Complications With Fries On The Side

Originally posted December 3, 2009

Just up the road from our place, right next to U.S. Highway 10, is a vacant building. Sometime in the last year, the auctioneer came by. They sold the booths and the counters, the grill and the deep-fat fryers, the hydraulic lifts and the gas pumps, the tool cabinets and all of the things that made the little building a gas station and restaurant for as many years as I can remember.

It was called Townsedge, and that was accurate enough in a practical sense. For many years, when folks would come into St. Cloud from the Twin Cities, Townsedge was the first gas station or restaurant they saw. They’d pass by a few other places – the marine shop, the masonry place and a used car lot or two – but if folks on the road had the usual travelers’ needs, Townsedge was the first place they saw where those needs could be met: Fill your tank, check the oil, buy a pack of smokes, sit down in a booth for a few minutes and have a cheeseburger straight from the grill, with a couple of pickle slices on the plate and a basket of fries on the side.

It was the kind of place you don’t often find anymore, and that’s truly a shame. There was another place like Townsedge across Highway 10, Fred’s Cafe, a classic American truck stop, and both Fred’s and Townsedge did well for many years. When Fred’s went out of business – that happened during the years I was away, but I think it was in the early 1990s – a chain convenience store/gas station took its place, and I’m sure that took business away from Townsedge. And when a franchised burger place opened up a couple of years ago about half a block from Townsedge, that pretty much told the tale.

After Dad retired, my folks went to Townsedge for coffee a couple of times a week, and after the Texas Gal and I moved here in 2002, I’d walk over and join them every once in a while. As we sat, I’d look around the place and gauge the ages of the customers. I’d see a few single moms with kids, but not many. Most of the time, I was the youngest person in the place (except for one or two of the waitresses). Once Dad was gone and Mom moved, I had no reason to go into Townsedge anymore, and not too long after that, I saw the “Closed” sign in the window as I drove by one day. And eventually, the auctioneer came by.

Places come and go, but Townsedge – as it was in the 1970s, not as it was in its last years – was a special place for a couple of reasons. First, the fries. The French fries at Townsedge – golden and crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside – were among the best I have ever had. I’ve been to a few other places over the years whose fries were better, but when I was in high school, Townsedge had the best fries in town, and the little café was frequently the last stop during an evening spent out with friends.

Then there was the evening in early December 1970, during my senior year of high school. The St. Cloud Tech High School choirs had performed in concert, and a young lady and I were going to double up with another couple for burgers and fries at Townsedge. For some reason, the other guy had to cancel, so there were only three of us, my date and me on one side of the booth and the other young lady sitting across from us.

I dropped a quarter into the jukebox terminal in our booth. I have no idea what I played, but one of the other young folks elsewhere in the café had cued up the week’s No. 1 record, and that’s what we heard first. My date sang along for a few moments with the Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You.” We all laughed, and I realized that my life right then was about as complicated as it had ever been. None of us mentioned it, but all three of us – my date, the other young lady and I – knew that if I’d had my druthers, I’d have been sitting on the other side of the booth, next to the gal whose boyfriend hadn’t been able to join us.

Then the waitress brought us our burgers and fries, and life moved on.

A Six-Pack From The Charts (Billboard Hot 100, December 5, 1970)
“I Think I Love You” by the Partridge Family (No. 1)
“Yellow River” by Christie (No. 23)
“Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin (No. 44)
“Silver Moon” by Mike Nesmith & the First National Band (No. 75)
“Lonely Days” by the Bee Gees (No. 81)
“Maggie” by Redbone (No. 100)

At the time, as I sat in that booth, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of “I Think I Love You.” It was pop, but it wasn’t serious, I thought. Something like Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” now that was serious pop. It said something. The Beatles’ “Let It Be” was serious. The Partridge Family was a fake group from a television show, for cripe’s sake! The fact is, though, “I Think I Love You” remains – despite its very odd middle section – a well-produced record with a killer chorus/hook, not to mention a memorable and unmistakable introduction. But still, it was hard in the late months of 1970 to take the record seriously. The fact that the song wasn’t written by its performers seemed to matter a great deal. (The song came from the pen of Tony Romeo, a fairly prolific writer whose credits also include Lou Christie’s “I’m Gonna Make You Mine,” one of my favorite records.) Thirty-nine years later, that seems to matter very little, if at all. “I Think I Love You” was in its third and final week at No. 1 during the first week of December 1970.

Most of us who listened to “Yellow River” as it rolled out of our radio speakers in 1970 inferred, I am certain, that the narrator was just back from Vietnam or maybe – considering the narrator says his “war is won” – some mythical place like it:

So long, boy, you can take my place.
I got my papers, I got my pay,
So pack my bags and I’ll be on my way to Yellow River.
Put my gun down, the war is won.
Fill my glass high, the time has come.
I’m goin’ back to the place that I love: Yellow River.

The group Christie was made up of songwriter and singer Jeff Christie, guitarist Vic Elmes and drummer Mike Blakely. Wikipedia says that Christie first offered the song “Yellow River” to the group the Tremeloes, whose members included Blakely’s brother, Alan. The Tremeloes recorded the song but declined to release it and allowed Christie to use the backing track for its own version of the song. “Yellow River” spent eight weeks in the Top 40, peaking at No. 23. Christie’s follow-up, “San Bernadino,” barely edged into the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 100.

(Note from 2022: I’ve read in the year since 2009 that Christie actually had the U.S. Civil War in mind when he wrote “Yellow River.)

Back in late 1970, not much came out of the radio or the jukebox quite so insistently as Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” with its thunderous introduction and haunting wail. The immigrants of the title were, of course, the historical Vikings, descending from Scandinavia to raid, plunder and eventually trade:

We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow
Hammer of the gods, we’ll drive our ships to new land,
To fight the horde, sing and cry: Valhalla, I am coming!

The record spent ten weeks in the Top 40, peaking at No. 16.

“Silver Moon” is a countryish gem from Mike Nesmith, who came to prominence, of course, as a member of the Monkees in the 1960s. Just a few months earlier, Nesmith had reached the Top 40 when “Joanne” went to No. 21. But “Silver Moon” didn’t quite catch on, peaking at No. 42 in mid-January 1971 before tumbling out of sight. I can’t help wondering if Nesmith’s work would have fared better a few years later during the rather brief heyday of country rock. I think it would have.

Rick and I were fans of the Bee Gees, so we were quite pleased – and tickled by the odd ending – the first time we heard “Lonely Days” sometime in December 1970. The record came from the album 2 Years On, which reunited Robin Gibb with his brothers, Barry and Maurice, following a brief separation. During that separation, Robin released a solo album, Robin’s Reign, while Barry and Maurice released Cucumber Castle as a Bee Gees album. We thought – and I still think – that 2 Years On was better than the two releases that came during the brothers’ rift. “Lonely Days” climbed into the Top 40 and spent ten weeks there, peaking at No. 3 in early 1971.

Redbone’s swampy pop-rock was still a couple years away from chart success, but “Maggie” provided a perfect preview to what listeners would get in 1972 with “The Witch Queen of New Orleans,” which went to No. 21, and then again in 1974, when “Come and Get Your Love” would go to No. 5. “Maggie” rose to No. 80 and stayed there for two weeks as 1970 turned into 1971 before falling out of the Hot 100.

Are these tracks the same as the singles? In two cases, I’m pretty sure that’s the case. “Maggie” is the single edit offered as a bonus track on Redbone’s Potlatch CD. “I Think I Love You” was ripped from a Billboard compilation on LP; the LP label listed the same running time – 2:28 – as did the Bell 45 label, but the actual running time was longer at 2:47. I suspect label skullduggery, which – as we all know – was quite frequent. The other four of these mp3s were pulled from the various groups’ albums, but the running times – based on comparison to labels from 45s found online – are about the same as those of the singles. Are they the same mixes as on the 45s? I have no idea.

Thanksgiving Tales

Originally posted November 25, 2009

Well, tomorrow morning, like millions of others here in the U.S., the Texas Gal and I – joined by my mother – will head off for Thanksgiving. In our case, we’ll be going to my sister’s home in the Twin Cities suburb of Maple Grove for turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Our contribution will be a plate of deviled eggs, a dish that’s become a holiday tradition for us since the Texas Gal first brought them along in 2000.

We missed Thanksgiving at my sister’s last year due to some health issues. And the plan to return there got me thinking about the various places I’ve celebrated Thanksgiving over the years.

For years – until I was out of  college, I think – we gathered at my grandparents’ home, first on their farm outside the small town of Lamberton, Minnesota, and then at their home in Lamberton itself. Sometime in the mid-1970s, after Grandma passed on, the Thanksgiving celebration shifted to my parents’ home here in St. Cloud. And after about twenty years there, the annual feast shifted venues again, and my sister and brother-in-law have hosted Thanksgiving since then.

Besides last year’s celebration, I can recall two other Thanksgivings that have found me in different places. In 1980, I think it was, the woman who was then my wife had the idea of hosting Thanksgiving in a restored 1860s cabin owned by friends of hers. We prepared the food in our own home and then moved the entire feast about two miles to the cabin. The food was fine, but the cabin was uncomfortably cold despite the presence of a fireplace. It was an interesting experiment, but I’d rather flip it: I’d be interested in using Nineteenth Century recipes and work from a modern kitchen.

The other Thanksgiving that found me in another place was during the time I spent in Denmark. The Danes don’t celebrate the holiday, of course, but my ladyfriend – another American – and I decided to cook a traditional American Thanksgiving meal for my Danish family and a few other students, both American and Danish.

There was no turkey for sale in Fredericia, so we made do with a couple of chickens. Potatoes were easy enough, as was flour for the gravy. Green beans amandine went well enough after a tussle with the Danish language. Not knowing where the nutcracker was, I looked up the word in my Danish/English dictionary and called my Danish mother at her office. Danish uses some sounds that are, well, foreign to English, so it took some time before she understood that I was trying to say nøddeknækker.

Beyond the linguistic difficulties, the main challenge of the day was the pumpkin pie. We could find neither canned pumpkin nor a fresh pumpkin in Fredericia. Luckily, my ladyfriend had made pumpkin pie from scratch with her mother, and she assured me that an orange winter squash would meet our needs. We cleaned it, cut it up and cooked it with the appropriate seasonings and then baked it in a homemade shell. As dinner came to a close that evening, our Danish guests were a bit puzzled by the pie, but our American guests marveled at how close we’d come to the Thanksgiving dessert they’d all had for years.

That may have been my most memorable Thanksgiving ever. Does that mean it was the best? Well, no. As the fourth Thursday of November comes along year after year, each Thanksgiving somehow seems better than the one before it . . . as long as I share that table with my loved ones, especially the Texas Gal.

A Six-Pack of Thanks
“Now Be Thankful” by Fairport Convention, Island WIP 6089 [1970]
“Thank You” by Led Zeppelin from Led Zeppelin II [1969]
“I Thank You” by Mongo Santamaria from All Strung Out [1969]
“Thank You For The Promises” by Gordon Lightfoot from Shadows [1982]
‘Thanks to You” by Jesse Winchester from Humour Me [1988]
“Be Thankful for What You Got (Pt. 1)” by William DeVaughn, Roxbury 0236 [1974]

Of these six, only the Fairport Convention tune really seems to fully address the sentiments of the holiday. The others generally work with only their titles; their content has at best only a glancing connection to the day. But that’s good enough for me.

The Texas Gal and I wish you a joyful Thanksgiving. May you all have many reasons to be thankful.

Saturday Single No. 667

Let’s take a look at the top ten LPs in the Billboard 200 during this week in 1969, fifty years ago:

Abbey Road by the Beatles
Led Zeppelin II
Green River by Creedence Clearwater Revival
Tom Jones Live in Las Vegas
Puzzle People by the Temptations
Crosby, Stills & Nash
Blood, Sweat & Tears
Johnny Cash at San Quentin
Santana
I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! by Janis Joplin

At the time the chart came out – on November 29, 1969 – three of those albums were in the house on Kilian Boulevard. I had the Beatles and BST on cassette and the Johnny Cash album on LP. I was far more in tune with current trends than I had ever been (even though that didn’t take much movement).

These days, I can do without the Tom Jones, I never really liked the Kozmic Blues album, and I never had the Temptations’ album (getting along with anthologies of their singles instead). The other seven, I like just fine, and they all showed up eventually – along with the Joplin – in the vinyl stacks and on the digital shelves. Four of them – the Beatles, CSN, BST and Cash – are also on the CD shelves here.

Singles from at least eight of those albums – all except the Jones and the Joplin – were coming out of my radio speakers that autumn, and I liked most of them. (I still care very little for CCR’s “Down On The Corner.”) Still new to Top 40 listening, one of the singles from that group of albums startled me the first time I heard it, and I was also startled on second and third hearings to realize that I liked it.

And just that little bit of memory is enough this morning to make Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” today’s Saturday Single.

Saturday Single No. 524

It’s been a while since we looked at the book that offers the weekly Top Ten album charts from Billboard. So here’s the Top Ten from this week in 1972, forty-five years ago:

American Pie by Don McClean
The Concert for Bangla Desh
Music by Carole King
Chicago at Carnegie Hall
Led Zeppelin IV (untitled)
Teaser & The Firecat by Cat Stevens
Tapestry by Carole King
There’s a Riot Goin’ On by Sly & The Family Stone
Madman Across The Water by Elton John
Wild Life by Wings

During that distant week, three of those albums would have been in the box next to the stereo in our basement rec room on Kilian Boulevard. The Concert for Bangla Desh was there, as I’d gotten it for Christmas just weeks earlier. And my sister had copies of Tapestry and the Cat Stevens album. She did, however, take them with her when she got married, so by August of that year, the only one of those albums in the house was the massive concert document.

Over the years, all but one of the other nine made their ways to my shelves, but it took some time to get started and to finish:

American Pie, February 1989
Madman Across The Water, February 1989
Chicago at Carnegie Hall, February 1989 & June 1990
Led Zeppelin IV, March 1989
There’s A Riot Goin’ On, September 1989
Teaser & The Firecat, November 1995
Music, November 1998
Tapestry, November 1998

(Two notes: I have never owned a copy of Wild Life, and by the time I got around to the four-LP Chicago album, it was being offered as two sets of two LPs each.)

I’m not sure what conclusions can be drawn from that timeline, but the question that popped into my head as I pulled that listing together was: Are any of those albums essential listening for me in 2017?

Well, making that question hard to answer is the fact that the way we listen to music in 2017 is far different than the way it was back in 1972. We have playlists in our devices, pulling individual tracks from disparate sources. It’s a rare thing, I think, for us to listen to an album – whether current or from our youths – from start to finish. I try to do that in the car at least once a week, popping a CD in and letting it roll from the first track through the last; since it generally takes several trips to get through a CD, it’s not quite the same, but it’s a close approximation, I think.

As it happens, one of the two albums that I heard in the car this week was The Concert for Bangla Desh. It was as enjoyable this week as it was during January of 1972, and I made a mental note to see how much of its music I have among the 3,700 tracks in the iPod. As it turns out, I had pulled only four tracks from that album into the device: Leon Russell’s medley of “Jumping Jack Flash” and “Young Blood,” Billy Preston’s “That’s The Way God Planned It” and George Harrison’s performances of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Bangla Desh.”

So I guess I could say that those four are the essential tracks from that album, and maybe we should alter our question, asking instead: Which of those albums in that long ago Top Ten have tracks that are, based on the contents of the iPod, still essential to me today?

Well, almost all of them. Tapestry leads the way with six tracks in the iPod, and there are three from Music. The device has four tracks from the Led Zeppelin album, and I’ve pulled two each from the Don McLean, Elton John and Cat Stevens albums. Which leaves unrepresented from that January 1972 Top Ten the albums by Chicago and Sly & The Family Stone, meaning that – approaching our question from the other end – those two albums have for me nothing essential.

None of that accounting is surprising, of course (except maybe that four of the Zep tracks landed in the iPod). But it tells me that there twenty-three tracks that I evidently see as essential from those albums in that January 1972 Top Ten. And here’s the one that back in 1972, I would have deemed least likely to be among my essential listening. It’s “When The Levee Breaks” by Led Zeppelin, and it’s today’s Saturday Single.

‘Ten’

Sorting for the word “ten” in the titles of the 68,000 mp3s is a difficult process, perhaps the most difficult so far in our March Of The Integers. The RealPlayer lists 1,632 mp3s with that letter combination somewhere in the indexed information. And few of those titles in that listing can be used.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos as recorded by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment? Gone, just like the Allman Brothers Band’s album Enlightened Rogues. Any music tagged as easy listening is also dismissed, which wipes out entire catalogs from artists like Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, the Baja Marimba Band, Ray Conniff & The Singers, Ferrante & Teicher, Percy Faith and of course (in a double stroke), my entire collection of Hugo Montenegro’s music.

Anything with the name of the state of Tennessee in its title has to be set aside, from the Dykes Magic City Trio’s 1927 version of “Tennessee Girls” to the Secret Sisters’ 2010 track “Tennessee Me.” We also lose anything tagged as having been recorded in the state, from Clarence “Tom” Ashley’s 1929 recording of “Coo Coo Bird” to Johnny Cash’s 1974 take on “Ragged Old Flag.” And we eliminate as well several albums: The Tennessee Tapes by the Jonas Fjeld Band, Easin’ Back to Tennessee by Colin Linden and Tennessee Pusher by the Old Crow Medicine Show.

Marc Cohn’s 2010 album of covers, Listening Booth: 1970 is gone, as are the single tracks “Lisa, Listen To Me” by Blood, Sweat & Tears, “Listen to the Wind” by Jack Casady, “Listen to Me” by Buddy Holly, “Listen Here” by Richard “Groove” Holmes and “Listen To The Flowers Growing” by Artie Wayne, among many others.

We’ll also have to avoid everything with the word “tender” in it, including the Bee Gees “Fanny (Be Tender With My Love),” Blue Öyster Cult’s “Tenderloin,” all of Jackson Browne’s album The Pretender, Trisha Yearwood’s “Bartender’s Blues,” and six versions of the classic song “Tenderly,” including Sam “The Man” Taylor’s sweet 1960 saxophone cover.

Lastly, we must pass over the marvelously titled 1945 R&B number “Voo-It! Voo-It!” by Marion (The Blues Woman) Abernathy. As well as having a great title, it’s a decent record that showed up in the list only because an appended comment noted that it was co-written – there’s the “ten” – by Buddy Banks and William “Frosty” Pyles. I am now determined to feature it in this space someday soon.

So what are we left with? Well, there are likely several tracks with the word “ten” hidden in the middle of their titles, but we’ll go the easy route from here and land on six tracks that start with the word. And we have about twenty to choose from, so we should come up with something interesting.

We have covers of a Gordon Lightfoot tune by Tony Rice and Nanci Griffith. We’ll go with Griffith’s version of “Ten Degrees and Getting Colder” from her 1993 album of covers, Other Voices, Other Rooms. The album is well worth finding; the highlights also include Griffith’s takes on John Prine’s “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness” and Bob Dylan’s “Boots of Spanish Leather.” Griffith reprised the idea in 1998 with Other Voices, Too (A Trip Back to Bountiful), an album that starts with a Fairport Convention bang: covers of Richard Thompson’s “Wall of Death” and Sandy Denny’s “Who Knows Where The Time Goes.”

The Miller Sisters – Elsie Jo Miller and Mildred Miller Wages – were actually sisters-in-law from Tupelo, Mississippi. After performing with Elsie’s husband Roy Miller (being billed then as the Miller Trio), the women auditioned for Sun Records in Memphis. According to Wikipedia, “Producer Sam Phillips believed that the Millers’ vocal harmonies, complemented by the steel guitar solos of Stan Kesler and the percussive electric guitar of Quinton Claunch, would translate into significant record sales,” and the duo released a few country singles without much success. Those singles included “Ten Cats Down” from August of 1956, a rockabilly romp that features some nice harmonies. I found the track on the 2002 British compilation The Legendary Story of Sun Records.

We’ll stay with rockabilly for another record: “Ten Little Women” by Terry Noland. A Texas native, Noland – according to the website BlackCat Rockabilly – “attended the same school as Buddy Holly, and like Holly, most of his Brunswick records were produced by Norman Petty in Clovis, New Mexico.” Brunswick released “Ten Little Women” in 1957 and followed it with “Patty Baby.” The latter sold well in New York, says BlackCat Rockabilly, which led to Noland’s appearing “at the bottom of the bill on Alan Freed’s 1957 Holiday of Stars show at the Brooklyn Paramount.” The flip side of “Ten Little Women” was a tune called “Hypnotized,” which the Drifters covered and took to No. 79 in 1957. I found “Ten Little Women” in the massive That’ll Flat Git It collection of rockabilly released about twenty years ago.

One of the highlights of 2000 – around here, anyway – was the release of Riding With The King, the album that brought Eric Clapton and B.B. King into the studio together. The album’s highlights include takes on King classics like “Help the Poor” and “Three O’Clock Blues” and a shuffling duet on Bill Broonzy’s “Key to the Highway,” a take that’s shorter and less intense but just as pleasurable as the legendary version Clapton recorded in 1970 with Derek & The Dominos. Today, however, it’s “Ten Long Years” that draws our attention. The version King recorded for the RPM label in 1955 went to No. 9 on the R&B chart; the version from Riding is longer but, again, no less pleasurable.

Led Zeppelin was never high on my list of favorite bands; I imagine the band’s excesses – in all ways – put me off. These days, the group’s music is more accessible (and no doubt my tastes have broadened), and there’s no doubt the band’s legendary misbehaviors are far less shocking when viewed from the perspective of today’s libertine culture. So I’ve heard more Zeppelin in the past fifteen years than I likely did in the years way back, but there are still surprises: The aching “Ten Years Gone” from 1975’s Physical Graffiti is one of them. The track was tucked into the second disc of the two-LP album, but I came across it after finding two concise anthologies – Early Days and Latter Days – at a garage sale a couple of years ago. And it’s a pleasant interlude as we wander toward our last stop of the morning.

I don’t know a lot about the Canadian group Steel River. The group was from the Toronto area and got a deal in 1970 from Canada’s Tuesday Records, according to Wikipedia. “Ten Pound Note” was the group’s first single; the record ended up reaching the Canadian Top Ten and was No. 79 in Canada for the year of 1970. I found the single a few years ago when I came across a rip of the group’s only album, Weighin’ Heavy. It’s a decent single, and, given that songs with “eleven” in their titles are rare – I have only four of them among the 68,000 on the mp3 shelves – it’s not a bad place to end the March Of The Integers.

Some Thoughts On Thanksgiving 2008

Originally posted November 27, 2008

Well, it’s Thanksgiving, at least here in the United States.

Other places, I imagine it’s an ordinary Thursday, but here, it’s a day when we feast – those of us who can, that is. As we feast, however, we should also consider the lives of others, both near and distant.

From news reports over the past few days, it’s evident that even here in one of the most blessed nations on Earth, there are people who need the help of others to afford even the most basic of Thanksgiving dinners. The Galilean told his disciples, “The poor we have always with us.” He’s still correct two thousand years later, and I often wonder why we in this nation, in this community of nations, aren’t doing more to be proving him wrong.

And I don’t know the answer. I think the answer – if there is one – gets lost in a morass of politics, economics, theology and ethics. And all the wrangling through those topics doesn’t get us one step closer to putting onto the plate of a poor child a meal of beans and sausage, never mind turkey with the trimmings.

I think, however, that more and more frequently in years to come, those of us fortunate to live in basic comfort – a comfort that must seem like unimaginable affluence to many in the world – will learn what it is like to live on the edge of want and need. It might do us some good, as it might instill in us as people a caring awareness of how fragile life and wellness have been for many who have lived on that edge for years, for decades, for centuries.

Many of us already have that caring awareness, that empathy necessary for us to understand the lives of others, an empathy that one would hope would lead to a driving desire to improve the lives of those others. Perhaps, in what appears to be a coming time of constraint and restraint, those who have not yet shown that trait can learn it. And when better times come again – as we all hope they will – perhaps more of us will be able to feast without the aid of others, and those of us so blessed will be able to lead still more of the world to the table to join us.

In the meantime, on this Thanksgiving Day, may your blessings be – as are the Texas Gal’s and mine – too numerous to count.

A Six-Pack of Thanks
“Be Thankful For What You Got” by William DeVaughn from Be Thankful For What You Got, 1974

“I Want To Thank You” by Billy Preston from That’s The Way God Planned It, 1969

“Thank You Lord” by Rick Nelson from Rudy the Fifth, 1971

“Thank You” by Led Zeppelin from Led Zeppelin II, 1969

“I Want To Thank You” by the Staple Singers from Let’s Do It Again, 1975

“Now Be Thankful” by Fairport Convention, Island WIP 6089, 1970

A Quick Six-Pack From 1971

I got an invitation in my email the other week: The St. Cloud Tech High Class of 1971 is getting together one evening near the end of June to celebrate the forty years gone by.

I’ve made two other reunions: the tenth, which I didn’t enjoy all that much, and the twentieth, which I did. Since then, there’s been some barrier or other in my way, and I’ve missed the get-togethers.

This really isn’t about the reunion, but the reminder that it’s been forty years since we donned our caps and gowns and then moved on to other things gave me a convenient hook on which to hang a quick Friday morning post: A six-tune random trek through 1971.

British musician Phil Cordell released an instrumental titled  “I Will Return” under the name of Springwater that year. The song didn’t chart in the U.S., but it did all right in Europe, reaching No. 1 in Switzerland and making the Top Five in the U.K. I caught up to it sometime during these past four years, and I like it quite a bit.

Our next stop is a tune that I thought was rude and excessive forty years ago, as well as being a bit too loud: “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin. Rude and excessive or not, it went to No. 15. And these days, I like it quite a bit more than I did then.

Third up is “We Got To Have Peace,” a Curtis Mayfield track pulled from his album Roots. The single barely made a dent in the pop chart, bubbling under at No. 115. It did a fair amount better on the R&B chart, rising to No. 32.

Staying on the R&B side of town for a while, we come across “Going In Circles,” a track from Isaac Hayes’ monumental album Black Moses. ‘Never Can Say Goodbye” was the hit single from the album, going to No. 22 on the pop chart and to No, 5 on the R&B chart. The album itself went to No. 10 on the Billboard 200, No. 2 on the Jazz chart and No. 1 on the R&B chart.

Our fifth stop this morning is “I Woke Up In Love This Morning” by the Partridge Family. Created for  television, the faux family group had plenty of detractors at the time, but forty years have softened the disdain, and now the group’s records sound like pretty decent early-70s pop-.  “I Woke Up In Love This Morning” went to No. 13.

And our final stop this morning brings us to Lou Rawls and “A Natural Man.” The record went to No. 17 on both the pop and R&B charts, and it won Rawls a well-deserved Grammy for R&B Male Vocal performance:

That’s it for a few days. The Texas Gal and I are going to go outside and play. I’ll be back Monday.

Thirty Years Ago At The Fish Fry

One of the classic small-town fund-raisers is the fish fry. During the years I lived in Monticello, we’d occasionally make our way to the American Legion club at the west edge of town and join our friends and neighbors at long tables. The menu was always deep-fried fish – probably haddock – with french fries and cole slaw.

We’d nibble on our dinners, sip coffee and chat with whoever ended up sitting nearby. Occasionally, I’d field questions or complaints about something the newspaper had published that week. Otherwise, we’d maybe talk about the city’s plans to redevelop downtown, the upcoming school board election or the prospects for the high school’s teams – still called, amazingly enough, the Redmen – in the coming winter tournaments.

But as we sat at the tables for the Rotary Club’s annual fish fry thirty years ago this evening, we talked about none of that. All anybody wanted to talk about was a bunch of college kids, kids with names like Broten, Johnson and Eruzione; Callahan, Craig and Pavelich; Morrow, Verchota and Suter and eleven more. And we talked about Herb Brooks, the hockey coach who’d molded those twenty American college kids into a hockey team that had defeated the legendary team from the Soviet Union 4 to 3 in an Olympic medal-round game late that afternoon.

I’ve never asked anyone, but I’ve always wondered how sparse the crowd was for the first hour or so of the fish fry that evening. The hockey game began at four o’clock Central Time – officials for the ABC network, which was broadcasting the Olympics from Lake Placid, N.Y., tried to have the game switched to seven o’clock, but Soviet officials refused – and was likely over a little after six o’clock. That’s when we – my wife of the time and I – made our way to the Legion club for dinner, as I’d been listening to the game on a distant radio station, struggling to make sense of the play-by-play through a forest of static.

I imagine that many others had done the same, as it seems in memory that we were among a large group of diners who showed up about the same time. Those already dining were already talking about hockey or related topics, like why ABC – which planned to air a tape of the game that evening – didn’t show the game live at four o’clock. And there were grumbles at the Soviet officials who refused to allow the game to be moved from late afternoon to the evening. (Wikipedia notes that such a shift would have meant a four a.m. start for the game in Moscow.)

But most of the time, it seems – in the soft light of a memory thirty years old – we were shaking our heads and marveling at what those twenty American kids and their coaches had done that afternoon. After all, the Soviet team had won five of the six gold medals in hockey since 1956 (with the U.S. winning in 1960 in Squaw Valley, Calif.). Since those 1960 games, the Soviets had gone 32-1-1 over the next four Olympic tournaments and the preliminary round at Lake Placid. Games between the Soviet teams and the professionals of the National Hockey League had started in 1972, and during the two most recent series, the Soviets were 7-4-1 against the NHL’s best. In addition, in the last exhibition game for the U.S. Olympic team before the competition at Lake Placid, the Soviets had defeated the U.S. team in New York City by a 10-3 score.

So I don’t recall talking to anyone during the preceding days who thought that the U.S. boys – who’d won four and tied one of their preliminary round games – could beat the Soviets. Watching the five earlier games had cued us – hockey fans and those who were only vaguely familiar with the sport alike – that the U.S. team might be something special. And it was, advancing to the medal round with what seemed like a good chance for silver or at least bronze.

But those American kids surprised everyone, including the experts in the sporting world who’d conceded the gold medal to the Soviet team from the start, the delirious crowd in the Lake Placid arena that afternoon, and those of us all across the country who would sit in their living rooms and watch the taped game that evening. The kids probably even surprised their own coach, Herb Brooks. And there’s no doubt that they surprised the supremely talented members of the Soviet Union’s Olympic hockey team.

There were overtones to the hockey game, of course: The general sense of unease in the U.S. at the time and the international rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union – heightened by the Soviets’ 1979 invasion of Afghanistan – all made the U.S team’s victory a template for something more than a hockey game. But even as only a hockey game, it was enough. And that’s what we chewed on that evening at the Rotary fish fry, thirty years ago tonight.

A Six-Pack From The Charts (Billboard Hot 100, February 23, 1980)
“Cruisin’” by Smokey Robinson [No. 4]
“Sara” by Fleetwood Mac [No. 10]
“Fool In The Rain” by Led Zeppelin [No. 21]
“I Thank You” by ZZ Top [No. 42]
“Lost Her In The Sun” by John Stewart [No. 77] (Download)
“Stomp!” by the Brothers Johnson [No. 103]

These five videos and one download can all stand on their own except for noting two things: First, the original poster of “Sara” at YouTube unaccountably calls Stevie Nicks “Sara.” Second, the version of “Lost Her In The Sun” offered is the album track from Stewart’s Bombs Away Dream Babies, not the single edit. Tomorrow or Wednesday we’ll dig into the Ultimate Jukebox.

What A Weekend!
I should note that the Texas Gal and I had a wonderful weekend visiting jb of The Hits Just Keep On Comin’ and The Mrs. in Madison, Wisconsin. Billed loosely as Blog Summit & Beer Spree III, the weekend included a men’s hockey game between the University of Wisconsin and St. Cloud State, some remarkably good meals and very good brews, as well as tours of the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison and Middleton’s own Capital Brewery and its National Mustard Museum. Thanks for the fun and friendship!