1970s

Bill Champlin | What Good is Love

“In 1978, Bill Champlin had left his namesake band to pursue both his solo career and his career as a session vocalist— the latter would provide him with one of the most extensive and impressive CVs in the music industry,” (The Review Revue). “His credits as both a session vocalist and songwriter read like a who’s who of the music industry of the late seventies and through the eighties as well. He even netted a couple of grammies (Best R&B single for ‘After The Love Is Gone’ for Earth Wind & Fire in 1979 and Best R&B single for ‘Turn Your Love Around’ for George Benson in 1982).

(Champlin’s 1978 album) Single is a product of that era. The influences are evident as the album bears a musical resemblance to Boz Scaggs Grammy-winning Silk Degrees album from a couple years prior. It’s little surprise that many of the musicians who performed on Silk Degrees also performed on Single. Incidentally those musicians who appeared on both Single and on Scagg’s Silk Degrees (Steve Lukather, David Hungate, Steve Porcaro, David Paich, & Jeff Porcaro) created a band of their own, Toto, and released a self-titled debut between working with Scaggs on Silk Degrees and Champlin on Single … Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers and Daryl Hall of Hall & Oates contributed their voices for some catchy background vocals. And having future svengali producer David Foster at the helm in one of his first turns as producer certainly didn’t hurt.”

Built initially in F major, “What Good is Love” is saturated to the point of bursting. The former Chicago vocalist obviously convened a gargantuan band for this track, with nobody working on a per-note basis. A dense flotilla of kitchen sinks floats by as a fast funk/disco groove drives the track. The musicianship is excellent, but the thick sonic texture might violate some sound system’s warrantees. A shift to G major is led by the backing vocalists during one of the only (comparatively) calm moments of the track (2:28).

Rod Stewart | You’re In My Heart (The Final Acclaim)

“Over the course of his career, Rod Stewart has … written several songs that turned into modern standards; he’s sung with the Faces, who rivaled the Rolling Stones in their prime; and he’s had massive commercial success” as a solo artist (AllMusic). “He’s one of rock & roll’s best interpretive singers, as well as an accomplished, innovative songwriter whose work created a raw, loose, and charming combination of folk, rock, blues, and country. After Stewart became successful, he began to lose the rootsier elements of his music, adapting his style to suit the times, leading to smash hits in the disco, new wave, and MTV eras.”

Stewart’s 1977 release “You’re In My Heart,” a single from Footloose and Fancy Free, hit #1 on the Australian and Canadian pop charts, peaking at #4 on the Billboard pop chart in the US and in the top ten in Ireland, the Netherlands, and the Stewart’s native UK.

After a start in B major, the soft-spoken mid-tempo tune’s chorus shifts to A major from 1:36 – 1:54 before returning to its original key. The pattern continues throughout. Surprisingly, the song performed much better on the singles charts than “Hot Legs,” the album’s lead track, which was much more in keeping with Stewart’s raucous image at the time; Billboard called “Hot Legs” a “blistering blues rocker.”

Seals + Crofts | Get Closer

“’Get Closer’ (1976) has all those soft-rock flourishes that everyone loves to deride: the wash of strings, the soulful piano, the soothing harmonies … The lyrical premise of ‘Get Closer’ is simple and pleasantly symmetrical,” (SF Weekly). “Seals and Crofts are asking for reciprocity in their romantic relationships. ‘If you desire emotional intimacy with me, I need you to open up more,’ they seem to be saying. ‘You want me to be monogamous with you? Then quit sleeping around with my friends.’

This song has the added bonus of the voice of Carolyn Willis. Willis was a member of the R&B group Honey Cone in the early 1970s. After the group broke up, she worked as a session singer in Los Angeles for many years before retiring. She seems to have never pursued a solo career; aside from ‘Get Closer,’ you may also recognize her voice on the original ‘Wonder Woman’ theme.”

After starting in G major through the verse, there’s a shift up to A major at 1:01 the chorus. At 1:41, an unprepared modulation back down to G major would have been a bit jarring all on its own, but we’re also knocked further off balance by an unexpected 2/4 bar in an otherwise 4/4 arrangement. The pattern continues from there — until we jump all the way up to E major for the balance of the track at 3:12.

David Bowie | Life on Mars

“In music, there are some songs that speak to some people, and some speak to every one of us,” (Anurag Arya). “This is a song that makes us think of escapism and disillusionment with the world: ‘Life on Mars’ by David Bowie. The song is a career-defining one for Bowie, and one of his most-covered songs. Originally appearing on his Hunky Dory album (1971), it isn’t your standard rock ballad by any means. Bowie could have easily made a four-chord hit out of this one, but instead, this song contains about twenty chords, with unusual scale and tempo changes.

… In a song with a duration of about four minutes, David Bowie made us think of life, a sense of purpose versus a tendency to escape the real world, and commercialism with vivid imagery and a beautiful melody. No wonder his genius lives on even after his death: Among the generic and commercial tropes within pop music, David Bowie managed to cut through the clutter and redefine songwriting musically and lyrically.”

After beginning in E major, 0:42 brings us to a transitional pre-chorus with plenty of pivots in tonality. But at 0:58, we land squarely in A major for the chorus. After another unsettled section — this time an instrumental interlude (1:38 – 1:53), another E major verse returns. The pattern continues from there, with the tune ending with a return to A major.

Many thanks to Mark B. for submitting this tune — his fifth contribution to MotD!

Chase | Get it On

The early 1970s was the Era of the Horn Band — Chicago, Blood Sweat and Tears, Electric Flag, and Ten Wheel Drive among them (anyone remember Ambergris or Sweet Apple?). They played jazz-tinged rock, or rock-tinged jazz, depending on your POV. Then there was Chase, led by trumpeter Bill Chase, an alum of the Woody Herman and Stan Kenton groups, and also of Maynard Ferguson’s group. Like Ferguson, he was a master of the highest registers of his instrument, and not shy about flaunting it. Unusually, Chase had only trumpets — four of them! — as its brass section.

Chase released three albums on Epic, but only their first self-titled release met with real chart success (Billboard #22 in 1971). The single presented here from that album was a decent hit, reaching #24 on the Billboard 100 chart. A second album, Ennea, recorded after several personnel changes with additional changes during its recording, performed much less well. By the time of Chase’s last album in 1974, Pure Music, only founder Bill Chase remained. Sadly, Bill Chase and several band members were killed in August 1974 when the small plane carrying them to an engagement crashed.

The song here contains the trademark Chase elements: virtuosic, outrageously pitched ensemble trumpet lines and a driving rhythm section, fronted by gritty blues-rock vocals. In case you thought the trumpets couldn’t play any higher, there’s an upward modulation at 2:34.

Peaches + Herb | Reunited

“Peaches & Herb weren’t really reunited. The duo had been a pretty successful soul act in the ’60s, and then they’d disappeared for years before returning with their two biggest hits ever,” (Stereogum). But the Peaches & Herb of the late ’70s weren’t the same as the Peaches & Herb of the late ’60s. Herb was the same. (Herb was Herbert Feemster, a Washington, DC native who wisely took the stage name Herb Fame when he got famous). Peaches was different. The Peaches on ‘Reunited’ was Linda Greene, the third in a long line of Peacheses. Maybe ‘Reconstituted’ just wasn’t as catchy a song title.

… Back in 1968, the first version of Peaches & Herb had scored a minor hit with a cover of ‘United,’ an early Philly soul song that Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff had written for the Intruders. So ‘Reunited’ (1979) was a kind of sequel … The lyrics hint at past mistakes: ‘I can’t go cheating/ Honey, I can’t play.’ But they mostly refer to relationship bliss in the most generic terms possible: ‘I was a fool to ever leave your side/ Me minus you is such a lonely ride/ The breakup we had has made me lonesome and sad.'”

The sleepy track did quite well for itself: it topped both the R&B singles chart and the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for four weeks in 1979. Selling over two million copies, it was ranked as the No. 5 song for 1979 by Billboard. After a start in Db major, “Reunited” features an early half-step shift to D major at 1:42, then another to Eb major at 3:10. The verses are just about identical to the choruses in harmonic structure, so the extra bumps in energy brought by the harmonic step-ups is welcome indeed!

Foreigner | Feels Like the First Time

The Foreigner debut has some of the biggest FM rock hits of 1977, like “Cold as Ice,” “Feels Like the First Time,” (and) “Long, Long Way From Home” — songs which still get plenty of radio air time today,” (Classic Rock Forums). “This album had a solid production by Gary Lyons and one of the best songwriters of the 70s, Mick Jones. Jones was involved with each song on this album. Vocalist Lou Gramm is one of the best in the business, with a strong, soaring voice.

… every song is highly polished with flawless musicianship. This album is truly a classic! ‘Feels Like the First Time’ is a grand opening song. A quintessential glam-jam with stellar keyboards, catchy riffs, and an outstanding vocal performance from Gramm. The background vocal harmony layering is a great addition to the already fantastic musical mix.”

Built in G mixolydian overall, the verse for “Feels Like the First Time” features a striking ascending whole step key-of-the-moment series (0:37 and 0:46) before 0:55 brings us the first chorus (returning to the original key). Between 1:49 – 2:21, the relative E minor takes over for the bridge, leading to a series of choruses in the original key for the fading outro.

Wilson Pickett | Sugar Sugar

The producers of The Archies animated TV series (1968-1969) “recruited a crew of anonymous songwriters and performers to provide some musical product to be performed by the cartoon band,” (Reverb Raccoon). “To the consternation of everyone who was not taking massive doses of drugs, The Archies scored a #1 hit with ‘Sugar, Sugar.’ The song was written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim, who later had his own #1 hit with ‘Rock Me Gently.'” In fact, the track was a worldwide smash hit, and scored #1 positions on the 1969 year-end charts in both the US and Canada.

” … Long story short, The Archies’ ‘Sugar, Sugar’ is the epitome of everything that was wrong with pop music of the late 60’s and early 70’s. No one, except maybe anyone unlucky enough to have lost their virginity at a drive-in movie while it played on the car radio, recalls ‘Sugar, Sugar’ with anything approaching nostalgic affection. But… Let’s give this much-maligned song to another artist. Let’s give it to soul singer Wilson Pickett. This is the guy who had hits with ‘In the Midnight Hour,’ ‘Land of 1000 Dances,’ and ‘Mustang Sally.’

Pickett’s 1970 version of ‘Sugar, Sugar’ is everything that The Archies’ version was not. Meaning that Wilson Pickett’s version can be listened to, fifty years after the fact, without embarrassment. The horns and pulsing organ drive the song, and Wilson Pickett’s vocal shows a passion and sincerity that his animated counterpart failed to achieve. I can listen to this song every day. If I stumble across the original once a year it’s too many times … The moral of this story: Don’t send a cartoon to do a man’s job. Or something like that.” To say nothing of the fact that Pickett’s version features a half-step key change (2:08), a factor missing from the original version! We’ve featured both versions below.

Dolly Parton | Baby, I’m Burnin’

“’Baby, I’m Burnin” is a killer disco track that still sounds great today,” (Country Universe). “Very much of the era, but not overwhelmed by it. A big reason that it works is that Parton’s jubilant persona is a good fit for dance music in its late 1970s form. When the genre moved toward synthesized sounds in the 1980s, her natural warmth would often sound out of place. But she sounds great here. She knows she’s singing a silly song for people to dance to, and she commits to it wholeheartedly.

And don’t let the cotton candy substance of the song fool you. A great disco song isn’t any easier to write than a great country song, and having a talent for the latter doesn’t necessarily translate to having one for the former. It’s a keeper, and one that’s proven timeless enough for her to still open her shows with it today.”

There’s a disco-infused country version of “Baby, I’m Burnin'” (1978) and a country-infused disco version; this video is from the latter category. At 3:41, after what sounds like both an electronic and acoustic percussion break, the tune moves up a half step.

The Commodores | Too Hot ta Trot

“It would have been hard for any group to release a more appropriately-titled single in late 1977 than the Commodores did with ‘Too Hot Ta Trot.'” (UDiscoverMusic). “After an appropriate period of dues-paying, the Alabama collective were now in the form of their lives. Two of the Motown group’s previous four singles, ‘Easy’ and ‘Just to Be Close To You,’ had topped the Billboard R&B charts. With Lionel Richie’s ballads as a counterpoint to their funk origins, they were masters of any tempo. The irresistible ballad ‘Easy’ had been followed by another Top 5 hit in both soul and pop formats with the slinky ‘Brick House,’ and now came another winning floor-filler.

In the group’s democratic way, the songwriting credit for “Too Hot Ta Trot” went to them all, listing Richie, Milan Williams, Ronald LaPread, Thomas McClary, Walter “Clyde” Orange and William King. It originated as the closing studio cut on their then-new Live! set, which was predicted by Billboard to be a “hot holiday item with both pop and soul crowds.” It entered Hot Soul Singles at a bold #51 on the December 24, 1977 chart, and rose swiftly to spend a week at the top of that countdown in February 1978. The Commodores had their fourth R&B #1, with another around the corner in ‘Three Times a Lady,’ and another again in 1979 with ‘Still.’ With disco fever at its height, ‘Too Hot Ta Trot’ was a natural for the soundtrack of the movie Thank God It’s Friday, which appeared the following spring.”

From 1:03 – 1:20, E major flips over into its C# relative minor for a brief section (not sure what to call it, as the song’s form is a little bit atypical!). The section is repeated later in the form.