My nephew is learning how to drive. He is, in true adolescent-guy fashion, trying not to seem too excited about it, although you can tell by the look in his eyes whenever he hears his parents’ car keys jingle how geeked up he really is. I don’t think either his father or mother has driven themselves anywhere since he got his learner’s permit. In the winter of 1976, I was learning how to drive, too, and here are some of the tunes that were on car radios across the country during this week in 1976, as heard on WIXY in Cleveland, Ohio.
2. “Convoy”/C.W. McCall (down from 1) C.W. McCall was a character dreamed up in 1972 by Omaha advertising man Bill Fries for a bread commercial. One of the ads was later turned into a Top 20 country hit, “The Old Home Fill-er Up and Keep on Truckin’ Cafe,” with lyrics by Fries and music by Chip Davis. (Yes, that Chip Davis. The Mannheim Steamroller guy.) Fries and Davis collaborated on several other McCall songs in the mid 70s, although “Convoy” was by far the biggest, both the crowning moment of the CB-radio craze and one of the main sources that fueled it. It isn’t going to turn up on your local good-times-great-oldies station anytime soon, but it’s held up better than lots of novelty records do, for a couple of reasons: First, it tells a larger-than-life story pretty well, and second, it’s actually funny.
8. “Paloma Blanca”/George Baker Selection (up from 10) Every time I hear “Paloma Blanca,” it puts me squarely behind the wheel of the driver’s ed car. One of the instructors whiled away hours of boredom (surely interspersed with moments of terror) by listening to country radio. That’s right, country radio—”Paloma Blanca” rose about as high on the country charts as it did on the pop charts. I’m tempted to say that the only thing that can explain its success was the bone-deep weirdness of 70s taste, but the song is a fairly stout earworm, too. Here’s the video featuring George Baker, a girl, some ancient ruins, and, inevitably, una paloma blanca.
17. “Theme from S.W.A.T.”/Rhythm Heritage (up from 21) S.W.A.T. was an ABC-TV series about the Special Weapons and Tactics unit of the Los Angeles police department, starring Steve Forrest and Robert Urich. It had premiered in February 1975 and was canceled in April 1976, mere weeks after its theme song had hit Number One and while it remained in heavy rotation on the radio. So much for synergy.
30. “Baby Face”/Wing and a Prayer Fife and Drum Corps (up from 35) This thorougly generic disco remake of a song that had been a hit in 1926 and again in 1948 didn’t get much airplay on the stations I was listening to in 1976, although it rose to Number 14 in Billboard. The full-length version, in which the group takes over 6 1/2 minutes to do what could just as effectively have been done in two, is here. Or, you could look up “interminable” in the dictionary and find it there.
33. “Winners and Losers”/Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds (down from 26) It’s one of the great Top 40 trivia bits that Tommy Reynolds had left HJF&R by 1975, and was replaced by Alan Dennison, but the group kept its original name for the sake of continuity in marketing, thus making Dennison one of the most obscure artists ever to reach Number One when “Fallin’ in Love” did the trick in the late summer of 1975. But I’d like to think that they also kept the name because it’s so much fun for DJs to say. In your best DJ voice, it just rolls off your tongue: “Hamiltonjoefrankandreynolds.” DJs also loved their records because they had such great intros: “Don’t Pull Your Love” and “Fallin’ in Love” just beg you to talk over them. “Winners and Losers” does, too, and it’s a finely crafted pop tune as well, even if does sound a bit like the theme to The Love Boat. (You can try this YouTube link to hear it, although it doesn’t seem to work very well.)
(Bonus YouTube link: Crow, Servo, and Joel from Mystery Science Theater 3000 consider Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds here.)
“Convoy”/C.W. McCall (buy it here)
Filed under: Record Charts, Tracks
Funny you should mention “Convoy.” I have that and “Wolf Creek Pass” on 45. What was I thinking when I bought those records?
A couple of years ago my wife asked me to do a “Thursday 13″ of songs that took me back to a certain time in my life. “Convoy” was the song that took me back to when a time when I wanted to be a truck driver. Of course the song “Convoy” and the movie “White Line Fever” had everything to do with that career choice. But it was a short lived career ambition because, well, I was 9 years old at the time.
Your mention of SWAT and its theme song reminds me of The Greatest American Hero, another show whose theme song has withstood the test of time a bit better than the show itself did. Although I was/am happy to see that the complete series is now available on DVD.
I am positive that I saw C.W. McCall perform the song “Convoy” on either “The Midnight Special” on NBC or “In Concert” on ABC. It was Chip Davis along with 3 female back-up singers. On that same show back in 1976, C.W. McCall also did a song with the lyrics, “There’s won’t be no country music/There won’t be no rock n’ roll/For when they take away our country/They’ll take away our soul.”
My bad…it was Bill Fries, not Chip Davis, appearing in concert fronting C.W. McCall. But, imagine C.W. McCall in concert on the same television show with the likes of Deep Purple, Aerosmith, Kiss, and Alice Cooper!
Also, JB, great post on Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds. “Winners and Loser” is one of those great forgotten oldies! Nobody plays that song and it had a great piano solo toward th end of the song. I have a tape of Larry Lujack doing a talkover thru the intro of that song. Here’s another great story…we used to print out music logs from ABC Oldies Radio and used many of the songs from their format each hour. We had a 22 year old jock on the air and he front-announced “Don’t Pull Your Love” as a song by “Joe Frank Hamilton.”