In early January of 1971 songwriter Carole King recorded her 2nd solo album as a singer.  When Tapestry was release a few months later, no one knew nor imagine how popular the album would become.

It was the biggest Album of 1971 remaining at the Number 1 spot for 15 weeks and on the Album Charts for over 6 years.

This is the Album’s title song.

All of the songs on the Album were written or co-written by King including a couple of songs that she had written with her ex-husband Gerry Goffin and  had been huge hits by others in the 1960s.

The Album would win the Grammy for Album of the Year.  It’s Too Late would win Record of the Year and the song You’ve Got a Friend a song on the album and also recorded by her friend James Taylor would be Song of the Year.  Taylor sang backup on her version.

Not sure when this version was recorded.

With Carole King, the song’s composer backing him on piano.

This is James Taylor’s only number 1 on the Billboard charts reaching the top spot on July 31, 1971.

The album Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, the album where this song first appeared, peaked at the Number 2 spot on the albums charts. It was prevented from reaching Number 1 because Carole Kings’s Tapestry held the top spot. King’s album included her version of her song.

The song received two Grammy Awards. James Taylor won Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male for the song. It also won Best Song of the Year. Carole King was one of the few, if not the only, person to be involved in the winning of all five of the Grammy top awards. Along with these two she also won Record of the Year for It’s Too Late. Album of the Year for Tapestry as well as Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female.

Grand Funk, the self proclaimed American Band, was pure rock band. In 1974 as they were working on their album Shinin’ On and was thinking that they may need one more song to complete it. Mark Farner as a lark began singing ‘Everybody’s doing a brand new dance now’, which with standard reaction other members of the band thought, ‘Yeah, Grand Funk doing the Locomotion’. After thought they said Why not and turned out this version of the ’60′s pop classic.

The Locomotion became the group’s 2nd Number 1 single and their biggest selling single.

The original version was done in 1962 by Little Eva, the 13 year old baby sitter of the song’s writers Carole King and Gerry Goffin.

In the 1980′s the song became a hit again this time by Australian Kylie Minogue.

Carole King has performed the song many time in her live shows. This version was from the Coming Home Concert in the early 1990′s.

Over the years there have been a few artist who have gone just by one name. The 60′s artist Donavan and from the 80′s Madonna and Prince. Beginning in the late 1960′s and even into today, Melanie is one of those one name artist.

She was just a young singer when she was invited to perform at the Woodstock festival in 1969 but by the end of it she was better known.

The song Lay Down (Candles In The Rain) which she recorded in 1970 with the Edwin Hawkins Singers was inspired by the events at Woodstock. It reached a top spot of Number 6 on the charts.

And as an added bonus Melanie performing the same song 20 years later.

The song was written by Bobby Russell. Russell was a popular songwriter in the late 60′s and early 70′s having written the hits Little Green Apples and Honey. He also wrote and recorded a a song about the everyday man having a normal Saturday titled Saturday Morning Confusion.

The song was offered to Cher, but her husband Sonny Bono turned the song down. Vicki Lawrence, one of the regulars on the Carol Brunett Show was married to Russell. She recorded a demo of the song and her version was finally release. The song plus the ones she recorded for an album of the same name were her only recorded songs.

The song reached Number 1 on the Pop charts, but barely charted on the country charts, although it was an obvious country song.

A movie based loosely on the song was made in 1981 and starred Mark Hamill and Kristy McNichol with the title song sung by Tanya Tucker.

10 years later Country Singer Reba McIntyre’s version reached the top of the country charts. The clip is not from the 70s but the 90s when Reba appeared on a Talk Show hosted by Vicki Lawrence.

I have seen Rose Garden by Lynn Anderson listed as a One-Hit wonder. While it may be true that this was the only song that may have crossed over to the Pop charts to any one who was listening to Country Music in the late 60′s and early 70′s she sure wasn’t a One-Hit artist.

The song was a Number 1 hit on the country charts for five weeks and managed to reach as high as Number 3 on the Pop charts.

This was also the name of an album she released in 1971. Until Shania Twain’s 1997 album Come On Over, it was the biggest selling album by a country female singer.

Anderson won the Grammy for Best Country Female singer in 1971 for this song.

She was also a horsewoman winning 16 National Championships, eight World Championships and several celebrity championships.

To many when they think of the song I will Always Love You, they will think about the version that Whitney Houston sang from the movie My Bodyguard. But long before that it was done by its composer Dolly Parton.

Parton wrote the song in 1973 and released it as one of the songs on her album Jolene and was the follow up single to Jolene. Even though it hit Number 1 on the country charts in a year when many country songs were cross over hits on the Pop charts it was not a big success on the Pop charts.

Parton has re-recorded the song twice. Once in 1982, (this clip may be from 1982) for the movie Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and again in 1995 as a duet with Vince Gill.

The Whitney Houston version released in 1992 is the 6th most successful song in chart history.

Patti Smith was the leader of the group that shares her name the Patti Smith Group. They signed in 1975 to Arista Records. Because the Night was from their second album Easter, their most commercially successful album partly due to this top 20 single.

At the same time the group was recording Easter, Bruce Springsteen was working on his album Darkness at the Edge of Town. Springsteen wrote a couple of songs in the style of the Patti Smith Group. Smith reworked his composition of this song so that it came from the female point of view and not the working man view that Springsteen was working on.

Springsteen never released the song on a studio album, but he did work it into his tour and a live version appeared on Live/1975–85.

Joni Mitchell was not at the Woodstock Music and Art Festival, but she composed the song that many consider the anthem of the festival. Her manager felt that it was more important to be at a taping of the Dick Cavett Show and was afraid had she gone to the festival she would not have been able to make it.

While the festival was taking place she sat in her New York hotel room watching reports and began writing the song. She was also in a relationship with Graham Nash, who was there as part of Crosby Stills and Nash, and she heard from him his first hand experiences.

About a month after the festival she performed Woodstock at at the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival. That’s where this comes from.

The song later went on to be hits for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Matthews Southern Comfort

Janis Joplin was one of the many performers at Woodstock. She didn’t perform Me and Bobby McGee at the show, it may not have even been written yet. It was one of the songs that she recorded for her 1970 album Pearl as well as being part of her set during the summer of 1970. She was working on the album when she died at the age of 27 from a drug overdose on October 4, 1970.

“Me and Bobby McGee” was written by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster and originally Bobby is a woman. Janis Joplin changed a few of the lyrics to change the sex of Bobby McGee.

The song reached Number 1 in March of 1971 becoming her only Number 1 song and only the second posthumous number one single in rock & roll history (the first was “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding).

Since it was composed in 1969 the song has been recorded by many artists including Roger Miller (first version released), Gordon Lightfoot (reached Canadian Country Number 1) and more recently by the Pop Artist P!nk (during a live recording).

As an added extra I am including the last vocal track that she recorded before her untimely death.

Also included in Box of Pearls: The Janis Joplin Collection