Robert Mitchum's facial expression on the movie poster, a bit more puzzlement than dismay, sums up the critical reaction to Ryan's Daughter and probably those of most viewers. The otherwise celebrated British director David Lean asked for over three hours of audiences' time to tell this generally unhappy tale set in a nationalist village on the Irish coast circa 1917, where idle, slow-evolving citizens dwell. More spirited than any of them is a publican's daughter named Rosy (Sarah Miles), who marries the low-key teacher, a widower who is oddly cast but played admirably by Mitchum.
Rosy's bubbling youth finds more age-appropriate physical release in a shell-shocked British soldier played by Christopher Jones (Wild in the Streets), who is an eerie, android-like character that makes maybe twenty short utterances. Word about the affair gets out, local outrage simmers, and when an effort by the villagers to aid a band of Irish gunrunners goes awry, Rosy becomes their scapegoat and they mob her, shaving her head and tearing off her clothes. After this, Mitchum nonetheless finds it in his heart to forgive his humiliated wife. His goodness serves, ostensibly, as the film's moral center. Or maybe it's the common-sense humanity of Father Collins (Trevor Howard), or the impressionable classroom children, or the ever-beautiful Irish landscape.
Much legendry exists about Jones's unpleasant experiences shooting this film (getting drugged by Lean and Miles; a resulting auto accident; impatience and friction with Lean; having his voice dubbed; and grieving over news of Sharon Tate's murder) which prompted him to quit show business entirely. Director Lean almost did too, waiting fourteen more years before directing another feature film (A Passage to India in 1984).
Among the themes locating Ryan's Daughter at the turn of the decade were political complexity and frustration, sexual liberation and frustration, and—perhaps a bit more below the surface—the innocence of children and their subjection to the dramas of adults. The classroom scenes with Mitchum and his pupils are few, but they linger because they lift your spirits, however moderately, the way few other scenes in the production do. They also give insight into the character of Rosy, who had fallen for Mitchum's character as one of his former students.
The music in Ryan's Daughteris what makes me, especially, pull Mitchum's poster face. David Lean had apparently requested that composer Maurice Jarre, who'd also done the scores for Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965), bring forth no overtly Irish musical signifiers. (Was this an effort to distance the project emotionally from the real-life tensions simmering in Northern Ireland at the time?) The theme Jarre delivered, then, feels like continental schlager, in the vein of "Mack the Knife" or "Those Were the Days," lending a musical incongruence that discourages any melancholic sympathy.
A 1971 album by the Mike Curb Congregation called Burning Bridges and Other Great Motion Picture Themes included two selections from Ryan's Daughter with a fresh set of lyrics written by Curb and Mack David. The film's main title appeared as "It Was a Good Time (Rosy's Theme)" along with "Where Was I When the Parade Went By? (The Major)." The former played well as a new popular vocal standard. Although Eydie Gorme, a Billboard chart regular since 1953, had the only Billboard charting version (Easy Listening #23 in 1971), Liza Minnelli gave it prominent airtime in her 1972 TV special Liza with a Z.
"It Was a Good Time (Rosy's Theme)" (1970) - Eydie Gormé
Written by Maurice Jarre (music), Mike Curb (lyrics), and Mack David (lyrics) * Produced by Don Costa * LP: It Was a Good Time * 45: "It Was a Good Time (Rosy's Theme)" / "Rosy's Theme" (Don Costa) * Label: MGM * Charts: Billboard Easy Listening (#23)
"It Was a Good Time" made an easy argument for its suitability in any cabaret with its Italian musica leggera vibe and can-can cadence. (The seagulls and tide during the intro are the only elements acknowledging Ryan's Daughter's Irish coastal setting.) Gormé stayed in the spirit for her follow-up single, a non-charting version of Danyel Gerard's popular schlager singalong "Butterfly." The 45 flipside for "It Was a Good Time" contained a rare, vinyl-only instrumental version, titled "Rosy's Theme" and credited to producer Don Costa.
Gormé would reprise the song in a different version with her husband Steve Lawrence for their World of Steve and Eydie album in 1972. Here they would sing songwriter Hubert Ithier's French lyrics as "Rose D'Irlande" before singing it through as "It Was a Good Time" in English.
The biggest musical curiosity in Bless the Beasts and the Children, Stanley Kramer's film version of a novel by Glendon Swarthout, is an early appearance of what came to be known as "Nadia's Theme." Listed as "Cotton's Theme" on the soundtrack, that hypnotic melody gives the proceedings a dusky pathos, even playing in an uptempo arrangement to accompany a buffalo stampede. The movie depicts six adolescent misfits, victims of short-sighted parenting who become known as the humiliation-prone "bedwetters" at an Arizona boys camp. After witnessing a population-control buffalo shoot, they sneak out in the night on an adventure to set the beasts free, with tragedy lurking near the end in proper bummer film-era fashion.
Although Bless the Beasts and the Children resonates loudest as a general study in societal ills, a clearer-cut anti-war moral does struggle to emerge. The boys journey like a rag-tag military cavalry on horseback and also in a rusty jeep, with an angst-ridden ringleader named Cotton who wears an army helmet and addresses them as "men." (Lost in Space-vet Billy Mumy is the coolest of these kids, with his deadpan, mistrustful gaze; Miles Chapin seems based on the 1969 Hardy Boys cartoon character "Chubby," even appearing at one point wearing an ascot.) The Vietnam War looms largest as a parallel, with the boys aiming to rescue a weaker ally in spite of unforeseen complexity. Mere absurdity, too, functions reliably as an allegorical ingredient.
The Carpenters' theme song, written by Barry DeVorzon and Perry Botkin, Jr., is a solid entry in the early '70s hit parade of childhood awareness, a glaring counterpoint during the early upsurge of Me Generation cultural behavior. "The world can never be the world they see," go the lyrics, with musical accompaniment that sounds clearly elegiac, if not funereal. (You can read more about the era's pronounced interest in childhood in chapter 1 of my book, Early '70s Radio.) By the time this song had appeared as the B-side of their "Superstar" single, the Carpenters had become well-established sovereigns in the new realm of soft-rock, where the young adult expressions and concerns of the post-sixties could foster and abide. This sort of balladry had long-reaching influence. Listen to how the melody resolves at the end of each verse in "Bless the Beasts and the Children" and see how it reminds you of Lionel Richie and Diana Ross's "Endless Love," which came out a full decade later.
"Bless the Beasts and the Children" found enough radio traction to peak at #67 on the Billboard Hot 100, riding on the fumes of its movie placement and its hit A-side, which peaked at #2. The soundtrack album included a version with a vibraphone intro, which is different from the oboe intro on the versions the Carpenters would otherwise release on 45 and LP. The vibraphone version, with its blurry, tear-in-the-eye sound, has the more emotional effect.
"Bless the Beasts and the Children" (1971)
The Carpenters
Written by Barry DeVorzon and Perry Botkin, Jr. * Produced by Jack Daugherty * Arranged by Richard Carpenter * 45: "Superstar" / "Bless the Beasts and the Children" * LP: Bless the Beasts and the Children (soundtrack); A Song for You (1972) * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#67), Easy Listening (#26) * Entered: 1971-11-27 (peaked in 1972)
"Bless the Beasts and the Children"
"Bless the Beasts and the Children" (soundtrack version)
"Love's Street and Fool's Road" (1972) - Solomon Burke
Written and produced by Solomon Burke * 45: "Love's Street and Fool's Road" / "I Got to Tell It" * LP: Cool Breeze * Label: MGM * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#89), soul (#13) * Entered: 1972-04-15 (Hot 100), 1972-04-22 (soul)
Directed by Barry Pollack, Cool Breeze did whatever it could to live up to the term "blaxploitation." On display most prominently were the era's favorite caricaturizations of urban blackness and, as a dreary bonus, an unwavering commitment to chauvinism. Its biggest mishap, though, was closing credits that stunned viewers by even being there. Their first line should have read, "we didn't know what else to do, and we're out of money, so we're just gonna end this." Even so, Cool Breeze does have the makings of a cult movie (which it's becoming) due to its funny dialogue and time capsule visuals, such as scenes where Thalmus Rasulala's assembled gang of diamond thieves wear Nixon and Agnew masks.
The choice of influential R&B singer Solomon Burke—whose chart success was on the wane after a busy 1960s—as the movie's soundtrack man is apropos because he, like one of Cool Breeze's characters, had something of a world-tainted preacher aura. As his obituary in the New York Times reports, Burke was known in his youth as a "wonder boy" at the pulpit whose competing love for life's temporal pleasures led him toward a music career that made them all available. (As the "king of rock and soul," he would appear on stage wearing a crown and robe.) In the film, a preacher who's also a safe cracker joins the heist squad, and one scene shows three of his cohorts awkwardly discussing business on a church pew, surrounded by elders and children who are trying to worship. It's a scene full of inner angel-devil conflict that Burke probably appreciated.
After the soul chart (and minor Hot 100) success of "Love's Street and Fool's Road," which features the kind of spoken interjections he was known for, Burke had only one more Hot 100 appearance and two more on the soul chart. In 2002, though (eight years before his death), he'd release the rally-round comeback album Don't Give Up on Me, full of songs by contemporary songwriting icons.
Side B previewed a song, written by J.W. Alexander and Willie Hutch, that would later show up on Burke's We're Almost Home LP the same year.
Before the Billy Jackmovie ever existed, the Original Caste reached the US Top 40 with "One Tin Soldier." After the early Dennis Lambert-Brian Potter composition with a "peace on earth" moral had run its course for them, though, the Calgary band could only manage to get three more songs to "bubble under" in 1970. The group who had been called the North Country Singers until 1968 would ultimately prove to have more traction in its homeland of Canada and in Japan.
After their flurry of early '70s success, the Original Caste managed to reconfigure off-and-on throughout the following decades under the ongoing leadership of Bruce Innes (who split up with his lead vocalist wife Dixie Lee in 1980). He's remained musically active since the sixties into the 2010s, having sung backup on the hit recording of John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High" along the way. Here are the Original Caste's four Billboard singles, including "One Tin Soldier, which entered the US charts in late 1969 but peaked in early 1970.
"One Tin Soldier" (1969) - The Original Caste
Written and produced by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter * Arranged by Artie Butler * 45: "One Tin Soldier" / "Live for Tomorrow" * LP: One Tin Soldier * Label: T.A. * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#34) * Entered: 1969-11-15
After signing to Bell subsidiary label TA, the Original Caste released this single written by their producers Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. Guitarist Bruce Innes reports not having any inkling that the song had actual hit potential until Chicago's WLS put it in hourly rotation. It seems strange that Billy Jack film composer Mundell Lowe opted to record a new version of a recent hit rather than licensing this one, but maybe the now-legendary shoestring budget of the film (one million dollars) demanded it. There was also the problem of TA/Bell Records being a division of Columbia Pictures, while Billy Jack was a project for Warner Bros., its competitor.
"One Tin Soldier"
"Mr. Monday" (1970) - The Original Caste
Written and produced by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter * Arranged by Artie Butler * 45: "Mr. Monday" / "Highway" * LP: One Tin Soldier * Label: TA * Billboard charts: Bubbling under (#119) * Entered: 1970-04-25
"Mr. Monday"—another Lambert-Pottter track—had a similar Pachelbel's Canon chord sequence as "One Tin Soldier" in the verses. A mystical piano hook, though, reminiscent of the one at the beginning of Pink Floyd's "Remember a Day" (1968), closes out the choruses. "Mr. Monday" would be the Original Caste's highest charting Canadian hit, reaching #4 and also selling thousands of copies in Japan. "Highway" on side B is a Bruce Innes track sung by Dixie Lee that can easily strike listeners as a more diverting bit of songcraft than "Mr. Monday." (The picture sleeve comes from the German edition.)
Side A: "Mr. Monday"
Side B: "Highway"
"Nothing Can Touch Me (Don't Worry Baby, It's Alright)" (1969) - The Original Caste
Written and produced by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter * Arranged by Artie Butler * 45: "Nothing Can Touch Me (Don't Worry Baby, It's Alright)" / "Country Song" * LP: One Tin Soldier * Label: TA * Billboard charts: Bubbling under (#114) * Entered: 1970-07-11
All of the Original Caste's US charting singles were Lambert-Potter compositions. "Nothing Can Touch Me" focused on the power of imagination (or some other unnamed power) to help you "sit and get high" when the "pressures of the day" get too heavy. In Canada, though, the flipside is the one radio stations spun and sent to #29 in RPM Weekly (Canada's chart authority until 2000).
Written and sung by Bruce Innes, "Country Song" is a Class A hippie social-crit anthem with weird and wise lyrics every bit as subversive—if not more so—than "One Toke Over the Line" or "Signs." Innes, channeling the melody and structure of "The Weight" by his countrymen the Band, sings of interactions with a warmongering "unknown soldier," cops "mowing down" kids for "passing their stuff around," and the "beer cans and swill" in public waters. There's no question this song inspired Five Man Electrical Band's Les Emmerson (from Ottawa) with its mood and attitude to write "Signs." Where Innes sings "I took off my boot and did a salute," Emmerson sings "I took off my hat and said 'Imagine that!" And the money line in the "Country Song" chorus is one every Canadian child of the seventies knows: "My neighbor Fred said God is dead, but I think he just moved away." US radio listeners definitely lost out on this one.
Side A: "Nothing Can Touch Me (Don't Worry Baby, It's Alright)"
Side B: "Country Song"
"Ain't That Tellin' You People" (1970) - The Original Caste
Written and produced by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter * Arranged by Artie Butler * 45: "Ain't That Tellin' You People" / "Sweet Chicago" * Label: TA * Billboard charts: Bubbling under (#117) * Entered: 1970-10-30
Lambert and Potter's "Ain't That Tellin' You People" had a "whole world needs some changin'" chorus that walked in step with the Five Stairsteps' "O-o-h Child" or the Brotherhood of Man's "United We Stand" (both from earlier in the year), and it did especially well on Canadian MOR stations, peaking at #2 on RPM Weekly's "MOR Playlist" chart. It becomes clear, when listening to the Original Caste's singles, though, that all the songs Bruce Innes wrote are especially worth paying attention to. His B-side "Sweet Chicago," a youth movement think piece about recent Chicago violence (e.g., the 1968 Democratic Convention) and gun control in general, taps into the pensive musical atmosphere of Brook Benton's "Rainy Night in Georgia," a late 1969/early 1970 hit. Which came first? Although the "One Tin Soldier" single came out in late '69, I'm pretty sure its album, which also included "Sweet Chicago," didn't roll out until spring 1970 or so.
Side A: "Ain't That Tellin' You People"
Side B: "Sweet Chicago"
*Canadian chart bonus*
"Sault Ste. Marie" (1971) - The Original Caste
Written and arranged by Bruce Innes * Produced by Roger Nichols * 45: "Sault Ste. Marie" / "When Love Is Near" * Billboard charts: —
By 1971, Dennis Lambert, Brian Potter, and arranger Artie Butler had parted ways with the Original Caste and, shortly before the TA subsidiary of Bell would shut down altogether, the group released one more single. This time around, it was Roger Nichols, the songwriting partner of Paul Williams, who sat in the producer's chair. And although an ad appeared in the March 20, 1971 issue of RPM Weekly clearly designating the Williams-Nichols composition "When Love Is Near" as the proper A side, the following week's issue showed the B side listed on the RPM 100, the Country 50 and the MOR Playlist charts. In that same issue, a young Terry David Mulligan plugged the song in a column and the magazine's singles review section panned the intended A side with a "WHO CARES??????" while praising "Sault Ste. Marie" as the "big side" and declaring it to be "about time the very talented and highly creative leader of this Canadian group received some recognition." And they were right about "Sault Ste. Marie," a rockin' Canada-centric road song with another classic line in the chorus: "I'm just trying to make it to Montreal / I do believe I'm going to hell." In truth, they were on their way to Japan for some touring, then into the studio, eventually, for a 1974 album on the Century II label, but no more rides up any pop charts.
The 1960s were Andy Williams's big decade, where his reassuring grin charmed TV cameras and his fail-safe croon comforted the generation gap's parental wing. His signature song "Moon River," from the 1961 Breakfast at Tiffany's film, became the theme song for his Andy Williams Show, which ran on NBC from 1962 to 1971 and helped create the template for the variety show format that dominated television throughout the following decade. Among Williams's early seventies highlights as one of easy listening radio's most reliable voices were definitive versions of the Love Story and Godfather movie themes, although his presence on the Billboard charts would fade by 1976 (not counting the now perennial Christmas reissue appearances.)
"Can't Help Falling in Love" (1970) - Andy Williams
Written by George David Weiss, Hugo Peretti, and Luigi Creatore * Produced by Dick Glasser * Arranged by Al Capps * 45: "Can't Help Falling in Love" / "Sweet Memories" * Label: Columbia * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#88); easy listening (#28) * Entered: 1970-02-28 (Hot 100/easy listening)
In the late sixties Columbia record executives determined that the way to keep their classic voices like Andy Williams and Tony Bennett commercially viable was through movie themes and contemporary hit covers. (Clive Davis, in his 1975 autobiography, reports Bennett as being none too happy about the strategy, favoring Great American Songbook standards.) Williams's first chart entry takes Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love" and straps it onto a bolting horse; the heights to which arranger Al Capps pushes Williams's vocal make him sound like a jockey trying not to lose control. This was a single-only release in the US, with a flipside called "Sweet Memories" taken from his 1969 Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head album. Written by Mickey Newbury, that song seemed to have all sorts of natural, unappreciated hit potential. It featured a melodic hook in the verses later used by John Denver in "Sunshine on My Shoulders," while the choruses allowed Williams to sing falsetto and (unlike the A-side) to glide with grace.
Side A: "Can't Help Falling in Love"
Side B: "Sweet Memories"
"One Day of Your Life" (1970) - Andy Williams
Written by Howard Greenfield and Neil Sedaka * Produced by Dick Glasser * Arranged by Al Capps * 45: "One Day of Your Life" / "Long Time Blues" * Label: Columbia * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#77); easy listening (#2) * Entered: 1970-06-06 (easy listening); 1970-06-27 (Hot 100)
The Andy Williams Show ran on NBC from 1962-1971 and had served as a convenient springboard for the popular easy listening crooner's record releases. For eight episodes during the summer of 1970, the program morphed into Andy Williams Presents Ray Stevens. This was an apparent trial run for the comedy country singer who had scored a surprise #1 earlier in the year with the earnest "Everything Is Beautiful." A June episode of the show featured a Williams guest turn where (in addition to wrangling with the show's ever-present "Cookie Bear") he performed this hyper-arranged Neil Sedaka-Howard Greenfield number, which sounded made to order for a Kodak commercial. (It also seemed poised to merge into a medley, at any moment, with Gary Puckett's "Young Girl.") Although the A-side was a single-only release, the rural B-side "Long Time Blues," written by "Classical Gas" guitarist/comedy writer Mason Williams (no relation), had shown up previously on the 1969 Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head album.
Side A: "One Day of Your Life"
Side B: "Long Time Blues"
*Non-charting bonus*
"Joanne" (1970) - Andy Williams
Written by Michael Nesmith * Produced by Mike Post * LP: The Andy Williams Show * Label: Columbia * Billboard charts: —
The Andy Williams Show LP, released in the fall of 1970, gathered up a handful of his previously recorded covers from the late sixties and added six freshly recorded ones ("Joanne," "Make It With You," "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life," "Close to You," "El Condor Pasa," and "Snowbird"), then added applause tracks and segue music. Produced by Mike Post, the album presented a more scaled-down band sound as opposed to the big, orchestral approach more typically found on an Andy Williams record, and sold respectably in the US while going top ten in the UK. "Joanne" is Williams's steel-guitar countrypolitan version of ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith's #21 hit from earlier in the year. The song's baying vocal hook is perhaps what got the dog on the cover participating. In 1971, the album appeared on one of the rare surviving playlists of Los Angeles MOR station KMPC, which justifies inclusion here.
"Joanne"
"Home Lovin' Man" (1970) - Andy Williams
Written by Roger Greenaway, Roger Cook, and Tony Macaulay * Produced by Dick Glasser * Arranged by Artie Butler * 45: "Home Lovin' Man" / "Whistling in the Dark" * LP: Alone Again (Naturally) (1972, two years later) * Label: Columbia * Billboard charts: Easy listening (#10-1970; #27-1972) * Entered: 1970-10-24 and 1972-11-04
The three British songwriters Roger Greenaway, Roger Cook, and Tony Macaulay were late-sixties/early-seventies zeitgeist-crafting VIPs, generating between them such era-defining hits as "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing," "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress," "Gimme Dat Ding," and "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)." Their evocative, seafaring "Home Lovin' Man," though, which featured a "Whiter Shade of Pale" organ intro and an uncredited pianist sounding very much like Nicky Hopkins, had all the earmarks of a big hit in Britain, where Andy Williams's recording of it peaked at #7. (According to Williams, in his Moon River and Me memoir, the song had originally been intended for actor-singer Richard Harris, who was "irate" over the interception.) In the US, though, it only managed to go top ten on the easy listening chart. The flipside contained a big, Al Capps-orchestrated version of Henry Mancini's "Whistling Away in the Dark," from the Darling Lili film (starring Julie Andrews). Both sides were non-album tracks, reflecting a possible short-term effort on Columbia's part to keep Williams's singles and albums as separate marketing entities.
In 1972, "Home Lovin' Man" would reappear on the Alone Again (Naturally) album, with a reissue of the track as a single maxing out at #27 on the Billboard easy listening chart. Although the album itself bore the title of a Gilbert O'Sullivan song, the O'Sullivan-penned flipside for the "Home Lovin' Man" single reissue did not make the cut. Entitled "Who Was It," the recording had appeared on O'Sullivan's UK chart-topping LP Back to Front and charted in the US the following year in the distinctive voice of Hurricane Smith. Williams's version, though, features an unsettling, double-tracked lead vocal.
Side A: "Home Lovin' Man"
Side B: "Who Was It"
"(Where Do I Begin) Love Story" (1971) - Andy Williams
Written by Carl Sigman and Francis Lai * Produced by Dick Glasser * Arranged by Richard P. Hazard * 45: "(Where Do I Begin) Love Story"/"Something" * LP: Love Story * Label: Columbia * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#9); easy listening (#1) * Entered: 1971-02-06 (both charts)
Although Erich Segal's Love Story was enough of a bummer to fit early seventies film trends, it also had a sentimental, tearjerker quality, rife with images of two lovers (played by Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw) frolicking in the snow, to function as an effective cultural escape. The pervasive title theme (which contained no vocalized manifestations on the soundtrack) was among the last of the big multiple-version hits, although the Godfather theme tried to keep the tradition alive the following year. Out of the five charting recordings of this song, all of which competed with each other in early 1971, the crescendo-heavy Andy Williams version climbed highest at #9. Columbia label-mate Tony Bennett would enter the charts with an equally dramatic iteration a week later, but wouldn't be able to contend with a Williams single that had already caught fire. Side B contains a comparatively soothing interpretation of George Harrison's "Something," which alternates between cheerful horns and moody strings.
Side A: "Where Do I Begin (Love Story)"
Side B: "Something"
"A Song for You" (1971) - Andy Williams
Written by Leon Russell * Produced by Dick Glasser * Arranged by Ernie Freeman * 45: "A Song for You" / "You've Got a Friend" * LP: You've Got a Friend * Label: Columbia * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#82); easy listening (#29) * Entered: 1971-08-21 (Hot 100); 1971-08-28 (easy listening)
Oklahoma songwriter/musician Leon Russell had long established himself as an in-demand LA session player and side man by the time he recorded his first solo album, A Song for You, in 1970. With its sophisticated structure and expressive melody, the title track became a favorite cover tune for big voices. Andy Williams was among the first to interpret it, adding it to his You've Got a Friend album, which rounded up eleven versions of contemporary hits. With its opening chord sequence mirroring the first two chords from "Love Story," among more general similarities in mood throughout, it sounded like a suitable follow-up. An Al Capps-arranged show band version of "You've Got a Friend" appears on the B-side, while the back cover depicts a flashy Elton John look.
Side A: "A Song for You"
Side B: "You've Got a Friend"
"Love Is All" (1971) - Andy Williams
Written by Jack Elliott and Norman Gimbel * Produced by Dick Glasser * Arranged by Dick Hazard * 45: "Love Is All" / "Help Me Make It Through the Night" * Billboard charts: Easy listening (#29) * Entered: 1971-12-04
"Love Is All" was part three in Andy Williams's early seventies run of minor-key chansons nouvelles, the idea clearly being to replicate the success of "Love Story." This was another vocalized version of an instrumental movie theme, this time for Herbert Ross's bummer film T.R. Baskin, about a newly-independent young runaway (Candice Bergen) struggling to get a footing in Chicago. The era's preoccupations with the cold muddle of modern life are on full display along with ripe thematic offerings for timely feminist cultural critique. Disadvantaged by the film's poor reviews and box office receipts, though, "Love Is All" only managed an easy listening chart appearance before vanishing, never even showing up on an album. In 1973, Engelbert Humperdinck would barely dent the Hot 100 with the song. Side B of Williams's single is a version of Kris Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through the Night," about a lonely one night stand, and in spite of Ernie Freeman's atmospheric string arrangement, it comes off as a cruel swipe at Bergman's sexually vulnerable film character.
Side A: "Love Is All"
Side B: "Help Me Make It Through the Night"
"Music from Across the Way" (1972) - Andy Williams
Written by James Last and Carl Sigman * Produced by Dick Glasser * Arranged by Ernie Freeman * 45: "Music from Across the Way" / "The Last Time I Saw Her" * LP: Love Theme from "The Godfather" * Label: Columbia * Billboard charts: Easy listening (#30) * Entered: 1972-01-29
Like William's previous three singles, "Music from Across the Way" sailed the same melodramatic, minor-key waters as "Love Story." That song's Carl Sigman even provided lyrics for it, with German show band maestro James Last handling the music. Last's own version, sung by an anonymous choral group, outperformed Williams's, reaching the Hot 100 at #84 around the same time. After a brief easy listening chart appearance, the track would eventually turn up on Williams's forthcoming Love Theme from "The Godfather" album. For the opening piano line, arranger Ernie Freeman borrows from the Carpenters's "For All We Know" refrain. On side B of the single is a treatment of Gordon Lightfoot's 1968 track "The Last Time I Saw Her," which Glen Campbell had turned into a charting crossover single in 1971.
Side A: "Music from Across the Way"
Side B: "The Last Time I Saw Her"
"Speak Softly Love (Love Theme from The Godfather)" (1972) - Andy Williams
Written by Nino Rota and Larry Kusik * Produced by Dick Glasser * Arranged by Al Capps * 45: "Speak Softly Love (Love Theme from 'The Godfather')" / "Home for Thee" * LP: Love Theme from "The Godfather" * Label: Columbia * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (# 34); Easy listening (#7) * Entered: 1970-04-08 (both charts)
Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather turned Mario Puzo's best-selling mafia novel into the highest grossing film of 1972, demonstrating that the early seventies cinematic penchant for downbeat themes had blockbuster potential. Critical success accompanied it too, with many of its scenes and performances turning into cultural touchstones. Among the era's preoccupations playing out on screen were the plight of the antihero, a fascination with family and tradition at a time when both underwent unprecedented redefinition, and a "going back" instinct that reached toward ethnicity and roots.
In spite of this, Andy Williams, one of pop music's WASP-iest singers, ended up with the biggest hit version of the theme song, but he was primed and ready, having charted the previous four times with similarly sophisticated and stormy minor-key offerings. Composed for the soundtrack by the classically-oriented Nino Rota, veteran lyricist Larry Kusik then turned the theme into the vocal-friendly "Speak Softly Love." As Andrew J. Edelstein and Kevin McDonough said about the film in their The Seventies: From Hot Pants to Hot Tubs (1990), the record came off as "high art disguised as pop entertainment."
Aside from Williams, who had his final Top 40 appearance with the song, the only other singer to chart with it (#80) would be Al Martino, who had played washed up pop star Johnny Fontaine in the film. Instrumental versions by Roger Williams (#116), Carlo Savina (#66, from the soundtrack album), and Ferrante and Teicher (easy listening #28) also made chart showings. Side B of "Speak Softly Love" contained the 45-only track "Home for Thee," written by Paul Parrish. (Final tangential tidbit: Lyricist Larry Kusik was the uncle of the musician and music writer Lenny Kaye, for whom Kusik had once written and produced a record called "Crazy Like a Fox," on which Kaye used the pseudonym "Link Cromwell.")
Side A: "Speak Softly Love (Love Theme from The Godfather)"
Side B: "Home for Thee"
"MacArthur Park" (1972) - Andy Williams
Written by Jimmy Webb * Produced by Dick Glasser * Arranged by Artie Butler * 45: "MacArthur Park" / "Amazing Grace" * LP: Love Theme from "The Godfather" * Label: Columbia * Billboard charts: Bubbling under (#102) * Entered: 1972-08-05
Its high angst levels, epic length and "cake in the rain" lyrics have always invited critics to call it overbaked, but Jimmy Webb's "MacArthur Park" nonetheless touched some sort of psychological nerve in its time. Between 1968 and 1972, the actor Richard Harris (in the voice and persona of a mad Renaissance courtier), Waylon Jennings (with Grammy-winning dourness), the Four Tops, and Andy Williams all showed up on various Billboard charts with their own personalized recipes for it. No one did as well as Harris, who'd reached #2, but of the four, Williams served up the most palatable entry.
With an intro that hints at Burt Bacharach's "Trains and Boats and Plains" or the Bee Gees' "Words," the Artie Butler arrangement for this version bumps the severe minor-key verse section to the end while allowing the major-key bridge—in which Williams shames Harris on the high notes—to take precedence. In 1978 Donna Summer would elevate "MacArthur Park" to pop heaven, with a 45 that managed to clock in under four minutes and still seem grandiose. (She'd make an eighteen-minute behemoth available for discotheques.) The flipside of Williams's single was his contribution to Jesus Rock—a version of "Amazing Grace." This had previously appeared on his Alone Again (Naturally) album with an Al Capps arrangement taking cues from Judy Collins's acapella hit from early 1971.
Side A: "MacArthur Park"
Side B: "Amazing Grace"
"Solitaire" (1973) - Andy Williams
Written by Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody * Produced by Richard Perry * 45: "Solitaire" / "My Love" * LP: Solitaire * Billboard charts: Easy listening (#23) * Entered: 1973-10-06
With his Solitaire LP, Andy Williams shook things up by getting in the studio with producer Richard Perry, who had been on a hot streak with hit albums by Carly Simon, Harry Nilsson, and Ringo Starr, among others. The song selection included deeper album tracks along with the usual hit covers, while Williams's vocal sound now popped with slapback echo. Neil Sedaka's original 1972 recording of the album's title track had included more card metaphors in the chorus, which Williams and Perry had altered to Sedaka's apparent chagrin (as reported in Williams's Moon River and Me). After the song reached #4 in the UK and then became a Top 40 hit for the Carpenters, Sedaka likely set his grievances aside. The closing section of "Solitaire" transported listeners directly to the closing section of Nilsson's "Without You," a #1 hit for Perry in 1972. The Solitaire version of Paul McCartney's "My Love," with an uncomfortable rendering of its "whoah whoahs," takes up the B side. Another song from the album—a satisfying interpretation of "Getting Over You" by the British singer-songwriter Tony Hazzard—rose to #35 in England.
Side A: "Solitaire"
Side B: "My Love"
UK chart bonus: "Getting Over You"
"Remember" (1974) - Andy Williams and Noelle
Written by Harry Nilsson * Produced by Richard Perry * 45: "Remember" / "Walk Right Back" (Andy Williams) * LP: Solitaire * Label: Columbia * Billboard charts: Easy listening (#30) * Entered: 1974-01-05
Seventies TV had a thing for variety shows, in which hosts would guide viewers through a bevy of skits and musical numbers. A standard Christmas device brought audiences into a celebrity's "home," as Andy Williams had done every year since 1962. Although his show had run its course by 1971, he was back on air in 1973 for a December 13 Christmas special, which treated viewers to songs by Andy, his own brothers, his teen idol nephews the Williams Brothers, and his then-wife Claudine Longet. In one segment, Williams sings Harry Nilsson's "Remember Christmas" to Noelle, his ten-year-old daughter. This prompted Columbia to release a 45 of the song—which had also appeared on his recently released Solitaire album—with added dialogue and a verse sung by Noelle. The album version, thankfully, is free of these intrusions. A product of the '73 Christmas season, the record made its first chart appearance in January 1974. (Neither the 45 nor the album version of the song use Nilsson's full title of "Remember Christmas.") The venerable British session man Nicky Hopkins handled the gorgeous piano part, as he had done on the original 1972 recording by Nilsson, while the ever-reliable Gene Page worked his magic on the string arrangement. An unembarrassing iteration of the Everly Brothers' "Walk Right Back" from Solitaire, with tasteful Jimmy Calvert guitar lines, appears on the flipside.
Side A: "Remember"
Side B: "Walk Right Back"
"Love's Theme" (1974) - Andy Williams
Written by Aaron Schroeder and Barry White * Produced by Mike Curb * Arranged by Don Costa * 45: "Love's Theme" / "You're the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me" * LP: The Way We Were * Label: Columbia * Billboard charts: Easy listening (#16) * Entered: 1974-06-08
After Andy Williams's flirtation with contemporary album artistry on Solitaire, he appeared to drift back into easy listening assembly-line mode for his follow-up, The Way We Were. Every song but one—a Mike Curb-Alan Osmond variation on "O Holy Night" (listen to the bridge) called "If I Could Only Go Back Again"—paid tribute to established hits. Even so, Williams's vocal version of the Love Unlimited Orchestra's "Love's Theme" went down like a sweet disco ambrosia. Love Unlimited, the vocal trio on whose Under the Influence of Love album Barry White's instrumental first appeared, did their own vocalized take, also using Aaron Schroeder's lyrics, for their late 1974 In Heat album.
MGM mogul Mike Curb's involvement in the Columbia album as producer is a curiosity that perhaps had to do with some inter-label tit for tat. In 1966, MGM had released the soundtrack to the Columbia film Born Free, which may well have set the table for a deal like this. Williams's side-B easy listening performance of Jim Weatherly's "Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me" (with an added "You're" in the title), demonstrates the song's crossover elasticity—Gladys Knight had recently topped the soul chart with it while Ray Price did the same thing on the country chart, and both records appeared on the Hot 100 (Gladys Knight #3, Ray Price #82).
Side A: "Love's Theme"
Side B: "You're the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me"
Bonus: "If I Could Only Go Back Again"
"Another Lonely Song" (1974) - Andy Williams
Written by Billy Sherrill, Norro Wilson, and Tammy Wynette * Produced by Billy Sherrill * 45: "Another Lonely Song" / "A Mi Esposa con Amor" * LP: You Lay So Easy on My Mind * Label: Columbia * Billboard charts: Easy listening (#29) * Entered: 1974-09-21
With country music going through such aggressive crossover experimentation in the early seventies, it wasn't any kind of stretch for Andy Williams to "go country" for one album. All he needed was some denim for the cover, a judicious steel guitarist, a Nashville producer, and a roundup of ten hits that already sounded like candidates for the easy listening charts. Tammy Wynette's 1973 chart-topping "Another Lonely Song" got the nod as the lead off single for Williams's You Lay So Easy on My Mind album, produced by countrypolitan king Billy Sherrill. An interpretation of acquired-taste vocalist Sonny James's 1973 country hit "A Mi Esposa con Amor (To My Wife with Love)" appears on side B.
Side A: "Another Lonely Song"
Side B: "A Mi Esposa con Amor"
"Love Said Goodbye" (1974) - Andy Williams
Written by Nino Rota and Larry Kusik * Produced and arranged by Marty and David Paich * 45: "Love Said Goodbye" / "One More Time" * Label: Columbia * Billboard charts: Easy listening (#24) * Entered: 1975-01-11
The December 1974 release of the second acclaimed Godfather film, complete with a new theme song by Nino Rota, called for another Andy Williams rendition. "Love Said Goodbye" was a similar-sounding but less-memorable track with lyrics again provided by Larry Kusik, and it greeted the market late in the year as a non-album one-off. The record signaled early success for future Toto member David Paich, son of veteran arranger/producer Marty, who'd already won an Emmy with his father in May 1974 for a piece the two had composed for the Ironsides TV show. Side B of the Godfather Part II single included David's song "One More Time," which was unavailable on any albums until it showed up as a bonus track on the 2002 CD reissue of the 1976 Andy album.
Side A: "Love Said Goodbye"
Side B: "One More Time"
"Cry Softly" (1974) - Andy Williams
Written by Buddy Killen, Billy Sherrill, and Glen Sutton * Produced by Billy Sherrill * 45: "Cry Softly" / "You Lay So Easy on My Mind" * LP: You Lay So Easy on My Mind * Label: Columbia * Billboard charts: Easy listening (#20) * Entered: 1975-04-12
In 1966, before the names Buddy Killen, Billy Sherrill, or Glen Sutton became such country industry fixtures, Nancy Ames crept into the Hot 100 (#95) with "Cry Softly"—a schlager welding-job the three men had done on the Franz Liszt melody "Liebestraum." Andy Williams's 1974 recording of the song gathered up enough momentum on MOR radio for it to see release as a single, which entered the Billboard easy listening chart in April 1975. Although Sherrill is listed as a songwriter on the label, he had only appeared as a co-producer on the 1966 Ames single for some reason. (The closing musical phrase in the verses drove me crazy for a long time because it reminded me of something else, which turned out to be the chorus endings of Cass Elliot's "One Way Ticket.")
One of the more memorable songs on the You Lay So Easy on My Mind album was the title track, which also served as the B-side of "Cry Softly." It took Bobby G. Rice's
1973 sexual revolution double entendre hit and traded its honky tonk
gait and underwater guitar for crying lap steel and even more emphasis
on the chorus's falsetto. Not released as a single in the US, it reached
#32 in the UK. Only two more songs (in 1975 and 1976) would chart for Willliams in the US and UK until 1998, when TV commercials by Peugeot ("Can't Take My Eyes Off of You") and Fiat ("Music to Watch Girls By") would spark a UK revival. [And thanks to the commenter who has pointed out the rejuvenated chart power of "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year."]
"All His Children" (1971) - Charley Pride with Henry Mancini
Written by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, and Henry Mancini * Producer: Jack Clement * 45: "All His Children" / "You'll Still Be the One" * LP: Sometimes a Great Notion (soundtrack) * Label: Decca (LP); RCA (45) * Charts: Billboard Hot 100 (#92); Billboard country (#2) * Entered: 1972-04-01 (Hot 100); 1972-02-19 (country)
The 1971 Paul Newman film Sometimes a Great Notion (which had the much better overseas title of Never Give an Inch) put Ken Kesey's Oregon logging novel, with its gorgeous fir trees and coastal scenery, to the big screen. If early seventies media tended to splash its feet in post-sixties cultural bewilderment, this film submerged itself, with every development—all the way to the closing credits—feeling like a gasping lunge through political and interpersonal complexity. Charley Pride's theme song, written by composers who excelled in memorability, was surprisingly forgettable, and the odd paired billing of Pride and Mancini (who also gave his arrangement scoopfuls of stock background vocals) only added to the entire project's murkiness. What makes "All His Children" special, though, is Pride's final note, which sputters with knowing exasperation. A Johnny Duncan composition from Charley Pride Sings Heart Songs (1971) appears on the B-side.
Like True Grit, Norwood featured Glen Campbell (on screen and in the soundtrack) with Kim Darby and used a Glen Portis novel as source material. Unlike True Grit, an esteemed classic, Norwood comes off as a trifle. It tells the story of hayseed guitar picker Campbell who's come back home to Ralph, Texas, from the Marine Corps, and is fixated on getting a spot on the Louisiana Hayride radio show (which had actually stopped airing by 1969.)
A post-Midnight Cowboy rube-in-New York subplot plays itself out (Portis's novel, by the way, predated Midnight Cowboy by three years), while quirky characters come and go. Campbell, along the way, carries around a fancy Ovation with no case (Campbell was one of the carbon fiber guitar model's first endorsers) and serenades his co-stars to fully orchestrated soundtracks. Joe Namath, the Pennsylvania native who took his New York Jets to a 1969 Super Bowl victory, plays a marine buddy of Campbell who throws a football around at a fish fry and imitates the southern accents he heard as a college player at Alabama.
Of most interest here is the transitional bigger-picture awkwardness of the sixties turning into the seventies and of the old, isolated South morphing into a newer, mainstream version. Glen Campbell was a poster child for this process, hosting his Goodtime Hour on TV from 1969 to 1972, playing with the Beach Boys and the Wrecking Crew in the sixties, popularizing a more sophisticated brand of country song ("Gentle on My Mind," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," and "Wichita Lineman"), wearing a peace symbol on his album with Bobbie Gentry, covering the black gospel song "Oh Happy Day," and endorsing non-standard acoustic guitars.
Equally awkward, but typical of 1970, are the real world complexities that—in a film that attempts to come off as a Disney live action film for adults—serve as glaring sexual revolution signifiers. Campbell's sister has shacked up with the effeminate moocher Dom DeLuise, Campbell racks up a shameless one night stand with his Big Apple host, and his eventual "right girl" Kim Darby, who dresses like the Flying Nun, is pregnant with another marine's child—a non-issue compared to Campbell getting to the Hayride.
Director Jack Haley, Jr. was the son of the same Jack Haley who played the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz (and who appears in Norwood, in his final role, as Joe Namath's dad). Haley Jr.'s best loved movie moment came in 1974 when he put together the Hollywood musical retrospective That's Entertainment. (The other Wizard of Oz connection: he was married to Liza Minneli, daughter of Judy Garland, from 1974 to 1979.)
Two songs from Norwood made the charts thanks to their appearance in the film:
"Everything a Man Could Ever Need" (1970) - Glen Campbell
Written by Mac Davis * 45: "Everything a Man Could Ever Need" / "Norwood (Me and My Guitar)" * LP: Norwood * Produced by Neely Plumb * Label: Capitol * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#54); country (#5) * Entered: 1970-07-04 (Hot 100)
Written by future country-pop crossover star Mac Davis, Glen Campbell's "Everything a Man Could Ever Need," from the Norwood soundtrack, runs on "Gentle on My Mind" fumes, using that song's opening root to root-major7 sequence, which borrowed from Bob Lind's "Elusive Butterfly" (1966). Bobby Goldsboro's "Honey" also used it in 1968, as did Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin' " in 1969, giving Norwood another small connection to Midnight Cowboy (see above). That chord sequence became a familiar late sixties/early seventies sound on the radio, usually accompanying itinerant male self-analysis. "Everything a Man Could Ever Need" included Campbell's fellow Wrecking Crew alumnus Al DeLory as a co-arranger, who helped make the already too-crafty song sound even less likely to have stood a chance on the real Louisiana Hayride. Another Mac Davis composition from the soundtrack appears on the B-side.
Side A: "Everything a Man Could Ever Need"
Side B: "Norwood (Me and My Guitar)"
"I'll Paint You a Song" (1970) - Mac Davis
Written by Mac Davis * 45: "I'll Paint You a Song" / "Closest I Ever Came" (Columbia) * Produced by Jimmy Bowen * Arranged by Artie Butler * LP: Song Painter (Columbia) * Billboard charts: Bubbling under (#110); country (#68) * Entered: 1970-07-18 (Bubbling under)
Mac Davis's second charting single as a vocalist was his own version of a song he'd written for Glen Campbell to sing on Norwood in a train car scene in the middle of the night—fully orchestrated but somehow waking no one. "I'll Paint You a Song," with its rainbows and bluebirds, featured a comparable easy listening backdrop arranged by Artie Butler that laid the groundwork for Davis's forthcoming stream of crossover MOR-country hits. By 1972, his "Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me" would turn him into a multi-media figure in the mold of Campbell. The Song Painter album was Mac Davis's debut and presented itself as a full-fledged "Meet Mac Davis-the-artist" affair, with numerous musical interludes. His "Babies' Butts" series might have inspired Tom T. Hall to write "I Love." It's not implausible. (A 1974 reissue of this album had an alternate cover.)
Written and produced by Curtis Mayfield * 45: "On and On" / "The Makings of You" * LP: Claudine * Label: Buddah *
Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#5); soul (#2) * Entered: 1974-05-25 (Hot 100)
Directed by John Berry, Claudine infiltrated the early seventies blaxploitation film market with something different: a sympathetic look at a single mother, played by Diahann Carroll, who struggles to raise a large family in the deep city. James Earl Jones plays her love interest, a strong garbage collector whose laudable sensitivity threatens to function as a fatal flaw.
Although the film posters billed Claudine as "a heart and soul comedy," early seventies cinema trends ensured that the sobering food-for-thought factors overshadowed any laughs. (The American Welfare System turns in an especially fine performance as the villain.) Giving the film added edge are the Harlem visuals and the music written and produced by blaxploitation VIP Curtis Mayfield.
Gladys Knight and the Pips perform all the music on Claudine, with the hit single "On and On" exploding in the opening credits as the big-screen urban scenes unfold. Here's a rare situation, though, where a film made a song seem better than it actually was. (It's usually the other way around.) No one who experiences "On and On" away from the film would rank it with Knight's or Mayfield's best work.
"Till Love Touches Your Life" (1970) Richard Williams
Written by Riz Ortolani and Arthur Hamilton * Produced by Alfred Perry * 45: "Till Love Touches Your Life"/"I've Never Loved Anyone" * LP: Madron * Label: Quad * Billboard charts: —
The theme song for this violent Wild Bunch-era Western (filmed in Israel) about a gunfighter and a nun was nominated for a 1971 Academy Award, and it's one of only two tracks on the album with vocals. (A different version with Jan Daley appears at the end.) The singer, Richard Williams, had been a regular on the TV show Love-American Style, and his 1970 Where Do I Go LP, which also contained "Till Love Touches Your Life," earned a plug in Billboard that predicted "good MOR mileage." Contrary to a blurb on that album's cover from KMPC personality Johnny Magnus declaring Williams as being "on his way to the very top," Williams subsequently disappeared with rare thoroughness.
Written by the prolific Italian film composer Riz Ortolani and lyricist Arthur Hamilton (who had written both words and music for Julie London's "Cry Me a River"), the flamenco-flavored song with its fluid bass guitar runs missed the Billboard charts, although it did appear on a 1970 airplay list for Los Angeles station KMPC, arguably the nation's most influential MOR outlet.
Update (October 2017): As mentioned above, a non-charting version of the same song with a similar arrangement by vocalist Jan Daley (which was also released as a single) appeared at the end of the movie and as the last track on the soundtrack album. A cancer survivor (at the age of 22) and a former United Service Organizations tour member with Bob Hope, Daley has continued to record and perform since 1970. In the summer of 2017, her album The Way of a Woman entered the Billboard jazz album chart and peaked at #2. (Although Daley's bios refer to her as a former Miss California in the 1960s, none of my research efforts have been able to verify this.)
Written by J. Robert Dunbar * Produced by Earth Quake and Allan Mason * 45: "Tickler" / "Guarding You" * LP: Earth Quake * Label: A&M * Billboard charts: Regional breakout—San Francisco
San Francisco's Earth Quake played the type of well-chiseled rock and roll that would eventually get called power pop. "Tickler," their first single, is the only record between 1970 and 1974 to appear on Billboard's listings as a San Francisco "regional breakout hit" and to not move any higher.
The song would actually be Earth Quake's only Billboard appearance although they'd maintain a steady following in the Bay Area and have a cachet of historical coolness for their involvement with Beserkley Records, the indie label their manager Matthew "King' Kaufman formed out of frustration with A&M. (He'd also gotten some money from New Generation Pictures, who'd used a snippet of uncredited Earth Quake music in the 1972 Steve McQueen movie The Getaway—it's a scene where McQueen and Ali MacGraw are at a drive-in while Sally Struthers shimmies in a motel room wearing radio headphones.)
The Beserkley label also carried artists such as Jonathan Richman's Modern Lovers, the Rubinoos (who included Tommy Dunbar, brother of Earth Quake guitarist and "Tickler" composer Robbie), and future hit makers the Greg Kihn Band. By 1979, with six solid power pop albums under their belts, Earth Quake would call it good. Side B, also from the Earth Quake album, is a track written by bassist Stan Miller and drummer Steve Nelson. (Earth Quake Vocalist: Steve Doukas.)
The "break-in" novelty record legend Dickie Goodman started The Glass Bottle as a marketing ploy for Manhattan public relations firm Benton & Bowles. They had hired Goodman to battle the burgeoning aluminum can and plastic bottle industries, and he'd developed a strategy to form a topical band, write their (non break-in) songs, and possibly make a fortune. He gathered together six young musicians from New Jersey, featuring the Johnny Maestro-esque lead vocals of Gary Criss, who'd released a number of teen idol disks on the Diamond label in the early sixties.
If the public would have responded favorably to Goodman's initial plan, we'd now recognize the Glass Bottle for songs he'd written with titles like "Glass," "Little Bottle Baby," and "Soda Pop Tonite." According to his son Jon, in his 2000 book The King of Novelty, Goodman eventually withdrew his own compositions from the hungry band's repertoire (which was fine by him because he was "still getting paid") and hooked them up with the AVCO Embassy label, for whom three of their recordings made the Hot 100, with "I Ain't Got Time Anymore" cracking the Top 40. Another non-charting single of theirs, "Mama Don't You Wait Up for Me (Wonderwheel)" appeared in the soundtrack for the well-regarded 1970 narcotics film The People Next Door.
As for Goodman's ongoing commitment to Benton & Bowles, a captioned Billboard photo (above) that misspells Criss's last name refers to the group's "antilitter campaign," which suggests that they might have shifted their PR strategy from recording glass bottle industry-themed songs to merely speaking favorably about the easily recycled product during their appearances. (Aluminum and plastic recycling hadn't yet become so normalized at that point.)
All three of the group's charting records were MOR-suitable songs arranged by Goodman's business partner Bill Ramal, whose background in studio orchestration manifested itself clearly. The tracks also hearkened back to the teen idol ballad tradition Criss knew well and which many a music listener was feeling a nostalgic tolerance for during the troubled early seventies. The Glass Bottle's hit-making career didn't make it past the era, although Criss had some late-seventies traction with a disco album on the Salsoul label before he made his exit from the music business.
Below are the group's three charting singles:
"Love for Living" (1970)
The Glass Bottle
Written by Clare Torry * Produced by Bill Ramal and Dickie Goodman * 45: "Love for Living" / "The First Time" *
LP: The Glass Bottle * Label: AVCO Embassy * Billboard charts: Bubbling under (#109; peaked 1970-05-30)
Although the cover of the Glass Bottle's first LP displayed a kid-friendly band, the grooves inside contained a far more parent-friendly sound. This was a marketing page taken from the playbook of other acts like the Walker Brothers and Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, who also had lead singers with strong, disciplined voices. If "Love for Living" brings to mind some of the early Bee Gees ballads where Robin Gibb is given free emotive reign, you won't be surprised to learn that the original version of the song was a 1969 B-side for singer-songwriter Clare Torry, which lists the aforementioned Gibb brother as producer. Torry would later record the famous vocal segment for Pink Floyd's "The Great Gig in the Sky" in 1973. The credited songwriter for the flipside's ballad (and also for their "The Girl Who Loved Me When" below) is Dayton Callie. Is this the character actor from Sons of Anarchy and Deadwood?
Side A: "Love for Living"
Side B: "The First Time"
"I Ain't Got Time Anymore" (1971)
The Glass Bottle
Written by Mike Leander and Eddie Seago * Produced by Bill Ramal and Dickie Goodman * 45: "I Ain't Got Time Anymore" / "Things" * LP: I Ain't Got Time Anymore * Label: AVCO Embassy * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#36; peaked 1971-09-25)
As they had done with their previous charting single, the Glass Bottle dipped into the British record bins for their lone Top 40 single. "I Ain't Got Time Anymore" revamped a 1970 UK hit (#21) for Cliff Richard, whose folk-rock delivery transformed itself into dramatic stage fare under the command of Gary Criss's larger vocals. The line where he sings, "used to take an interest in the state of the world, now I only know how much I'm missing that girl" rings with irony in context of the group's environmental origins. The single's B-side version of Bobby Darin's "Things" is, to the present day, available only on the original seven-inch vinyl. Composers Mike Leander and Eddie Seago would form the glam rock publishing company Rock Artistes Music Ltd. a few years after this.
"I Ain't Got Time Anymore"
"The Girl Who Loved Me When" (1971)
The Glass Bottle
Written by Neil Goldberg * Produced by Bill Ramal and Dickie Goodman * 45: "The Girl Who Loved Me When" / "Because She's Mine Again" * LP: I Ain't Got Time Anymore * Label: AVCO Embassy * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#87; peaked 1971-12-11)
"The Girl Who Loved Me When" opened the Glass Bottle's I Ain't Got Time Anymore LP and served as their final single with its familiar quiet-then-loud mood swing approach. Around the time of this single, songwriter Neil Goldberg had also been keeping busy in Jeff Barry's cartoon music realm, contributing actively to the Archie's Funhouse TV show among others. A ballad by Dayton Callie (see "Love for Living" above) appears on the B side.
