Time Machine week 7

It's June the 6th, back in good ol' 1972.  George McGovern has just won the Democratic primary in California to virtually seal the presidential nomination- and David Bowie has just released The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars.  Coincidence?  Or all part of an evil master plan...

Ziggy and George... separated at birth?

Uh, yeah, welcome back to Time Machine '72, where I have to make up for last week's side jaunt into 1968 by mashing together two weeks worth of fun and useless trivia.  And I will cap it off with not one, but two (or two attempts thereof) of Six degrees!  Welcome to the weeks when our radios first played Procol Harum's Conquistador, Alice Cooper's School's Out, Bobby Vinton's Sealed With A Kiss, Argent's Hold Your Head Up, Harry Nilsson's Coconut, and Donna Fargo's Happiest Girl In The Whole USA (at least on pop stations; it's halfway through its run at the top on the country charts!).


First up, we had a total of ten songs make there first appearance in the top 40 the last two weeks.  Last week, James Brown's There It Is (you can recognize it because it sounds like all the other JB hits), I've Been Lonely For So Long by international one-hit wonder Frederick Knight, Wayne Newton's Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast, Jimmy Castor's Troglodyte (Caveman), Elton John's Rocket Man, and America's I Need You (who pulled off the biggest jump, 21 spots to #32) came into the chart.  This week, the newbies are Nash/Crosby's Immigration Man (up 6 to #38), Cher's Living In A House Divided (up #11 to #33), along with a couple you can listen to.  The lower one doesn't qualify as a "song I first heard because of TM" because I do know it from the ending chorus, but I think you Michael Jackson fans out there won't mind:




I Wanna Be Where You Are climbs 17 to #37 this week.  Now one that I didn't know before this was another of the nicely done covers by David Cassidy, this one coming in at #35 (up 13):




How about that?  Double the videos, too!

One idea I considered was to do a spot on twins in music.  But the Martin Era of 1962-1979, on a cursory examination, yielded only four sets of twins.  I'll let you see if you can pick them off for a little bit, but I'll give you this much of a clue:  One had a #1 near the beginning of the Martin Era, one had a top dog at the end of the Martin Era, and one would have 9 number ones, all within the Martin Era!


This week's You Peaked netted us 5 peakers, all but one of them last week.  Doctor My Eyes topped off at 12, Vincent at 11; Taxi, amazingly enough, let its fare out at #20, and Run Run Run by JoJo Gunne topped off at 31.  Which reminds me of a story I forgot to tell the first time Jay Ferguson's old band got mentioned.  The story I get was that their second lp, Jumping The Gunne, had a disastrous showing mainly because of their choice of cover art.  It was a picture of the band in a bed, with a naked fat lady "jumping " over them.  Tasteful, it was not.

Yeah, I can see this as a selling point...

Returning to propriety, War's Slipping Into Darkness peaked out this week at #12.


Ready for those twins yet?  The last to chart (and technically they didn't make top forty noise until 1980, but had been around long before) are The Whispers (And The Beat Goes On, It's A Love Thing), with twins Wallace and Walter Scott. Makes you wonder what the next kid got named, don't it? The ones with the early #1 are the Shangri-Las, with identical twins Marge and Maryann Ganser, who topped the charts in 1964 with Leader Of The Pack.  The late charting act was Styx, with twins, Chuck and John Panozzo, who didn't top the charts until 1979's sell-out hit Babe. And in-between, with the nine #1s, the Bee Gees with Robin and Maurice being the far-from-identical twins.

The Shangri-Las... and I bet I don't have to tell you Maryann and Marge are in the middle.

And now, let's crash and bash out that top ten!


TEN- The first week, Back Off Boogaloo held that spot for a second week; this week, Ringo drops from 10 to 34, with the Stones' Tumbling Dice (Note:  Not dices.  Dice is already plural.) moving up one to take the spot.

NINE- Last week, Love Unlimited leapt 7 spots to land here with Walking In The Rain With The One I Love.  This week, Commander Cody loses some ground with Hot Rod Lincoln.

EIGHT- Last week, Paul Simon was with Me And Julio Down By number nine.  He drops all the way to 30 this week, and Love Unlimited moves up a notch to take his place.

SEVEN- Hot Rod Lincoln pulled in at its high water mark of 7 last week.  With it falling back, the spot was taken by another newbie, Gallery and Nice To Be With You, which came all the way from #19.

SIX- The Jackson Five moved up 3 last week with Little Bitty Pretty One.  They move on up, and the reigning top dog, I'll Take You There by the Staple Singers, falls to this spot this week.

FIVE- a song that poked around for 8 weeks before going 28 to 15 to 5 is our first six degrees victim.

That meteoric riser is Sammy Davis, Jr, with The Candy Man.  Panned by both the singer ("Too saccharine") and reviewers ("...about the closest music has ever come to being pure excrement"), it was produced by Mike Curb (of the Mike Curb Congregation), who Sammy liked about as much as the song.  Taken from the Willie Wonka movie, Sammy recorded it on his album Sammy Davis, Jr, Now- an lp so bad that the reviewer said that the only song that was even listenable was a cover of MacArthur Park (and having listened to it, all I can say is, I liked Candy Man much better.  And I liked his Hawaii 5-0 theme better.  But given a choice between Sammy Now and Mrs. Miller's Greatest Hits, well....)

Wait... what are you saying?

The # 5 for this week was Little Bitty Pretty One, moving up a notch.

FOUR- The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face slid from 2 to 4 last week, and fell to #13 this week.  Which reminds me, last week's drop outs were Rockin' Robin (5 to 20) and I Gotcha (6 to 24).  The song at #4 this week, climbing 11 spots from #15, is our second six degrees.

Dr. Hook's Sylvia's Mother was a composition by the multi-talented Shel Silverstein (which is actually the second time today I've had his name mentioned, ironically).  In addition to the MANY other things this man achieved, in addition to the other Dr Hook songs he wrote (like Cover Of The Rolling Stone), in addition to writing Loretta Lynn's recent country chart topper One On The Way, he is also the writer of Johnny Cash's smash A Boy Named Sue.  Johnny, amazingly, sang that song in public the first time when he did his At San Quentin lp- in the film, you can see him checking a piece of paper for the words.  Another song that was a first timer for Johnny on the San Quentin lp was the first cut, a song called Wanted Man.  Now this song has a bit of a story, and you can read the whole thing here.  But the gist of it is- he and Bob Dylan were mutual admirers and became good friends, and, well:

Dylan and Cash were huge mutual inspirations, each covering the other's songs accordingly. The first nod came in 1965, when Cash recorded his version of “It Ain't Me, Babe” for his album Orange Blossom Special. Then, following his 1966 motorcycle accident, Dylan and The Band spent a good portion of the next year in Saugerties, NY, recording over 100 tracks for what became The Basement Tapes. Among the cover songs stuffed on the reels, Cash's presence looms large with Dylan doing “Belshazzar,” “Big River” and “Folsom Prison Blues.”


Dylan recorded most of his first all-country record, Nashville Skyline, on February 13-14, 1969 in Nashville. At the wrap-up sessions on February 17-18, Cash—who'd been recording at the studio next door—dropped in to visit, and ended up spending two days there, recording what's become known as the Bob Dylan/Johnny Cash Sessions. The 23 duets the label-mates laid down included everything from Cash's “Big River” to Dylan's “One Too Many Mornings,” along with covers of Jimmie Roger's “Blues Yodel #1,” plus “That's All Right Mama” and “You Are My Sunshine.”
Although this session was a bootlegger's wet dream, few of the songs were strong enough for an official album release. However, the crème of the session, a duet of “Girl from the North Country,” was included as the opening track to Nashville Skyline, which also featured liner notes written by Cash. During his stay in Nashville, Dylan also ended up writing “Wanted Man” for Cash—a song the Man in Black would debut live to a cafeteria full of California inmates a week later at San Quentin penitentiary.


(From "Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash: Two Songwriting Titans Make History "
By Ben Corbett)


THREE- Both weeks, same as the one before- the stalled-out Look What You've Done For Me by All Green.

TWO- Oh, Girl by the Chi-Lites climbed here from #4 last week;  Sammy and Candy Man climb here from #5 this week.


And at number ONE:

Last week, a repeat of I'll Take You There.  And this week......

...the Chi-Lites with Oh, Girl!!!!!



Whooo, we made it!  Are you seeing double yet?  I'll be if I don't get some eye rest here soon.  Catch you next week!