Saturday Single No. 640

Here are the top ten albums in the Billboard 200 released fifty years ago yesterday, May 10, 1969:

Hair by the original cast
Blood, Sweat & Tears
Galveston by Glenn Campbell
Nashville Skyline by Bob Dylan
Donovan’s Greatest Hits
Cloud Nine by the Temptations
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly
Bayou Country by Creedence Clearwater Revival
Help Yourself by Tom Jones
Led Zeppelin

Four of those ten, the LP database tells me, never showed up in the vinyl stacks: the records by the Temptations, Iron Butterfly, Tom Jones and Led Zeppelin. I had some other Zep and a Temptations anthology, and I once made the misguided decision to buy Iron Butterfly’s live album. (The live version of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” was even more aimless than was the studio version.) No albums by Tom Jones ever showed up in the vinyl stacks.

A few of those – the BST, the Campbell, the CCR – are great albums. Nashville Skyline is enjoyable, but somehow seems slight; if we’re listening to Dylan from 1970, I prefer New Morning. And the Donovan album is pleasant, but my judgment on his work has been the same since it first came out of the radio speakers in the mid- to late 1960s: It’s for the most part a series of trifles with little substance.

The most interesting of those ten might be Hair. I think the cast album was more a marker of a social moment than a record one listened to (unless one had seen the musical, I suppose), but what I noticed about the music was the number of cover hits it inspired: “Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In” went to No. 1 for the 5th Dimension, “Hair” went to No. 2 for the Cowsills, “Good Morning Starshine” went to No. 3 for Oliver, and “Easy To Be Hard” went to No. 4 for Three Dog Night. The Happenings tried to get in on the trend, too, but their medley of “Where Do I Go/Be-In/Hare Krishna” stalled at No. 69. And there may be other covers I’m not aware of.

As to current listening, a fair number of tracks from those albums are among the 3,900-plus tracks on the iPod: a couple from Nashville Skyline, a couple from Galveston, and seven each from Blood, Sweat & Tears and Donovan’s Greatest Hits. (Yes, I said Donovan’s works are basically trifles; that doesn’t mean they’re not fun to listen to.)

As it happens, I drove to the train station in Big Lake the other day to head to a Twins game with Rob, and I let the Blood, Sweat & Tears album keep me company. Even with David Clayton-Thomas’ tendency to over-sing, the album is pretty high on my list. (How high? In my top fifty, maybe.) I had kind of forgotten how jazzy things get during the instrumental breaks.

And I was also reminded as I listened that Blood, Sweat & Tears was the first album I got after I got my tape player during the summer of 1969. I’ve long since added it on vinyl and CD, which puts it pretty close to the front of the line in terms of music I’ve listened to the longest.

So here’s “Smiling Phases” from Blood, Sweat & Tears’ 1969 self-titled album. It’s today’s Saturday Single.

‘Sometimes In Winter’

Here’s a piece from the past that came to mind this morning. It ran here in a slightly different form almost ten years ago, in late February 2009.

I spent eight winters living in Minneapolis, three of them working downtown amid the unsurprising mix of a few modern skyscrapers, some other glass and steel buildings, and the older brick and stone edifices that had to that point survived the city’s occasional efforts at urban renewal.

While the canyons of downtown Minneapolis are slight shadows of those in the major cities – I think of Chicago and New York, obviously – there still was a wintertime melancholy there that one doesn’t find in smaller cities. Even away from downtown – maybe in the blocks around the trendy Uptown area not far away, or in the far southern reaches of the city, where I lived during my last urban seasons – the city can be a dreary place in the later afternoon of a winter day.

It was downtown Minneapolis on a wet winter day that popped into my head this morning. The RealPlayer was on random as I read the newspaper. One song ended and the next began: a familiar woodwind riff over a bed of muted brass and then some subdued percussion. It was Steve Katz’ evocative song, “Sometimes In Winter,” from Blood, Sweat & Tears’ second, self-titled album. And I sang along softly:

Sometimes in winter,
I gaze into the streets
And walk through snow and city sleet
Behind your room.

Sometimes in winter,
Forgotten memories
Remember you behind the trees
With leaves that cried.

By the window once I waited for you;
Laughing slightly you would run.
Trees alone would shield us in the meadow,
Makin’ love in the evening sun.

Now you’re gone, girl,
And the lamp posts call your name.
I can hear them
In the spring of frozen rain.

Now you’re gone, girl,
And the time’s slowed down till dawn.
It’s a cold room, and the walls ask
Where you’ve gone.

Sometimes in winter,
I love you when the good times
Seem like mem’ries in the spring
That never came.

Sometimes in winter,
I wish the empty streets
Would fill with laughter from the tears
That ease my pain.

As I sang, I could see the cold afternoon streets, the lights of the stores and the bars reflecting off the damp pavement. I could see the downtown workers huddled and hunched against the wind and snow, seeking the shelter of those stores and bars or maybe the havens of busses to take them home, away from the gray. And some of those who fled, just like some of those who stayed behind, would know well about Katz’ cold room with its questioning walls.

I first heard the song in 1969, when Blood, Sweat & Tears was the first cassette I got for my new tape player, and the song’s gentle grief has always felt right to me. For years, I envisioned Katz or his alter ego wandering the chill streets of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Today’s vision of Minneapolis doesn’t negate that; it adds to it. For I think all of us – even those in warmer climes – carry our own winter cities with us.

Saturday Singles Nos. 596 & 597

Sometime in the late summer of 1969, my sister came home from a shift of waitressing in the Woolworth’s restaurant at the Crossroads mall on the west end of St. Cloud, and she brought me a gift: Blood, Sweat & Tears’ 1968 self-titled album on cassette.

I’d recently spent the money I’d earned working at the state trapshoot – a three-time experience I’ve written about numerous times here – for a Panasonic cassette tape recorder, but I had yet to get myself anything to listen to. Rick and I had spent some time and giggles recording things around our two households and the neighborhood, but that was it. And then my sister spotted Blood, Sweat & Tears on sale at the mall, possibly at J.C. Penney but more likely at Musicland.

I knew the group, sort of. I think I’d heard “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” the previous spring, when it went to No. 2, and I know I’d heard “Spinning Wheel” during the early summer, when it also went to No. 2, but that was about it. So with a fair amount of curiosity, and grateful to have something to listen to in my tape recorder that didn’t feature my own voice, I popped the cassette in and hit “Play.”

I liked what I heard (and still do; seven of the album’s ten tracks are on the iPod). And I listened to the album enough in those long-ago days that its sequence and solos and turns are still ingrained in my head. When “Smiling Phases,” the album’s real opener (I tend to discount the Erik Satie pieces as filigree) fades out on the iPod, I expect to hear “Sometimes In Winter.” And when that one fades out, I expect to hear this:

And so on through “Blues – Part II” (followed by a reprise of Erik Satie and the sound of footsteps and a slamming door – more filigree). I’ve liked the album enough over the years that it’s one of two that I’ve owned as cassette, LP and CD. (The Beatles’ Abbey Road is the other.)

Fast-forward to this morning: I was heading downtown for a stop at the bank and then a haircut. Little Milton’s Greatest Hits – a 1997 Chess/MCA release – was in the CD player. And along came this, originally released in 1967 as Checker single 1189:

I’ve listened to it several times since then: on the way home from the barbershop and then a couple times as I’ve written this post. I have to admit that – even though I frequently dig into covers and their origins, I’ve never spent any time wondering where Blood, Sweat & Tears found the song. And that’s okay. There are a lot of tunes and covers to write about. This morning, it’s enough to say that Little Milton’s original “More and More” and Blood, Sweat & Tears’ 1968 cover of the tune are today’s Saturday Singles.

Saturday Single No. 591

We’re off to the eye doctor!

Both the Texas Gal and I have noticed in the past couple of weeks that things are getting a bit blurry, especially when we’re driving and most especially when we’re driving after dark. So we checked our records, and for both of us, it’s been a few years since we had our eyes checked.

So later this morning, we’re off to the regional big box store on the East Side, where we’ve had our eyes checked since we moved to St. Cloud almost sixteen years ago. We’ll also likely look for a hose attachment we can use to clean the winter gunk from the garage floor and for a couple other necessities as well. And lunch at one of our former East Side haunts might be on the agenda, too.

But it’s our eyes that are the main part of the agenda. So here’s a tune that’s never shown up here before: “Meagan’s Gypsy Eyes.” It’s from Child Is Father To The Man, the 1968 debut album for Blood, Sweat & Tears, and it’s today’s Saturday Single.

Preparing For The Storm

Here comes the snow!

Sometime this afternoon – around three o’clock, if the weather warnings are accurate – the snow will begin, and it’s not likely to end until sometime late Wednesday afternoon. After having only about eighteen inches of snow fall all winter, we’re about to get hit. The forecasters say that we’re likely to get between ten and thirteen inches here in St. Cloud.

Well, bring it on! We haven’t had a good snowstorm since, I think, the week of Christmas in 2009, when we were socked in for a couple of days. In any case, whether we have a legendary blizzard or just a big end-of-February snow, there were a few things that had to get done in preparation this morning. So I ran a few errands for my mom and then stopped at the nearby supermarket for some necessities and some extras for the Texas Gal and me.

I expect the Texas Gal to be home a little early today, and no doubt she’ll bring some work for tomorrow and maybe the next day, as I doubt we’re going anywhere until the driveway gets plowed. The earliest I’d expect that to happen would be mid-morning Thursday.

So, I’m thinking that it’s a good day for a song with “snow” in its title. I’d hoped to share Carole King’s “Snow Queen” as performed by her late 1960s group The City, but embedding of that tune seems to be disabled. (The tune and the rest of the City’s single album, Now That Everything’s Been Said, are worth checking out although the album’s availability as a new CD is spotty, and the CD can be expensive. The album is available as a download at Amazon.)

So I looked for other versions of the tune. The Roger Nichols Trio released a version of the tune as a single in 1968, but the track is pretty light-weight. (Confusingly, the same group is called Roger Nichols & The Small Circle Of Friends on its single album from 1968.) And I don’t much care for the version that King did on her 1980 album Pearl – The Songs of Goffin & King. Moving on, once I corrected a spelling error in the title, I found in my files the typically jazzy version by Blood, Sweat & Tears that showed up on 1972’s New Blood, but I was underwhelmed once again.

So I dug deeper and found that the Association recorded the tune for its 1972 album, Waterbeds in Trinidad, an effort that turned out to be the group’s last album, according to the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. And that version of “Snow Queen” turns out to be pretty good. (With the vocals stacked Curt Boettcher-style and laid atop what sounded to me like an adventurous backing track, I heard echoes, actually, of Gypsy.)

Since we’ll be snowed in tomorrow, I think I’ll finally get around to writing about Chef Boy-Ar-Dee. Honest. As long as the storm doesn’t take down the cable and Internet.

‘The Lamp Posts Call Your Name . . .’

Originally posted February 24, 2009

I spent eight winters living in Minneapolis, three of them working downtown amid the unsurprising mix of a few skyscrapers, some other modern glass and steel buildings, and the older brick and stone buildings that had to that point survived the city’s occasional efforts at urban renewal.

While the canyons of downtown Minneapolis are slight shadows of those in the major cities – I think of Chicago and New York, obviously – there still was a wintertime melancholy there that one doesn’t find in smaller cities. Even away from downtown – in the blocks around the trendy Uptown area at the intersection of Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue, say, or in the far southern reaches of Minneapolis, where I lived during my last urban winter – the city can be a dreary place in the later afternoon of a winter day.

It was downtown Minneapolis on a wet winter day that popped into my head this morning. The RealPlayer was on random as I read the newspaper. One song ended and the next began: a familiar woodwind riff over a bed of muted brass and then some subdued percussion. It was Steve Katz’ evocative song, “Sometimes In Winter,” from Blood, Sweat & Tears’ second, self-titled album. And I sang along softly:

Sometimes in winter,
I gaze into the streets
And walk through snow and city sleet
Behind your room.
Sometimes in winter,
Forgotten memories
Remember you behind the trees
With leaves that cried.

By the window once I waited for you;
Laughing slightly you would run.
Trees alone would shield us in the meadow,
Makin’ love in the evening sun.

Now you’re gone, girl,
And the lamp posts call your name.
I can hear them
In the spring of frozen rain.
Now you’re gone, girl,
And the time’s slowed down till dawn.
It’s a cold room, and the walls ask
Where you’ve gone.

Sometimes in winter,
I love you when the good times
Seem like mem’ries in the spring
That never came.

Sometimes in winter,
I wish the empty streets
Would fill with laughter from the tears
That ease my pain.

As I sang, I could see the cold afternoon streets, the lights of the stores and the bars reflecting off the damp pavement. I could see the downtown workers huddled and hunched against the wind and the snow, seeking the shelter of those stores and bars or of busses to take them home, away from the gray. And some of those who fled, just like some of those who stayed behind, would know well about Katz’ cold room with its questioning walls.

I first heard the song in 1969, when Blood, Sweat & Tears was the first cassette I got for my new tape player, and the song’s gentle grief has always felt right to me. For years, I envisioned Katz – or his alter ego – wandering the chill streets of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Today’s vision of Minneapolis doesn’t negate that; it adds to it. For I think all of us – even those in warmer climes – carry our own winter cities with us.

It’s evidently a song that’s not been covered much. All-Music Guide lists only two other versions. One is by Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 and the other is credited by AMG to German keyboard player Dieter Reith. After a little digging, I learned that Reith was the organist, arranger and conductor for a 1970 album called Stop! Watch! And Listen! by a group called the Knut Kiesewetter Train. The song is collected on an anthology of Reith’s work, Reith On! The Legendary MPS Sessions.

The Mendes version isn’t quite as gloomy as the original, but it’s not the cheery Latin popfest that I expected. It’s moody at points, and that fits the song well. The Knut Kiesewetter Train version, on the other hand . . . Well, it comes from an aesthetic direction that I clearly don’t grasp. And, no disrespect intended, but it makes me feel as if I’m listening to a performance in the lounge of a third-line hotel for English-speaking travelers somewhere in Essen or Dortmund.

“Sometimes In Winter” by Blood, Sweat & Tears from Blood, Sweat & Tears [1969]

“Sometimes In Winter” by Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 from Stillness [1971]

“Sometimes In Winter” by the Knut Kiesewetter Train from Stop! Watch! And Listen! [1970]

Of Heartsfield & Sneezes

Originally posted May 12, 2008

Last November, I posted a Saturday Single from The Wonder Of It All, a 1974 album by a Midwest band called Heartsfield, a group I’d run across more or less by accident. (I have a sneaking suspicion that we find most of the musicians and groups we listen in that way: pure happenstance.) And I received a few notes from fans of the group, some of them offering assistance in helping me find the rest of Heartsfield’s oeuvre.

I took one of those readers up on that offer this weekend. Mark of St. Louis posted links for me of Heartsfield from 1973, Foolish Pleasures from 1975 and Rescue the Dog, a 2005 album by a band newly organized by one of Heartsfield’s co-founders. (Thanks much, Mark!) That brings me close to a complete Heartsfield collection. A 1977 album, Heartsfield Collectors Item, appears to be an album of new material rather than the compilation the title might imply.

Normally, on Monday, I’d post an album or some kind of themed collection as a Baker’s Dozen. But the pollen has attacked – I read in the Twin Cities newspaper last week that this is the worst year for spring allergies in some time. Well, I already knew that. And I spent much of the weekend wheezing and sniffling and not putting much time at all into thinking about what I would offer this morning. I have some interesting albums in the stack of things to rip, and I will get to one or two of them this week, as well as offer the rest of the week’s regular features.

For now, however, I’m going to let the universe do my work for me this morning. We’ll start with a song from one of the Heartsfield albums Mark provided for me, and from there, we’ll take a fifteen-song walk through the 1950-1999 junkyard.

A Walk Through The Junkyard
“I’m Coming Home” by Heartsfield from Heartsfield, 1973

“Kaval Sviri (The Flute Plays)” by Ensemble Trakia from Mystère Des Voix Bulgares, Vol. 2, recorded at Plodiv, Bulgaria, 1982

“Naturally” by Fat Mattress from Fat Mattress 2, 1970

“By Today” by Batdorf & Rodney from Batdorf & Rodney, 1972

“Redneck Rhythm and Blues” by Brooks & Dunn from Borderline, 1996

“Abraham, Martin & John” by Boo Hewerdine & Darden Smith from Interchords radio show, live, 1991.

“Pacific Coast Highway” by the Mamas & the Papas from People Like Us, 1971

“I’m A Woman” by Maria Muldaur from Waitress In A Donut Shop, 1974

“Ain’t It Hell Up In Harlem” by Edwin Starr from Hell Up In Harlem soundtrack, 1974

“Spinning Wheel” by Blood, Sweat & Tears from Blood, Sweat & Tears, 1969

“Changes” by Gordon Lightfoot from Lightfoot!, 1966

“I Still Miss Someone (Blue Eyes)” by Stevie Nicks from The Other Side of the Mirror, 1989

“Back Stabbers” by the O’Jays, Philadelphia International single 3517, 1972

“The Moon Struck One” by The Band from Cahoots, 1971

“Lullaby” by Wishbone Ash from Pilgrimage, 1971

A few notes:

Visitors sometimes snort when I tell them I listen at times to Bulgarian choral music. But should one of the tracks pop up from one of the several such albums I have ripped to mp3s, well, my visitors’ eyes widen and their mouths open as they hear the odd intervals and impossibly close harmonies. The sound is alien to Western ears, and I don’t listen to a lot of it at one time, but it never hurts to know what other places sound like, and the musicianship on all of the Mystère Des Voix Bulgares albums – and on the Nonesuch label albums that preceded them – is impeccable.

Fat Mattress is where Noel Redding went in the late 1960s after his time as bassist with the Jimi Hendrix Experience was over. The group’s music was different from that of the Experience: far more based on the British folk-rock tradition and the psychedelic and progressive rock sounds that stemmed from that tradition. The two albums the group did are well worth hearing, if those sounds intrigue you. The group’s second album – from which “Naturally” comes – was slightly inferior to the first album, says All-Music Guide, but from a distance of more than thirty-five years, the differences don’t seem that significant.

John Batdorf and Mark Rodney made three albums in the early 1970s in a singer-songwriter/soft rock vein. The albums are pleasant but not very consequential. One of the joys of having a 500-gig external hard drive is that there is room to keep bits and pieces of pleasant marginalia if one so desires. The duo is similar to, but not quite as good as, Seals & Crofts.

The Boo Hewerdine/Darden Smith performance of Dick Holler’s wondrous “Abraham, Martin & John” is, to me, a highlight of both singers’ careers. The Interchords appearance had Hewerdine interviewing Smith along with performances by both. I’d love to hear the entire show. And I’d love to know who Stephen (Steven?) was. Listen to the song, and you’ll know what I mean.

The Mamas & the Papas, who had broken up in 1968, reunited in 1971 to record the album, People Like Us, simply to fulfill a contractual obligation. The album is better than one might expect of such an effort, but the group’s time had passed and the product sounded out of date and went nowhere.

Wishbone Ash is one of those bands I knew about in my youth but never listened to (given the vast number of groups at the time and since then, there are many such, I am certain). I ran across a track by Wishbone Ash at The College Crowd Digs Me about seven months ago and since then have slowly been taking in the group’s body of work. “Lullaby,” along with the album it comes from, is far more mellow than the sounds I’d expected when I began digging into the group’s work.

Edited slightly during reposting June 27, 2011.

Chart Digging: June 14, 1975

I was pretty busy during the summer of 1975.

I was clearing up the last of my general education courses at St. Cloud State. I was taking two required seminars for seniors and knocking off the four phy ed courses I was required to take. (Nothing too strenuous: I took archery, tennis, bowling and ballroom dancing.) And I was repeating a physics course I’d failed during my first quarter in the fall of 1971.

I didn’t have to repeat the physics course. I’d taken another science course somewhere along the way that satisfied the general education requirement. But I had the time, and I wanted to get the F off my academic record or at least out of my grade-point average. And I got lucky: Instead of being an introduction to pure physics with lots of lab work, I was able to take an introduction to astronomy. I’d taken a rigorous astronomy course during my last semester of high school and had done well, so I eased through the college intro with no worries.

So I might have been busy academically through the two five-week summer sessions, but I wasn’t really working hard. Nor was my half-time summer job very arduous: That was the summer that a crew of about ten of us, headed up by Murl – who would be one of my best friends by the end of the summer – made our way across the SCS campus doing an inventory of every piece of audio-visual equipment. We got a lot of work done, had a lot of laughs and got to move around a lot.

On a personal level, I was busy, too. I dated about eight women that summer, and a couple of those pairings lasted the summer though nothing serious came out of either. I also spent some time with a group of folks from the astronomy class, and hung around after working hours with folks from the inventory crew. Still, as the season went on, I was unattached. I heard Paul Williams’ “Waking Up Alone” for the first time one evening in July. And it was during that summer that I began taking seriously the idea of writing a startling letter to a young woman in knew in Finland.

It turned out to be a great summer, and I think I realized by the middle of June that it was headed that way. And the Billboard Top Ten for the week ending June 14, 1975, was pretty good:

“Sister Golden Hair” by America
“Love Will Keep Us Together” by the Captain & Tennille
“When Will I Be Loved/It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” by Linda Ronstadt
“Bad Time” by Grand Funk
“Old Days” by Chicago
“I’m Not Lisa” by Jessi Colter
“Love Won’t Let Me Wait” by Major Harris
“Thank God I’m A Country Boy” by John Denver
“Philadelphia Freedom” by Elton John
“Get Down, Get Down (Get On The Floor)” by Joe Simon

I can do without the John Denver tune for the rest of my life, and I’d like to limit my exposure to the first two on that list, but other than that, that’s a good Top Ten. There are some I’d play on a jukebox – I recall actually dropping in a quarter to hear “I’m Not Lisa” during a coffee date at the local Country Kitchen – and some I wouldn’t, but beyond the three I singled out, that list would make a good slice of radio.

As always, though, I’m interested in records that were sitting below the Top 40 of the time, some of which I might have never heard or even heard of.

The O’Jays’ “Give The People What They Want” was sitting at No. 45, and it would move no further. I vaguely remember this populist and funky piece of R&B that calls for “freedom, justice and equality.” The record was the eighteenth by the Canton, Ohio, group to hit the Hot 100, with eleven more to come through 1997. Though it didn’t do all that well on the pop chart, the record did make it to the top of the R&B chart for a week.

“Shoeshine Boy” by Eddie Kendricks is one of those records that I have no memory of at all. And that’s odd, considering that it peaked at No. 18, and I was still spending some time listening to radio. You’d think I’d have run across it often enough to recall it. Or maybe it didn’t do as well in Minnesota as it did across the board. In any case, the record by the one-time member of the Temptations peaked in late May – topping the R&B chart for a week – and by the middle of June, it was heading down the chart and was sitting at No. 51. Kendricks would have four more Hot 100 hits to bring his total to fifteen, with the last coming in 1985.

By the end of 1975, I’d be hearing a little bit of country music, as the family of the young lady I was seeing at the time – all nine of her siblings and her folks – were country fans. But that was some months ahead, so I entirely missed the sweet “Blanket on the Ground” by Billie Jo Spears of Beaumont, Texas. The record was sitting at No. 78 by the middle of June and would go no higher, though that was a little better than Spears’ only other Hot 100 record, “Mr. Walker, It’s All Over,” which went to No. 80 in 1969. But “Blanket on the Ground” did very well on the country chart, spending a week at No. 1.

The entry for Blood, Sweat & Tears in Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles shows an interesting arc. The group’s first three singles, in 1969, all went to No. 2. (They were “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” “Spinning Wheel” and “And When I Die.”) The next three listed singles were hits but didn’t fare as well, reaching the Top 40 at Nos. 14, 29 and 32, respectively. And from that point, BS&T had no more Top 40 hits (though they came close with “So Long Dixie,” which went to No. 44 in the autumn of 1972). In mid-June of 1975, the group was about to fall short again, as its cover of the Beatles’ “Got To Get You Into My Life” was at No. 81 and would peak at No. 62. It’s actually a pretty good version of the Beatles tune, and it maybe should have done better, but BS&T’s trademark sound was no longer fresh by the middle of 1975. “Got To Get You Into My Life” was the last of ten BS&T records to reach the Hot 100 although “You’re The One” bubbled under at No. 106 in late 1976.

Bobby Womack never did as well as one might have expected on the pop chart: Four Top 40 hits between 1972 and 1974, with his highest placing coming from “Lookin’ For A Love,” which went to No. 10 in the spring of 1974. He had eleven other records reach the Hot 100, and four more bubbled under. (Unsurprisingly, he did much better on the R&B chart, where he had twenty-eight Top 40 hits including two No. 1 records and four that went to No. 2.) Now, fifteen records in the Hot 100 is a pretty good run, but when his stuff pops up in my player, it sounds like it should have done better. And that’s what I thought when I listened to “Check It Out” last evening. It was at No. 99 in the Hot 100 released June 14, 1975, and it peaked at No. 91. To my ears, it should have been a hit. (It did go to No. 6 on the R&B chart.)

Long-time readers know that one of my all-time radio horrors is Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun.” So they can imagine my reluctance to even go searching at YouTube when I saw that the No. 108 tune in the Hot 100 from mid-June 1974 was a record by Jacks titled “Christina.” I reminded myself that as part of the Poppy Family, Jacks had come up with some pretty good stuff, including the compelling and disquieting “That’s Where I Went Wrong” (with vocals by Susan Jacks, his wife at the time). So I checked out “Christina” and found an odd, unsettling record with some echoes of Helen Reddy’s 1974 hit ‘Angie Baby.” As strange as it is, it’s understandable that “Christina” peaked at No. 106, but I like it.

A Baker’s Dozen Of Winter

Originally posted December 5, 2007

Through the window, I hear the skrik-skrik of someone scraping ice from a vehicle in the parking lot. We got another six inches of snow yesterday afternoon (on top of the six or so inches from Saturday), and it came in the afternoon, causing havoc during what passes for rush hour here in St. Cloud.

It looks like this winter is going to be a tougher one than the past few have been. At least, it’s starting out that way, with two six-inch snowfalls in four days and another storm heading our direction for tomorrow. The past few years haven’t seen much snow at all, and it’s generally come later in the season. And some of those winters have seemed to bring fewer days of sub-zero cold, the kind of cold that makes snow squeak under your feet and makes your cheeks burn.

Were winters colder when I was a kid? I don’t know. I remember walking in some pretty cold weather during my elementary school days. For the seven years I went to Lincoln School (kindergarten through sixth grade), I walked the five blocks from Kilian Boulevard to the school almost every day. On those winter days when the wind came from the north or northwest, we’d turn around and back our way to school, whole clusters of kids walking in reverse along Fifth Avenue Southeast.

(One very clear recollection that points out how times have changed is that the girls were still required to wear skirts or dresses in school. They could wear slacks under their dresses or skirts when they walked to school, but those slacks had to come off once they got inside.)

On very frigid days, those snow-squeaking days when the temperature was at twenty below zero or colder (that’s about twenty-nine degrees below zero Celsius), my mom or dad would drive us – my sister was three years ahead of me – the five blocks to school, often picking up classmates of ours along the way. And on occasion during my first few years of elementary school, I’d get a ride to school from Ed, the college fellow who lived in the next block and was the quarterback for the St. Cloud State Huskies football team.

Do kids still walk to school in any season? I don’t know. I do have a sense that kids no longer do as much outdoors as we used to do. Forty years ago, there were two city-maintained outdoor skating rinks within walking distance of our house: one right across the highway from Lincoln School (with a walking bridge over the highway providing easy access), and another about six blocks south of us on Kilian Boulevard. I was never a very good skater, but I spent my time with Rick and the other neighborhood kids scuffling around the two rinks. And on occasion, we’d go downtown where the city maintained a skating surface on Lake George.

And once every couple of weeks, we’d grab our saucer sleds and head down to the big hill in Riverside Park for a weekend afternoon of sliding, coming home cold and wet, tired and happy.

The rink on Kilian is long gone now, its location having become part of a permanent rose garden. I don’t think there’s a rink near Lincoln anymore. The open area that was flooded each winter is still there, but the warming house is long gone. And the old warming house on Lake George came down years ago, too. I suppose kids who want to skate do so in the ice arenas that were built during the years I was gone.

I would imagine, though, that kids still slide down the hill in Riverside Park. I hope so. And this year, it looks as if there will be plenty of snow for them.

“The First Chill of Winter” by Boo Hewerdine & Darden Smith from Evidence, 1989

“Winterlude” by Bob Dylan from New Morning, 1970

“A Hazy Shade of Winter” by Simon & Garfunkel from Bookends, 1968

“Song of Winter” by Françoise Hardy from One Nine Seven Zero, 1970

“Winterlong” by Neil Young, unreleased, 1974

“Wintery Feeling” by Jesse Winchester from A Touch On The Rainy Side, 1978

“The Coldest Winter in Memory” by Al Stewart from Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time, 1996

“In The Winter” by Janis Ian from Between the Lines, 1975

“Song For A Winter’s Night” by Gordon Lightfoot from The Way I Feel, 1967

“The Winter is Cold” by Wendy & Bonnie from Genesis, 1969

“Lion in Winter” by the Bee Gees from Trafalgar, 1971

“Winter Winds’ by Fotheringay from Fotheringay, 1970

“Sometimes In Winter” by Blood, Sweat & Tears from Blood, Sweat & Tears, 1969

A few notes on some of the songs and artists:

I’ve posted the Hewerdine and Smith album Evidence here before, but I could not resist starting this list with “The First Chill of Winter,” which is one of my favorite songs.

The album One Nine Seven Zero, the source of French chanteuse Françoise Hardy’s “Song of Winter,” was originally released in 1969 in South Africa under the title of English 3. A year later, it was released in the U.K., Australia and New Zealand as One Nine Seven Zero. In the U.S. and Canada, the album’s title was Alone. I don’t think there’s any difference between the albums, but the source I had for the album called it One Nine Seven Zero, so that’s what I’ve called it.

The Neil Young track, “Winterlong” was included on Decade, his 1977 retrospective. The only other place the song shows up officially is on the 2006 release, Live at the Fillmore East, which documents a 1970 performance by Young with Crazy Horse.

Gordon Lightfoot’s “Song For A Winter Night” may be more familiar in a version by Sarah McLachlan. Her nicely done cover of the song was released on the soundtrack of a 1994 remake of the Christmas film, Miracle on 34th Street, although the recording was not used in the film.

“The Winter Is Cold” comes from one of the more remarkable one-shot recordings of the 1960s. Genesis came from San Francisco-based sisters, Wendy and Bonnie Flowers, who were seventeen and thirteen, respectively, at the time. It was released on the Skye label, which folded soon after the record came out, dooming any chances for the record to gain any attention. “The Winter Is Cold” is one of the lesser tracks on the album, I think, but the album – re-released on the Sundazed label in 2001 with bonus tracks – is worth finding.

A Baker’s Dozen From 1969, Vol. 2

Originally posted August 29, 2007

Autumn approaches. Day by day, the signs accumulate: geese honking their ways across the sky in great V’s; the first tree on the boulevard abandoning its green cover for dusty brown or perhaps orange; and the slight chill hanging in the morning air, accompanied sometimes with a thin haze of fog in the low places.

There are other signs, less tied with nature’s hike toward the season: I drove past one of the three St. Cloud high schools the other afternoon, and the warming air there was filled with the demands of coaches and the grunted responses of athletes in pads as the football team went through its workout. And even more prosaically, the newspaper supplements have been filled for weeks already with advertising for back to school sales and promotions.

My junior year of high school began on a football field, although a different one than the one I drove past the other day. I was at the practice area next to Clark Field, home of the Tech Tigers. I wasn’t a player – my frame was too slight and my pace too slow. Rather, I was a manager, lugging a primitive medical kit between the field and the school a block away, tending to minor injuries, gathering and packing away loose footballs during and after practices, and running errands for the coaches.

And like the players and the three other managers, I hung around the locker room and the training room between and after practices. (This was not today’s complex weight training room but rather a small room with three tables, a tall medicine cabinet, an old refrigerator and a primitive whirlpool bath.) We’d trade jokes and stories –many of them vulgar and tasteless, of course – and listen to the radio, always tuned to KDWB, one of the two Twin Cities stations devoted to airing the Top 40.

In any one hour, we might hear “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies, “Lay, Lady, Lay” by Bob Dylan, “Grazing in the Grass” from the Friends of Distinction,” “Crystal Blue Persuasion” from Tommy James and the Shondells,” Tony Joe White’s “Poke Salad Annie,” Zager & Evans’ “In the Year 2525” and two of the Beatles’ trio of “Get Back,” “Don’t Let Me Down” and “The Ballad of John and Yoko.”

And there was one song that we in Minnesota heard far more than listeners anywhere in the country did: “Pain” by the Mystics, a Twin Cities group also known as Michael’s Mystics. The song was No. 1 for two weeks in mid-August on KDWB’s Top 40 chart. It was a great summer for radio, and a great time to turn sixteen, which I did the Friday of the first week of school.

The beginning of a school year was always a time of great hopes: the hope that I’d like all my classes and teachers; the hope that I would find a place to fit in, a group of kids with whom I had some connection beyond sharing the same crowded hallways; the hope that the football team would succeed and that for the first time I would be able to feel like a part of that success; and the hope – this one a long-recurring wish – that I might find a young lady with whom to spend sweet time.

Well, the football team went 6-3 and wound up being ranked ninth in the state by the Minneapolis Tribune. As there were no playoffs, the newspaper’s ranking was all we had to strive for, especially since we were not a member of any conference and played an independent schedule. We took some pride in the fact that our three losses were to the teams the newspaper ranked first, second and third in the state: the suburban powerhouse Edina Hornets, the Austin Packers from near the Iowa border, and the Moorhead Spuds from the Red River Valley in the far northwest.

My classes and teachers were fine, although I struggled with third-year French. I never really did find that group of kids I sought. I spent some time hanging around in the locker room with the football team and – during winter – the wrestlers, for whom I was a second-year manager, and I also spent time with students who focused on music, as I was in the orchestra and the concert choir. I never did find a place, really.

Nor did I find that young lady. But several of the young women I knew became good friends, which in the long term is worth a great deal. At the age of sixteen, however, it’s difficult to think about anything other than the short term.

One fine moment of the year came in mid-September, when the first dance of the year had live music, provided by the Mystics. With my pal Mike – also a football manager – I hitched a ride from Tech to the dance at the old Central School, where we hung around the edges of the dance floor, listening to the music and watching the dancers. We didn’t dance a step all evening, but the Mystics were pretty good, and we got to hear their hit, the first time for either one of us to hear a band perform a Top 40 hit live.

And that’s where we’ll start this Baker’s Dozen for 1969.

“Pain” by the Mystics, Metromedia single 130

“Wooden Ships” by Crosby, Stills & Nash from Crosby, Stills & Nash

“Where’s the Playground, Susie?” by Glen Campbell, Capitol single 2494

“To Be Alone With You” by Bob Dylan from Nashville Skyline

“Love and a Yellow Rose” by the Guess Who from Wheatfield Soul

“More and More” by Blood, Sweat & Tears from Blood, Sweat & Tears

“All Along The Watchtower” by Brewer & Shipley from Weeds

“Joker (On A Trip Through The Jungle)” by Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band from In The Jungle, Babe

“Woman” by Zager & Evans from In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)

“Nobody” by Three Dog Night from Captured Live At The Forum

“Nitty Gritty” by Gladys Knight & the Pips, Soul single 35063

“Cherry Hill Park” by Billy Joe Royal, Columbia single 44902

“London Bridge” by Bread from Bread

A few notes on some of the songs:

One can argue which version of “Wooden Ships” is better, this one from Crosby, Stills & Nash or the version released later the same year on Jefferson Airplane’s Volunteers album. (David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane wrote the song.) The CS&N version is a little more sleek and polished, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a compliment here. Nevertheless, both recordings of this enduring song are worth hearing.

When folks talk about Glen Campbell’s hits, they often forget about “Where’s The Playground, Susie?” and that’s too bad. It’s a fine performance of another Jimmy Webb song. It likely gets ignored because it only reached No. 26 on the pop chart, rather than climbing into the Top 10, as had “Wichita Lineman” and “Galveston,” Campbell’s previous two releases to reach the Top 40.

“Love and a Yellow Rose” is a Guess Who album track that sprawls and wanders through simulations of Indian ragas, Gregorian chant (I think), standard pop rock and the kind of silly declamatory stuff that lead singer Burton Cummings was prone to (when he wasn’t writing hit singles, that is). As odd as “Love and a Yellow Rose” is, it’s not the strangest track on the album; that honor goes to the even sillier “Friends of Mine,” in which Cummings channels the still-living Jim Morrison.

“Joker (On A Trip Through The Jungle)” is a not-bad album track instrumental by Charles Wright and his group, but Wright and his band are better remembered for their singles, including the sweet “Love Land” from 1969, and 1970’s funky “Express Yourself.”

“Woman,” another album track, is Zager & Evans’ attempt at sweet and subtle, and the music is nice, but the lyrics are pretty vapid and unsubtle. I think that was the case, however, with pretty much everything the group did. It’s short, which helps.

Billy Joe Royal’s “Cherry Hill Park” is one of those guilty pleasures from the Top 40, and at the time, was just a little bit naughty: “Mary Hill was such a thrill after dark . . . in Cherry Hill Park.” Pretty tame these days, but still fun to listen to.