Peter Gabriel's Breakthrough

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Peter Gabriel's "So," which hit the music stores 30 years ago today, was not his first solo album. I'm not even sure you could call it his best solo album — although many would.

But it was his true breakthrough album as a solo performer — and I have reasons to believe that other than the fact that, even 30 years later, "So" is his best–selling solo effort.

Gabriel, who was the original lead singer for Genesis, had other hits before "So" — which was, after all, his fifth solo album — but "So" had four hit singles. "Sledgehammer" was the biggest hit, climbing to No. 1. The others didn't make it that far, which was probably a good thing for them. "Sledgehammer" became something of a social phenomenon in the summer of 1986. It would have been difficult to live up to it.

Do you think I am kidding? I'm not. It set a record at the MTV Awards, winning nine. Its video was a big hit, too. It is still the most played music video in MTV history. "Sledgehammer" was every freaking where.

Anyway, I got kind of tired of it at the time. Enough time has passed that I can listen to it and enjoy it today, but I went through a period when I simply could not listen to it. I would change the radio station if it came on.

Not so with the album's other singles — "Big Time," "Red Rain" and "In Your Eyes." A fifth single, "Don't Give Up," was more popular in the U.K. than it was in the U.S.

I am tempted to dismiss that as being because Kate Bush was featured on the track. It was a good song, but it never really did anything for me.

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Of those, I guess "Big Time" was the most recognizable hit, and I could have gotten tired of it — had it not been for "Sledgehammer."

"Big Time" cracked Billboard's Top Ten but never quite got to No. 1.

I liked it better than "Sledgehammer" at the time.

I'm not really sure how I feel about them now, but I must say that I always found a certain amount of personal relevance in the lyrics "The place where I come from/Is a small town/They think so small/They use small words/But not me/I'm smarter than that/I worked it out/I'll be stretching my mouth/To let those big words come right out."

At that time, I thought it perfectly described my hometown — which is not such a small town anymore, at least according to my friends who still live there.

Yes, I preferred "Big Time" to "Sledgehammer" — but, of the singles from "So" that hit the airwaves, I guess my favorite was "Red Rain."

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It reached No. 3 on Billboard's Top Ten, but it never struck me as being as commercial as those other two songs, especially "Sledgehammer."

I've heard it described as an anthem — and perhaps that is what attracted me to it.

Four of a Kind

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On this day in 1960, Ferlin Husky's "Wings of a Dove" became just the fourth song to climb to #1 in Billboard's Hot C&W chart that year.

You could expand that list to five if you include Marty Robbins' "El Paso," which reached the top spot late in 1959 and remained there through the first five weeks of 1960.

But in the year itself, only four songs ascended to #1 on the Billboard chart. The other three were Jim Reeves' "He'll Have to Go," Hank Locklin's "Please Help Me, I'm Falling" and Cowboy Copas' "Alabam."

Compare that to modern times, when there seems to be a new #1 hit on music charts every week.

John Denver's Triple

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John Denver was one of my early favorites.

Not long after I got my first stereo, I was listening to Denver's music on a regular basis (along with Three Dog Night and Cat Stevens). At one time in my life I had most of his albums, but I wasn't exactly blazing a trail there. I mean, a lot of people liked John Denver in those days. He was quite popular. You didn't really have to have his records in your possession to listen to him, either. You could hear his latest hits on mainstream radio pretty frequently.

But if you wanted to hear his latest songs that were not being played on the radio, you pretty much needed to have his latest album.

I would venture to say that most people didn't think of John Denver as a country musician. He was primarily regarded as a pop star, but he sang about country topics — simple pleasures, the rural lifestyle and small–town values — but his music never really met the definition of country music that had been established by David Allen Coe as a spoken interlude in his 1975 recording, "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" — at least not in my opinion.

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"Well a friend of mine named Steve Goodman wrote that song
And he told me it was the perfect country and western song.
I wrote him back a letter and I told him it was not the
Perfect country and western song because he hadn't said
Anything at all about mama or trains or trucks or prison or gettin' drunk."

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No, that wasn't John Denver's style.

He had a lot of crossover appeal, though. It seemed there were a lot of artists who were like that in the '70s — or maybe it just seems that way in hindsight. Most of today's music seems to be designed to appeal to a narrow niche.

Of course, there are acts that try to blend styles and create something new, but that isn't really the same thing. Most such acts seem to be little more than cynical attempts to cash in on more than one market simultaneously.

What I'm talking about is a genuine connection to people and how they relate to others, to places, to themselves. Earlier in 1975, Denver had a big hit with a song titled, "Thank God I'm a Country Boy," which spoke to the human condition more than it did to musical genres. That was the essence of Denver's music. It was a uniter, not a divider, to borrow a famous phrase.

There aren't many performers these days who try to push the envelope and make music that attracts a diverse audience, but it wasn't too uncommon 40 years ago. It seems as if I was always surprised to learn that a pop star I liked was getting a lot of airplay on country stations.

John Denver was one of those musicians, and the best evidence of that may be that on this day in 1975, his single "I'm Sorry," which had been released in July, reached the top spot on Billboard's Hot Country Singles chart. In September, the song reached the top position in Billboard's Hot 100, just as "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" had.

I suppose the greatest difference between the two is the fact that "I'm Sorry" turned out to be the final #1 pop hit of Denver's career.

In the mid–'70s, Denver probably was at his peak in popularity with a string of #1 songs and #1 albums, crossing over into multiple categories. "I'm Sorry," for example, not only occupied the top spot in Billboard's Hot 100 before claiming the same spot on the Hot Country Singles chart, but it was also #1 for awhile on Billboard's Easy Listening chart (now Adult Contemporary).

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"I'm Sorry" was Denver's last #1 hit on the Hot Country Singles chart — the last of three, all in the mid–1970s. He had been topping other charts in the earlier years, but he had only reached #1 with the country audience for the first time about a year earlier with "Back Home Again," a song with a country flavor but still very much the folk music for which Denver was known originally.

In fact the B side of "I'm Sorry" is a good example of Denver's versatility. One would never mistake it for a country song.

Until just a few years ago, I thought the B side — "Calypso" — was an A side. It was a tribute to French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau and his vessel, the Calypso, and it was featured in a television documentary about Cousteau's work. I was certain I had heard it played on the radio more often than I had heard "I'm Sorry." And, as I say, I was a John Denver fan in those days.

Truth is, "Calypso" apparently did receive more airplay than "I'm Sorry" did, and RCA reversed the order on the single, making "Calypso" the A side and "I'm Sorry" the B side.

"Calypso" may have had more airplay, but it never made it to #1 on any chart.

An Ode to Fame

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I remember the first time I heard David Bowie's "Fame." It was this day in 1975, the day the song hit the music stores and the air waves.

I remember it for the oddest of reasons. I was at my home in Arkansas packing for a family trip to Dallas to visit my grandmothers. It was the kind of trip my family had been making at least two or three times a year every year for as long as I could remember. It was a bit more meaningful for me this time, though. I would be attending a week–long workshop for high school journalism students at Southern Methodist University the next week, and, even before it started, I knew one of the participants — the son of some family friends. We had known each other all our lives.

Anyway, I had my radio on in my bedroom as I packed for the trip to Texas, and the D.J. announced the latest song from David Bowie. It had just been released that morning, he said, and he proceeded to play the song for his listeners. I stopped packing and sat down to listen to it. Forty years later, I still listen to it. For the last 25 years, I have tended to listen to the remix that was recorded in 1990 for the "Changesbowie" CD ...

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... but hearing the original recording brings back sweet memories of those days. John Lennon, my favorite Beatle, was credited as a co–writer of the song, but Bowie did most of the heavy lifting — lyrically speaking. In late 1974, Lennon and Bowie met and started jamming together. In January 1975, they had a recording session that produced a cover of the Beatles' "Across the Universe" and a recording of the new song, "Fame."

Bowie said it was "nasty, angry," and acknowledged that it had been written with a malicious edge thanks to the nature of Bowie's relationship with the management group with whom he had been working.

Maybe Lennon's role in the creation of the song is why I was so drawn to it, but the truth is that I wasn't aware of his connection to the song when it was prominent on the radio. I just knew that I liked it.

I guess the style was funk — although I'm not really sure that's an accurate description. It was at a time when Bowie seemed to be obsessing over soul music. At any rate, anything that was co–written by Bowie and Lennon was bound to be unique.

Apparently, a lot of people were drawn to it. It became Bowie's biggest hit in the United States to that point. The song hit #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 and went to #1 in Canada as well. It was in the Top 10 in Norway and the Netherlands.

"Fame" was running through my head when I went to the SMU campus the following Monday to begin the journalism workshop. It was playing on my radio later in the day when I was back at my grandmother's house, and I could smell the evening meal cooking in the kitchen. If I close my eyes and listen to the original recording of "Fame," I probably can tell you what was on the menu.

For awhile there in the summer of '75, "Fame" was everywhere.

I like the remix. As I said, I've been listening to that version for many years. It doesn't revive memories from 40 years ago. But the original one sure does.

And, frankly, I have been surprised that more attention hasn't been paid to this milestone anniversary, especially when you consider how influential the song was in the summer of '75. Maybe people are too busy paying attention to the 40th anniversary of "Jaws."

But not Ryan Book. Last month, Book observed, in an article for Music Times, about Bowie's epic duets, that "perhaps the most legendary performer that Bowie ever formed a duet with was also the least present for the recording.

"'Fame' doesn't attempt to hide the fact that the former Beatle is included on the single," Book wrote, "yet it was hardly advertised as a duet. Bowie just happened to meet Lennon in New York while recording for Young Americans, and the pair shacked up for a few days and jammed. One of the results was a cover of 'Across The Universe,' but more unique inspiration was found when Lennon chanted the signature 'Fame!' line while guitarist Carlos Alomar improvised a riff. Bowie seized the initiative and quickly scribed the invective–laden lyrics, and keeping Lennon on as a rhythm guitarist, tasked vocally only with chanting the single word repeatedly. The song was tossed onto Young Americans at the last moment, and Bowie gave Lennon a disproportionate amount of songwriting credit, considering that he only contributed one word. Ah, but what an important word it was."

The Beatles' Historic High Five

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The Beatles did something 50 years ago today that no one — not Elvis, not Mitch Miller, not Bob Dylan — had ever done — and no one has done since.

Their recordings occupied the top five spots in Billboard's Top 100.

"Can't Buy Me Love" was in the top spot. "Twist and Shout" was second.

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Number three on the list was "She Loves You," followed by "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Please Please Me."

All five songs are among the Beatles' all–time Top 20 hits, according to Billboard.

The Beatles were less than two months removed from their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, but they were thoroughly dominating the music scene in America as Billboard's chart clearly demonstrated. Along with the top five spots, the Beatles held an additional seven positions in the Top 100:

• #31 — "I Saw Her Standing There"
• #41 — "From Me to You"
• #46 — "Do You Want to Know a Secret?"
• #58 — "All My Loving"
• #65 — "You Can't Do That"
• #68 — "Roll Over Beethoven"
• #79 — "Thank You Girl"

A week later, the Beatles placed two more hits in the Top 100 — "There's a Place" and "Love Me Do" — giving them an incredible 14 songs on the list. In the last half–century, only the Bee Gees have come close to matching the Beatles' accomplishment, charting five songs in the Top 20, thanks to the wave of popularity for the music from "Saturday Night Fever" in March 1978.

Three of those top five songs (plus "A Hard Day's Night," "Love Me Do" and "I Feel Fine") were #1 at some point in 1964, setting a record for the most #1 hits in a single calendar year. (The exceptions were "Twist and Shout" and "Please Please Me.")

Five of their songs reached #1 in 1965.

Beatlemania was for real.

Summertime ... and the Listening's Easy

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If you are a follower of Billboard magazine's "Adult Contemporary" chart, you might be interested to know that it made its debut 50 years ago today.

Apparently, for a few years prior to this day in 1961, there had been a growing desire on the part of many radio stations in America to play popular songs without becoming known as "rock 'n' roll" stations. The music industry had to acknowledge that there was a portion of the market that wasn't rock 'n' roll — and it wasn't country — and respond appropriately.

Billboard's response was to devise a chart that would list the current best–selling recordings that the magazine had decided were not rock 'n' roll songs. Billboard had written about this a few times before so the list was hardly a surprise for regular readers.

Thus, in the beginning, there was a general hits chart — and, from that, a more style–specific (or, perhaps, content– is a better word) chart was derived that was known, initially, as Easy Listening.

The format was established enough by 1965 that Billboard was able to treat it as it did other genres. By that time, it had been through a number of name changes already — a year after it was introduced, it was known as "Middle–Road Singles," then it was known as "Pop–Standard Singles" in 1964.

In 1965, it was known again as "Easy Listening," and it retained that designation through the 1970s. In 1979, it was renamed "Adult Contemporary," and those words have been part of the chart's title, in one form or another, ever since.

The early editions of the list were led by the artists and the kind of songs you probably would expect — the songs were often show tunes and love songs, and performers who specialized in them tended to be the top sellers.

That's why it seems strange to me that the very first #1 recording on this chart was called "The Boll Weevil Song." Perhaps you aren't familiar with the song. It's a blues song, about 100 years old now, according to some folks, and it has been recorded by several blues artists.

(If you haven't lived in the South, you might not be familiar with boll weevils, either. They're insects, pests as far as cotton farmers are concerned. Well, the word pest probably isn't adequate. They devastated cotton farmers before and during the Great Depression — which happened to be when many of the initial followers of the Easy Listening chart were born.)

The version that was a hit 50 years ago today was recorded by Brook Benton, a popular performer of the time who was known for his rock 'n' roll recordings — but also for his R&B and blues stuff, too, which made him something of a crossover artist, I guess.

Actually, applying the label of "rock 'n' roll artist" to Benton seems inappropriate to me. His two breakthrough hits from 1959 — "It's Just a Matter of Time" and "Endlessly" — would have been right at home on an Easy Listening chart if such a thing had existed at the time.

And if you listen to the other hits he had in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I think you would conclude that he was more of an easy listening artist. He sure wasn't an Elvis or a Buddy Holly or a Chuck Berry. He was more like Nat King Cole.

(In fact, Benton and collaborator Clyde Otis originally offered those breakthrough hits to Cole — but, after Otis joined a music label, he persuaded Benton to record them instead.)

As I say, Benton recorded many songs that would have earned prominent spots on an Easy Listening chart — but it was the song about boll weevils that was popular when the chart debuted. Weird. Good song but weird.

Boll weevils aren't lovable or cuddly. Thus, it seems very odd to me that they should have such a role in the history of this kind of chart. If you haven't heard the song, the title read kind of like an ode to roaches.

It's also odd, I think, that, given the kind of songs Benton frequently recorded, he never returned to the top of the Easy Listening chart. He did come close, though — with his comeback song, "Rainy Night in Georgia," in 1970.

The Music of Our Lives

I came across a website that I thought I would share with you.

On this website, you can find out what was the #1 Billboard song on any date in history — the day you were born, the day your spouse or your child(ren) were born, the day you graduated from high school or college, the day you got married, the day someone close to you died.

I found, for example, that the #1 song on the day that I was born was "Mack the Knife" by Bobby Darin.

The top song on the day my brother was born was "Telstar" by The Tornados.

And, out of curiosity, I checked to see what the top song was the day I received my master's degree. It was "Black or White" by Michael Jackson.

Try it out. Pick a random date, or pick one that has special significance for you.