This Date in Rock Music History: July 22

1963:  The Beatles released their first album Introducing the Beatles, the group's first U.S. album.




1963:  The Angels released "My Boyfriend's Back".

1963:  The Beatles began their tour of the U.K. with Gerry and the Pacemakers at Odeon Cinema in Weston-super-Mare, England.
1967:  Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big Brother & the Holding Company were at the Convention Hall of San Diego, California.
1967:  The Doors made their national television debut performing "Light My Fire" on American Bandstand.
1967:  Petula Clark's "Don't Sleep In The Subway" was #1 for a second week on the Adult chart.

1967:  The Bee Gees had the fastest-rising song on this date--79 to 42, with "To Love Somebody".
1971:  John Lennon and Yoko Ono began recording the promotional film for the song "Imagine".

1971:  Stevie Wonder released the single "If You Really Love Me".

1972:  The Carpenters moved from 68 to 38 with "Goodbye to Love".
1973:  Van Morrison performed at the Birmingham Town Hall in England.












1972:  "Where Is The Love" by Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway was the new #1 song on the Adult chart.
1975:  The Eagles and Dan Fogelberg were in concert at Richfield Coliseum in Cleveland, Ohio.
1977:  Elvis Costello released his debut album My Aim Is True in the U.K.  He would wait until December to released the album in the United States.










1977:  Tony Orlando announced his retirement from show business while on stage in Cohasset, Massachusetts.
1978:  Cheap Trick debuted on the chart with their first hit "Surrender".
1978:  Roberta Flack topped the Adult Contemporary chart for the third week with "If Ever I See You Again".










   
                    "Spellbinder", one of the top tracks on 'Double Vision'...

1978:  The album Some Girls by the Rolling Stones topped the chart, but the Soundtrack to "Grease" moved from 8-2.  Gerry Rafferty was at 3 with City to City while Bob Seger was moving up with Stranger in Town.  The rest of the Top 10:  The Commodores with Natural High, Darkness on the Edge of Town from Bruce Springsteen was stuck at 6, Andy Gibb's Shadow Dancing was at #7, the Soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever" was at 8 after 35 weeks, Foreigner moved into the Top 10 with their second album Double Vision and the Soundtrack to "Thank God It's Friday" was at #10.  





      
    "Grease" was hot in the summer of 1978 and for years afterward...


1978:  It was an outstanding Top 10--"Shadow Dancing" by Andy Gibb prevailed for a sixth week at #1, out-dueling "Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty for the fifth week.  "Miss You", the Rolling Stones' disco hit, was up to #3 while Bob Seger moved up with "Still The Same".  The rest of the Top 10:  Donna Summer moved from 10 to 5 with "Last Dance", "Grease" was the word for Frankie Valli as he entered the Top 10, Heatwave had a hit with "The Groove Line", the O'Jays were on their way down with "Use Ta Be My Girl" as was ABBA's "Take A Chance On Me" at #9 and the Commodores raced up from 21 to 10 with "Three Times A Lady".
1979:  Little Richard, known by then as Reverend Richard Penniman, warned his congregation in North Richmond, California about the evils of rock & roll music.  He certainly would know about them having been on the inside.
1980:  A reunited Allman Brothers Band signed with Arista Records.
1983:  Making good on a promise, Diana Ross performed in front of several hundred thousand fans in New York City's Central Park.  She had performed the night before, but driving rain, wind and lightning forced her to cut the concert short and she told fans she would be back the next night.
1985:  The album Like a Virgin became the first album by a female artist to reach five million in sales.  (Some websites say that the album hit five million on August 10.  This is incorrect.  According to the official website of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), 'Like a Virgin' was certified as a five-million seller on July 22.)
1989:  Simply Red rose to the top of the U.K. Album chart with A New Flame.












1989:  "Toy Soldiers" by Martika was #1 with Madonna's Express Yourself" remaining at #2.  Simply Red fell from #1 with "If You Don't Know Me By Now".
1989:  The great album Repeat Offender by Richard Marx moved into the Top 10.
2001:  Destiny's Child regained the #1 spot in the U.K. with their album Survivor.
















2003:  Coldplay were in concert for the second night at the Horden Pavilion in Sydney, Australia.
2004:  Arthur Crier, singer, songwriter and producer with The Four Tops, the Temptations, the Coasters, Little Eva, Johnny Nash and Ben E. King, died of heart failure at the age of 69 in Warsaw, North Carolina.
2004:  In today's episode of "Inmates Run Rap Music", C-Murder was indicted on charges of attempted second degree murder in Louisiana.  The person with no morals shot a Baton Rouge nightclub owner in 2001 and with any luck, that rap star will spend the rest of his life as an inmate.
2005:  John Densmore, drummer of the Doors, won a court ruling that prevented the other two surviving members, Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger, from using the group's name as part of their show called "The Doors of the 21st Century".  
2005:  Eugene Record of the Chi-Lites died of cancer in Chicago, Illinois at the age of 64.
2006:  Johnny Cash had a posthumous #1 album with American V:  A Hundred Highways.
2007:  Paul Potts had the top U.K. album with One Chance.
2007:  We have a Part Two in our continuing series on "Dangerous Inmates Run Rap Music".  Ja Rule and Lil Wayne were arrested after a concert in Manhattan for carrying illegal firearms.
2009:  The Eagles performed at the Pavilhão Atlântico in Lisbon, Portugal.


Born This Day:
1924:  Margaret Whiting ("The Money Tree" from 1956) was born in Detroit, Michigan; died January 10, 2011 in Englewood, New Jersey.
1937:  Chuck Jackson ("Any Day Now" from 1962) was born in Latta, South Carolina.  (Note:  some websites claim Chuck was born June 22 or July 27.  Unfortunately, no credible websites exist for his official birthdate, but our best research indicates he was born July 22.)
1940:  George Clinton, leader of both Parliament and Funkadelic, was born in Kannapolis, North Carolina.
1941:  Thomas Wayne ("Tragedy" from 1959) was born in Batesville, Mississippi; died in a car accident at the age of 30 on August 15, 1971.

1943:  Bobby Sherman was born in Santa Monica, California.

1944:  Rick Davies, singer/songwriter/keyboardist and founder of Supertramp, was born in Swindon, Wiltshire, England.
1944:  Estelle Bennett of the Ronettes; died of colon cancer at her home in Englewood, New Jersey February 11, 2009.

1947:  Don Henley, founder, drummer, elite songwriter and co-lead singer of the Eagles, and a solo star, was born in Gilmer, Texas.
1961:  Keith Sweat was born in Manhattan, New York.  (Note:  several websites say Sweat was born in Harlem, New York.  Harlem is a neighborhood, not a city, and will never be included on an official birth certificate.  Cities, counties and states are the only locations listed on a birth certificate, and Keith's says he was born in Manhattan.)
1963:  Emily Sailers of the Indigo Girls was born in New Haven, Connecticut.
1964:  William Calhoun, drummer of Living Colour, was born in the Bronx, New York.  (Note:  Wikipedia reports Calhoun was born in Brooklyn.  'Drummerzone.com' states he was born in the Bronx.  The scale tilts towards Brooklyn in this case.)
1967:  Pat Badger, bass guitarist of Extreme, was born in Boston, Massachusetts.
1973:  Daniel Jones, vocalist and songwriter of Savage Garden and now a record producer, was born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England.
1973:  Rufus Wainwright, son of Loudon Wainwright III, was born in Rhinebeck, New York.

Five Best: Billy Idol

One of the most successful of the "new wave" artists of the 80's, here are the Five Best* from Billy Idol:

1.  "White Wedding"

 

2.  "Eyes Without a Face"

3.  "Rebel Yell"

 

4.  "Mony, Mony"

5.  "Hot in the City"

The Top 100 Instrumentals of the Rock Era, Part 9

You will find several lists of the top instrumentals so this one is far from being the only one.  It is, however, unique in that I tried to base it on what the public thinks, leaving my personal bias out of it.  For it doesn't matter what a so-called "expert" or professional in the music business thinks.  History will always record what the public likes.

So I base a good deal of this list on chart performance at the time, single and album sales to this point in history, and how the song holds up today.  I have put a considerable amount of time and effort into coming up with this list.    

What is great about instrumentals is that the songwriter is free to focus solely on the music.  Artists today have gotten away from that--when you strip the song from its jive and 21st century sound effects, all you have is the music.  By listening to these instrumentals, hopefully we'll get back to what matters when composing a song. 

 Of course, I do realize that beginning in the 1980's, we as a society began cutting music programs to the bone so really we have only ourselves to blame for the poor quality of "music" these days.  I know my own knowledge of music (I play the saxophone, clarinet and have played piano since age 5 and was in a group of 12 that was selected to sing at our church's world conference in Portland, Oregon and then toured throughout the country...) would not have been as great were it not for music education in the schools.  I hope we can get back to providing more funds for that, to stimulate our children's interest in music.

Getting back to the other "lists" you may see on the web.  They are great, but what is a music site without music?!  Thus, you actually get to hear the songs that are in the list.  Many I was not familiar with until I started researching for this special.

For navigation, the song titles are below the embedded YouTube video.  For ease of use, I have separated the list into 10 segments of 10 songs each.  I strongly recommend playing each song in order--with any luck (if I've done my homework (and I have!)), each one should sound better than the last.  At least that's the goal.

The Top 10 Instrumentals of the Rock Era* will appear July 24.  Here now, numbers 20 through 11--













20.  "The Hustle", by Van McCoy





McCoy came up with the song after popular line and partner forms of a dance called "The Hustle" emerged.  The partner form of the dance is usually called "The New York Hustle" or "The Latin Hustle".  The cast of the movie "Saturday Night Fever" came up with "The Tango Hustle".  Up against songs like "Listen to What the Man Said", "Jive Talkin'", "One of These Nights" and "I'm Not in Love", McCoy's song reached #1 on July 26, 1975.  It was #2 for two weeks on the Adult Contemporary chart, went gold and won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.





McCoy has over 700 copyrights to his credit as a writer, co-writer or arranger.  He was the lead singer and songwriter of the Starlighters for a brief time.  McCoy was then hired as a staff writer at Scepter Records, writing songs for Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Nat King Cole, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Tom Jones, the Shirelles, Chad & Jeremy, Ruby and the Romantics, Nancy Wilson, Barbara Lewis and others.












19.  "A Fifth of Beethoven" by the Walter Murphy Band







"A Fifth of Beethoven" was adapted from Beethoven's "5th Symphony".  Murphy played nearly every instrument on the song but was inexplicably forced by his record label to credit it to an imaginary ensemble.  "A Fifth of Beethoven" reached #1 on the popular chart, sold over a million copies and remained a best-seller for 28 weeks.  It didn't hurt that the song was later included on the blockbuster "Saturday Night Fever" Soundtrack.





Murphy took piano and organ lessons at the age of four.  He studied both Classical and Jazz music piano at the Manhattan School of Music.  He worked for a while as the arranger for Doc Severinson and "The Tonight Show" band.  In the early 70's, Murphy wrote advertising jingles for Revlon and Woolworth's, among others.    








18.  "Exodus" by Ferrante & Teicher

"Exodus" is the theme song from the movie starring Paul Newman.  It was written by Ernest Gold and won a Grammy Award for Song of the Year (The score to the movie by Gold also won an Academy Award for Best Original Score.)  Ferrante & Teicher reached #2 in 1960 with the song, which sold over a million copies.





Ferrante & Teicher were one of the best-selling Easy Listening acts of the 1960's.  They played to packed concert houses, performing up to 100 times a year at their peak.  They posted 10 Top 10 hits over a 13-year period.








17.  "A Taste of Honey" by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass

Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow wrote "A Taste of Honey" as a theme to a Shelagh Delaney play that was made into a movie in 1961.  Martin Denny recorded the song and won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Theme.  In 1966, Alpert and the Tijuana Brass recorded the song and reached #1 for five weeks on the Easy Listening Chart and #7 on the Popular chart.  Alpert won Grammys Please Please Me.







Alpert and his wife Lani Hall donated $30 million to UCLA to form and endow the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. They gave $24 million to CalArts

16.  "Joy" by Apollo 100

"Joy" was based on "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" by Johann Sebastian Bach.  British Jigsaw (later shortened to Jigsaw, who had the hit "Sky High" in 1975), originally recorded the song on their album in 1970.  Apollo 100 remade the song and it reached #6 in 1972.

Apollo 100 was a British studio group formed by arranger and multi-instrumentalist Tom Parker. The group concentrated on light classical pieces on two albums in the early 70's.   













15.  "Gonna' Fly Now" by Maynard Ferguson


"Gonna' Fly Now" is of course the theme from the blockbuster movie "Rocky" starring Sylvester Stallone and Burgess Meredith.  Bill Conti did the music for the soundtrack and enough stations played that version to take it to #1 on Billboard's chart.  The reality is that most radio stations (and far more people) preferred the "jazzed-up" version of the song by Maynard Ferguson, but the record company took too long to release it, and of course a station couldn't play two versions of the same song when people were already tired of the Conti version.





Ferguson was playing piano and violin by age four.  At age nine, he heard a cornet and began playing that as well.  By 13, Ferguson soloed with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra.  Ferguson won a scholarship to the Conservatoire de musique du Quebec a Montreal.  



Ferguson began playing in Stan Keaton's orchestra, and played alongside Doc Severinson in the Charlie Barnet Band before forming his own band in 1957.  In 1950, 1951 and 1952, Ferguson won the Down Beat Readers' Poll as best trumpeter.  Ferguson could play an incredibly high register (the high-high notes!).  He became a session player for Paramount Pictures and played on 46 soundtracks including "The Ten Commandments". 

14. "Nadia's Theme" by Barry DeVorzon and Perry Botkin, Jr.

This song (originally titled "Cotton's Dream" and including lyrics) was written by Barry DeVorzon and Perry Botkin, Jr. for the movie "Bless the Beasts and the Children".  Two years later, the pair rearranged the song for the television soap opera "The Young and the Restless", which used it as its theme beginning March 26, 1973.  The song was renamed "Nadia's Theme" when ABC television requested it as the background for a montage they were putting together of Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci.  Comaneci so captured the world's attention with her perfect "10" routines in the 1976 Summer Olympics that A&M Records decided to release the single a month later as "Nadia's Theme". 


"Nadia's Theme" reached #8 on both the popular chart and the Adult Contemporary chart, sold over a million copies and won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement. 





 DeVorzon worked with Marty Robbins, Dorsey and Johnny Burnette.  He founded Valiant Records in the mid-60's and signed the Association to his label.  DeVorzon also wrote the "Theme from S.W.A.T.", which we have already heard in The Top 100 Instrumentals*, and co-wrote "In the City" for the movie "The Warriors" with Joe Walsh.  Devorzon and Botkin together wrote "Bless the Beasts and the Children" for the Carpenters, which received an Academy Award nomination.

Botkin worked as an arranger with Barbra Streisand, Carly Simon, Bobby Darin, Harry Nilsson, the Lettermen, Ed Ames, Harpers Bizarre, the Cascades ("Rhythm of the Rain"), Jose Feliciano ("Feliz Navidad") and others.

13.  "Theme From 'Romeo & Juliet'" by Henry Mancini

The song, also known as "A Time for Us" is from the movie "Romeo & Juliet", which starred Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey.  The song began competing for airplay on a Florida radio station with songs by the Beatles and Rolling Stones and gradually, more stations played it.  The record company was forced to release the song as a single and it topped the popular chart for two weeks and the Easy Listening chart for eight weeks. 

Mancini composed music "Breakfast at Tiffany's", the powerful movie "Days of Wine and Roses" starring Jack Lemmon, the great movie "Silver Streak", for all the "Pink Panther" movies starring Peter Sellers, and dozens of others.   Mancini was nominated for an unprecedented 72 Grammys, winning 20, was nominated for 18 Academy Awards, winning four, and also won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for two Emmys. 

12.  "TSOP" by MFSB and the Three Degrees

"TSOP" was the theme of the popular television show "Soul Train" for years and was the first disco song to reach #1.  There are two vocal parts of the song performed by the Three Degrees but the song is considered an instrumental.  "TSOP" reached #1 for two weeks, was #1 on the R&B chart for a week and #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart for two weeks.

MFSB Record producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff assembled a group of about 30 studio musicians that became known as MFSB, which stood for Mother, Father, Sister, Brother (not that the musicians were related but that they were connected musically).  In 1978, MFSB recorded a cover of "K-Jee", which was featured in a prominent scene of the blockbuster movie "Saturday Night Fever". 

 

11.  "Green Onions" by Booker T. & the MG's

Booker T & the MG's composed music for this 45 while waiting for a Sun Recording artist to show up for a session.  They wrote a blues song called "Behave Yourself".  The studio engineer (Jim Stewart) liked the song and wanted to put it out on a 45.  They of course needed something to put on the flip side  The group decided to play one of the songs Booker T (age 17 at the time) had been playing on piano but using the Hammond M3 organ instead.  That way, both songs would feature the Hammond.  That song would be known as "Green Onions".    The group brought the song to WLOK in Washington, D.C. the day after recording it.  DJ's ignored the A-side and played "Green Onions" instead.  Subsequent pressings had "Green Onions" as the A-side.


"Green Onions" reached #3 in 1962 and sold over a million copies.  

Booker T and the MG's (MG of course stands for the famous sports car but to avoid legal problems the group said that it stood for "Memphis Group") recorded with all the greats on the Stax label, including Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes, but they also recorded their own music in between sessions.  The group consisted of Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Al Jackson and Lewie Steinberg.  Steinberg was replaced in 1964 by Donald "Duck" Dunn.