Saturday Single No. 662

All right, it’s time for some Games With Numbers. We’re going to take today’s date – 10-12-19 – and turn that into 41, and then we’re going to check out the records at No. 41 on few Billboard Hot 100s from this week over the years to find a tune to feature this morning. Since we’re fifty years out from 1969 – a year favored greatly here – we’ll head to October of that year and then move five years away in both directions for a couple of other years as targets: 1964 and 1974.

As we generally do when we play these games, we’ll check out the No. 1 and No. 2 records from those weeks along the way.

We’ll start in 1964. The record sitting at No. 41 in a chart released fifty-five years ago this week was “I Like It,” the fourth charting record for the Merseyside group of Gerry & The Pacemakers.

Two of the group’s singles had reached the Billboard Top Ten earlier in the year: “Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying” had gone to No. 4 during the first weeks of summer, and “How Do You Do It” had reached No. 9 during the first week of September. Oddly, the same week that “How Do You Do It” (b/w “You’ll Never Walk Alone”) entered the Hot 100, so did the group’s “I’m The One,” which had “How Do You Do It” as its B-side.

That seems strange, and I’ll need someone wiser than I in the ways of record companies to explain. In any case, “I’m The One” stiffed at No. 82, leaving “I Like It” as the follow-up to that odd set of releases. Actually a re-release of a 1963 single that did not chart, “I Like It” went to No. 17.

It’s an okay record, but then, the only thing I ever loved by Gerry & The Pacemakers was “Ferry Cross The Mersey,” which I heard a fair amount at home in early 1965 because my sister bought the record. So “I Like It” seems a little pale to me.

Sitting at No. 1 and No. 2 in the Hot 100 released October 10, 1964 were, respectively, “Oh, Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison and “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” by Manfred Mann.

Five years later, the record at No. 41 was one that I’ve written about before: “Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home” by Joe South. In a meditation on how music reflects the desire to return to a better time and/or place, I wrote:

Joe South’s 1969 lament, “Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home,” mourned the changes brought to his home place – and by extension, the entire south – by the so-called progress of that decade, which replaced orchards with offices and meadows with malls (and the orchards and meadows continue to disappear to this day, of course, not just in the south but all across the country).

The era during which Joe South sang – those volatile years from, say, 1965 to 1975 – was one of displacement for a lot of folks. Many of those who were displaced, of course, had not one bit of use for rock or soul or any of their relatives; they instead found their solace in gospel music or in the country stylings of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard and their contemporaries. But the sense of longing wasn’t limited by genre. It’s not an accident that one of the better singles of the Beatles, the best group of the time – or any time, for that matter – told us all to get back to where we once belonged. We all wanted to go home.

Oddly enough, for a record of such subtle power during a time of confusing change, “Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home” did not make the Top 40. It peaked right where it sat fifty years ago yesterday, at No. 41.

Parked at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, during that week were “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies and “Jean” by Oliver.

Five years after that, at October 1974 hit the one-third point, the record at No. 41 was a profession of faith and a prayer for endurance that crossed over from the country chart and provided its singer with her only pop hit. Marilyn Sellars (who turns out to have been born in the college town of Northfield, Minnesota) put a couple of records into the Country Top 40 in the mid-1970s.

The one we’re concerned with today is “One Day At A Time,” which, forty-five years ago today, was a week past its pop peak at No. 37. Written by Marijohn Wilkin and Kris Kristofferson, “One Day At A Time” peaked on the country chart at No. 19. For the record, Sellars’ other country hit, a plaint of lost love titled “He’s Everywhere,” went to No. 39 in early 1975.

Sitting at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, during this week in 1974 were “I Honestly Love You” by Olivia Newton-John and “Nothing From Nothing” by Billy Preston.

So, given those three to consider, there’s not much question about which direction we’ll go this morning. Almost by default, Joe South’s “Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home” is today’s Saturday Single.

First Wednesday: February 1968

In this space ten years ago, I put up a series of monthly posts looking at the year of 1968, then forty years gone. I thought it would be interesting to rerun those posts this year as we mark the fiftieth anniversary of that remarkable and often horrifying year. We’ll correct errors or update information as necessary, but the historic portion of the posts will otherwise be unchanged. As to music, we’ll update our examination of charts from fifty years ago and then, when possible, share the same full albums from 1968 as we did ten years ago, but this time – as is our habit now – as YouTube videos. The posts will appear on the first Wednesday of each month.

One of the most indelible images of the Vietnam War was captured forty years ago this month. Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams was working in the streets of Saigon during the Tet Offensive when, on February 1, he came upon South Vietnamese police and soldiers detaining a man named Nguyễn Văn Lém, who has most often been described over the years as a member of the Viet Cong guerillas. Whatever he was, Nguyễn was executed in the street by Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, the chief of the national police. Adams was there, as was NBC television cameraman Vo Suu. Adam’s photo of the execution won a Pulitzer Prize, but his photo and Suu’s footage earned world-wide criticism for the executioner and the South Vietnamese forces and government.

That’s where it becomes important to know exactly who Nguyễn Văn Lém was. Wikipedia says that Nguyễn Văn Lém, according to South Vietnamese sources, “commanded a Viet Cong insurgent team, which, on February 1, 1968, the second day of the Tet Offensive, had targeted South Vietnamese National Police officers, or in their place, the police officers’ families. Corroborating this, Lém was captured at the site of a mass grave that included the bodies of at least seven police family members. Photographer Adams confirmed the South Vietnamese account, although he was only present for the execution.”

Wikipedia also says that “[t]he execution was explained at the time as being the consequence of Lém’s admitted guerrilla activity and war crimes, and otherwise due to a general ‘wartime mentality’.”

(I have read a few times over the years that Nguyễn Văn Lém was a member of the North Vietnamese army operating in Saigon in civilian clothes; in that case, the Geneva Conventions allow for summary execution. From what I can tell, that claim is historical revisionism intended to justify Nguyễn Ngọc Loan’s administration of summary justice.)

It should also be noted that Wikipedia states that some of its sources for its entry on Lém “may not be reliable.” Whatever the truth fifty years later, I remember the revulsion the photograph and the film footage caused at the time. There was the usual yipping of approval from some quarters, but I think that even most of those still supporting the U.S. efforts in Vietnam were sickened by the brutality of this one incident.

Elsewhere in February 1968:

The Winter Olympics took place from February 6 through 18 at Grenoble, France. With loads of coverage on ABC – though not nearly as much coverage as the Olympics get these days – we were able to watch a fair amount of the action. The two leading personalities of the Games – as defined, I suppose, by ABC and other media – were ice skater Peggy Fleming, who won the only gold medal for the U.S., and French skier Jean-Claude Killy, who won all three men’s downhill events. A side note: The Grenoble games marked the first time that ABC used the now-familiar tympani- and brass-laden musical theme for its production; the work’s title is actually “Bugler’s Dream,” and it was composed by Frenchman Léo Arnaud.

Here in the U.S., there was a civil rights protest at a bowling alley in Orangeburg, South Carolina, with officers of the state Highway Patrol firing into the crowd of protestors, killing three and wounding twenty-seven. Civil rights protests also took place that month at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

And the month ended on a tragic note in the music world, as Frankie Lymon of Frankie & the Teenagers was found dead of a heroin overdose February 27 in Harlem. He had been scheduled to begin recording for Big Apple records the next day.

The top ten singles on the Billboard Hot 100 during the first week of February 1968 were:

“Green Tambourine” by the Lemon Pipers
“Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)” by John Fred & His Playboy Band
“Chain Of Fools” by Aretha Franklin
“Spooky” by the Classics IV
“Bend Me, Shape Me” by the American Breed
“Woman, Woman” by the Union Gap featuring Gary Puckett
“Love Is Blue” by Paul Mauriat
“Nobody But Me” by the Human Beinz
“Goin’ Out Of My Head/Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by the Lettermen
“I Wish It Would Rain” by the Temptations

And the top ten albums that week were:

Magical Mystery Tour by the Beatles
Their Satanic Majesties Request by the Rolling Stones
Greatest Hits by Diana Ross & The Supremes
Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. by the Monkees
Herb Alpert’s Ninth by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles
Golden Hits by the Turtles
Disraeli Gears by Cream
Farewell to the First Golden Era by The Mamas & the Papas
The Last Waltz by Engelbert Humperdinck

Today’s featured album came from much later in 1968. (As I said in January, it would be nice if I could share one album from each month as the year goes along, but I’m not that organized.) The hit single that came from the album actually didn’t chart until 1969. The record is Introspect by Joe South. (I called the album little-known ten years ago; in the era of reissues, I’m not sure that’s the case now.)

It’s an odd record, in that it didn’t exist long in its original form. A long-time writer and session guitarist in Nashville and Muscle Shoals, South wrote “Hush” for Deep Purple and several songs for Billy Joe Royal, including “Down in the Boondocks.” And in 1968, South went into the studios and came out with Introspect, arranging and producing the album himself. (Some sources say the album was released in 1969, but the Rolling Stone Record Guide and All-Music Guide say it was 1968, so I’m going with that.)

When Introspect was released in November 1968, the album track “Games People Play” began to get some air play, if I’m reading between the lines correctly. Capitol released “Games People Play” as a single, and the record entered the Top 40 in February of 1969, going as high as No. 12 during a nine-week chart run. And at that point, Capitol pulled Introspect from the shelves. Three songs from the record were included on a new album, Games People Play, with the rest of the new record made up of South’s versions of songs he’d written for others and a few new things.

Capitol’s quick yank of Introspect made it a little bit of a collector’s item over the years. Amazon currently lists a U.S. CD set for release at the end of March 2018, with the pre-order price set at $38.99. The website also offers a Japanese issue on CD and vinyl, with streaming and mp3s available as well (prices vary). And a two-fer CD of Introspect paired with Don’t It Make You Wanna Go Home, South’s 1969 album, is available new for the tidy price of $245.22, with used copies starting around $35 and going up from there.

So what do you get for your money? Well, the eleven songs on Introspect kind of collide together with a mixture of country, pop, soul, a touch of gospel and even a little bit of Indian raga. It’s an odd mixture, an idiosyncratic blend that fits perfectly with South’s maverick persona. (AMG calls him a “prickly character” and relates that, after his brother’s suicide in 1971, South moved to Maui, Hawaii, and lived in the jungle.) The hit, as mentioned above, was “The Games People Play,” and “Rose Garden” was a hit in 1971 for Lynn Anderson.

Along with those tracks, I hear the album’s high points as its opener, “All My Hard Times,” the biting “These Are Not My People” and the closer “Gabriel.” But the entire album is well worth hearing (as is almost any of South’s work).

Track list
All My Hard Times
Rose Garden
Mirror of Your Mind
Redneck
Don’t Throw Your Love to the Wind
The Greatest Love
Games People Play
These Are Not My People
Don’t You Be Ashamed
Birds of a Feather
Gabriel

The Price Of Procrastination

Originally posted April 15, 2009

I’m one of those folks with a tendency to put off unpleasant tasks. That means that, in the years prior to the Texas Gal’s arrival, April 15 would find me scrambling about to file my tax returns.

I’d generally prepare my returns the evening before, having delayed as long as I could. And the day of the 15th would find me spending my breaks and my lunch hour making photocopies of my returns and forms and getting all of those into the appropriate envelopes. And then I’d drop the envelopes off at the nearest post office on my way home from work.

I imagine that with some effort, I could have been a lot more organized and life would have been a lot less stressful during the middle of April. I tried, year after year. But I never seemed to be able to pull it together. I’d get my forms and everything assembled in January and let the papers sit in a pile on my desk at home until I could put the tasks off no longer.

The Texas Gal, thankfully, has a different approach, and that, of course, has changed things for me. We generally pull our tax information together during the first week of January each year, and I would guess that since 2002, we’ve filed our returns no later than January 7. As a result, I no longer dread the approach of April 15. And as I watch the folks on the news reports line up at the post office late this evening, I will know that there, but for the Texas Gal, would wait I.

A Six-Pack for April 15
“Before It’s Too Late” by Joe South from Don’t It Make You Wanna Go Home? [1969]
“Let the Dollar Circulate” by Billy Paul from When Love Is New [1975]
“Pay To The Piper” by the Chairmen of the Board, Invictus 9081 [1970]
“Taxed To The Max” by Tower of Power from Souled Out [1995]
“Poor Man’s Plea” by Buddy Guy & Junior Wells from Buddy Guy & Junior Wells Play The Blues [1972]
“Taxman” by Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings from Songs From The Material World: A Tribute To George Harrison [2002]

Some of these have no connection with the travails of the day except for their titles. The Joe South tune, for example, is one of those “Let’s get together” anthems that were prevalent in the late 1960s, and it happens to sound pretty good, even if its lyrics are a bit simple. The Buddy Guy/Junior Wells tune is a great piece of honking blues, and the Tower of Power track is – typically – a hot piece of horn-heavy R&B.

I’m not sure how I came across the Billy Paul tune. I must have found a rip of When Love Is New and then deleted most of it, because this the only track I have from the album. And from what I can tell, the track wasn’t released as a single at the time. One source I consulted showed that the Paul track was released on a single with a track by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, but I think that was a later release. (If anyone knows differently, let me know, please.)

“Pay To The Piper” was, however, released as a single, and went to No. 13 around the time 1970 turned into 1971.

I wondered if I should post the original “Taxman” from Revolver, but I decided that it’s so well known – and so available – that there was no point. The Bill Wyman version is pretty good.

‘Go Where You’ve Got To Go . . .’

I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone from Saginaw. My only knowledge – such as it is – of that central Michigan town comes courtesy of Lefty Frizzell, whose “Saginaw, Michigan” spent four weeks on top of the country chart in early 1964.

But not knowing much about the city didn’t stop me from looking this morning at a radio chart from Saginaw’s WKNX, a chart dated January 26, 1968, forty-four years ago today. And I find a few things that I don’t recall running into before.

That includes the No. 1 record in Saginaw for that week, “Love Power” by the Sandpebbles, a kind of Motown/Stax workout with some nifty call and response vocals, some nice horn parts and a killer instrumental/drum break. The record was on the Calla label, and I have no memory of it at all, even though it went to No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 14 on the R&B chart.

As the music was playing, I did some digging at the Oldies Loon and looked at a few charts for Twin Cities Top 40 from early 1968. “Love Power” went to No. 25 on WDGY, but WDGY’s signal was weak to nonexistent in St. Cloud; my friends – with me as a bystander – listened to KDWB. The only two early 1968 KDWB surveys at the Oldies Loon are from earlier in January and do not list the Sandpebbles hit at all. Given that those weeks were when “Love Power” was climbing the WDGY rankings, I’m assuming that the record got little or no play on KDWB.

(That turns out not to have been the case, highlighting once again the risk of assuming anything: As chart oracle Yah Shure points out in a note below, “Love Power” went to No. 14 on KDWB’s survey, two weeks after peaking at No. 22 on the WDGY survey. Thanks, as always, Yah Shure.)

But back to Saginaw: It was certainly not uncommon, but I think it was still noteworthy for a record to do so much better in a single market than it did nationwide. And there were a few other such entries on the WKNX survey for that last week of January 1968.

Sitting at No. 14 on the WKNX survey was “United, Part 1” – an instrumental version of the Intruders’ “(We’ll Be) United” – by the studio group called the Music Makers. The single went to No. 78 nationally and is worth noting because the Music Makers evolved into MFSB, who hit No. 1 in 1974 with “TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia).”

As I write, I’m tempted to guess that the greater success of some records in Saginaw than elsewhere was because Saginaw was at least somewhat a R&B market: The Sandpebbles’ single did better (No. 14, as noted above) on the R&B chart than on the pop chart (No. 22), and the Music Makers’ single went to No. 48 on the R&B chart while reaching No. 78 on the pop chart.

That’s also the case with “Sockin’ 1-2-3-4” by John Roberts, which was a gritty dance workout based on the catch phrase “Sock it to me!” It was at No. 19 in Saginaw during the last week of January 1968; No. 19 is also where it peaked on the R&B chart, while it got only to No. 71 on the pop chart.

Another R&B hit that did better on the WKNX survey than it did on the pop chart nationally was the cover of the movie theme “Born Free” by the Hesitations, a vocal group from Cleveland, Ohio. The record peaked on the pop chart at No. 38, but went to No. 4 on the R&B chart. During the last week of January 1968, the record was at No. 31 on the WKNX chart.

The late Arthur Prysock sang jazz, blues and R&B and did well enough that he placed seven record in the R&B Top 40 and eleven records on or near the Hot 100 (most of them in the Bubbling Under portion). His presence on the late January WKNX survey is kind of an anomaly, as “A Workingman’s Prayer” was a Christmas record; it was sitting at No. 25 on the WKNX survey and it went to No. 74 on the pop chart; it did not make the R&B chart.

But that wasn’t as much of an anomaly to me as the presence of Joe South’s “Birds of  Feather” at No. 26 on the WKNX survey. Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles says that the record was released twice, in 1968 and in 1969. This was the first release, when the single went to No. 106 nationally. (It didn’t do much better in 1969, peaking at No. 96.) I can understand what happened with some of the other records in this brief list, but I have no shred of an idea why South’s record was so popular in Saginaw. Someone, somewhere, must know.

There was one other record on the WKNX survey from January 26, 1968, that ranked far higher than it ever did on the national charts. And it’s no wonder: The Cherry Slush was made up, Whitburn says, of six kids from Saginaw. In 1967, “I Cannot Stop You” was released on the Coconut Grove label; by January of 1968, it had been released on the U.S.A. label. It would spend three weeks bubbling under the Hot 100, peaking at No. 119.

But during the last week of January 1968, “I Cannot Stop You” was No. 6 at WKNX:

Friends, Joe South, Nilsson & More

Originally posted August 28, 2008

This will be my last post for about week, as it’s time to focus on packing and moving. The movers come Tuesday, and we’re hoping – as I’ve said before – to have the lighter and smaller stuff already carried across to the new place when the truck gets here. So it’s time to take some time. If all goes as planned, I’ll be back September 5 with a First Friday post looking at September 1968.

I did my usual wandering through YouTube this morning. Here’s the Friends of Distinction lip-synching “Love or Let Me Be Lonely” on television sometime around 1970. (The ending is chopped, unfortunately.)

Video deleted.

I also found what appears to be a television performance by Joe South as he sings “The Games People Play,” which was released on his Introspect album in 1968:

Here’s a video from Beat Club – a German show originating in Bremen that ran from 1965 through 1972, according to Wikipedia – with Harry Nilsson performing “Everybody’s Talkin’.” I don’t think Harry did a lot of television, so this could be fairly rare.

And I’ll close for the time being with an actual live performance from right around 1969, with Chuck Negron leading Three Dog Night through a pretty good rendition of “Easy To Be Hard.”

Video deleted

See you in a little more than a week!

As The End Of The Year Draws Near

Originally posted August 27, 2008

As August enters its last days, we’re coming to the end of another year.

Forget that December 31/January 1 stuff. That’s bookkeeping. For me – and for many, I think – the years turn over sometime during the first weeks of September.

During my school days, for thirteen years, the new year began on the day after Labor Day with the first day of school. For another six years – I went to college on the extended plan – the year began sometime in September when the fall quarter started. If I’d pondered that sense of timing at all in those days, I would have expected it to change when I went into the adult world. But it didn’t. Years still turned as August ended and September began.

Part of that was because of my work: Small town newspapers find so much of their content in the local schools that their calendars are tied to the schools’ calendars. In between my newspaper years, I went to graduate school and then taught and worked at several colleges and universities, so my life continued to be tied to a literal calendar that ran from September onward.

But it’s been more than ten years since I was a reporter. My day-to-day life has no connection with the schools, with colleges and universities, with the regular events that command the attention of reporters and editors. And still, it feels to me as if a year is ending in these few days. And it feels as if a new year is about to begin.

Maybe it’s conditioning from all those early years in school. Maybe it’s something so instinctive in the human mind, perhaps something tied to the harvest-time, that we’ve lost track of where it comes from. (It occurs to me that, if the perception of years turning at this time of year is innately tied to the harvest, folks whose forbears were native to the Southern Hemisphere would have a different perception. Anyone from those precincts have a thought?)

Whatever the reason, this time of year has always felt like a time of renewal and change. One such time, an August/September that stands out clearly (I know I’ve mentioned it before), came in 1969, when I spent daytimes of the last weeks of summer at football practice, lugging equipment and supplies around for the Tech Tigers and then hanging around the locker room, sharing ribald stories and the music that came from the training room radio.

In a way that very little else does, music marks our years. And here are some tunes that are markers for me from late August and early September of that year.

A Baker’s Dozen from 1969, Vol. 3
“Goodbye Columbus” by the Association, Warner Bros. 7265 (No. 95 on the Billboard Hot 100, August 23, 1969)

“Going In Circles” by the Friends of Distinction, RCA 0204 (No. 90)

“Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home” by Joe South, Capitol 2592 (No. 84)

“I’m Gonna Make You Mine” by Lou Christie, Buddah 116 (No. 66)

“Everybody’s Talkin’” by Nilsson, RCA Victor 0161 (No. 49)

“Keem-O-Sabe” by the Electric Indian, United Artists 50563 (No. 39)

“Share Your Love With Me” by Aretha Franklin, Atlantic 2650 (No. 31)

“Marrakesh Express” by Crosby, Stills & Nash, Atlantic 2652 (No. 28)

“Soul Deep” by the Box Tops, Mala 12040 (No. 24)

“Easy To Be Hard” by Three Dog Night, Dunhill/ABC 4203 (No. 18)

“Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town” by Kenny Rogers & the First Edition, Reprise 0829 (No. 11)

“Green River” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fantasy 625 (No. 7)

“Put A Little Love In Your Heart” by Jackie DeShannon, Imperial 66385 (No. 6)

A few notes:

I’ve always been surprised that “Goodbye Columbus” – the theme from the film of the same name – didn’t do better. The record peaked at No. 88 on September 6 and then fell off the chart.

“Everybody’s Talkin’” is one of those tunes that has a few different versions out there. It was used in the film Midnight Cowboy, and two different versions of it are on the official soundtrack. Neither of them sounds like the one I remember coming from my radio. The version here is from Nilsson’s 1968 album Aerial Ballet, and I think this was the version that got airplay as the single, which reached No. 6. I could be wrong. Anyone know?

“Keem-O-Sabe” was one of those instrumentals that occasionally popped up in the Top 40, and the thought occurs that it likely wouldn’t have a chance of doing so today, given changes in attitudes. The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits notes that Electric Indian was actually a group of studio musicians from Philadelphia; some of them later were members of MFSB. The record peaked at No. 16.

I liked Kenny Rogers when he was with the First Edition; the group had four more Top 40 hits after “Ruby” peaked at No. 6. They were “Ruben James” and “Something’s Burning,” which I recall, and “Tell It All Brother” and “Heed The Call,” which I don’t. (I have “Heed The Call” but I don’t remember hearing it in 1970.) After those four, Rogers was absent from the Top 40 for seven years, until “Lucille” began his remarkable run of success as a country crossover artist, a string of tunes that didn’t interest me much.

I imagine that, if asked to pick the perfect CCR record, lots of folks would go with “Proud Mary.” Nothing wrong with that one, but something about “Green River” grabbed me the first time I heard that opening guitar riff, and it’s never let me go.

First Friday: February 1968

Originally posted February 1, 2008

One of the most indelible images of the Vietnam War was captured forty years ago today. Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams was working in the streets of Saigon during the Tet Offensive when he came upon South Vietnamese police and soldiers detaining a man named Nguyễn Văn Lém, who has most often been described over the years as a member of the Viet Cong guerillas. Whatever he was, Nguyễn was executed in the street by Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, the chief of the national police. Adams was there, as was NBC television cameraman Vo Suu. Adam’s photo of the execution won a Pulitzer Prize, but his photo and Suu’s footage earned world-wide criticism for the executioner and the South Vietnamese forces and government.

That’s where it becomes important to know exactly who Nguyễn Văn Lém was. If he was a member of the Viet Cong, an irregular group rather than a formal army, he should have been taken prisoner when he was captured, although Wikipedia says that South Vietnam’s treatment of the Viet Cong as prisoners as defined by the Geneva Conventions was limited to those captured during military action. Nguyễn Văn Lém, according to South Vietnamese leaders and Wikipedia, “commanded a Viet Cong assassination and revenge platoon, which on that day had targeted South Vietnamese National Police officers, or in their stead, the police officers’ families; these sources said that Lém was captured near the site of a ditch holding as many as thirty-four bound and shot bodies of police and their relatives.”

(I have read a few times over the years that Nguyễn Văn Lém was a member of the North Vietnamese army operating in Saigon in civilian clothes; in that case, the Geneva Conventions allow for summary execution. From what I can tell, that claim is historical revisionism intended to justify Nguyễn Ngọc Loan’s administration of summary justice.)

Whatever the truth forty years later, I remember the revulsion the photograph and the film footage caused. There was the usual yipping of approval from some quarters, but I think that even most of those still supporting the U.S. efforts in Vietnam were sickened by the brutality of this one incident.

Elsewhere in February 1968:

The Winter Olympics took place from February 6 through 18 at Grenoble, France. With loads of coverage on ABC – though not nearly as much coverage as the Olympics get these days – we were able to watch a fair amount of the action. The two leading personalities of the Games – as defined, I suppose, by ABC and other media – were ice skater Peggy Fleming, who won the only gold medal for the U.S., and French skier Jean-Claude Killy, who won all three men’s downhill events. A side note: The Grenoble games marked the first time that ABC used the now-familiar typmani- and brass-laden musical theme for its production; the work’s title is actually “Bugler’s Dream,” and it was composed by Frenchman Léo Arnaud.

Here in the U.S., there was a civil rights protest at a bowling alley in Orangeburg, South Carolina, with officers of the state Highway Patrol firing into the crowd of protestors, killing three and wounding twenty-seven. Civil rights protests also took place that month at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

And the month ended on a tragic note in the music world, as Frankie Lymon of Frankie & the Teenagers was found dead of a heroin overdose February 27 in Harlem. He had been scheduled to begin recording for Big Apple records the next day.

Singles released in February 1968 included:
“Dance to the Music” by Sly & the Family Stone
“Everything That Touches You” by the Association
“I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” by Madeline Bell
“I Thank You” by Sam & Dave
“Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” by the First Edition
“La-La Means I Love You” by the Delfonics
“(Sittin’) On The Dock Of The Bay” by Otis Redding
“Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream
“Walk Away Renee” by the Four Tops
“Words” by the Bee Gees

Among the albums on the charts during February 1968 were:
Herb Alpert’s Ninth by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
Wild Honey by the Beach Boys
Disraeli Gears by Cream
John Wesley Harding by Bob Dylan
Lady Soul by Aretha Franklin
Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie
Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Lettermen!!!…and “Live!” by the Lettermen
Blooming Hits by Paul Mauriat
Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. by the Monkees
Album 1700 by Peter, Paul & Mary
Clambake by Elvis Presley
History of Otis Redding by Otis Redding
Vanilla Fudge by Vanilla Fudge

The No. 1 album for the entire month was the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour.

The album I’m sharing today came from much later in 1968. (As I said in January, it would be nice if I could share one album from each month as the year goes along, but I’m not that organized.) The hit single that came from the album actually didn’t chart until 1969. The record is the little-known Introspect by Joe South.

It’s an odd record, in that it didn’t exist long in its original form. A long-time writer and session guitarist in Nashville and Muscle Shoals, South wrote “Hush” for Deep Purple and several songs for Billy Joe Royal, including “Down in the Boondocks.” And in 1968, South went into the studios and came out with Introspect, arranging and producing the album himself. (Some sources say the album was released in 1969, but the Rolling Stone Record Guide and All-Music Guide say it was 1968, so I’m going with that.)

When Introspect was released, the album track “Games People Play” began to get some air play, if I’m reading between the lines correctly. Capitol released “Games People Play” as a single, and the record entered the Top 40 in February of 1969, going as high as No. 12 during a nine-week chart run. And at that point, Captiol pulled Introspect from the shelves. Three songs from the record were included on a new album, Games People Play, with the rest of the new record was made up of South’s versions of songs he’d written for others and a few new things.

Capitol’s quick yank of Introspect made it a little bit of a collector’s item over the years, and as far as I know, there’s been no CD release of the album in the United States, although Amazon has on occasion listed an import copy with prices running about $50. GEMM lists copies of the album on single CD for $20 or more, and a two-few CD of Introspect paired with Don’t It Make You Wanna Go Home, his 1969 album (again, the date seems to be uncertain; none of the three records in their original vinyl configuration have dates on them), runs anywhere from $15 to $80. The original vinyl of Introspect runs about $8 to $15, from what I can tell.

So what do you get for your money? Well, the eleven songs on Introspect kind of collide together with a mixture of country, pop, soul, a touch of gospel and even a little bit of Indian raga. It’s an odd mixture, an idiosynractic blend that fits perfectly with South’s maverick persona. (AMG calls him a “prickly character” and relates that, after his brother’s suicide in 1971, South moved to Maui, Hawaii, and lived in the jungle.) The hit, as mentioned above, was “The Games People Play,” and “Rose Garden” was a hit in 1971 for Lynn Anderson.

Along with those tracks, I hear the album’s high points as its opener, “All My Hard Times,” the biting “These Are Not My People” and the closer “Gabriel.” But the entire album is well worth hearing (as is almost any of South’s work). I found this rip of Introspect on line some time ago; from its quality, I assume it came from a CD release.

Track list:
All My Hard Times
Rose Garden
Mirror of Your Mind
Redneck
Don’t Throw Your Love to the Wind
The Greatest Love
Games People Play
These Are Not My People
Don’t You Be Ashamed
Birds of a Feather
Gabriel

Joe South – Introspect [1968]