Month: May 2022

1979 Heart – Dog & Butterfly

In 1967, the band The Army was formed by Steve Fossen on bass and Roger Fisher on guitar. Several other musicians came and went over the next two years and the band’s name morphed to Hocus Pocus, then White Hart (a name from Arthur C. Clarke short stories), then the White Heart. In 1971, the band dropped the “White” and became Heart, a name that they’ve used since.

Roger’s brother Mike had his number come up in the US draft, and he fled to Canada to avoid the draft. Mike met Ann Wilson when he snuck over the border to attend a concert, and she returned to Canada with him.

Steve finished college and joined them in Canada in 1972. Roger followed soon after. Steve, Roger, and Ann added a drummer and keyboard player to reform Heart.

In 1974, Ann’s sister Nancy joined the group as well. Multi-instrumentalist Howard Leese joined the group. The band began working with producer Mike Flicker on a demo tape, and then on their first album. Drummer Mike Derosier also became a member of Heart.

The local Canadian record label, Mushroom Records, released the band’s first album. The 1975 single Magic Man reached the US top ten.

Work began on their second album, but a distasteful ad run by Mushroom caused the sisters to demand an end to their contract with Mushroom. The label released unfinished recordings as their second album, and it took a lawsuit to stop them and free them to sign with a CBS label.

The band finally finished their second album, which eventually went platinum. Several more successful albums followed in the next few years.

The band released their fifth album in late 1978. The first single from the album, Straight On, reached #15 on the Hot 100.

The second single from the album was the title song, Dog & Butterfly. The song was a complete change of pace for the band, closer to some of their earlier folk music than the hard rock songs that the band had turned out more recently.

The band had another top ten single in 1980. They struggled for a few years after that single, but a move to Capitol Records in 1985 changed everything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_(band)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_%26_Butterfly_(song)

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1978 Styx – Blue Collar Man 

In 1961, a band calling itself The Tradewinds began playing together in a suburb of Chicago. Chuck and John Panozzo played bass and drums while their next-door neighbor, Dennis DeYoung, played the accordion. After the group moved to college, Dennis switched to keyboards. The band changed their name to TW4 after a group using the name “Trade Winds” had a hit with New York’s A Lonely Town (which I wrote about in another article).

In 1969, guitarist/vocalist John “J.C.” Curulewski joined the group. James “J.Y.” Young joined the band in 1970, adding a more hard rock guitar to the mix.

They signed with Wooden Nickel Records in 1972 and were convinced to change the band’s name one last time: the group became known as Styx.

Four albums followed before Lady, a song from their second album, became a national hit in 1975. That top ten song is widely considered to be the first power ballad.

The hit led to plans for a nationwide tour. Rather than tour with the group, John elected to leave the band so he could spend more time with his family. Tommy Shaw replaced him in Styx, singing and playing guitar and writing songs.

The second album Tommy cut with the band in 1977 contained the song Come Sail Away, and that finally gave Styx the success they had been chasing for so long.

Their 1978 album Pieces of Eight spawned the hit singles Blue Collar Man and Renegade. Tommy wrote both songs and sang lead vocals on them as well. 

One of Tommy’s friends had been laid off from his job at the railroad. His complaints about wanting a new job instead of surviving on handouts led Tommy to write Blue Collar Man. The single reached #21 on the Hot 100 in 1978.

The record company produced a small number of the singles using blue vinyl rather than the traditional black vinyl, and those have become very collectible (and difficult to find!)

It wasn’t too much longer after the release of Renegade before Styx finally had their only number one record on the Hot 100 (Babe).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styx_(band)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styx_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Collar_Man_(Long_Nights)

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1977 Foghat – I Just Want To Make Love To You (Live) 

Three former members of Savoy Brown and a slide guitarist from Black Cat Bones joined forces in early 1971 and formed Foghat in England. The group’s name was a nonsense word from a picture in a kid’s game that is similar to Scrabble.

The group relocated to the US a year later after signing with Bearsville Records. Dave Edmunds had just reached the top ten on the Hot 100 with his cover version of I Hear You Knocking, and he produced the band’s first album.

Willie Dixon wrote the song Just Make Love to Me in 1954 and Muddy Waters recorded the song and took it to #4 on the R&B chart.

Etta James recorded the song on her 1960 album that included At Last but gave the song a new title: I Just Want To Make Love To You. They did not initially release the recording as a single. When a portion of the song got used in an ad for Diet Coke in 1996, popular demand resulted in the release of a single that reached the top ten in the UK and Ireland.

Foghat included the song on their first album and it became their first single as well (with Fool For The City as the B-side). Despite heavy FM radio airplay, the single stalled at only #83 on the Hot 100.

Some bands simply sound better live than they do in the studio, and perhaps that explains why Foghat had so much trouble reaching the charts. The band’s best-selling album was Foghat Live, which included an eight-minute live version of I Just Want To Make Love To You. A quick edit created a four-minute single version that reached #33 on the Hot 100 in 1977.

A few more hits followed before the band split up in 1984. The original members reformed in 1993 and their original lead guitar player still leads a touring band.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foghat

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1975 Tavares – Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel 

Five brothers named Ralph, Pooch, Chubby, Butch, and Tiny started singing together in 1959 as Chubby and the Turnpikes. Their parents were from Cape Verdean, but the young men had been born in either New Bedford, Massachusetts, or Providence, Rhode Island.

The band signed with Capitol Records in 1967 and began creating records that only did well locally.

The group’s name eventually changed to Tavares. They reached the R&B top ten and the Hot 100 top forty in 1973 and followed that with two more similar R&B hits.

In 1969, drummer Joey Kramer joined them. They dropped Chubby from their name and became The Turnpikes. About a year later, Joey left to join Aerosmith, and the group started using other backup musicians.

In 1973, the group began appearing using their last name as the group name: Tavares. They recorded their first album in 1973 and regularly began to reach the R&B charts with their singles.

We don’t remember it now, but for a brief time, Tavares was more successful than Hall and Oates. That duo’s first charting record was She’s Gone, which only reached #60 on the Hot 100 in 1974. It would be two long years before Hall and Oates even reached the Hot 100 again!

Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter were producing records for Tavares, and Dennis suggested the group cover She’s Gone for their album in 1974. The single reached #1 on the R&B chart, although it stalled at only #50 on the Hot 100.

Hall and Oates’ record company re-issued their version of She’s Gone after Sara Smile became a hit and it reached the top ten on the Hot 100.

Tavares released It Only Takes A Minute in 1975, and that became their most successful single: the record again topped the R&B chart and reached #10 on the Hot 100 and #2 on the new US Disco Action Chart (which later became the US Dance chart).

Freddie Perren was a songwriter and producer who had worked with the Jackson Five on many of their early hits. Freddie began working on disco records in 1975 and produced Love Machine by the Miracles and Boogie Fever by the Sylvers. He also produced the fourth Tavares album, Sky High. The first single from that album was Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel (Part 1).

The disco single was the group’s first truly international hit, reaching #1 on the US Dance chart, #3 on the R&B chart, and #15 on the Hot 100. The record also reached #1 in the Netherlands, which led to an appearance on the Dutch television show TopPop.

Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel was the group’s only gold record for a single, although the band also had a song on the soundtrack for the film Saturday Night Fever, which also earned them a gold album.

The group had a long string of R&B hits and four of them even reached the Hot 100 as well. They continued recording new music until 1983, after which the group continued to appear in oldie shows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavares_(group)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven_Must_Be_Missing_an_Angel

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1975 Gladys Knight and the Pips – The Way We Were/Try To Remember 

After Gladys Knight and the Pips left Motown Records and moved to Buddah Records, they missed the top twenty with their first single stalled at #28. Their next single, Midnight Train To Georgia, went all the way to the top of the Hot 100 and the R&B chart.

Three more top ten singles followed, but after that, the group never again reached the top ten on the Hot 100. They scored nearly a dozen more top ten records in the R&B chart (including a few more #1 singles), but the closest they came on the Hot 100 was a single that stopped at #11.

That record was a medley of The Way We Were and Try To Remember. 

Barbra Streisand had recorded The Way We Were as the title song for her 1973 film, and the single reached the top of the Hot 100 and became the most successful single of that year.

Try To Remember came from the 1960 off-Broadway play, The Fantasticks. Jerry Orbach, who later played Lennie Briscoe on the television show Law And Order, performed the song in the play during its original run. 

In 1965, three versions of Try To Remember reached the Hot 100 with versions by Ed Ames (#73 on the Hot 100 and #17 on the Adult Contemporary chart), the Brothers Four (#91 and #10), and Roger Williams (#97 only on the Hot 100).

The single from Gladys Knight and the Pips was a recording from a live performance that reached #11 on the Hot 100. The single also reached #4 in the UK, the highest any of their records reached there.

The Wu-Tan Clan sampled portions of The Way We Were in 1993 for their single Can It Be All So Simple, which reached #24 on the US Rap chart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_Knight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pips_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_We_Were_(song)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Try_to_Remember

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1974 Grand Funk – Walk Like A Man 

Mark Farner on guitar and vocals, Don Brewer from Terry Knight and the Pack on drums and vocals, and Mel Schacher from ? and the Mysterians on bass formed a hard-rock group in 1969. Terry became the group’s manager and came up with the name for the band: Grand Funk Railroad.

The group quickly began playing in arenas and their first two albums each went gold. Their first top forty single came in 1970 with the release of Closer To Home (I’m Your Captain). They cut the ten-minute album version down to a single and it peaked at #22.

The group added Craig Frost on keyboards for their sixth album and began working with producer Todd Rundgren for their seventh album. Don wrote the title song from that album, We’re An American Band, and it became the band’s first #1 single.

The second single from the album, Walk Like A Man, only reached #19 on the Hot 100 in January 1974. It was not a remake of the Four Seasons hit with that name, but a new song written by Mark and Don. Perhaps that slowed down the success of the record.

Ironically, the lead single from their next album was a remake of a song that Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote for their babysitter, Little Eva. The Loco-Motion gave the group their second #1 hit.

In the next year, the group covered two more singles and had hits that reached #3 and #4 while another single that Mark and Don wrote (Shinin’ On) only reached #11.

Their next album came out in 1976 and featured songs the group wrote themselves. They never reached the top forty again.

The original group disbanded in 1976 when Mark left to focus on a solo career. Mark and Don reformed the group without Mel from 1981 to 1983, after which the group disbanded again.

The original trio (plus a keyboard player) reformed the band in 1996, but after three years, Mark left again. The band went on hiatus until 2000; Max Carl replaced Mark, and the group returned to touring as a five-man band.

Mark later formed a group he named Mark Farner’s American Band that performs songs from both Grand Funk’s catalog and other albums Mark has recorded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Funk_Railroad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Funk_Railroad_discography

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1973 Elvis – Steamroller Blues 

While working as a member of The Flying Machine, James Taylor played in clubs in Greenwich Village. He became annoyed at what passed for blues that were sung by white performers in the Village and wrote Steamroller Blues to make fun of them. Years later, he included the song on his second solo album in 1970. He did not release it as a single.

Elvis began singing the song in his concerts. He probably did not mean his performances to mock blues singers the way James did; he may just have liked the song.

In 1973, Elvis broadcast the first worldwide live concert performance. The double album Aloha from Hawaii: Via Satellite included the song. I released the album in quadrophonic sound and became the first album in that format to reach the top of the Billboard album chart.

The live performance from the album became the only single from the album. It stalled at only #17 on the Hot 100 in 1973.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_Presley_singles_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamroller_Blues

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1971 Mac and Katie Kissoon – Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep 

British musician and songwriter Lally Stott wrote and recorded the song Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep in 1970. His single was not a hit in the UK, but it topped the chart in Australia and reached #15 in France.

Lally’s record was also a minor success in Italy and a few other countries. The record also entered the Hot 100 in the US in April 1971 and peaked at #92.

Lally’s record company did not want to promote the single in the UK, so they offered the song to two other groups: Middle of the Road and Mac and Katie Kissoon.

Middle of the Road was a Scottish band that was having trouble finding success in the UK, so they moved to Italy in 1970. They began working with music producer Giacomo Tosti. He arranged their version of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, and their single slowly found success in Europe.

The record entered the UK chart in 1971 and spent four weeks at #1 beginning in June. Their version of the song reached #1 or #2 in at least seven countries but did not chart in the US. Their single was one of fewer than fifty singles that have sold over ten million physical copies.

Mac and Katie Kissoon were a brother and sister from the Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago. Their family moved to the UK in 1962 and Katie began recording singles a few years later using the name Peanut. She later joined the Rag Dolls, who released singles in 1967 and 1968. Mac sang in the Marionettes in the mid-sixties and later formed his own band to tour US bases in Europe. He had a solo single that reached the top thirty in the Netherlands in 1970.

The pair recorded their own version of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep which was released in the UK in July 1971. Their version didn’t chart any higher than #41 in the UK thanks to the Middle of the Road single. RCA released the single in the US, where it reached #20 on the Hot 100 in October 1971.

Lally wrote other songs that were top ten hits for the Middle of the Road later in their career and songs that were hits for himself, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Jerry Reed.

The Middle of the Road had four more top forty singles in the UK and a long string of hits in Germany. They recorded about a dozen albums and released a new single in 2017.

Mac and Katie continued recording through 1980, after which they worked primarily as background singers and studio musicians. Katie has sung with Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Elton John, George Harrison, the Pet Shop Boys, George Michael, and many others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirpy_Chirpy_Cheep_Cheep
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lally_Stott
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_of_the_Road_(band)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_and_Katie_Kissoon

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1971 Fortunes – Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again 

After coasting to success in the British Invasion in 1965, the Fortunes failed to return to the top forty in either the UK or the US for several years. By 1968, almost all the members of the group had left the band.

Original members Rod Allen, Andy Brown, and Barry Pritchard continued to lead the group. Shel Macraes on lead vocals and rhythm guitar and George McAllister on backup vocals and keyboards replaced other members who were gone.

In times to come, perhaps people will most likely recall the Fortunes mostly because of the music they recorded beginning in 1967: the group recorded a series of jingles used in commercials for Coca Cola. After a few early jingles for ongoing campaigns, the Fortunes were used to record the primary jingle for the new 1969 slogan, “It’s the real thing.”

Somebody even patched together pieces of multiple 1969 recordings with some of the television ads to produce a video on YouTube that runs over two minutes long.

Roger Greenaway and Roger Cook, who wrote the group’s hit You’ve Got Your Troubles, I’ve Got Mine, wrote another song that the group successfully released in 1971. Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again reached #15 on the US Hot 100 and proved to be the group’s final top forty single in the US.

The band had two more top ten singles in the UK, but neither even reached the top forty in the US. The group charted nowhere again except for a single they released only in the Netherlands that peaked at #87 in 1987.

Original member Glen Dale left the group in 1966. He formed Glen’s Fortunes in 1991, which eventually morphed into an Elton John tribute band. Glen died in 2019.

Rod and Barry continued to lead a touring group of the Fortunes after other members faded away. Barry left the group in 1995 because of illness. Rod simply replaced any musicians who left the group and continued touring with the band until his death from liver cancer in 2008. There is still an active group touring as the Fortunes, but those four joined the group in 1983, 2007, 2010, and 2018; I believe the word “tribute” might be appropriate again.

A group of session musicians calling themselves Starsound created a recording that mashed up small re-recordings of a stack of older hit records. In the US, the song and the group were both named Stars On 45. The first medley single reached the top of the Hot 100 in 1981. The single ran a little over four minutes and included portions of ten songs.

A 12-inch version of the medley also got released. It ran almost ten minutes and included a cover of a portion of Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again which begins at 7:54.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortunes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortunes_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_That_Rainy_Day_Feeling_Again

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1970 Tom Jones – Daughter Of Darkness 

After quick success on the charts in both the UK and the US in 1965 during the British Invasion, it became difficult for Tom Jones to reach the top ten on the US Hot 100 again. He had seven more top ten singles in the UK in 1967 and 1968.

Tom Jones got his career moving again in 1969 when he began starring in the syndicated television variety show This Is Tom Jones. He had two more top ten singles in both countries in 1969.

 Peter Sullivan produced all of Tom’s singles through 1970 (and also worked with Engelbert Humperdinck). Two prolific British songwriters, Les Reed and Geoff Stephens, wrote the song Daughter Of Darkness, which Tom recorded in 1970.

The single peaked at #5 in the UK but stalled at #13 on the US Hot 100. Fortunately for Tom, it also reached #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart.

The recording included vocal work by session singer Reginald Dwight (who legally changed his name to Elton John in 1972).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Jones_(singer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Jones_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daughter_of_Darkness_(song)

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