One of my favorite posts in the history of this blog appeared three years ago this week, about the darkness audible on Top 40 radio in the fall of 1969 via the WLS chart from the week of November 10. There are other ways to look at the same week, of course—how dark could it have been if Sesame Street premiered on TV? Here’s how it sounded at WKNR in Detroit, the fabled Keener 13, on the survey dated November 13, 1969.
8. “Down on the Corner”-”Fortunate Son”/Creedence Clearwater Revival (up from 13). Has there ever been a better two-sided hit single? If we had a contest to figure it out, this one would definitely make the semi-finals, at least—with several other two-sided CCR singles.
16. “Get It From the Bottom”/Steelers (down from 7). The Steelers were a Chicago group that started out recording on the local Crash label, owned by DJ Al Benson. Even after Crash crashed in 1967, the Steelers carried on. “Get It From the Bottom” was good enough to get national distribution from Columbia, although it was popular mostly in the Midwest. The Steelers are still performing around Chicago, apparently.
25. “Midnight Cowboy”/Ferrante and Teicher (up from 28). WKNR lists two versions of this movie theme, by John Barry, who wrote it, and Ferrante and Teicher, who had a Top-10 national hit with it. There’s a hallucinatory quality to the F&T version, although most of the atmosphere comes not from the famous twin pianos but from Vincent Bell’s guitar and those ghostly choral voices. The vibe is nicely captured in this YouTube video, which features scenes from the Dustin Hoffman/Jon Voight film.
26. “The Music Box”/Ruth Copeland (up from 29). One of the first releases on Holland/Dozier/Holland’s Invictus label was by Ruth Copeland, a white girl from England whose debut album was recorded at the same time and features many of the same musicians as the debut album by Parliament. It’s weird stuff; the band is great, but Copeland’s performance is frequently over-the-top strange—like the sobbing that takes up the last 45 seconds of “The Music Box,” which is unobjectionable up to that point despite the presence of a children’s chorus.
Keener LP #3: Rock and Roll Music/The Frost. Another Detroit-area legend. The group’s leader was Dick Wagner, who would go on to play with Lou Reed and Alice Cooper, among others. (He started the band after the demise of the Bossmen, another Detroit band that had included Mark Farner, who later founded Grand Funk Railroad.) Rock and Roll Music was the group’s second album, recorded live at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, which hosted shows by Cream, the Who, Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, and even John Coltrane in the 60s along with the full roster of Michigan acts, including the MC5, the Stooges (both of whom were house bands for a while) and the Rationals.
When it comes to Detroit music in the 60s, Motown was just the beginning, and not enough people know that.
“The Music Box”/Ruth Copeland (buy it here)
Filed under: Forgotten 45, Record Charts, Tracks, YouTube | Tagged: 1969, Chicago Steelers, Ferrante and Teicher, Ruth Copeland, the Frost, WKNR
