1973
In black music,the trends were toward seminal disco,middle-of-the-road soul and the topical song;sometimes those trends overlapped.After 1972's hard-edged Back Stabbers,the O'jays seemed to be more forgiving on Love Train. The song actually contained a plea for unity in Third World trouble spots.
Sounds of The Seventies
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Gladys Knight and the Pips,who made their debut in 1961,scored their 25th chart entry and their first No.1 with the soft,silky Midnight Train to Georgia. Jim Weatherly,who wrote the song based on a conversation with a friend,had recorded it first as a country-pop ballad called Midnight Plane to Houston for an independent label.Atlanta producer Sonny Limbo rewrote the lyrics for Cissy Houston (mother of Whitney,first cousin to Dionna Warwick),whose version Gladys Knight,an Atlanta native herself,eclipsed.
The Spinners,who had been around (as the Detroit Spinners) since 1957, came to Atlantic Records courtesy of Aretha Franklin and quickly hooked up with producer Thom Bell.With Phillipe Wynne taking over leads,the group updated the traditional black harmony sound on their 1973 album,The Spinners,which spawned four hit singles,including Could it Be I'm Falling in Love. Their fellow Motown alumni,the Four Tops were in the midst of updating their classic sound on such sides as Ain't No Woman. Curtis Mayfield,the lead voice and writer behind the impressions from 1958 to 1970,contributed the title song to the "blaxploitation" flick Superfly, which glorified a dope dealer about whom Curtis was ambivalent.
Marvin Gaye's Let's Get it On album was a celebration of eros that sought to reconcile his notion of perfect sex,and perfect love,with his strict Apostolic upbringing.As Gaye was recording co-producer Ed Townsend's title song.Townsend's friend Janis Hunter,the daughter of jazz hipster Slim Gaillard,visted the studio.At 16,Janis was 17 years younger than Gaye,then still enemeshed in a bad marriage with a woman(Anne Gordy,Motown presdent Berry Gordy's sister)17 years his senior.But Gaye loved Janis at first sight and directed the song to her as a plea for transcendent sex and love.Marvin and Janis were soon inseparable,and they married in 1977.
1973
Despite frequent chart singles,Steely Dan was not a singles band.In fact,it was not really a band at all.Steely Dan was basically a studio vehicle for two sophisticated writers and a producer.The writers were Donald Fagen and Walter Becker,who met in 1967 while students at elite Bard College in upstate New York,where they formed the Bad Rock Group,featuring future comedian Chevy Chase on drums.In 1969,the pair left Barb (only Fagen graduated,with a degree in English lit) and moved to New York City to sell songs.They wrote and cut the sound track to an early Richard Pryor film,You Gotta Walk it Like you Talk it (the music wasn't released on record until nearly a decade later.) When their music failed to get off the ground,they joined Jay and The Americans,through whom they met producer Richard Katz.Late in 1971 Katz took the job of staff producer at ABC-Dunhill in Hollywood on the condition that Fagen and Becker be hired as staff writers.
Despite frequent chart singles,Steely Dan was not a singles band.In fact,it was not really a band at all.Steely Dan was basically a studio vehicle for two sophisticated writers and a producer.The writers were Donald Fagen and Walter Becker,who met in 1967 while students at elite Bard College in upstate New York,where they formed the Bad Rock Group,featuring future comedian Chevy Chase on drums.In 1969,the pair left Barb (only Fagen graduated,with a degree in English lit) and moved to New York City to sell songs.They wrote and cut the sound track to an early Richard Pryor film,You Gotta Walk it Like you Talk it (the music wasn't released on record until nearly a decade later.) When their music failed to get off the ground,they joined Jay and The Americans,through whom they met producer Richard Katz.Late in 1971 Katz took the job of staff producer at ABC-Dunhill in Hollywood on the condition that Fagen and Becker be hired as staff writers.
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1973
Steely Dan,named after the dildo in William Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch. Their debut album,Can't Buy a Thrill dealt mainly with experiences and acquaintances as Bard. Reeling in the Years made a mockery of one man's claim to genius; Do it Again described an obsessive loser.The music was hookladen,jazz-inflected and often propelled by Latin-derived rhythms,while the lyrics were obscure and surreal--all of which contributed to Steely Dan's image as the thinking man's Top 40 band.But personnel changed so regularly,and the two principals disliked touring so much,that by 1974 they had left the road entirely and existed solely as a studio duo with a rotating cast of sidemen.Steely Dan continued on this basis into the early 80s.
Steely Dan,named after the dildo in William Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch. Their debut album,Can't Buy a Thrill dealt mainly with experiences and acquaintances as Bard. Reeling in the Years made a mockery of one man's claim to genius; Do it Again described an obsessive loser.The music was hookladen,jazz-inflected and often propelled by Latin-derived rhythms,while the lyrics were obscure and surreal--all of which contributed to Steely Dan's image as the thinking man's Top 40 band.But personnel changed so regularly,and the two principals disliked touring so much,that by 1974 they had left the road entirely and existed solely as a studio duo with a rotating cast of sidemen.Steely Dan continued on this basis into the early 80s.
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By prevailing rock standards,which in 1973 were fairly conservative.Steely Dan was positively avant-grade.In contrast.Billy Preston's brand of pop-soul couldn't have been more mainstream. Preston came out of L.A.'s black churches;he went secular when he toured with Sam Cooke and Little Richard in the early 60's.
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1973
In 1965,Billy Preston played keyboards in the Shindogs,the house band for the TV show Shindig, then began working with Ray Charles.Spotted by George Harrison playing with Charles in 1971,Preston was tapped to perform on the Beatles' Get Back record.He signed with their label,Apple,which went under in financial chaos after he cut two LPs,and Preston returned to L.A. to record for A&M.Following his first hit,the instrumental Outa-Space, he got the words that would become Will It Go Round in Circles stuck in his head but couldn't find a decent melody.His writing partner Bruce Fisher did however,and when the song eventually topped the charts,Fisher quit his job in the NBC mailroom in Burbank.
In 1965,Billy Preston played keyboards in the Shindogs,the house band for the TV show Shindig, then began working with Ray Charles.Spotted by George Harrison playing with Charles in 1971,Preston was tapped to perform on the Beatles' Get Back record.He signed with their label,Apple,which went under in financial chaos after he cut two LPs,and Preston returned to L.A. to record for A&M.Following his first hit,the instrumental Outa-Space, he got the words that would become Will It Go Round in Circles stuck in his head but couldn't find a decent melody.His writing partner Bruce Fisher did however,and when the song eventually topped the charts,Fisher quit his job in the NBC mailroom in Burbank.
Several black artists enjoyed crossovers in 1973. The Pointer Sisters,daughters of an Oakland preacher,were singing pop songs in nightclubs when local producer David Rubinson enlisted them as backup singers.Soon the sisters were under management contract to Bill Graham,Rubinson's former employer,but after two failed singles with Atlantic Records Rubinson extricated them from both managers and ladel and signed the group with Blue Thumb. Yes We Can Can, an Allen Toussaint song,established the Pointers with the upscale nightclub crowd still fond of good pop material.
1973
Dobbie Gray,Timmy Thomas and Johnny Nash all had surprise hits in 1973.Gray had scored in 1965 with The In Growd, then disappeared into law school and acting before resurfacing in a 1971 band called Pollution.While singing demos for Paul Williams,Gray met the diminutive songwriter's brother Mentor,a Nashville veteran and staff writer for A&M.Mentor soon put Gray back on the charts with Drift Away,a ballad about the increasingly subject of rock'n' roll.
Dobbie Gray,Timmy Thomas and Johnny Nash all had surprise hits in 1973.Gray had scored in 1965 with The In Growd, then disappeared into law school and acting before resurfacing in a 1971 band called Pollution.While singing demos for Paul Williams,Gray met the diminutive songwriter's brother Mentor,a Nashville veteran and staff writer for A&M.Mentor soon put Gray back on the charts with Drift Away,a ballad about the increasingly subject of rock'n' roll.
1973
A former student at the Stan Kenton Jazz Clinic,Timmy Thomas became a sessions mainstay at TK Productions in Miami,where KC and The Sunshine Band,Betty Wright,Little Beaver,and George and Gwen McCrae recorded.Thomas improvised the solo keyboard tune Why Can't We live Together one night in a club,and it ultimately became a two million-seller.Johnny Nash's Stir it Up was the first hit on the American charts written by Bob Marley (whose group,the Wailers,played on the album that contained this song). Soul journeyman Nash had been following Jamaican music ever since filming the melodrama Take a Giant Step on the island in 1958.
A former student at the Stan Kenton Jazz Clinic,Timmy Thomas became a sessions mainstay at TK Productions in Miami,where KC and The Sunshine Band,Betty Wright,Little Beaver,and George and Gwen McCrae recorded.Thomas improvised the solo keyboard tune Why Can't We live Together one night in a club,and it ultimately became a two million-seller.Johnny Nash's Stir it Up was the first hit on the American charts written by Bob Marley (whose group,the Wailers,played on the album that contained this song). Soul journeyman Nash had been following Jamaican music ever since filming the melodrama Take a Giant Step on the island in 1958.
1973
In 1973,hits by black artists just kept on coming.War's The World Is a Ghetto appeared initially as the 10-minute title track on their million-selling album.Al Green's Call Me (Come Back Home) was his sixth consecutive million-seller in the sweet southern groove he struck with producer Willie Mitchell.The Spinners' One of a Kind (Love Affair) was the third of four hits from their first Atlantic Album, produced by Philly whiz Thorm Bell, after the Detroit group fled Motown.
In 1973,hits by black artists just kept on coming.War's The World Is a Ghetto appeared initially as the 10-minute title track on their million-selling album.Al Green's Call Me (Come Back Home) was his sixth consecutive million-seller in the sweet southern groove he struck with producer Willie Mitchell.The Spinners' One of a Kind (Love Affair) was the third of four hits from their first Atlantic Album, produced by Philly whiz Thorm Bell, after the Detroit group fled Motown.
1973
Gladys Knight and The Pips were in the process of leaving Motown for Buddah Records when their interpretation of Weatherly's country-flavored Neither One Of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye) became their third million-seller and their second-biggest hit.Marvin Gaye was with Motown when he cut Trouble Man, the title tune to his score for the blaxploitation film.Gaye had always wanted to do an album of jazz instrumentals,and this score (only the hit single had lyrics) was as close as he came;it was also the first substantial vehicle for his newfound infatuation with the Moog synthesixer.
Gladys Knight and The Pips were in the process of leaving Motown for Buddah Records when their interpretation of Weatherly's country-flavored Neither One Of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye) became their third million-seller and their second-biggest hit.Marvin Gaye was with Motown when he cut Trouble Man, the title tune to his score for the blaxploitation film.Gaye had always wanted to do an album of jazz instrumentals,and this score (only the hit single had lyrics) was as close as he came;it was also the first substantial vehicle for his newfound infatuation with the Moog synthesixer.
1973
Arena rock continued to come into its own in 1973.Edgar Winter,brother of Texas blues-rock guitar sensation Johnny Winter,abandoned his southern roadhouse band White Trash for the Edgar Winter group.This group's Free Ride was kicked along by the guitar of future heavy-metal hero Ronnie Montrose.
Arena rock continued to come into its own in 1973.Edgar Winter,brother of Texas blues-rock guitar sensation Johnny Winter,abandoned his southern roadhouse band White Trash for the Edgar Winter group.This group's Free Ride was kicked along by the guitar of future heavy-metal hero Ronnie Montrose.