Top 5: New Kid in Town

This week in 1977, Americans got a new president, and the country was optimistic about him. Jimmy Carter’s approval rating as he took office was something like 66 percent, the highest for an elected president since John F. Kennedy, and higher than any president who succeeded him until Barack Obama took office this week. Carter’s promises of an open administration and the perception that he was not the usual Washington politician gave people hope that he might be able to reverse the fortunes of a country that had been shaken by scandals and buffeted by economic hardship. And if you turned on the radio that week, you were treated to the 1970s in their full, glorious, goofy musical variety. No matter what you liked, you could probably hear it on your favorite Top 40 station—love songs, disco songs, rockers, novelties—so much variety, in fact, that it’ll take 10 examples to cover it, from the Cash Box chart dated January 22, 1977:

1. “Car Wash”/Rose Royce (second week at #1). Rose Royce was an LA funk band hired by Norman Whitfield to perform music he had written for the movie Car Wash, and as it turned out, the music was more popular than the film, which opened to lukewarm reviews and little audience response in October 1976. But for a time capsule of daily life in the urban 70s, you can’t do better. It features a load of actors whose faces you’d recognize if not their names, as well as appearances by George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and the Pointer Sisters. Here’s the trailer:

3. “You Don’t Have to Be a Star”/Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. (down from 2). McCoo and Davis were members of the Fifth Dimension, and based on this, one might have expected them to enjoy a lengthy run of success as a duo, but they didn’t. Fluffy, yeah, but it sounded great on the radio and still does on those few occasions when it gets played.

8. “Walk This Way”/Aerosmith (up from 10). It’s worth noting just how many records on this chart have become classic-rock staples: “Blinded by the Light,” “Somebody to Love,” “Night Moves,” “Fly Like an Eagle,” “Carry On Wayward Son,” “Free Bird” (albeit a live version here), “More Than a Feeling,” “Rockin’ Me,” and this, which is the best thing Aerosmith ever did—and surprisingly explicit for 1977, when radio stations were a lot more leery about language than they are today. Or was “down on a muffin” about breakfast?

10. “New Kid in Town”/Eagles (up from 13). The lead single from Hotel California, this was the most adult-contemporary thing the Eagles had done up to that point, a morsel of country-flavored rock that now seems rather slight up against the rest of the album. Nevertheless, it remains one of my two or three favorite Eagles records.

13. “I Like Dreamin’/Kenny Nolan (up from 16). Truly one of the most sugary love songs ever, and when we’re talking about the 70s, that’s really sayin’ something. The sap rises here.

14. “Jeans On”/David Dundas (holding at 14). Dundas was—and is—a British lord;  his father was the 3rd Marquess of Zetland. (His brother holds the title and sits in the House of Lords today.) The son’s career involved scoring films and television shows. He also wrote commercial jingles, which is where “Jeans On” came from. It was a sizeable hit in the UK, although not quite so big over here, where the commercial didn’t air. Here’s the ad:

22. “Year of the Cat”/Al Stewart (up from 33). And there I am in 1977, flying up the highway toward Madison with my girlfriend in her cherry-red ’66 Mustang, and we’re blasting WISM on the radio, and they’re playing “Year of the Cat.” You had to be there, and I’m glad I was. Here’s a fine live performance circa 1977 from The Old Grey Whistle Test:

23. “Whispering/Cherchez la Femme”/Dr. Buzzard’s Original “Savannah” Band (holding at 23). Despite sounding like something out of the 40s, “Cherchez la Femme” managed to sound contemporary at the same time. If all dance music had been this elegant and intelligent, people probably wouldn’t have hated disco quite so much, although according to Wikipedia, Dr. Buzzard’s Savannah Band frequently played live at Studio 54. Bandleader August Darnell went on to form Kid Creole and the Coconuts.

27. “Hard Luck Woman”/KISS (up from 35). Most teenagers at the time perceived KISS to be the baddest, hardest-rockin’ band of them all, so “Beth” had been controversial when it came out in the fall of 1976. The followup single, “Hard Luck Woman,” probably should have been controversial, too. It does not exactly kick ass either, and sounds most of all like a Rod Stewart outtake.

47. “In the Mood”/Henhouse Five Plus Too (up from 56). I actually have a copy of this somewhere, but it doesn’t seem worth the effort to digitize it, unless you beg. It’s a version of the big-band standard as done by chickens. (As we used to say back on the farm: I shit you not.) Novelty master Ray Stevens was behind it, and it was one of several novelties on the chart that week, along with Rod Hart’s “C.B. Savage,” Gabe Kaplan’s “Up Your Nose,” and “Dis-Gorilla” by Rick Dees—and you might also count “Flight 66″ (Walter Murphy’s disco version of “Flight of the Bumblebee”), “Disco Lucy,” and even “Muskrat Love.”

All in all, there are some pretty good 70s memories here. Or maybe it’s just me. As I warned you on the very first day, at this blog, sometimes I’m going to be the only one who gets it.

“Whispering/Cherchez la Femme”/Dr. Buzzard’s Original “Savannah” Band (buy it here)
“Hard Luck Woman”/KISS (buy it here)