70's Music Revisited

January 2, 9, & 16 – “My Sweet Lord” / “Isn’t It a Pity”; George Harrison

January 23, 30 & February 6 – “Knock Three Times”; Dawn

February 13, 20, 27, March 6 & 13 – “One Bad Apple”; The Osmonds

March 20 & 27 – “Me and Bobby McGee”; Janis Joplin

April 3 & 10 – “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)” The Temptations

April 17, 24, May 1, 8, 15, & 22 – “Joy to the World”; Three Dog Night

May 29 & June 5 – “Brown Sugar”; The Rolling Stones

June 12 – “Want Ads”; The Honey Cone

June 19, 26, July 3, 10, & 17 – “It’s Too Late” / “I Feel the Earth Move”; Carole King

July 24 – “Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)”; The Raiders

July 31 – “You’ve Got a Friend”; James Taylor

August 7, 14, 21, & 28 “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” Bee Gees

September 4 – “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”; Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney

September 11, 18, & 25 – “Go Away Little Girl”; Donny Osmond

October 2, 9, 16, 23, & 30 – “Maggie May” / “Reason to Believe”; Rod Stewart

November 6 & 13 – “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves”; Cher

November 20 & 27 – “Theme from Shaft”; Isaac Hayes

December 4, 11 & 18 – “Family Affair”; Sly and the Family Stone

December 25 – “Brand New Key”; Melanie

When the 1960′s ended and the 70′s began I wasn’t really listening too much to music. But when The Partridge Family debuted on ABC Television I was really exposed to music. Call it bubble gum rock, but the number 6 song I Think I Love You by The Partridge Family was top on my list.

The Beatles formally announced their breakup and John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison each had their own projects. George must have had a big backlog of songs since he released the three record album All Things Must Pass along with the number 5 best song of 1970, My Sweet Lord.

The number 4 song of the year, Close To You by The Carpenters. It was the first ‘hit’ single release by the siblings Richard and Karen Carpenter. The song was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. This was their second release having released a version of The Beatles, Ticket to Ride, a few months earlier.

The number 3 song was also written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and was featured in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head by B.J. Thomas was the first number one song of the 1970′s.

I’ll Be There by Jackson 5 was their 4th number one song in 1970. The previous three were all upbeat songs, but this one was a ballad. The song was released by Mariah Carey in 1992 and also was a chart topper.

Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel was the number 1 song of 1970. It also won the Grammy for Song of the Year, Record of the Year and appeared on the Album of the Year, which also had the same title.

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Many thanks to Steve Atkinson who has given permission to republish this which was originally published at 6 Things to Consider – 6ThingsToConsider.com

40 years ago, as I was looking forward to Christmas, I was just a pre-teen. Just a few months earlier I had celebrated my 12th birthday. While I did have a portable AM radio and listened to it, I wasn’t a regular listener.

Most of my music experience was from Movie Musicals, Saturday Morning Cartoons, (The Archies, The Beatles cartoon, etc), and other TV shows. Of course the biggest of these were the Monkees and the brand new series, The Partridge Family.

Christmas of 1970 brought presents that would be the beginning of the creation of this Music Fan.

For it was on that Christmas morning I opened my very first record player. Looking back 40 years ago with how easy it is to have a constant source of music, having your own record player may not be a big deal. But for this 12 year old boy it was. I’m sure it would be to anyone living it that generation. A generation where entertainment in the house usually was focused in one room of the house. A TV set, and it may not have been a color one, and music console were all together.

My record player wasn’t simply a small one. It resembled a medium sized trunk. Nor was it mono, as many were in 1970. It was a stereo. It also have a Bass and Treble control. I don’t know how expensive it may have been, but I’m sure for our family it was quite expensive.

On top of that I received three albums. Amazingly these are still in my collection. Those albums were The Beatles, Yesterday and Today, Elvis Presley, From Memphis to Vegas and the first album from what was my favorite music group, The Partridge Family.

I’m sure that there are many, men and women, my age who still think back to the Christmas of 1970 as the beginning of their musical journey. And while they may not admit that the Partridge Family, The Jackson Five and the Osmonds were some of their earliest favorites, like mine they probably were.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Very Happy 1971

September of 1970. I had just turned 12 and the new television season was beginning. With it the Partridge Family debuted on Friday September 25th.

The show, based loosely on the family group the Cowsills, was to show the adventures of a family who came together to be pop stars. Shirley Jones was the Mom of the group and the songs that were to be used were developed and recorded by a group of studio and session musicians.

It wasn’t until after the cast was finalized and filming began that it was discovered that David Cassidy was a musician as well as an actor. The first couple of episodes featured songs recorded by the studio group and not with Cassidy singing lead. But it wasn’t long before that changed.

The only cast members of the television show to actually participate in the recordings of the songs on the show were David Cassidy and Shirley Jones. Studio musicians such as Hal Blaine, Larry Knechtel, Joe Osborne, Louie Shelton, Tommy Tedesco, and others was the ones behind the music.

When I Think I Love You, the first single release, reached Number 1 on the Billboard Charts they became the third third fictional artist to have a #1 hit. The first was The Chipmunks with The Archies reaching number 1 with Sugar Sugar in 1969.

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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.

Trumpeter Bill Chase form his band in 1970. They took the last name of their leader. Get it On was the hit from their first album. In all the group would release three albums. With a number of changes in the members of the band they were working on their 4th when Bill Chase and three other members died in a plane crash on August 9, 1974. This 1974 video of Chase was recorded a few months before the accident.

At the time that this song was on the charts in America, T-Rex had a European song that was also titled Get It On. When they released that song in America it was retitled, Bang-a-Gong (Get It On).

T-Rex led by Mac Bolan was a popular group in England, but relatively unknown in America. Bang a Gong was their only US hit. It did hit the Top 10, but just barely topping out at Number 10.

Under the title Get It On, it was a big hit in 1971 in England reaching the Number 1 spot there. The title was changed to Bang A Gong (Get It One) due to Chase’s song Get It On which was released in America during the summer of 1971.

In July of 1973 Grand Funk Railroad released their 7th album We’re An American Band.  This was also the first of three Albums where the group was simply call Grand Funk.  The first single released from the album was the title song We’re An American Band.

The song was their first Number 1 single.  It was written by Don Brewer and produced by Todd Rundgren  and brought the group to the larger, pop audience.  Prior to this the group was more Heavy Rock, the term Heavy Metal was not used until the 1980s.

Many of Grand Funk Railroad songs were sung by Mark Farner, but this one was sung by Brewer, the group drummer.

In the first pressing, all the copies of the 45 RPM records were pressed on gold vinyl.

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.

In 1971 in Netherland the duo Mouth and MacNeal (Big Mouth (born Willem Duyn, March 31, 1937) and Maggie MacNeal (born Sjoukje van’t Spijker, May 5, 1950) came together. They recorded a few songs and were more popular in Europe, especially Germany, than they were in the United States. How Do You Do, released in 1972 was their biggest US hit, reaching as high as Number 8 in July. It’s reported that Willem Duyn died on December 4, 2004,

Note:The following was originally published at 6 Things To Consider. We thank Steve Atkinson for allowing us to republish this.

It was on Friday the 13th, February 1970 that the album that many consider the first Heavy Metal album was released. It was released in the United Kingdom. The debut album of a band from Birmingham England. The band and the album shared the name Black Sabbath.

The album had seven tracks. Five were original songs written by the group and two covers.

Black Sabbath consisted of Tony Iommi on guitar, Ozzy Osbourne sang lead, Terry “Geezer” Butler was the bassman, and Bill Ward at drums.

The album was a commercial success reaching number 8 on the UK Albums Chart, and following its US release in May 1970 reached number 23 on the Billboard 200 staying on the charts for over a year. It was widely panned by critics partly because it was so much different than what had been heard before.

A few months later the band would record their second album. From that recording came two of the most popular and most familiar songs done by the group. The album’s title song, Paranoid and the album’s second single Iron Man.

The term Heavy Metal wasn’t used until a number of years after the album’s released. Once it did become a term for music with a heavy rock beat, it was determined that this album was the first.

Pinball Wizard

Baba O’Riley

Who Are You

See Me, Feel Me

Won’t get Fooled Again

As far as I am concerned this is the best song that Rod Stewart has recorded. It was written by him and Ron Wood while they were both members of Faces.

The song originally appeared on their 1971 album A Nod Is as Good as a Wink…To a Blind Horse

Have you seen the CVS commercial. The one about receiving Double Bucks. The song that they are using is Double Lovin’ by the Osmonds.

After their big success with their self titled Osmonds album and their single from it One Bad Apple they recorded a follow-up album. The album was called Homemade and the first single release from it was the song Double Lovin’.

The song wasn’t as successful as One Bad Apple nor the song that followed Yo-Yo. While both of these reached the Top 5, with One Bad Apple reaching the top spot, Double Lovin’ would peak at 14.