsh and Tom Scott among others, but the LP still only managed a meager number twenty-eight on the charts.

While America was a headlining act and radio staple, the trend was not good, and when it came time for the next album Dan told Gerry that they needed to get a real producer. He suggested the best one he could think of, George Martin, the producer of The Beatles, and the rest of the band was in full accord. The results on the album Holiday, recorded in Martin’s AIR studios in London, were immediate and dramatic, resulting in terrific songs like “Tin Man,” “Lonely People,” and “Another Try,” and the LP going to number three in the album charts. The only backup musician for the sessions was Willie Leacox on the drums, while Gerry and Dan traded off on bass. Bassist David Dickey had wanted to become a full member of the group at the time, but he was turned down and offered the touring spot instead. When he felt slighted by the group just prior to the tour, however, he left for L.A. but was forgiven in time to make the next album, Hearts. This time they moved up to the Record Plant in Sausalito, with Gerry providing the hits “Sister Golden Hair” and “Daisy Jane,” and the whole band coming up with one of their most infectious tunes, “Woman Tonight.” This was the height of their popularity, going to number four on the album charts and inspiring the label to release their greatest hits package next, re-engineered by George Martin and titled History.

Unfortunately a rift formed in the band and things began to gradually deteriorate. The next album, Hideaway, was recorded at the Caribou Ranch in Colorado and produced the group’s last Top 40 hit, Dan Peek’s “Today’s The Day.” The album was also the first since Hat Trick to fail to make the top ten. Though Peek was ready to leave the band at this point, they still owed Warner Brothers another album and after retreating to Hawaii, Peek demanded that the last album be recorded there. The result was Harbor, the most disparate collection of songs to date, and none of the three singles released were able to chart. The album itself still recorded a respectable twenty-one on the album charts, but the heyday of the group was clearly over. Up to this point Peek’s book is mercifully free from Christian proselytizing, but as he was forced out of the group and began to look for a Christian record label to sign with he gives in to the need to testify. Nevertheless, the circumstances surrounding his first solo album, All Things are Possible, are fascinating, especially the machinations in the Christian record industry that are every bit as cutthroat as the secular side. Of course, there is much, much more in the book about his personal life and the relationship between the three members of the band that is priceless. For anyone who loves the group, An American Band is required reading as well as being a rewarding history of one of the greatest groups of the seventies.

Two Tickets to Paradise (1978)

Performer: Eddie Money                                        Writer: Eddie Money
Highest US Chart Position: #22                              Label: Columbia Records
Musicians: Eddie Money, Jimmy Lyon, Randy Nichols, Lonnie Turner and Gary Mallaber

When I was in high school my dad thought it would be a good idea for me to take a public speaking class. Unlike me, most of the kids in the class were on the school debate team, and the teacher was the advisor of the team. One of our early speeches was to do a persuasive speech, and I have no idea what I did for mine, but I will never forget the speech that one of my classmates did. She was a petite girl with long, black hair. We would call her style of dress Goth today, but then it was just eccentric. Anyway, the intent of her speech was to persuade all of us that the album Eddie Money, was the greatest rock and roll album of all time. As it turns out, it wasn’t very persuasive, but through no fault of hers. Back in high school I didn’t have a lot of money and my purchase of music was almost entirely dependent upon hits. Because I already had two 45s from that album, in essence I already owned four out of the ten tracks from the LP, and so there was little chance I was going to spend more money on songs I hadn’t heard. Had I not owned those two singles, however, there’s a good chance I would have purchased it because I loved the hits. “Baby Hold On” was a medium tempo tune that had a deep and relentless groove, with lyrics that alluded to “Que Sera, Sera.” But the standout track, the real rocker, was “Two Tickets to Paradise,” yet another song that should have been a number one and still mystifies me as to why it wasn’t.

The song starts out with Jimmy Lyon’s overdubbed harmony guitars playing quarter-note triplets on three as a pickup into the full band hitting on one. Lyons continues with the harmony melody for six bars of the eight-bar intro, hits and holds on the downbeat of bar seven, and then Randy Nichols hits the organ on the eighth measure, along with drum fills by Gary Mallaber, heading into the verse. Eddie Money comes in with the verse, about taking his girl away on an impromptu vacation, with the addition of Alan Pasqua on piano. At the end of the verse is a sort of vamp, with Money singing “waiting so long” and Lyon responding with the harmony guitars. This leads powerfully into the chorus with the band accenting the first syllable of each of the words of the title and continuing with that rhythm four times until it slides back into the second verse and chorus. At this point Lyon’s takes over with a wonderfully intricate solo, where he once again harmonizes with himself all the way through. Money comes in with the third verse, but this time he provides background vocals singing “whoa, whoa, whoa.” The guitar heading into the third chorus climbs quickly up the neck and solos during the chorus. The chorus repeats one more time heading into the end, with Money holding out the word “paradise,” along with the organ and a splash of cymbals.

Eventually I got rid of all my old records and tapes, ushering in my own digital era in music. But this caused some real disappointments for me along the way as I realized that many of the songs I had taken for granted, weren’t available digitally. One was “Two Tickets to Paradise.” Every CD that had the song on it, from the original LP to his greatest hits package, had a completely different version of the song, most notably absent was the incredibly distinctive harmony guitar fills by Jimmy Lyon. For me, it was as if half the song was missing, and for years I never liked to listen to it because of that. Finally, in the era of illegal downloads I thought I might have a chance, but still couldn’t find it despite exhaustive Google searches. Then one day, on an obscure music blog, I managed to find an unbroken link to a file sharing site and, low and behold, I had the song back. Fortunately the situation has been remedied legally, with the 45 version appearing at last on the CD Playlist: The Very Best of Eddie Money. The song only reached number twenty-two in the charts, entering the Hot 100 at the end of June and staying on the charts all summer, finally peaking in early September. The B-side of the single was a very nice medium tempo blues called “Don’t Worry,” with Money playing the sax. The single version of “Two Tickets to Paradise” is one of my favorite songs of that year, maybe not the greatest song of all time, but definitely in the running.

God Loves You (1979)

Performer: The Archers                                          Writer: Billy Preston
Highest US Chart Position: N/A                              Label: Light Records
Musicians: Tim Archer, Steve Archer, Janice Archer, Billy Preston and David Hungate

In the early seventies it was known as Jesus Music, but it would take the rest of the decade before it would be transformed into the genre known as Contemporary Christian. While I played music and sang in high school, the only actual rock band I was in played Christian music, and that was my first and only real exposure to a variety of songs and styles from that era late in the decade. Our band even managed to be accepted into a Christian music competition in Colorado in the summer of 1979, and that’s where I bought The Archers album Stand Up! One of my favorite songs on the album was the penultimate number, “God Loves You,” which, I didn’t learn until recently, was written by the great Billy Preston back in 1972 for his album Music Is My Life. But where Preston’s version had been more like gospel funk, The Archers turned it into pure disco. At the time, however, this was a great way to go, and taking into consideration the time period it’s still a great rendition even today. Part of the reason for that has to be the presence of Billy Preston himself on the record. Not only his distinctive sound on the organ, but his mere presence in the studio must have been a real inspiration to the group and it shows.

The tune doesn’t begin with a typical disco beat, straight sixteenth-notes on the hi-hats, but instead drummer Mike Baird has a much more interesting rhythm going, and with the addition of congas by King Errisson it lifts it out of the realm of cliché, though it does owe something to Barry Manilow’s intro to "Copacabana". After eight bars the organ hits on the last beat and the vocals come in singing the chorus. The rhythm section is thick, with Dean Parks playing a very rhythmic electric guitar, Larry Muhoberac playing percussive piano, Preston on the organ, and David Hungate of Toto on bass. The lyrics, such as they are, are fairly minimal as this is a pure song of praise. The chorus repeats the title phrase four times, once every four bars, and then a second repeating phrase of thanks begins with the singers invoking the idea of eternal life. At this point all the musicians drop out, except for the percussion, and the singers sort of rhythmically whisper their praise ending on the same fourth beat from the intro that begins the whole thing again. The second time around a horn section plays call and response with the vocals all the way through. Again a whispered section with percussion, this time twice as long, leads right into a Billy Preston solo on the organ. After an extended second half of the verse, ad lib vocals by Steve Archer are responded to by the full group over the percussion, with bits of guitar and organ, and finally the horns and piano joining in. A short whispered section ends with a shouted-out repetition of the title.

This was already the sixth album recorded by The Archers, who began as a trio, Tim and Steve singing with their older brother Gary. When Gary left to become the manager of the group the two boys were joined by singer Nancye Short and guitarist Billy Rush Masters, who wrote many of their songs. Eventually Pat Boone heard them and brought then to Nashville to start their recording career. When Short and Masters left the group the boys were then joined by their younger sister Janice. Stand Up! was the second album featuring Janice and she does a great job on all her feature numbers. By this time the group was doing the bulk of their recording in Los Angeles and drawing on the cream of studio musicians in town. In addition to the distinguished rhythm section on this album, the horn section consisted of Buddy Collette and Don Menza on saxophones, Chuck Findlay and Jay DaVersa on trumpet, and Bill Watrous on trombone. The album was also produced by pianist Larry Muhoberac, who was the original keyboard player with Elvis Presley’s seventies touring band. He worked in the studio with dozens of name acts in the seventies before going into producing for Seals and Crofts as well as the Archers. Though not typically remembered by non-Christians, this kind of music had a large popular following in the seventies, and with its connection to pop superstar Billy Preston, “God Loves You” is a quintessential example of the genre.

If You Love Me, Let Me Know (1974)

Performer: Olivia Newton-John                              Writer: John Rostill
Highest US Chart Position: #5                               Label: Brotherly Love
Musicians: Mike Sammes                                      Producer: John Farrar

Despite any negative criticism about living in the seventies, it was generally an optimistic time, and the music reflected that. There was an enthusiasm inherent in playing music and trying to get signed, and a wide-open radio platform in which to get discovered, one nearly free from the formatting straightjacket of today. As such, the seventies were a tremendous time of crossover for country artists who were able to create a real presence on the pop charts. One of the most successful was Olivia Newton-John, who seemed to burst onto the U.S. airwaves in the early seventies out of nowhere, but had actually been putting out singles and albums for over two years prior to that, even managing to make it to number twenty-five with a cover of George Harrison’s “If Not For You” in 1971. But it wouldn’t be until late 1973 that she would hit the charts in earnest, with songs written specifically for her. The first was “Let Me Be There,” a straight-ahead country tune with a distinctive bass vocal by Mike Sammes. The follow-up, “If You Love Me (Let Me Know),” would notch one spot higher and make it to number five in the spring of 1974, finally peaking in late June and early July that summer. Not only was she a joy to listen to, but a pleasure to look at, a fresh-faced country girl out of Australia singing pop songs disguised as country, and selling millions of records despite the prominence of pedal steel and flat-picked Telecaster guitars behind her.

This tune is the title track from the album If You Love Me, Let Me Know. It announces its country presence right from the start, with a twangy electric guitar intro supported by a wash of pedal steel in the background. Yet, when Olivia Newton-John comes in on the verse, her voice couldn’t be any less country. The verse is supported by solid acoustic guitar strumming and piano, while the pedal steel plays call and response with Newton-John’s vocals. She sings about a man she’s fallen deeply in love with, and yet he has failed to profess his love for her. Like her previous hit, the chorus is made very distinctive by the bass vocals by Mike Sammes pushed up forward in the mix. In it she asks to be loved with equal passion or released from the promise of their relationship. The first half of the second verse is preceded by the same intro, but this time the vocals are sung over a fingerpicked guitar, again with pedal steel responding but further back in the mix and a string section underneath. Then the drums come in on eighth notes, bringing the rest of the band, with the addition of a tambourine on the fourth beat of every measure, along for the second half of the verse. The second chorus is followed by the intro again, and then a final turn around on the last phrase as the band fades and Sammes puts his vocal into the basement.

I’ll never forget walking by my sister’s room--in my memory it’s late May or early June--and she was playing the 45 on her record player. Of course I’d heard the song a dozen times by now, but when I went into my room I left the door open and just listened. At that time, my last year in grade school at the end of sixth grade, I had absolutely no interest in country music, but this was something else. It sure didn’t sound like the Tammy Wynette or Buck Owens albums my folks had played on their stereo once upon a time. She could alternately be breathy and almost whisper the lyrics, but there was also a full-throated quality she had that was just beneath the surface. Not quite Ronstadt, but certainly nothing like the Southern drawl so prevalent in the music coming out of Nashville at the same time. Olivia Newton-John was from Australia, but British by birth, and maybe that had something to do with it. The song was written by another Briton, John Rostill, who wrote a bunch of hits for her including “Let Me Be There,” as well as the number three hit from 1975, “Please Mr., Please.” Tragically, he died in 1973 before any of these songs hit the charts. The B-side of the single, “Brotherly Love,” is an absolutely bizarre pastiche of oom-pah band and military march set to synthesized horns and strange percussion. The song had been pulled from her previous U.S. album, Let Me Be There. Ultimately, Olivia Newton-John was a pop singer, and so her transition into that genre was effortless. “If You Love Me (Let Me Know)” was actually the highest charting song she ever had on the country charts, while she would be a fixture on the Top Forty for another decade.

Give It One (1972)

Performer: Maynard Ferguson                              Writer: Alan Downey & Maynard Ferguson
Album US Chart Position: N/A                              Label: Columbia Records
Musicians: Maynard Ferguson, Jeff Daly, Pete Jackson, Dave Lynane and Randy Jones

My introduction to real jazz did not happen in the seventies. That was the decade of jazz fusion, a polyglot put together by out of work jazz musicians pandering to black audiences that had turned their backs on jazz to embrace soul music. Where once they had played saxophones and trumpets, young musicians were now picking up guitars and electronic keyboards instead. As a result, the only jazz I was able to purchase at the local department store in my small hometown was of the fusion variety. And since me and most of my musical friends were in the school jazz band, the records we tended to gravitate to were by big bands. The most exciting of these was clearly Maynard Ferguson who, like Art Blakey in the real world of jazz, put together young jazz musicians who would rotate in and out of his band, writing and arranging for the leader’s high-note pyrotechnics. For a while Ferguson had a string of successful albums that made the album charts in the U.S. M.F. Horn Two did not chart, even though it is a far superior album than its successor, M.F. Horn 3, which made it to number 128 on the album charts. That judgment, however, must be qualified. MFH2 was composed primarily of pop tunes, where MFH3 had none and was a far more jazz oriented album. M.F. Horn Two opened up with what I consider to be the best song that Maynard Ferguson ever recorded in the seventies, an up-tempo number called “Give It One.”

The song was co-written and arranged by one of his trumpet section at the time, Alan Downey. It begins with four-note phrases of eighth notes that begins with the trumpet section, and as the phrases climb continuously higher the saxes and trombones join in. Ferguson finishes off the line solo, with the rhythm section joining in. But then the band cuts out and just the piano and bass play a syncopated line that climbs back down to the tonic. The trombones set up a bass pattern and the same piano line is also played by the saxes, while the trumpets join in with the bones. At the end of the intro Ferguson does a couple of high-notes with vibrato, and then a drum fill leads into the melody of the verse played by the trumpets. The saxes provide a subtle counter-melody, and then everyone drops out while the trumpets continue with the rest of the band providing accents similar to the end of the intro. Another drum fill leads to a key change and the melody again, with the bones and saxes playing a more aggressive counter, and with the same trumpet breaks at the end. From here, alto saxophonist Jeff Daly launches into an absolutely amazing solo with the band supporting him the second time through. Next Ferguson takes a solo with high-note run and hold at the end. After that is a sax soli that leads to another trumpet section break. The piano and bass go back to the bass pattern, joined first by the drums and then the whole band. Finally a long climb begins with the saxes and is taken over by the trumpets. The sections alternate at the close with a longer drum fill, an even longer run up, until the whole band hits on the staccato final note.

When looking at Maynard Ferguson’s seventies albums, the best of all has to be Chameleon. I’m almost certain, however, that I purchased M.F. Horn Two before that album, and it is absolutely a close runner-up. Given that, the chart listings for his albums don’t really make a lot of sense to me. While M.F. Horn 3, the jazz oriented album, charted, Chameleon failed to. After that Primal Scream, a definite step down artistically, made it all the way up to number seventy-five. Ferguson’s all-time best seller was Conquistador because of its inclusion of “Gonna Fly Now,” the theme from Rocky. From there on out, however, his albums tended to rely too much on the disco ethos and the arrangements of pop tunes weren’t nearly as interesting as those by Jay Chataway on Chameleon. During my time in the jazz band at high school we had a couple of guys who could play the high trumpet parts, and so we took the opportunity to purchase several of Ferguson’s charts, including “Give It One,” on which I attempted the saxophone solo. But where we were able to master the tunes off of Chameleon, we were never really able to get a hold of the intricacies of “Give It One.” Though that was always something of a disappointment, the few times we did attempt the tune were thrilling for me. But that challenge also served to demonstrate the artistic value of “Give It One” in general and only reinforced my love of the tune.