Time by the Alan Parsons Project

In the late 70s and early 80s, the Alan Parsons Project had several hits, a few of which still receive the occasional spin.  (And then there's "Sirius", which will be forever associated with NBA team introductions in my mind, and possibly for many others as well.)  They were known for a few concept albums that had a little bit of a storyline.

This was certainly the case in the group's 1980 album The Turn of a Friendly Card, which tells the tale of an addiction to gambling.  This album was one of several successes for the group, spawning two Top 20 singles.  The first, "Games People Play", hit #16 on Billboard's Hot 100 in early 1981.

(The Turn of a Friendly Card peaked at #13 on Billboard's Hot LPs and Tape chart. Album ℗1980 Arista Records. Photo courtesy Amazon.com.)

The second single, "Time", is somewhat of a departure from the gambling theme of the rest of the album.  Instead, it is more of a wistful ballad, with the protagonist saying goodbye to several people.

The song entered the Hot 100 the week ending April 18, 1981* and peaked at #15 the week ending August 1.  It remained at that same position for two more weeks before beginning a somewhat slow decline.  "Time" finally fell out of the Hot 100 the week ending September 26 after a fairly impressive 23 weeks on the chart.  That performance was enough to make it #48 on Billboard's year-end chart for 1981.  It was the best-selling single for the Alan Parsons Project until the release of "Eye in the Sky" the next year.

It should be noted that "Time" was the first Alan Parsons Project single for which lead vocals were sung by Eric Woolfson, the co-creator of the group.  (Also, Alan Parsons, about whom the album notes on his album Try Anything Once said "he almost never sings", is credited for background vocals.)  Mr. Woolfson would go on to sing lead vocals for "Eye in the Sky" in 1982 and "Don't Answer Me", the final Top 20 single for the group, in 1984.

I suppose it is always difficult for ballads to gain recurrent status on many stations, including the Classic Hits stations now present in many cities.  And that's too bad, as "Time" is widely regarded as a very beautiful song.  That's not a description you would find attached to too many Top 40 songs now...and that's to the detriment of current Top 40 radio.  Take a listen to this track and see for yourself.

* Google's archive of Billboard is still incomplete; this issue is not available online at present.

In America by The Charlie Daniels Band

Most people who have heard of Charlie Daniels probably remember him mostly for The Charlie Daniels Band's platinum-certified #3 smash "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", which still gets a fair amount of airplay even today, and rightly so.  Some may also remember his #9 song from a few years before, "Uneasy Rider", or they might even remember this ad from 2010:

Most people, though, probably don't remember that The Charlie Daniels Band very nearly returned to the Top 10 just a year after "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" had its run and helped the album on which it appeared, Million Mile Reflections, go platinum as well.  The band's follow-up album was entitled Full Moon and was released in the summer of 1980.

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(Full Moon peaked at #11 on Billboard's Hot LPs and Tape chart. Album ℗1980 Epic/Nashville Records. Photo courtesy Amazon.com.)

A few weeks before Full Moon dropped, the debut single, "In America", was released.  The song was about restoring patriotism in the United States after a rather lousy decade (with an economy to match) and while the Iran hostage crisis was still ongoing.  It spoke of Americans becoming united, and after all this, "God bless America again".  The hope, optimism, and patriotism of the song resonated with many people.  It debuted in Billboard's Hot 100 in its May 31, 1980 issue* and peaked at #11 the week ending August 2; it remained at that position for two weeks and then went into a freefall, falling out of the Top 40 within three weeks of peaking (by which time the second single from Full Moon, "The Legend of Wooley Swamp" had already begun its chart run) and out of the Hot 100 completely just two weeks later.  "In America" spent a respectable 15 weeks on the Hot 100, and it did well enough to land at #96 in the year-end chart for 1980.

According to Wikipedia**, "In America" experienced a short revival in 2001 after the events of September 11; however, since that time I know of no station that has played the song except WCBS-FM, in a 2008 Sunday night broadcast of their Top 20 from August 3, 1980.

* Google's archive of Billboard is still incomplete; this issue is not available online at present.
**Standard Disclaimer:  some information on this blog comes from the always-reliable Wikipedia; as such, its veracity may be questionable.

Love Sneakin' Up On You by Bonnie Raitt

Bonnie Raitt is one of those rockers who was around for years before ever having a top 40 hit.  She started recording in the early 1970s and even got a shoutout from Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati when he played her late 70s remake of "Runaway", which got up to #57.  But it wasn't until the early 90s that she ever hit the top 40 charts.  She hit first with "Have a Heart", but she is probably best known for "Something to Talk About", which hit #5 on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1991.  "Something to Talk About" still gets some airplay on radio these days, and deservedly so, usually on adult contemporary stations.

But who remembers the first single from her follow-up album in 1994?  Maybe some of my readers, whom I assume are quite enlightened, will remember "Love Sneakin' Up On You", the first single from Longing in Their Hearts, but I don't think radio remembers it at all.

(Longing in Their Hearts, as might be expected, peaked at #1 on the Billboard 200. Album ℗1994 Capitol Records. Photo courtesy Amazon.com.)

"Love Sneakin' Up On You" debuted on Billboard's Hot 100 the week ending March 12, 1994 at #90 (Google's Billboard archive is missing that week's issue), and I personally heard the song for the first time that same week on a Spring Break quasi-roadtrip.  It slowly made its way up the charts, peaking at #19 almost two months later, as seen in the issue for the week ending May 7.  The song had fairly good staying power, staying on the Hot 100 for 20 weeks and ending up at #94 for the year.  It did even better on the Canadian charts, where it was a #1 song.

After its run, there was one more single to be released from Longing in Their Hearts.  Unfortunately, "You" was not nearly as successful, peaking at #92.  After that, Ms. Raitt hit the Hot 100 a couple more times before basically moving solely to the adult contemporary chart, which she last hit in 2006.

"Love Sneakin' Up On You", though, has seemingly disappeared.  (In researching this song, I discovered that YouTube does not even presently have the album version of this song on its site.)  It would be nice to see it reappear on the airwaves sometime.

Room to Move by Animotion

This post has moved.  Find it here at the new Unfairly Forgotten Songs site.

How Much Love by Leo Sayer

When asked about Leo Sayer, I would guess that most people would either respond with "Who?" or possibly remember one or two songs of his...or the fact that he once appeared on the Muppet Show.  I personally remember him for three songs.  Two of them, "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" and "When I Need You", were mainstays on middle-of-the-road radio in my hometown for years.  The third, Mr. Sayer's 1980 remake of "More Than I Can Say", was popular after I was old enough to pay attention to what songs were popular at the time.

But I never remember hearing "How Much Love" even once.  It's quite possible that I heard it when it made its appearance on the charts, but I was too young to notice, and for some reason, it never survived as a recurrent the way other songs from Mr. Sayer did.

"How Much Love" was the third single from Mr. Sayer's 1976 album Endless Flight.  The first two singles were the two mainstays I remembered from my youth; both songs hit #1 on Billboard's Hot 100.

(This picture deserves a better caption than I can come up with at this hour.  Submissions are welcome.)
(Endless Flight peaked at #10 on Billboard's Top LPs and Tape Chart. Album ℗1976 Warner Bros. Records. Photo courtesy Amazon.com.)

While Google's Billboard archives, on which I have become rather dependent for specific information for these posts, is incomplete for 1977, it appears that "How Much Love" debuted on the Hot 100 the week ending July 9, 1977.  It peaked at #17 the week ending August 27 and stayed there for two weeks before rather quickly descending the charts, appearing at #70 during its 15th and final week on the charts, the week ending October 15.  Billboard ranked it the #98 song for the year 1977.

Following "How Much Love", which turned out to be the final single from Endless Flight, Mr. Sayer hit the bottom of the top 40 twice before hitting #2 with "More Than I Can Say" three years later.  His songs continued to chart in the U.K. into the 1980s, but after 1981, he never again appeared on the Hot 100.

As for "How Much Love" itself, I heard this song for the first time during a local radio station's daily nine-songs-from-one-year feature (mentioned on this blog before...here, for example), when they happened to be featuring 1977.  I heard it a second time...another time that same station used 1977 for that same feature.  And I've heard it on the radio no other time before or since.

You Don't Want Me Anymore by Steel Breeze

1982 was a year of flux for top 40 music.  A lot of different types of music hit the charts that year, and many acts came and left that year.  One act that appeared for the first time was Steel Breeze, a pop-rock band out of California.  Like Magazine 60, Steel Breeze incorporated synthesizers into its sound, but while Magazine 60 had an obvious Eurodisco sound, Steel Breeze was much more an album-oriented rock group.

At first, Steel Breeze seemed destined for quick success.  Their first and eponymous album was selling well, and the video for their first single, "You Don't Want Me Anymore" was getting heavy airplay on MTV.

(Steel Breeze peaked at #50 on Billboard's Top LPs and Tape Chart. Album ℗1982 RCA Records. Photo courtesy Amazon.com.)

"You Don't Want Me Anymore" started very strongly, debuting on Billboard's Hot 100 at #67, making it the highest debuting song for the week ending August 28, 1982.  Rather surprisingly, given the amount of airplay it received, it only peaked at #16 the week of November 13 and stayed there for two weeks before falling from there.  (It did better in what Billboard then called their Rock Top Tracks chart, peaking at #9.)  All in all, the song was on the Hot 100 for a respectable 20 weeks, though that was not quite enough to make it one of Billboard's hot 100 songs for the year.  (Interestingly enough, it did rank #100 on American Top 40's year-end countdown.*)

Steel Breeze followed "You Don't Want Me Anymore" up with one more top 40 song (which peaked at #30) before disappearing from view altogether.  No further albums or singles from Steel Breeze ever charted after early 1983, and the group has largely disappeared from radio since then.  (I personally have actually heard "You Don't Want Me Anymore" on the radio once or twice, though it was during a local station's spotlight of 1982 ("Nine great songs from one year!"); they certainly don't have this song in their regular rotation.)  In my opinion, this song deserved better.

* While American Top 40 used the Billboard Hot 100 as its exclusive source until November 1991, it did not always use Billboard's Hot 100 for its year-end countdowns for some reason. 

Don Quichotte (No Estan Aqui) by Magazine 60

During the post-disco years, a lot of synthpop bands popped up, many Europe-based.  One such band was Magazine 60, a French band which is known in America--if it is known here at all--for exactly one song, "Don Quichotte (No Estan Aqui)".

"Don Quichotte", you might have noticed, is the French name of Don Quixote, the literary hero brought to life by Miguel de Cervantes.  Why someone would try to call Don Quixote, or Don Quichotte, on the phone (which is exactly what happens in this song), is not explained, but that seems to be almost the entirety of the English portion of the song (the remainder is in Spanish).  And yet, the tune itself is quite catchy, which is probably why the song got airplay in the mid-80s.

"Don Quichotte (No Estan Aqui)", a 1984 single, appeared on Magazine 60's 1985 album Costa del Sol, which was, for whatever reason, not released in the US until 1987, which was well after the song had come and gone.  The album itself is apparently so forgotten that not only does Amazon not stock it, but no one is even selling a used copy on Amazon as of this writing.

(Costa del Sol never charted in the US.  Album ℗1985 CBS Records.)

"Don Quichotte (No Estan Aqui)" got its start in the US, as one might expect, on the Dance charts in 1985 before finally entering Billboard's Hot 100 the week ending May 10, 1986.  It peaked at #56 the week ending June 21.  Surprisingly, for its rather low peak position, it lasted 11 weeks on the Hot 100 before falling off.

Since its original chart run, the song has appeared on a few internet disco streams and has gotten, from what I can tell, a grand total of two spins on the 20 years of my favorite celebration of the obscure, "Crap From the Past", but for the most part, "Don Quichotte" is long forgotten. 

The Way I Want To Touch You by Captain & Tennille

I don't know about anyone else, but I was disappointed to hear that Toni Tennille filed for divorce from Daryl "Captain" Dragon a couple of weeks ago.  (And then I was further disappointed to see that most of the responses to this news was "they're still alive???")  As a child of the 70s, and specifically, a child whose mother listened to a radio station whose format was called "middle of the road" back then (but would have been called adult contemporary now), I heard quite a bit of music from Captain & Tennille.

Or, to be more precise, I heard two songs by Captain & Tennille a lot.  And so, I'm sure, did a lot of you, and they were the same two songs:  "Love Will Keep Us Together" (a title which lent itself to, well, one joke repeated 1000x last week after the divorce announcement came out) and "Do That To Me One More Time" (which lent itself to a joke which was slightly more clever, only used by one person), but I never heard any of their other hits, or at least I never heard them played as recurrents for years after their original release, and I was young enough not to remember their original chart runs.

I don't even remember "Muskrat Love" when it hit the charts.

And no, I am not putting it on this blog.  You want it, click the link and buy it yourself.  That might qualify as a song that was quite fairly forgotten.

But I digress.

A few years ago, I was able to purchase Captain & Tennille's debut album, also called Love Will Keep Us Together, on vinyl for a couple of dollars.  I didn't buy it for the title track; I bought it for the song that is thought of as the second hit from the album (though it was actually released first), "The Way I Want To Touch You".

(Love Will Keep Us Together peaked at #2 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart.  Album ℗1974 A&M Records.  Photo courtesy Amazon.com.)

As related in the August 16, 1975 issue of Billboard, "The Way I Want To Touch You" was originally just a regional hit on the west coast (not hitting the Hot 100, from what I can tell) after Mr. Dragon and Ms. Tennille spent $250 to have 500 records pressed of the song; they sent them to radio stations themselves.  The modest success the song had got them their contract with A&M Records, and after "Love Will Keep Us Together" hit #1 (eventually becoming the #1 song of 1975), A&M re-released "The Way I Want To Touch You".

The song entered the Hot 100 (finally) the week ending September 27, 1975.  It eventually topped the Adult Contemporary chart (called the "Top 50 Easy Listening" chart at the time) in November (right around the time Mr. Dragon and Ms. Tennille were getting married) and made it to #4 on the Hot 100, peaking the week of November 29.  According to the always-flaky Billboard.com, it spent 17 weeks on the Hot 100, which seems rather short for such a successful song.  Also, due to the timing of its peak sales, the song missed the year-end charts for both 1975 and 1976.

And so, after its run, the song was basically never heard again, at least by me, until I spent time in Dallas listening to a non-commercial station that was, at the time, running an all-70s format.  And then, I heard it a lot, which speaks to the music library available to a radio station run by a high school, I suppose.  Other than that station, though, no other "classic hits" station I know of has played it, well, ever.

As for the Captain & Tennille, they remained mainstays on the pop charts until a sudden disappearance in 1980 (just after "Do That To Me One More Time" became their second #1 hit) when their record company at the time, Casablanca Records, collapsed.  Of course, they continued to perform with success well after that, but their hit record career was done.

It's sad that their divorce is what inspired me to post this song, but it's a good reminder of the many good songs they released in their heyday.  Perhaps it might even inspire some classic hits station somewhere to add this one to its rotation.

Remembering George Duke

During the long, unplanned hiatus this blog took, George Duke passed away.  As I understand it, George Duke was primarily a jazz musician, though he occasionally branched over to pop music and R&B.  Most online bios of him will point to his work with Jean-Luc Ponty and Frank Zappa as helping to establish his name in the industry, so that gives you an idea of the diversity of his musical styles. 

George Duke had a very long discography spanning several decades; he also appeared on many other artists's albums (such as, for example, Michael Jackson's Off the Wall) and produced records for even more artists (including, for example, Deniece Williams's hit "Let's Hear It For the Boy", as well as the previously-mentioned-on-this-blog "I Can't Wait").  And yet, after all that, I would imagine most people do not remember him (or never heard of him in the first place).  Surprisingly, in such a long and successful career, Mr. Duke only reached Billboard's Hot 100 three times.

The first of the three songs to hit the Hot 100 was the title track of his 1977 album Reach For It, an album that would have been classified at the time as funk.

(Reach For It peaked at #25 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart.  Album ©1977 Epic/CBS Records.  Photo courtesy Amazon.com.)

"Reach For It" entered the Hot 100 the week ending December 31, 1977 (which means its first week on the chart was not covered by Billboard, which had published a year-end double issue the week before, and instead, "Reach For It" first appeared in the issue dated January 7, 1978).  It peaked at #54 the week ending February 4 before falling off the charts completely just two weeks later.  It stayed on the Hot 100 for seven weeks.

In 1981, George Duke collaborated with another well-known jazz musician, Stanley Clarke, to release a mostly jazz album entitled, appropriately enough, The Clarke/Duke Project.  It was successful enough to top the Billboard's Jazz LPs chart in August of that year.

(The Clarke/Duke Project peaked at #33 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart.  Album ©1981 Epic/CBS Records.  Photo courtesy Amazon.com.)

The first single from the album, entitled "Sweet Baby", didn't really match the jazz feel of the rest of the album; in fact, it was a slower, ballad-type piece that, apparently, was what people in 1981 wanted while they waited for the post-disco identity crisis in top 40 radio to abate.  "Sweet Baby" entered the Hot 100 the week of May 2, 1981 and peaked at #19 the week of August 1, 1981.  It spent 19 weeks overall on the chart.

George Duke's final Hot 100 entry came not too long afterward from his next album, Dream On.

(Dream On peaked at #48 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart.  Album ©1982 Epic/CBS Records.  Photo courtesy Amazon.com.)

That album's first single, "Shine On", was certainly funkier than "Sweet Baby", so it fit well with some of Mr. Duke's contemporaries (Multiple Amazon reviewers compared the sound of Dream On to Earth, Wind & Fire's sound.)  "Shine On" debuted on the Hot 100 at #85 the week ending February 20, 1982 and peaked at #41 the week ending April 10 before, again, falling off the chart entirely just two weeks after peaking.  During its short nine-week run, though, it got fairly good airplay, if the airchecks from 1982 that I have are any indication.

After that, George Duke never again hit the Hot 100, and those songs that did hit the chart have fallen by the wayside, never to be played on oldies, classic hits, or retro radio stations.  (Meanwhile, there's undoubtedly a station somewhere in the US playing "Tainted Love" at this exact moment.)

George Duke passed away on August 5, 2013 from chronic lymphocytic leukemia.  His official webpage lists several places where contributions can be made in his honor.