40 Year Itch : Turn It Up

[Purchase]

On April 15, 1974 Lynyrd Skynyrd released their second album, Second Helping, which featured the band's biggest song ever, "Sweet Home Alabama". Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington admits the song is a response to "Old Neil" Young's songs "Alabama" and "Southern Man":

We listened to Neil Young a lot back then, and "Southern Man" really cut the South--and he's from Canada!. It kind of peeved us, so we wrote that kind of as a joke. We never thought it would be a single, much less a hit...nothing we did was that premeditated.

In fact the lead off single from Second Helping wasn't "Sweet Home Alabama" but  "Don't Ask Me No Questions"... which failed to chart.

While Rolling Stone reviewer Gordon Fletcher complained that the band lacked the "sophistication and professionalism" of the Allman Brothers, both Robert Christgau and the critic at Billboard Magazine cited the band's good taste. Christgau goes on to say "any suspicions that this substantial, tasteful band blew their best stuff on the first platter should fall in the wake of the first state song ever to make top ten, which will expose you to their infectious put-downs of rock businessmen, rock journalists, and heroin." 

  Aside from "Sweet Home Alabama", Lynyrd Skynrd delivers "Workin for MCA", an inside-baseball tune about their record deal that may be more "punk rock" than the Sex Pistols's "EMI". There's also "The Needle and the Spoon" which warns listeners off heroin :

Lord, their gonna bury you boy /

                               Don't mess with the needle

Read More

40 Year Itch: They're Weird and They're Wonderful

Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 for April 13, 1974

1 Elton John Bennie and the Jets

With crowd noises nicked from an Elton John concert in London and Jimi Hendrix's performance at the Isle of Wight, as well as some off beat handclaps, "Bennie and the Jets" gave Elton John his second #1 in the US. He was prouder of the fact the song hit #15 in the R and B charts. One of those few tunes most people could name in one note.



2 Blue Swede Hooked on a Feeling
3 MFSB and the Three Degrees TSOP



4 Sister Janet Mead The Lord's Prayer
5 Redbone Come and Get Your Love
6 John Denver Sunshine On My Shoulders



7 Gladys Knight and the Pips Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me
8 Terry Jacks Seasons in the Sun
9 Ringo Starr Oh My My



10 Carly Simon and James Taylor Mockingbird

Read More

40 Year Itch: Suzi Q Tours the US of A

[Purchase]

On April 12, 1974 Suzi Quatro opened her US Tour at the Michigan Palace in front of her parents in her hometown of Detroit. She had already become a UK Glam sensation with three #1 hits--none of which did much business in the US. Still, Suzi and her band of Brits had a great time with, as she related in her autobiography Unzipped..."the endless TV Stations, the hamburger and hot dog stands, the malls, the guitar shops ( even better, the pawn shops where (we ) picked up loads of cheap guitars, the streets of Detroit, Sunset Strip, the huge expressways." 

      At one of her final shows, at the Whiskey in LA, Iggy Pop joined Suzi onstage.Problem was he was wasted, so we had to have security "escort" him off. Sorry Iggy, no offence. But if you're gonna get on my stage you'd better be "together", you know what I mean?

    

  Next stop: Australia where Suzi was such  huge star she couldn't go outside without being surrounded by screaming fans.

   Suzi would finally find fame in the US as Leather Tuscadero on the hit TV show Happy Days and with "Stumblin' In" her Top  5 1978 hit with Chris Norman whose band Smokie also failed to otherwise find a US audience.

Read More

40 Year Itch: Oh No, Oh No, Oh No, Oh No

It's not the best film ever made, but I've seen worse.

-Ringo Starr 

[Purchase]

   On April 11th, 1974 the soundtrack for the Apple film Son of Dracula was released, eight days before the movie premiered in Atlanta. The movie stars Harry Nilsson who took payment in the form of cosmetic dentistry. It is, by all accounts, abysmal. Ringo Starr financed the whole thing as a tribute to the classic monster movies of Hammer and Universal. He even managed to round up an all star cast of Peter Frampton, Keith Moon and John Bonham to play in the Count Downes, the son of Dracula's band. The movie tanked. Even when it was re-released as Young Dracula to try to cash in on Young Frankenstein's success. ( At least that movie inspired one rock n roll hit: Aerosmith's "Walk This Way").

                                                       

   The soundtrack is a dud as well. With the exception of the Top 40 single "Daybreak" ( featuring George Harrison on cowbell), all of the songs on the album had been previously released on Nilsson Scmilsson or Son of Schmilsson.

Read More

40 Year Itch: I Hear A Symphony

                       

    [Purchase]

    Canterbury art rockers Caravan follow-up one of their finest albums, 1973's For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night, with this live set recorded with the 39-piece New Symphonia Orchestra. Hey, it worked for Procol Harum (whose live album with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra was their top seller) and Deep Purple ( 1969's Concerto For Group and Orchestra). The Caravan offering doesn't have as many fans but I think it's a treat, especially on the longer tracks like "For Richard" from 1969's If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You. A remastered version is longer and much better recorded.

">

[Purchase]

These Italian prog rockers/ jazz fusionists sported both the softest and most melodic tunes in progressive rock and one of the fastest drummers ever on record : the perfectly named Furio Chirico.

\

 Check out the track "Positivo/Negativo" and you too will be wondering why this album is out of print.

[Purchase]

Having broken worldwide with their novelty number "Hocus Pocus", these Dutch masters of progressive rock get serious again and produce the fan favorite Hamburger Concerto. It's a little surprising that a band with a recently inducted guitar god (in Jan Akkerman)  has recorded an album so dominated by keyboardist (Thijs Van  Leer). A grower that requires patience and appreciation.

Read More

40 Year Itch: What the Purists Were Missing

[Purchase]

    By April of 1974 Blue Note had released two albums that would challenge Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters for the top spot on the jazz charts. Trumpeter Donald Byrd's Street Lady, his follow-up to the smash hit Black Byrd, sounds like a groovy Blaxploitation soundtrack. There's even some wah wah guitar from David T Walker, who played on Jackson 5 hits. Harvey Mason, who played drums on Head Hunters, finds the pocket on every Street Lady cut. 

[Purchase]

   But 1974 was the really the year of Jazz flautist Barbara Ann ("Bobbi") Humphrey whose Blacks and Blues ( also featuring Walker and Mason and Black Byrd brothers Larry and Fonce Mizell) has become a jazz funk classic. Bobbi Humphrey takes most of the solos on the album and that's just fine. She also sings Minnie Riperton-like on "Just a Love Child" and "Baby's Gone". A perfect soundtrack for sunny days.  

Read More

40 Year Itch : The Battle of Billy The Hero

[Purchase]

Although it was a song about the American Civil War, "Billy, Don't Be Hero" was written by two Brits, Mitch Murray and Peter Callander. When the Nottingham band Paper Lace won an ITV talent show called "Opportunity Knocks", Murray and Callander had the band record the tune which went to Number One in the UK on March 16, 1974. 

    As the song climbed the UK charts Murray and Callander desperately tried to get the Paper Lace tune distributed in the US. But they were met with rejection everywhere until Mercury Records finally bought the master. By then it was too late.

   That's because producer Steve Barrie heard the Paper Lace single at ABC Records and quickly dispatched the TV friendly band, Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods, to cover the tune. Their version hit the Billboard Hot 100 on April 20, 1974 beating Paper Lace by a week. DJ's played the songs back to back and asked listeners to choose the better version and The Heywoods won by a landslide.  

   Paper Lace had to settle for a peak position of 96 on the Hot 100 while Bo Donaldson and The Heywoods took the song all the way to Number One for two weeks in June of 1974. ( The Heywoods would hit the singles charts again later in the year with "Who Do You Think You Are")

   Don't feel too bad  for Paper Lace. They scored a #1 hit in the US two months later with "The Night Chicago Died".

Read More