I’m going to try going week by week with 1979, which will be easier given I did about a month’s worth of entries a few years back, so these are reruns. Check in with me again in two months and we’ll see how well I’m keeping up.
The Bee Gees, “Too Much Heaven,” #1, 1/6/1979
Complain all you want about disco, but these guys were
primarily balladeers – they had notched 13 top 40 hits in the United States
before their first dance tune, “Jive Talkin’,” hit the charts in 1975. This
marked the seventh #1 for the group in the States, the third ballad, and the
first ballad that wasn’t a rhetorical question (“How Can You Mend a Broken
Heart” and “How Deep Is Your Love”). Plenty of overdubs (nine layers of
three-part harmony, although Barry has his voice on the track more than Maurice
or Robin), and Chicago’s horn section (Lee Loughnane, James Pankow, Walter
Parazadier) buried in the mix. (The Bee Gees tended to bring in a lot of
big-name help – the only #1 single Stephen Stills ever played on in all his
years in the music business was “You Should Be Dancin’.”) This would be the
first #1 hit of the year, although Chic’s “Le Freak,” which had already
alternated at #1 twice with “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” would knock it off
after that. The Gibbs would continue to perform the song in later years in
concert, but losing the falsetto in the process.
Billy Joel, “My Life,” #3, 1/6/1979
First and biggest hit off Joel’s 52nd Street,
this tied “Just the Way You Are” for the highest-charting single of Joel’s
career to that point (although both would be topped in subsequent years). A
cheerful, don’t-fuck-with-me song (Joel would have several of these in his
career) that served as the theme for the 1980-1982 sitcom Bosom Buddies.
Two more notes: like “Too Much Heaven,” this also has members of Chicago
participating (Peter Cetera and Donnie Dacus contributed backing vocals; both 52nd
Street and Chicago’s concurrent Hot Streets were produced by Phil
Ramone), and the guy who “closed the shop, sold the house, bought a ticket to
the West Coast” is apparently standup comic Richard Lewis. This video is live from Wembley in 1984 - or you can watch the Adult Swim remake of the Bosom Buddies theme, with guest appearances by Joel, Tom Hanks, and Peter Scolari.
Dr. Hook, “Sharing the Night Together,” #6, 1/6/1979
Somehow, Dr. Hook managed to chalk up eight top 15 pop hits
between 1972 and 1980 without ever managing to push an album beyond #41. This
may have been part of the downside of the group: they weren’t songwriters
(humorist Shel Silverstein wrote most of their early songs when they were known
as Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show; a variety of songwriters handled the later
songs – this one was penned by Ava Aldridge and Eddie Struzick), so they were
pretty much at the mercy of their producers. In any case, at this point they’d
found a niche as a soft-rock alternative to disco by this point (with many
songs, such as this one, extolling the virtues of sex without that messy
emotional involvement). One of three chart hits from the 1978 LP Pleasure
and Pain.
Dan Hartman, “Instant Replay,” #29, 1/6/1979
A classic of the disco years and hugely catchy, this would
be the first chart hit (making #1 on the disco charts) for Hartman, who
previously had played bass and sang for the Edgar Winter Group (that’s him
singing on “Free Ride”), but could play several instruments, and wrote and
produced much of his work. Hartman started out with his own Pennsylvania-based
band in the 1960s and also played with Edgar Winter’s brother, Johnny, before
striking out on his own. The video is notable for featuring future Kiss
guitarist Vinnie Vincent on guitar, future Hall & Oates/Saturday Night
Live guitarist G.E. Smith on bass, and Sparks drummer Hilly Michaels - talk
about a bunch of hams.
Livingston Taylor, “I Will Be in Love With You,” #30,
1/6/1979
I have a soft spot for Livingston Taylor. In 1992, my wife
and I saw him at the Festival of the Eno, a long-running annual event in
Durham, NC. Taylor was performing when a very small child wandered by the stage
alone, obviously separated from her parents. He brought her up on stage and
sang “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to her (with the audience chiming in) until
her parents found her. Cool guy. Anyway, this was his biggest solo hit, from
his first album on Epic Records, Three-Way Mirror. It’s now out of print
from Epic, although UMG has it as part of a 20th Century Masters set
(however, since the label had to lease the rights from Epic, the song can only
be downloaded as part of the entire album, not by itself). Oddly, I
can’t find the original on video anywhere, so this duet will have to suffice.
Rick James, “Mary Jane,” #41, 1/6/1979
Here’s the flip side of the Livingston Taylor coin, I suppose.
James’ song, the second chart single from his double platinum album Come Get
It! celebrates two of what apparently were his primary interests: women and
drugs (don’t tell me the name Mary Jane is a coincidence). James’ Motown career
took a long time; he originally signed with the label as part of a multiracial
band called The Mynah Byrds, which featured Neil Young (yes, that Neil
Young) on guitar. It turned out that James was AWOL from the Navy (it also
turned out he was underage when he signed up for the Navy), so he spent a year
in prison, and the Motown contract dried up after one single. After knocking
around as a singer-songwriter and band leader for over a decade, he got a
second chance from Motown and took full advantage – Come Get It! was his
first of nine albums with the label.
Eddie Money, “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” #72,
1/6/1979
Lackadaisical but passable version of the Miracles 1962 hit,
which was later recorded by The Beatles for their first album (albeit without
the “’ve” in the first word of the title). Kind of a strange choice for a
single – Money had already generated two top 20 singles with his eponymous
album, which had been out for nearly a year, and had a second album, Life
for the Taking, already just about in the can (it would be released in
February), but I’m sure Columbia Records knew what they were doing. Anyway,
this one’s kind of hard to find other than on the original album – Money has
lots of hits sets, but the only one this appears on is the two-disk The
Essential Eddie Money (as opposed to the one-disk The Essential Eddie
Money, where it didn’t make the grade).
John Davis, “Ain’t That Enough for You,” #89, 1/6/1979It will be if you listen to the nine-minute version of this
song like I’ve got. John Davis was a member of the studio band MFSB (Mother
Father Sister Brother) that provided backup on a bunch of Philadelphia
International hits in the 1970s, including their own hit “TSOP (The Sound of
Philadelphia).” Striking off on his own, John Davis & His Monster Band
released three albums on SAM/Columbia between 1978 and 1981, but this was their
one chart hit, both in the States and the United Kingdom. A recent interview
indicated Davis lives in Ohio with his family.
By Curt Alliaume
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