Category: 1970-1974

“Manifiesto” (1973) – Victor Jara * Written and produced by Victor Jara * LP (Mexico): Manifiesto * Label: Discos Pueblo

“Manifiesto” by Chile’s Victor Jara became the title track to an album assembled after military thugs from the Pinochet dictatorship arrested, tortured and murdered him in September 1973. Jara had intended the song to appear, along with six other tracks he’d already recorded and others yet to be recorded, on an album called Tiempos que cambian (times that change). Listening to this with the knowledge that we’d lose him so soon after its creation still makes one’s skin tingle. It would have the same effect without that knowledge, though. “I don’t sing just to sing,” go the lyrics. “I sing because the guitar makes sense and has a reason… The song that is brave will always remain a new song.” Only in summer 2016 did Pedro Barrientos, the army officer who murdered Jara and who had escaped to Florida in the late 1980s, face a trial. The jury found him guilty, moving his eventual extradition to Chile a few steps closer.

“One Bad Apple” (1971) – The Osmonds * Written by George Jackson * 45: “One Bad Apple” / “He Ain’t Heavy…He’s My Brother” * LP The Osmonds * Produced by Rick Hall * Label: MGM

In his Soul Country: Making Music and Making Race in the American South (pp. 118-124), Charles L. Hughes writes that the Osmonds’ “One Bad Apple” was as “controversial as any piece of U.S. popular culture.” This was because its successful mimicry of the Jackson 5 sound came off to some as participation “in the white rip-off of black cultural resources.” Its inclusion in soul station playlists, too, seemed to fly in the face of “soul’s extramusical meaning.” Hughes points out that the single can also be seen as a model specimen for the “racial and stylistic crisscrossing” going on at the FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The record was, after all, the product of a white producer (Rick Hall) and a black songwriter (George Jackson) who had been recommended to Hall by another white producer (Billy Sherrill). The record’s multiracial Fame Gang studio musicians backed five white young men singing in a black idiom for a label run by a conservative white man (Mike Curb). In spite of any controversy, the song would launch ongoing successes for everyone involved, and lives on as a cheerful signifier of seventies youth. An Osmonds cartoon created in 1972 used the song for its opening sequence.

“Cracker Jack” (1970) – Mickey and His Mice * Written by Mickey Fields, Eddie Drennon, and Martin Cantine * 45: “Cracker Jack”/”Abraham, Martin and John” * Produced by Martin Cantine * Label: Marti * Charts: Billboard (Regional breakout hit [non-numbered list]: Washington DC)

Q: “Hey baby, what is this cracker jack thing?” A: “Ain’t nothin’ but the popcorn with some sweet jive on it.” The “popcorn” was a James Brown concoction—a dance he’d started doing onstage in 1968, according to some accounts, to the song “Bringing Up the Guitar.” He then recorded a stack of popcorn-oriented records, including “Mother Popcorn” (1969), a highlight in the James Brown hall of finest funk. But “popcorn” might have had more to do with the Godfather of Soul’s personal lexicon of booty synonyms than with any specific dance moves. “Popcorn music” has also become a term adopted by soul music aficionados in Europe to describe a sweeter strain of the obscure vintage sixties dance cuts you see categorized as “Northern soul” (so named for their popularity in certain Manchester clubs). It’s safe to assume, though, that Mickey Fields, the tenor sax man and bandleader answering the lady’s question at the beginning of “Cracker Jack,” is referring to the James Brown popcorn sound. The single showed up on Billboard as a regional breakout hit in Washington D.C., having likely racked up some airplay on WPGC or WEAM. It might have gotten more traction if Fields wouldn’t have refused to ever leave the Baltimore area.

“Rainy Night in Georgia” (1970) – Brook Benton * Written by Tony Joe White * 45: “Rainy Night in Georgia” / “Where Do I Go from Here” * LP: Brook Benton Today * Produced by Arif Mardin * Label: Atlantic

With no top ten hits since 1962’s “Hotel Happiness,” Benton took a shot with a song by Tony Joe White, who’d reached #8 with the deep southern “Polk Salad Annie” in 1969. The resulting #4 smash not only became a career-defining moment for Benton, but also for the prolific producer-arranger Arif Mardin. Dripping in aching strings and a lonely piano, the song transferred a detectable sense of resignation to the airwaves, as if to signal the end of a more youthful and carefree era. Benton’s next two 45s were versions of the new Sinatra signature song “My Way” and Joe South’s “Don’t It Make You Want to Go Home,” each of which seemed to verify and emphasize Benton’s elegiac mindframe in “Rainy Night in Georgia.” 

“Give It to Me Now” (1973) – Bay City Rollers * Written and produced by Bill Martin and Phil Coulter * UK LP: Rollin’ (Bell)

The Bay City Rollers’ first few albums stocked up on songs that paid tribute to the romantic concerns of early sixties teen idols. Now and then, though, their historical and geographical coordinates (i.e., glam-era Great Britain) would manifest loudly on BCR wax. “Give It to Me Now,” for example, is a sultry re-do of a glitter torpedo that Kenny had ridden up the the UK charts the same year.

“Give It to Me Now” (1973) – Kenny * Written and produced by Bill Martin and Phil Coulter * UK 45: “Give It to Me Now” / “Rollin'” (RAK)

The songwriting and production team of Phil Coulter and Bill Martin pumped out a whole bevy of songs for the Bay City Rollers. Many of these sounded like early ’60s fodder for American teen idols, e.g., “Summerlove Sensation,” “Remember (Sha La La La La),” “Shang a Lang,” and the biggie, “Saturday Night.” Coulter and Martin’s “Give It to Me Now,” with its “shim-sham-sham-a-ram” chorus, showed up in a steamy, slowed-down version on the Rollers’ 1974 debut LP Rollin’. Irishman Tom Kenny (“Kenny”), who had a face like David Essex and a voice like Suzi Quatro, recorded it first, though, as a 1973 A-side. The B-side, coincidentally, contained a song called “Rollin’,” which the Bay City Rollers never recorded. After “Give It to Me Now,” Kenny moved on with his life, but a new group formerly known as Chuff, with Rick Driscoll on lead vocals, stepped in as the new “Kenny” and recorded a handful of additional charting hits. One of these was a UK #3 called “The Bump,” which the Rollers also recorded as a B-side for their 1974 hit “All of Me Loves All of You.”

Génesis – “Señora del Silencio” (1974) * Written by e.e. cummings and Humberto Monroy * LP: Génesis * Label: Guerssen

The Colombian band Génesis included Humberto Monroy, who’d previously played with a rock band called the Speakers. This haunting Andean head trip appeared on their self-titled second album and is a Spanish iteration of e.e. cummings’s poem “The Lady of Silence.” A few more albums, reunions, and solo recordings by Monroy would all materialize in the following years, but this album stands tall as the legendary one.

“Drifting Away” (1974) – Status Quo * Written by Alan Lancaster and Rick Parfitt * 45: “Mystery Song” / “Drifting Away” * LP: Quo * Produced by Status Quo * Label: Vertigo (UK)/A&M (US)

The post-“Pictures of Matchstick Men” incarnation of Status Quo distinguished itself through a deep commitment to shallow boogie rock. (They’re perhaps the closest likely role models for Spinal Tap’s fictional trajectory). “Drifting Away,” though, appearing as the last song on side A of their 1974 Quo album, moves along with both characteristic insistence and uncharacteristic ease, drifting through the listener’s head long after the fadeout.

“Danas Majko ženiš sina” (1972) – Slavko Petrović * Written by Aleksandar Nikolić (lyrics) and Budimer Jovanović (music) * EP: Danas Majko ženiš sina * Label: PGP RTB

Not to be confused with the previous entry’s subject (Slavko Perović), whose surname lacks a T. Although the title song on Slavko Petrović’s debut EP is a known Montenegrin folk song (title translation: “Mother, today you’re marrying off your son”), a co-credit for authorship is given to Budimir Jovanović, the record’s Serbian accordionist and ensemble leader. This is a genre the Serbs call “national” music, which correlates with American country music in that it changes very little conceptually across the decades, save for some technological giveaways. Although Petrovic’s early seventies-to-early eighties recordings float around online, substantial info about him certainly does not.