70's Music Revisited

Sammy Davis Jr. singing the Theme from the TV Series Baretta – Keep Your Eye in the Sparrow

From the Carol Brunett Show. 1976 with Vicki Lawrence

from their show mid-1970s

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.

The song about infidelity, first by the wife of the singer and then the singer himself towards his secretary Maria.

The song reached Number 2 on the Billboard charts towards the end of 1969 and really shouldn’t be classified as a song of the 1970s. But it was a favorite of this author’s and I always sat back to listen to it when it played on the radio. Still do.

It was Greaves only hit record. He had a couple of more low charting singles in the early 1970s including a remake of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me” and Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale”.

Greaves was a nephew of the late great Sam Cooke.

By the time of their fourth album, Crazy Horses, the brothers not only were playing all of the instruments they were also writing the songs. They were also moving away from the bubblegum pop of their first couple of albums to be more Rock and Roll. It can be considered their first real sophisticated album and although there was some hints on their third album, Phase Three, this was a real departure for them.

Hold Me Tight was the first track on the album as well as their first single from it. This song can really be considered a rock song. The opening riff has been compared, even by some as lifted, to Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song.

It peaked at Number 14 on the charts.

Too bad that by the time of the release of the fourth album they were entrenched in the bubblegum image. By just listen to the albums that they released under their own direction, one could see their music as acid rock. In fact as recalled by brother Merrill on his his brother Jay’s website, JayOsmond.com, when they appeared in a concert in France, the audience didn’t know of their wholesome image and “the whole audience was Zeppelin, with long hair and drugs all over the arena” .

1971 may have been the biggest year for The Osmonds as a group, but in 1972 they were still one of the biggest acts around. Sure they may have had a young audience and didn’t draw the same type of crowds as The Who, Santana or Chicago, but they could rock. Here they are at the Ohio State Fair in August of 1972 doing Santana’s Everyone Everything and Chicago’s Free.

This performance from the 1972 Ohio State Fair features the Osmonds doing a song that opened many of their shows in the early 1970s. Motown Special is a medley of songs of Motown.

Not only was it the opening song of their shows it was also the opening song of their self-titled first album released in 1970.

Songs of the medley include; Motown Special, My World Is Empty Without You and I’m Gonna Make You Love Me.

By the time of the 1972 Ohio State Fair performance they had changed the words slightly using Osmond Special instead of Motown Special.

At 12:22 on Monday May 4, 1970, 29 members of a group of 77 National Guard troops from A Company and Troop G fired shots towards a group of students at Kent State. 13 seconds and about 67 shots later it ended. Some shots were in the air as warnings, others to induce injury and not kill. The outcome was 4 deaths and another 9 receiving injuries.

Neil Young after seeing pictures of the shooting wrote the song Ohio. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young recorded the song on May 15 and released as a single in June. The song became to many an anthem for the times giving a tribute that may last forever to the ‘Four dead in Ohio’.

The b-side was Stephen Stills’ ode to the war’s dead, “Find the Cost of Freedom.”

It peaked at #14 on the Billboard Hot 100. It may have charted higher if some radio stations hadn’t refused to play the song due to it’s anti-war/anti-Nixon lyrics.

The studio version of the song first appeared on their 1974 Greatest Hits Album, So Far. A live version of the song was on the live album Four Way Street.

The four dead in Ohio were:
(Name, distance from Guard, Injury)
Jeffrey Glen Miller, 265 ft, shot through the mouth – killed instantly
Allison Krause, 343 ft, fatal left chest wound
William Knox Schroeder, 382 ft, fatal chest wound
Sandra Lee Scheuer, 390 ft, fatal neck wound

The song One Tin Soldier was written by the songwriting team Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. It was recorded in late 1969 by the Canadian group The Original Caste and was a minor hit in the United States, but a big hit, reaching Number 1, in Canada.

Most people will remember the version of the song done for the 1971 film Billy Jack as recorded by Jinx Dawson and listed with her group Coven. Even though she sang it with the film’s orchestra she requested that the credit would be to the group and not in her name. Coven’s version would chart again in 1973 and 1974.

The obvious Anti-war song would be one of the most requested songs on American Radio in the early 70’s

On the Sonny and Cher show, the song as sung by Cher, was played in front of a cartoon.

Two clips of Edwin Starr singing his 1970 war protest song War. One is from the 70’s. Not sure when the second one is from, but it’s obviously much later than the first.

The song was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. It was Edwin Starr’s most successful song as well as the most successful anti-war song. It reached the number 1 spot in 1970.

The song was also recorded by the Temptations, although their version was slightly less intense than Starr’s. Motown was debating whether or not to release the Temptations version as a single when Starr volunteered to re-record the song. Motown had been afraid that it could hurt the Temptation’s career.

Starr’s version was more in a James Brown inspired Soul-Shout and the song instead of hurting his career gave him a successful one.

Bruce Springsteen had the song as part of his concert and it was recorded as part of the Live/1975-85 album. Springsteen released his live version as a single and once again it was a big seller, reaching Number 8 on the charts.

“War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin’!” The line is just as meaningful in 2009 as it was in 1970. It’s surprising that someone hasn’t re-recorded it. At least the Starr and the Springsteen versions are still being played.

Herbie Hancock is one of those musicians who seem to have been around forever. He first came on the scene in 1962 when he recorded his album Watermelon Man then got more attention when he joined Miles Davis and his band.

He also composed the music for Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert TV cartoon series.

By the 1970’s he had begun to work with electronic music and his 1974 Album Head Hunters showed his Funky side.

The Album version of the song was over 15 minutes of pure Funky Jazz.

Boogie Oogie Oogie was the first single from the self-titled debut album, A Taste of Honey. It was their biggest hit single spending three weeks at Billboard’s Single Chart at Number 1.

The group formed in Los Angeles, California, and originally consisted of Janice Marie Johnson (vocals, bass), Hazel Payne (vocals, guitar), Perry Kibble (keyboards) and Donald Johnson (drums).

Fans were shocked when they first saw the group perform on stage. Here was two beautiful girls standing on stage with guitars playing soulful disco type licks.

The idea of the song came one night when playing to a unenthused crowd Janice Johnson yelled out, “If you think that you’re too cool to boogie, we’ve got news for you! Everyone here tonight is going to boogie, and you’re no exception to the rule.” From this beginning Johnson and Perry L. Kibble wrote the song.

They won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

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.

By 1976 Johnny Cash had already been performing for 20 years and for many of those years he was at the top of the Charts.

it was in 1976 that he did the story song One Piece at a Time. It’s the story of an auto assembly line worker built a car with one stolen piece sneaked out of the factory. The song was composed by Wayne Kemp.

There was a car built for the song by Bruce Fitzpatrick, owner of Abernathy Auto Parts and Hilltop Auto Salvage in Nashville, TN. He had all the different models of Cadillacs mentioned in the song when it was released, and built a Cadillac using the song as a model.

The song reach the Number 1 spot on the County charts on May 29, 1976.