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.

Stairway to Heaven (1971)

Performer: Led Zeppelin                                        Writer: Jimmy Page & Robert Plant
Album US Chart Position: #2                                 Label: Atlantic Records
Musicians: Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham

When I was in school our local radio station ran a program every New Year’s Eve in which they would broadcast the top one hundred songs of the year, playing the number one song right at the stroke of midnight. And every year that I can remember listening to that program, the number one song was “Stairway to Heaven.” I have absolutely no idea how they tabulated the rankings, but for nearly a decade it didn’t matter what trends in music were happening, Led Zeppelin held the top spot with one of the most unique and distinctive songs in rock history. For me, however, there were lots of negative things associated with the group and I never made any effort at the time to seek out and listen to their music. For one thing, I didn’t really get it, and still don’t. One of my favorite moments from the History of Rock and Roll is when Pete Townsend says that he never understood Zeppelin and what they were trying to do. That made me feel vindicated--though frankly I never understood The Who either. The other thing was seeing a religious program on the Trinity Broadcast Network when Paul Crouch, Jr. did a three-hour program on backward masking and “Stairway to Heaven” was the featured song at the end of the show, revealing all kinds of demonic messages in the song when it was played backward. For a long time I would still feel a frisson of evil whenever I listen to it, but thankfully those days are gone and I can hear it for what it is.

The song begins with a fingerpicked acoustic guitar by Jimmy Page, and then is joined by twin, overdubbed recorders by John Paul Jones. There is a melancholy sadness to the chord progression, and when Robert Plant enters with the vocals the recorders drop out. The lyrics talk of a lady looking to buy her way into to heaven. Innocuous enough on the surface, but somehow warped into a message of evil by the religious right, when it could easily enough be interpreted as a cautionary tale. When the second verse comes around the recorders come back in. Page ends the first section with some double-time picking and the recorders then drop out for the duration. When the electric twelve-string comes in it is strumming the same minor chords over the top of the acoustic, and later picks out a rhythm similar to the opening when Plant goes into another verse. During this section Jones plays his bass part on the electric piano. The second section ends with John Bonham playing a simple fill before he enters playing a basic rhythm, but doing some more intricate work at the ends of the verses, while Jones is on his bass guitar. The final section begins with what could only be described as a fanfare on the electric guitar, with accents by the bass and drums. This leads right into a wonderful guitar solo by Page, supported by some great fills by Bonham. At the end of the solo Plant comes back in over an almost a march-like feel with accents on one and two for two bars and syncopated accents for the next two. At the end of the song Page bends into octaves up and down the neck before the music dies completely and Plant finishes by singing the title.

The song was never released as a single; at just over eight minutes long it certainly wasn’t going to get any AM airplay, though that wasn’t an issue on FM stations which resulted in the massive airplay the record received. It was the last cut of the A-side of Zeppelin’s fourth album, untitled but usually referred to as Led Zeppelin IV. The album was released at the end of November in 1971, and eventually climbed to the number two spot on the U.S. album charts early the following year. The group never really had any significant singles success in the U.S., being more of an album band where fans weren’t going to be satisfied with a couple of three-minute edits of their songs. “Stairway to Heaven” was pressed as a promotional single for radio stations, with the same song on both sides, and has since become a valued collectors item. A lot has been written about this song, but the most interesting thing to me is the way it was composed, with Jimmy Page piecing together snippets of things he was working on, but with the idea of creating an epic song that would increase in volume, speed, and intensity throughout. What’s also interesting is the reactions of the two composers to the song now. For Page, it’s the best thing he ever wrote, and feels that it represents everything the band was about. For Robert Plant, however, it’s more akin to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird,” something that has been so overplayed that it has lost its meaning. While entities like VH1 or Rolling Stone have put songs above it in their lists of all time great rock songs, like my childhood radio station “Stairway to Heaven” will always be number one to me.

One of These Nights (1975)

Performer: The Eagles                                            Writers: Don Henley & Glenn Frey
Highest US Chart Position: #1                                Label: Asylum Records
Musicians: Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Bernie Leadon, Don Felder and Randy Meisner

I met my best friend in seventh grade band class. I was playing saxophone and he was stuck on clarinet because his dad felt it would make his technique better before he switched over to the sax. His dad was probably right. There was no explanation for why we hit it off, but we seemed to share a lot of similar ideas as well as a perceived place in life. I think it was just a relief to find someone else who was like me, and we’ve been friends ever since. It wasn’t long after we met that we started spending time at each other’s house. I’ll never forget the first night I stayed at his place. We were in his bedroom at the end of the house and before we went to sleep he turned the lights off and dropped the needle on The Eagles: Their Greatest Hits. The album had just come out, and though I’d heard all of the songs on the radio I hadn’t had the opportunity to just listen before. The LP was on the B-side and the first cut was “One of These Nights.” The song had been a hit the year before, going to number one the summer my dad was in the hospital. It entered the charts at the end of May and took the entire summer to reach the top spot at the beginning of August, staying around until the end of September. But listening to it there in the dark, with no other distractions, it was as though I was hearing it for the first time.

The opening is wonderful, with Randy Meisner hitting on the downbeat followed by Don Felder sliding up on a single string to Meisner’s three-note phrase in which he slides down on the third note. The whole thing is punctuated by Felder with a staccato chord up the neck on the and of four. After once through the progression, Felder and Bernie Leadon slide into a power chord that holds and fades over two bars. The intro ends on four staccato notes by the whole band before Don Henley comes in on one with the vocal. The verse is about looking forward to a glorious night together with a woman. Though Glenn Frey plays guitar, he’s not really a lead player, and the song as well as the album benefits tremendously from the presence of Don Felder alongside Bernie Leadon. The chorus is uniquely constructed, with a wash of vocal harmonies at the beginning of each phrase, finally ending with the title. Henley also plays an interesting rhythm on the hi-hats throughout. The second verse follows and has a line that the group changed, originally saying the narrator is searching for the “daughter of god” but Henley and Frey though that was going too far and changed it to “angel in white.” At the end of the second chorus comes a scorching solo by Don Felder, starting up high on the neck and working his way down and back up, a crisp distortion adding just the right touch. A bridge follows with more intricate guitar work and backing harmonies. The background vocals then repeat the title phrase while Henley improvises through a lengthy fadeout.

The single version of the song is reduced by a minute and a half, mostly by trimming down the intro and the long fadeout at the end. The sound is major shift away from the country rock the band had been playing since their inception. But with Henley’s kind of vocal abilities, he and Frey wanted to go in a more soulful, rock direction and the missing piece was Don Felder. A friend of Bernie Leadon, his arrival signaled a significant change on the album One of These Nights, also aided by a new producer, Bill Szymczyk. Though Felder would have a serious falling out with the band, leading to his permanent dismissal, there is no doubting his vital contribution to the new sound that would be solidified with their next LP, Hotel California. In fact, the B-side of the single was given to Felder’s song “Visions,” which he wrote and sings the lead vocals. The song is a rocker with the kind of intricate guitar work that Felder is known for, along with the lush backing vocals by the rest of the group. For me, “One of These Nights” is a song I can return to over and over again. It is not only a vivid reminder of that summer of 1975, but hearing it a year later at my friend’s house was the impetus for going out immediately and purchasing the greatest hits, still the best selling hits album of all time, and one of my personal favorites.

One On One (1977)

Performer: Seals & Crofts                                        Writers: Paul Williams & Charles Fox
Album US Chart Position: #118                               Label: Warner Brothers
Musicians: Jim Seals and Dash Crofts                    Producers: Charles Fox and Louie Shelton

If we’re talking desert island discs from the seventies, this has to be on the top for me, for a lot of reasons that need some explaining. It all begins with the basketball film One On One, which was released in the summer of 1977. When I was in high school a lot of people said I looked like Robbie Benson at the time, so naturally I had to see this film. I also played sports all the way through high school--though I did bail on basketball during my freshman year because I tore the ligaments in my ankle and decided never to go back. I was also one of the few people who never saw Rocky when it came out the previous year, though this vehicle was substantially different. Anyway, I was blown away by the film, and I soon became obsessed with it. I didn’t have the money to see it a bunch of times in the theater, though I’m sure I went more than once. But for some reason, in those days before VHS, it seemed to follow me and I was able to see it several times in various contexts. Once our school even herded the entire student body into the gym one spring and ran the film for us up on a giant patchwork of white sheets that was the gym’s movie screen. Along with the film, however, was the soundtrack album for One On One, which I purchased immediately and could listen to as often as I want to--which was very often. The other factor that made the LP so magical for me was the presence of one of my favorite groups, Seals and Crofts. This was a unique project for them because they didn’t write any of the music as they usually did on their albums.

All of the music was written by composer Charles Fox, who was primarily a television composer at that point in his career. But he had also composed the music for several hit pop songs, and he certainly brought that sensibility to this project. The lyrics for the vocal numbers were penned by the great Paul Williams, a seventies staple on variety TV, but also an impressive songwriter who wrote hits for The Carpenters and Three Dog Night, among others. Finally, Seals and Crofts themselves, in addition to providing their unique vocals, also played on their vocal numbers. The first song on the album is the hit single off the record, “My Fair Share,” that went to number eighteen on the pop charts that fall. The love theme, it begins as something of a ballad, but soon turns into a medium tempo number about love. “This Day Belongs to Me” actually opens the film and runs under the credits as Benson drives from Colorado to Los Angeles. It’s also the tune that most prominently features Dash Crofts’ mandolin work. “John Wayne” is an interesting interpretation of music that occurs when Benson becomes determined to improve himself so that he’ll be ready when the comes time to prove himself. Williams gives the lyrics an appropriately western theme to go along with the prominent harmonica in the music. “Love Conquers All” is the other theme song of the picture, and is also reprised at the end as the music under the closing credits. “It’ll Be Alright” begins as an instrumental version of “My Fair Share,” and in fact Seals and Crofts come in toward the end with a slower version of the love theme. Lyrically, “The Hustle” celebrates the enthusiasm the main character has, despite not having the mental toughness to make the most of his physical abilities.

The rest of the tunes are instrumental numbers written by Charles Fox, with studio musicians performing. All of the songs are attractive in their own way, and they almost provide a vintage soundtrack of the seventies in instrumentation and mood. The first is “Janet’s Theme” a number featuring the flute along with a fusion-style jazz band as the leitmotif for Annette O’Toole’s character. “The Picnic” is really a two-part theme, the first one excited and jaunty as the couple goes on a picnic, but then it settles down into a slow variation of “My Fair Share” as they get serious with one another. “Flyin’” is up-tempo fusion with the flute on the theme, and an electric piano solo. This is followed by “Reflections,” and incredibly evocative seventies minor theme played on acoustic piano when Benson faces his worst fears. “Time Out” is another medium tempo flute tune that is used to underscore the times when Benson is feeling good and isn’t worried about anything. For “The Party” Fox changes things up and brings electric guitars to the fore, with two of them playing twin leads and solos, and is used in the film for the party scene that shocks the sheltered main character. Finally, the number used for the nationally televised climax of the film, “The Basketball Game.” It’s also used when Benson first arrives on campus and goes to the gym for the first time. Regardless of the success or failure of the film, the soundtrack from One On One remains a masterful summation of the seventies’ musical sensibility and is a wonderful slice of Seals and Crofts’ talents in the bargain. And it will always remain my favorite album of the decade.

All Right Now (1970)

Performer: Free                                                    Writer: Paul Rodgers & Andy Fraser
Highest US Chart Position: #4                              Label: A&M Records
Musicians: Paul Rodgers, Paul Kossoff, Andy Fraser and Simon Kirke

There was a time long before effects pedals, or Tom Schultz and his PowerSoak, when the only way to get an electric guitar to distort was to turn the amplifier all the way up. Later, manufacturers added overdrives so that the same effect could be achieved without the volume. One of the delightful things about early hard rock bands is how little actual distortion they used when amplifying their guitars. Instead of being used to assault the listener, distortion was used as texture, adding a warmth to the guitar’s sound rather than becoming the sound itself. “All Right Now” is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Paul Kossoff’s Les Paul has plenty of bite when playing full chords, but some of his single-line phrases during the solo have no distortion at all. And that’s another thing. Back then, guitarists played full chords, not just two strings with two fingers the way they do today. This allowed for all kinds of subtlety when playing hard rock songs. Guitarist Joe Perry could go full out with minimal distortion on a song like “Somebody” from Aerosmith’s first album, or on a song like “Fight or Fall” by Thin Lizzy, a slow strum on the guitar could produce almost no distortion at all. It was a time when rock music had melodies and meaningful lyrics, and rock songs could be appreciated by all kinds of people who listened to AM radio, not just by the people who bought rock albums.

The song begins with just the guitar and drums, Paul Kossoff playing the distinctive opening chords while an overdubbed Simon Kirke also hits the claves on the downbeats. (What was the last rock song on which you heard claves? AC/DC’s “Soul Stripper” is the only one that comes to mind.) Paul Rodgers’ lyrics are, of course, about a girl, sung in the form of a conversation about a guy trying to pick up a girl who, it turns out, is nobody’s fool. It’s not until the chant-like title chorus comes around that Andy Fraser’s bouncing bass enters, a simple but highly effective line. The second verse repeats the arrangement of the first, followed again by the full group as Kirke plays sixteenth-notes on the snare leading into the chorus. Then Kirke improvises a rhythm on the snare while Kossoff plays some licks up the neck. A drumroll leads into a Fraser bass riff that ends with a pair of two-note quarter-note fifths, the tonic dropping a half note on the second one. Underneath the guitar solo is some simple piano overdubbed by Fraser, while Kossoff launches into a wonderfully spacious solo on the album cut--most of which was eliminated from of the single. He’s in no hurry and really demonstrates the difference between the single-notes that don’t seem to have any distortion at all, and the double string slides that actually emphasize the distortion effect. From there it’s a repeat of verse two, but much more animated vocally, and the out choruses with some vocal improv by Rodgers.

Free was a British rock band formed in the late sixties. After a couple of albums that earned them a following in England, they recorded their third album, Fire and Water, and became an overnight sensation with their hit single “All Right Now.” The song was released in August of 1970, and by the middle of October it peaked at number four. The B-side of the record is a slow, beautiful instrumental called “Mouthful of Grass” from the group’s first album. Unfortunately the band was unable to capitalize on their success and soon vocalist Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke acquired the services of guitarist Mick Ralphs and bassist Boz Burrell, and christened their new group Bad Company. Beginning with the template they had established in Free, the new band was able to become a perennial chart resident for their first few years together, recording a string of classic rock songs that, while they may have left critics cold, were certainly popular with record buyers. The gifted guitarist Paul Kossoff succumbed to drug addiction in 1976, and is generally credited with the reason for the band’s lack of later success. Bassist Andy Fraser made several unsuccessful attempts at starting new bands, but it wasn’t until he moved to California and began writing songs for others--his other big hit being “Every Kinda People” for Robert Palmer--that he flourished in the music industry. Far from being a one-hit wonder, Free has nevertheless achieved radio immortality for their one hit single “All Right Now.”

Drift Away (1973)

Performer: Dobie Gray                                          Writers: Mentor Williams
Highest US Chart Position: #5                              Label: Decca Records
Musicians: Troy Seals, Reggie Young, David Briggs, Mike Leech and Kenny Malone

How this song failed to reach number one is absolutely mystifying to me. “Drift Away” by Dobie Gray has everything: a catchy hook in the chorus, an amazing vocal delivery, solid backing music, and wonderfully evocative lyrics. I don’t have any specific associations with the song, but every time I hear it I’m transported back to that magical summer of 1973 when pop music first began to become part of my consciousness. The song--as well as the performer--has quite an interesting background. It was written by producer Mentor Williams, who is the brother of the great songwriter Paul Williams, and first appeared on an album by John Henry Kurtz in 1972. That album also featured some heavyweights like Kenny Loggins, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, Doug Dillard, Jim Horn and Michael Omartian. The instrumentation has something of a country rock feel, not unlike a Neil Young tune when he was with CSN. But the album failed to chart, and Williams went back to the drawing board the following year with Dobie Gray as the singer. The arrangement is almost identical to what Williams did with Kurtz, but with new musicians like Reggie Young Jr. on guitar and Gray’s new vocals, it has a very different feel. This time the song was a top five smash and vindicated Williams’ belief in it. It was also the biggest hit of Gray’s career.

After some chording by Reggie Young on the guitar opening, he does a sort of sliding riff up the neck which is preceded by Mike Leech’s bass sliding into the downbeat, with Kenny Malone playing just the hi-hats and the bass drum. Gray’s vocals come in after the downbeat, and the short, eight-bar verse by the three musicians provides a soft cushion to sing over. When the chorus comes, it comes in strong, with Malone emphasizing the backbeat and Troy Seals coming in on guitar as well. If there’s any residual country-rock flavor left over from the original Kurtz version, it’s on the chorus with the twangy electric guitar. The same intro is played again by Young, but with the bass and drums underneath this time, and when the vocals come in for the next verse Malone plays a clock-like rhythm rather than the drums. A thick string section accompanies the chorus the second time through. A short bridge section has Malone improvising lightly on his cymbals while the strings and piano back up the vocals. This eases imperceptibly into the next verse, with Malone playing rim clicks on the snare along with the bass and strings. The next chorus is just the vocals and handclaps, with Young strumming lightly on the guitar and Leech coming in on bass toward the end. The out chorus has Gray improvising over the top with the piano and strings coming up in the mix as the tune fades out on a guitar solo.

The record was released in February of 1973, entering the charts at number eighty-five, and spent the entire spring on the charts, finally reaching it’s peak position of number five on May 12th, the same day Gray performed the song on American Bandstand. But Dobie Gray was not overnight success. By this time in his career he had already been performing and recording for over a decade. His first single was released in 1963, and two years later he reached the top twenty with the original vocal version of “The ‘In’ Crowd,” which Ramsey Lewis and his trio took to number five that same year in an instrumental version. After a stint acting, he began doing session work singing demos for Paul Williams and it was no doubt through that association that he me met Mentor. The album Drift Away was the first of several that Gray recorded at that time, though none of his other songs were as successful as the title track to his first album. The B-side of the single, “City Stars,” was co-written by Gray himself, along with Chuck Higgins Jr., but has little of the charm and excitement of the flip side. While I would categorize this music as soul, it’s not the seventies style of soul that was coming out of Philadelphia. Being recorded in Nashville, it is closer to the Muscle Shoals style of instrumentation that was used in the sixties. “Drift Away” is a terrific example of a song simply needing a second chance and having the right vocalist to connect with audiences.