Time Machine week 89

Today we arrive on Sunday September 9th, 1973- Two days before Salvador Allende is murdered by a military coup in Chile; one day after Arnold Schwarzenegger won his 4th straight Mr Olympia title; and right on the day that Willie Mays played his last game.  He drew two walks, struck out once, and his Mets won as the opposing Montreal Expos scattered 13 hits so evenly that never once did they threaten to score.

Or in other words, nothing earth shaking occurred- did I mention it's Sunday?  Anyway, welcome to this week's Time Machine, in which I will have a couple of intertwined special reports, along with a 6D that went all Columbo on me...

"Just one thing- does this put me in the Beauty Contest?"

Er, No, no it doesn't.  As I was saying, AND the first M10 #1 (to my knowledge) mostly written on a toy keyboard!  Extinguish all smoking materials and climb aboard!


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This week's list is brought to you by the following distinguished Panel:

WFMJ Youngstown OH;  KCPX Salt Lake City;  WCWC Ripon WI;  KKDJ Los Angeles; WAKY Louisville;  WKXY Sarasota; WSLQ St Louis;  WWCO Waterbury CT;  WQAM Miami;  WLLL Lynchburg VA;  WHJB Greenburg PA; and WBBM Chicago.  These worthies collected a mere 18 different songs, which led to NINE songs scoring in double figures, which means you get a Top Nine this week!  Even with 9 entrants, we still managed two #1s that didn't make the list- the DeFranco Family with Heartbeat-It's A Lovebeat (Salt Lake city) and Cher's Half Breed (Los Angeles).  Heartbeat also doubled as the low charter by only being at #74 this week on Cashbox's national chart.  Or, if you please, it was the Carpenters' Yesterday Once More, which dropped off last week but was still #5 in Connecticut.


Speaking of low, the Under the Limbo Stick gang this week looks like this- and some of them did escape the bubbling under chart:


10cc's Rubber Bullets at #94;
Marie Osmond and Paper Roses at #97;
A re-release of They're Coming To Take Me Away by Napoleon XIV was stuck at #102;
Marshal Tucker Band's Can't You See was at #115;
But this week's how low can you go champ is Todd Rundgren with Hello It's Me, down here at #128!

And now, the Panel Nine:

At #9 with 10 points and the #1 of Chicago, the national #7, Wings and Live And Let Die.
At #8 with 11 points but no #1s, the national #4, Grand Funk Railroad and We're An American Band.
At #7 with also 11 points and the #1s of Youngstown and Greenburg, the national #9, Elton John  and Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting.
At #6 with 13 points but no #1s, the national #5, Paul Simon's Loves Me Like a Rock.
At #5 with 15 points and the #1 from Louisville, the national #13, Diana Ross' Touch Me In The Morning.
At #4, with 18 points but no #1s, the national #3, the Stories and Brother Louie.
At #3 with that same 18 points but a #1 from Ripon, the national #6, Tony Orlando and Dawn with Hey Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose?
At #2, with 22 points and the #1 of Sarasota, the national top dog, Helen Reddy and Delta Dawn.

And at #1, with 30 points and 4 number ones, the national # 2.... stay tuned.


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Last week, Shady made this comment:

It's amazing that major hits like "You're The One" by the Vogues and Len Barry's signature song "1-2-3" began their chart journey at or near the bottom of the Bubbling Under basement. It might be fun for you to identify records that have climbed the greatest distance up the chart to get to the top 5 or to #1, or the ones that took the most weeks to do so. 

So I do like a challenge, so I started on a two-headed research project:  Head A- which number ones started chart life the lowest (in the Martin Era, of course); and Head B- who took the most Hot 100 weeks to get to the top?  Now the first was a bit challenging- I had to look at the #1s first week at the top, see what week on the hot 100 they were in (and record it for the second part), and then backtrack that many weeks plus one to see if they did time on the bubbling unders.


One thing I will tell you- the Beatles won't win this one.  In fact the only time I saw them on the bubbling unders at all was an EP in '64 that had their first wave of big hits.  Generally, they were 3-5 weeks to the top, and none longer than 8 weeks.  But anyway, back to the low chart side of things.  In about mid 1970, Cashbox began moving the bottom of the bubbling under up from 150 to 120, then 100, then 50.  So when it stopped being 150, I said, "I'm done!  The rest of this will be a snap!"  That didn't happen, but we'll get to that later.  So anyway, that left me with these being the #1s that started chart life the lowest:

10 (tie)- David Rose's The Stripper and the Box Tops' The Letter  at #143;
8 (tie)- Leslie Gore's It's My Party and Nino Tempo and April Stevens' Deep Purple, #145;
5 (tie)- The Archies' Sugar Sugar, The Four Tops' I Can't Help Myself, and Kyu Sakamoto's Sukiyaki, #146;
4- Paul Mauriat's Love Is Blue, #147;
3- The Association's Windy, #148;
And a first place tie at #149:

The Tornados, Telstar;
and Aretha Franklin, Respect (ironically enough).

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Three debuts grace the M10 this week, and the one at #10 belongs to a Canuck by the name of Daniel Romano:




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The other head of my research project had been easy to that point- in the 7 1/2 years of the sixties encompassed by the Martin Era, only 22 songs had taken 10 weeks or more- and the longest was the first- Chubby Checker's Limbo Rock taking 15 weeks to get there.

That song, for the full ME, was tied for 26th.  What the hell happened?

Well, there was an explosion, and I mean an EXPLOSION, of songs taking their sweet ol' time climbing the charts.  I made a graph that shows the percentage of #1s that took 10 or more weeks to reach the top, with the sixties in blue and the 70's in red...

As you can see, while the sixties averaged just over 10% 10+ week number ones, the seventies averaged just under 60%- and the years 1972-76, which EACH had more than the '60s combined- averaged almost 80%.  I will allow those of you who actually care try to dope out why this happened (I have my theories), but to move things along, let's find out who actually DID take the longest to hit #1:

A 6-way tie for 7th with 18 weeks- The Miracles and Love Machine, David Essex and Rock On, Crystal Gayle and Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue, Samantha Sang and Emotion, Andy Gibb and Love Is Thicker Than Water, and John Denver's Take Me Home Country Roads.

A three-way tie for 4th with 19 weeks: Frankie Valli's My Eyes Adored You, Rita Collidge's version of (Your Love Lifted Me) Higher And Higher, and Nick Gilder's Hot Child In The City.

A two-way tie for second at 20 weeks- Billy Preston's Will It Go 'Round In Circles, and Robert John's Sad Eyes.

And the longest, at 22 weeks-

And there you have it.  Only two acts in the '70s consistently raced up the charts: Elton John, who almost always made it in 9 or less, and Paul McCartney, who did about half-and-half.  And just for totals, there were, as I said, 22 10+ weekers in the ME '60s- and 195 in the '70s.


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Debut the second, at #9, another new one from my Aussie boys Castle Comer:




Well, that was a mouthful!

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So yet another failed attempt to do a 6 D, as the victim this week, War's Gypsy Man which was at #11 nationally but unloved by the Panel, was not just brimming with trivia.  But what I did find was that, back when the band was starting out with Eric Burdon, they had a gig with a very famous sit-it:  Jimi Hendrix, in his last public performance.  On the 15th of September 1970, he was invited to sit in with the band by Burdon, who was a friend, but when he got there he was too toasted to take the stage.  So they tried again the next night, and sometime after midnight- making it the 17th- Jimi sat in for a couple of songs- one of them Tobacco Road, which you can listen to here if you like.  The night of the 18th he was dead from sleeping pills and a bottle of wine.  But as I looked into all this, I kept hearing the allegations he was murdered.  The killer was supposedly men hired by his UK manager, who had taken out a life insurance policy on him.  But as I looked into the story, I found that basically it was a glorified roadie who decided to make a buck 40 years after the fact who made it up, including in the lie apparently the ME that examined the body, who claimed "I never saw so much wine come out of a body;  we'd pump some out, and more would gush to the top".  The star's American manager says that the "author" told him he needed a hook for his book, and this was it.  When the manager protested, he supposedly said, "Who's gonna know?  Every one involved is dead now."  And now the internet is full of idiots listening to this twerp, screaming  j'accuse at a case that was nothing but a money making lie.


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Final Debut this week kicks off our M10 this week.  The guy who looked more like me than Dave Edmunds, Dent May- who had a hit earlier here with Born Too Late, is back with probably the favorite of mine of all the song titles the M10 has had- Face Down In The Gutter Of Your Love.






At #7 M.A.G.S. slips a notch with My Love.

Wild Ones Move up a pair to #6 with Heatwave;  Dinosaur Jr does likewise to #5 with Tiny.

In their 7th week on the chart, the Explorers Club drop a single spot to #4 with former #1 California's Callin' Ya;  A newly former number one, Phantogram's Fall In Love, slides out of the top spot to #3.

Keane moves up two more spots into second with Somewhere Only We Know.

And at the top?

M10 says...

Shakes with Strange Tides!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I am told that this song was written on the beach using a toy keyboard, and punched up later at the studio.

And the Panel says....

...Marvin Gaye and Let's Get It On!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Next week, 1962!  Be there, I was!