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Coming into the airplay section of town are 5 tunes: Smokey Robinson sneaks in with another song I just don't recognize, Baby That's Backatcha at 40; Steely Dan edges in at 39 with Black Friday; Melissa Manchester appears at 37 with Midnight Blue; War roars in at 36 with a song I spent a lot of that summer singing on the back of my nephew's mini-bike, Why Can't We Be Friends; and 10cc's attempt to finally take themselves serious (listen to some of their older stuff once), I'm Not In Love, shoots 10 to number 31.
At this point, I interject one of the new features. A lot of good songs get lost on the road between top 40 debut and top 10, and I thought I'd give a shout out to one each week. This week, I salute the late, great Teddy Pendergrass and Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, who appear to have peaked at 13 with Bad Luck, a song I'd forgotten about for years until I saw the title a while back looking for songs to burn to CD and said, hey, I remember that! Unfortunately, the song appears well-named as far as top 10 success goes.
Our 2 top ten dropouts are Ace's How Long at 21, falling 17 (which seems funny, because I always associated it with I'm Not In Love popularity-wise, but it seems they were 2 ships that pass in the night), and EW&F's former top dog Shining Star- a falling star that dropped from 9 to 25.
Leading off the top 10, up two spots is Mrs. Waylon Jennings (or if you prefer, Jessie Colter) with her #1 country hit I'm Not Lisa. Up two to 9 is a song by veteran r&b man Joe Simon, his biggest crossover in his career, Get Down, Get Down (and no, after playing this, I still don't remember it. Sorry, Joe!). Freddy's got his new one coming, so he grabs a parachute and drops from 1 to 8 with Before the Next Teardrop Falls. In the cleanup spot, as is so often the case, is last week's # 10, Michael Murphy's Wildfire. Chicago edges up one with Old Days; Grand Funk Railroad does the same with Bad Time. Love won't let Major Harris wait; the hit by the former Delfonic jumps "4 big notches" as Casey used to say, to number 4. Linda Ronstadt gets a fair idea of when she'll be loved, as her latest moved up 2 to 3. Sister Golden Hair by America moved up one into the runner-up spot; and our brand new #1 is John Denver's live version of Thank God I'm a Country Boy.
The other new feature I'm modelling this week is "all those years ago"; a look at what was Number one 20, 30, years ago. On this week in 1990, the legacy band Wilson Phillips was tops with Hold On; 30 years ago this week, one of my least favorite offscourings of the disco era, Funky Town by Lipps, Inc., was number one; 40 years ago, the Beatles had come to the end of their Long and Winding Road (40 years? is that right?); 50 years ago, the Everly Brothers were Cathy's Clowns; and 60 years ago, the number one song had a neat little story to it. Movie director Carol Reed was putting the finishing touches on a movie called The Third Man which featured Orson Welles, among others. In a Vienna cafe, he heard a cafe musician of no fame named Anton Karas playing the zither. Inspired, Reed had this unknown musician do the entire score for the movie- with the result that no less an expert than Roger Ebert said, "Has there ever been a film where the music more perfectly suited the action than in Carol Reed's 'The Third Man'?" His version of the theme, just him and his zither, and a orchestral version by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians, combined to sell an estimated 40 million records. Again I listened to both, and it's a catchy, wistful number, but alas once again one I didn't remember. Of course, being 12 years from conception at that point, I guess I do have an excuse.
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