Top 40 Entry 1/1/72: The Partridge Family —“It’s One of Those Nights (Yes Love)”

The Partridge Family Featuring Shirley Jones Starring David Cassidy —“It’s One of Those Nights (Yes Love)”. Bell 45160. Top 40 debut: 1/1/72. Peak date: 1/29/72. Written by Tony Romeo. Produced by Wes Farrell. B-side: “One Night Stand.” LP: Shopping Bag. Charts: Billboard Hot 100 (#24), Easy Listening (#2).

Strangely enough, the Partridge Family’s “It’s One of Those Nights (Yes Love)” came and went—peaking in late January ‘72—before its supporting album ever reached stores in March. It was in March, too, when the episode featuring the TV family’s single finally aired (“The Partridge Papers,” about sister Laurie’s stolen diary). It seems like a better synchronized push might have helped it.

What’s significant about this song, though, is that it peaked at #20 on the pop charts, but climbed to #2 on the easy listening charts. This was their most lopsided and therefore most revealing teenage vs. adult audience ratio yet. In spite of David Cassidy and company's so-called bubblegum appeal, the music, in sound and sales tactics, never wavered from targeting the buying power of the mom and dad demographic. None of their music really raged with the kind of adolescent libido that even the Osmonds could summon, and the chart performance of “It’s One of Those Nights” puts this reality into sharp focus. You always wondered why only adults seemed to attend their TV supper club music segments, right?

Partridge staff writer Tony Romeo gets sole credit for “It’s One of Those Nights,” which tapdanced around the essential chord structure of Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s “Somethin’ Stupid” (#1, 1966—itself a descendant of “Tea for Two”), from the pantheon of grandparent-friendly hits. Keeping with their tradition of the concept package, the supporting Shopping Bag album—the group’s fourth—included an actual plastic tote decorated with the album cover’s blue, yellow, and bubblegum-pink swirls, along wth the duotone faces of each member.

Also consistent with their recorded products, Shopping Bag’s full billing appeared on labels as “The Partridge Family Starring Shirley Jones Featuring David Cassidy,” and featured the production of future Tina Sinatra hubby Wes Farrell. Along with “It’s One of Those Nights,” the album included one more glaring template song in “Hello Hello,” which nabbed its title, various hooks, and arrangement ideas from Sopwith Camel, whose original “Hello Hello” reached #26 in 1967.

Shopping Bag offered up just one additional single for Hot 100 consideration a few months later, Irwin Levine and Russell Brown’s “Am I Losing You,” which stopped short at #59. Low memorability was as much to blame as was competition from David Cassidy’s second solo album. The still-viable TV group would be back in the Top 40 one more time before the year of ‘72 was over, though, with their version of Neil Sedaka’s “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” from a new album.

The "One Night Stand" b-side came from their previous album, The Partridge Family Sound Magazine, but didn't show up on an episode until March '73 ("Diary of a Mad Millionaire," featuring John "Gomez Addams" Astin as an eccentric, Howard Hughes type). The song's lyrics emphasized the traveling band aspect of the title phrase more than the bedroom one.

Side A: "It's One of Those Nights (Yes Love)"


Side B: "One Night Stand"

Top 40 Entry 1/1/72: Carly Simon - "Anticipation"

Carly Simon — “Anticipation” (#13). Elektra 45759. Top 40 debut: 1/1/72. Peak date: 2/12/72. Written by Carly Simon. Produced by Paul Samwell-Smith. B-side: “The Garden.” LP: Anticipation. Charts: Billboard Hot 100 (#13), Easy Listening (#3).

Carly Simon’s debut single (“That’s the Way I Always Heard It Should Be, #10 in 1971), a quiet ballad with a big, Bacharach-style chorus, broke new ground for pop songs by looking at relationships from a psychoanalytical perspective. Fittingly, its sophisticated musical roadmap also offered rewards to those listeners with grown-up attention spans. The record practically demanded, on its own, the creation of a radio format to be known as “adult contemporary." Simon’s next single, “Anticipation,” which led off her second album, gave it its title, and did almost as well, peaking at #13. It followed the lead of "That's the Way" by reinforcing her reputation as pop music’s star reporter in the trenches of modern romance. She had lots of material, and you can read about it in her Boys in the Trees (2015) memoir.

Here’s one tidbit: “Anticipation” came from a date night with Cat Stevens, with whom she’d often shared the stage and also a producer in former Yardbird Paul Samwell-Smith. She had cooked dinner, but because the Teaser and the Firecat album icon took his time getting there, she at least got a song written while she waited. Such a well-crafted result, which became one of the quintessential radio hits for the singer-songwriter era, says as much about her creative skills as it does about right place/right time factors. (Stevens would sing background vocals on the album’s “Julie Through the Glass.”) The radio heyday of “Anticipation” coincided with Simon winning the Best New Artist Grammy for 1971, a ceremony that also handed Carole King the Record of the Year (“It’s Too Late”) and Song of the Year (“You’ve Got a Friend”). A golden age for women singer songwriters was evidently underway.

“Anticipation,” though—and this is not in Simon’s memoir—would become best known as a Heinz ketchup TV commercial theme from 1973 well into the eighties. In the present day, hit songs rent themselves out for commercial usage as standard practice. In the sixties and seventies, it tended to go the other way around, with popular commercial themes turning into jingle singles for radio. Simon’s record, then, anticipated a whole new era in pop music marketing.

The only other single from the Anticipation album, “Legend in Your Own Time,” missed the Top 40, peaking at #50. That song was almost universally understood, especially in light of her next big hit “You’re So Vain,” as a takedown of some male subject in a “legend in your own mind” kind of way. Her memoir, though, makes clear that she wrote it, with tenderness to boot, about future husband James Taylor, whom she had met when they were much younger and whose mother, apparently, didn’t have a music career in mind for her boy. He would become a legend, then, according to his own timetable.

Side A: "Anticipation"


Side B: "The Garden"

Chart Song Cinema: Madron (1970)

"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.)

"Till Love Touches Your Life" (Richard Williams)


"Till Love Touches Your Life" (Jan Daley)


Also see: A KMPC Playlist circa 1971

Chart Song Cinema: Last Tango in Paris (1973)

Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris depicted a steamy affair between two hopelessly damaged souls: an American widower (played by Marlon Brando in one of his quintessential performances) and a young French married girl who remain nameless to each other. At once a clear manifestation of post-sixties sexual freedom and its very seventies psychic complications, the bilingual film knocked critics off their theater seats and gave mere thrill seekers mental scars. What certainly lingered in all moviegoers' heads, though, was the moaning trumpet in Gato Barberi's theme music. Many instrumentalists got busy with personalized arrangements of the song, with only Herb Alpert and Tonight Show trumpeter Doc Severinsen checking in with chart listings. Composer Jack Elliott's theme music for the Charlie's Angels TV show (1976-81) would evoke the Last Tango theme, perhaps as an effort to heighten its already sexual edge.

Herb Alpert and the TJB - "Last Tango in Paris" (1973, Billboard #77). Written by Gato Barbieri. Produced and arranged by Herb Alpert. "String and things" by Quincy Jones. 45: "Last Tango in Paris"/"Fire and Rain" (A&M 1973). LP: (no US album appearance).

Side B is a marimba-cha-cha version of James Taylor's "Fire and Rain."

Doc Severinsen - "The Last Tango in Paris" (1973, Billboard # 106). Written by Gato Barbieri. Produced by Joe Reisman. Arranged by Harry Betts. 45: "Last Tango in Paris"/"Alone Again (Naturally)" (RCA 1973). LP: (no US album appearance).

The 2 Charting Versions of "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing"

Coca-Cola's "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" is the standard bearer of what I call "jingle singles," charting hits tied to the music from a TV/radio ad for another product. This Coke campaign debuted in 1971, shortly after Budweiser's "You've Said It All" (see previous post). The TV commercial that spawned it had a similar sequence as the Budweiser one, spotlighting a lone female singer who is joined by a growing chorus. The difference: Coca-Cola's singers are multicultural young adults while Budweiser's are American middle-aged nine-to-fivers. The song had a special quality of sounding at once like a commercial, a pop hit, a Christmas song, and a church hymn.

Composed by ad men Bill Backer and Billy Davis along with the British hit songwriting team of Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" hit it big as a 45 released by the Hillside Singers. According to the Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders, this was a group assembled by veteran producer Al Ham specifically to generate a record out of the Coke commercial, an idea he'd hatched along with Metromedia president Jack Wiedenman. That version hit #13 on Billboard, while a version by Australia's New Seekers climbed up to #7 in early '72. According to an article on the Coca-Cola website, the New Seekers were who the writers always had in mind to record it, but the group had scheduling conflicts, which they were able to resolve easily enough when they saw the Hillside Singers' version taking off. Hence the claims of a Billboard ad from Nov. 20, 1971, claiming the New Seekers' version to be the "original."

Note the early seventies tendency toward child imagery being put to use for the Hillside Singers' album cover above.

(Bonus info: The British rock band Oasis were successfully sued for using the opening melody of "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" for their 1994 #11 UK hit "Shakermaker.")

The Hillside Singers - "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)" (Billboard #13, entered 11/27/71). Written by Bill Backer, Billy Davis, Roger Cook, and Roger Greenaway. Produced by Al Ham. 45: "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)"/"I Believed It All" (Metromedia 1971). LP: I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (Metromedia 1971).

The New Seekers - "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)" (Billboard #7, entered 12/4/71). Written by Bill Backer, Billy Davis, Roger Cook, and Roger Greenaway. Produced by David MacKay. 45: "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)"/"Boom-Town" (Elektra 1971). LP: We'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (Elektra 1971).

Side B is surprisingly palatable glam pop written and sung by New Seeker Peter Doyle, a former solo hit-maker in Australia.

Three Budweiser Jingle Singles

One of the most recognizable American TV commercial tunes in its day was Steve Karmen's "You've Said It All," written for Budweiser. It debuted on TV in 1970 and featured an ad in which a Dionne Warwick lookalike sang solo, later to be joined by a growing chorus of cheerfully average people. The chord change to a flatted seventh in the bridge (at :43 in this clip), along with the singers' emphatic delivery, gives the beer ad an almost poignant, Jesus Christ Superstar aura.

A 45 record of this song credited to the Steve Karmen Orchestra sold well enough in the summer of '71 to register in Billboard magazine as a "breakout hit" in Chicago even though it never cracked the Hot 100. Oddly enough, "Budweiser" is mentioned nowhere on the label of Karmen's disc. Would that have helped or hurt its chances as a stand alone track, I wonder?

In 1972, the Nashville songwriting team of Jerry Foster and Bill Rice served up a song called "When You Say Love" to country/rockabilly veteran Bob Luman. They appropriated the Budweiser hook outright, giving it new words and a new bridge, and it bubbled right up to #6 on the country chart. Later that year it became Sonny and Cher's final Top 40 hit (#32). I'd always assumed "When You Say Love" was a knowing spin off of Karmen's jingle and that all parties had been in on it. No - it was an old-fashioned rip off, credited only to Foster and Rice, prompting the dumbfounded Karmen to (successfully) sue. (Karmen reports on this in his 2005 book Who Killed the Jingle? His name now appears on writer credits for reissues of this song, but it's often misspelled as "Carmen," for some reason.)

As for the adoption of the same Budweiser jingle by the Wisconsin marching band (and the legal aspects), that's a story you'll need to get elsewhere.   

Steve Karmen Orchestra - “You’ve Said It All (Tuba Version)” (Billboard Regional Hit: Chicago, entered 7/31/71). Written and produced by Steve Karmen. 45: "You've Said It All (Tuba Version)"/"You've Said It All (Four Feeling Version)" (Audio Fidelity 1971). LP: (No album appearance).

Don't miss the seventies noir version on the B-side!

Bob Luman - "When You Say Love" (Billboard country #6, 2/19/72). Written by Jerry Foster and Bill Rice (and Steve Karmen). Produced by Glenn Sutton. 45: "When You Say Love"/"Have a Little Faith" (Epic 1972). LP: When You Say Love (Epic 1972).

Sonny and Cher - “When You Say Love” (Billboard #32, entered 7/8/72). Written by Jerry Foster and Bill Rice (and Steve Karmen). Produced by Snuff Garrett. 45: "When You Say Love"/"Crystal Clear/Muddy Waters" (Kapp 1972). LP: Greatest Hits (MCA 1974).

Hee Haw and the CBS Country Massacre of 1971

The late John Aylesworth was one of the co-creators of Hee Haw, and in his recently published memoir, The Corn Was Green: The Inside Story of Hee Haw, he talks about "The Great CBS Country Massacre." This refers to CBS's 1971 efforts to "de-ruralize" its programming by axing Hee Haw, The Beverly Hillbillies, Mayberry RFD, Green Acres, and The Jim Nabors Hour (the only rural-ish survivor being The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour).

For CBS, this decision was more conceptual than it was numbers-oriented, with a new show called All in the Family representing the direction the network had in mind. Because Hee Haw was going great guns in its brazenly cornball way, the decision came as a shock, especially to Aylesworth and his creative partner Frank Peppiatt ("They couldn't kill us with a stick, so they killed us with a pencil," said Peppiatt).

Hee Haw's misfortune, of course, turned into a blessing as it followed the example of The Lawrence Welk Show by reviving itself through syndication, and the show became an American TV institution, running all the way into the early '90s. CBS's "de-ruralization," it turns out, contributed to a multi-decade ruralization trend (Bruce J. Schulman called it "the reddening of America").

Probably the most appropriate account of the entire situation came from Hee Haw co-host Roy Clark, whose "The Lawrence Welk-Hee Haw Counter-Revolution Polka" reached #9 on the Billboard country singles chart in 1972.

Roy Clark - "The Lawrence Welk-Hee Haw Counter-Revolution Polka" (Billboard #9, 1972). Written by Vaughn Horton. Produced by Joe Allison. 45: ""The Lawrence Welk-Hee Haw Counter Revolution Polka"/"When the Wind Blows" (ABC Dot 1972). LP: Roy Clark's Greatest Hits Vol. 1 (ABC Dot 1975).