“Shannon” by Henry Gross (1976, #6)

One person’s view:  “The most obvious flaw of the song is Henry Gross’ singing.  Dear Christ, that falsetto on the chorus.” – Nerd with an Afro

The public’s view:  2.58 / 5.00

Hello again, and welcome to the Bad Top Ten Hits blog.  I’m not Casey Kasem.  Every week we’re seen on great screens in the 50 states and around the world, including:  Linda Biffwater’s iPad in East Orange, New Jersey; the point-of-sale system at the Jack in the Box in Ogden, Utah; and a bot in Singapore that downloads our entire site 22 times an hour to feed an AI-powered content generator that will replace this blog and all other sources of human creativity.  It’s good to have you with us.

Now we’re up to our long distance dedication.  It comes to us from a man in Hawthorne, California named Carl Wilson.  Here’s what he writes:  “Dear Bad Top Ten Hits.  Recently there was a death in our family.  She was a little dog named Shannon.  Last Wednesday, Shannon slipped out of our yard and was run over by a car.”

Wait a minute.  Who is picking these goddamn songs?  This is turning into the most depressing website on the planet!  Last week was a pregnant girl getting shot by her own goddamn father, and now I gotta talk about a fuckin’ dog dying!  You know, they do this to me all the time.  I don’t know what the hell they do it for.  I want somebody to use his fuckin’ brain and make a goddamn concerted effort to find some bad top ten hits that don’t make me want to stick my head in a microwave and push the popcorn button.  Isn’t there any more shittiness from the Osmonds that we can dredge up instead of this?  This is ponderous, man, fuckin’ ponderous.

Sorry for that detour.  Back to the letter:  “I think it was a Buick.  She was pretty much pancaked, but we were able to save her collar.  Can you please play ‘Shannon’ by Henry Gross and dedicate it to our unfortunate furry pal?  It was Shannon’s favorite song, because she was the only one in the house who could hear the chorus.  Love, Carl.”  Carl, here’s your long distance dedication.

I can understand why “Shannon” appears on a lot of lists of bad ‘70s hits.  It’s gooey and sentimental, and the tempo is just slow enough to be disagreeable.  When he reaches the chorus, Henry Gross forsakes his pleasant Fogelbergesque vocals and hits some high notes that do not exist in nature.  All of this is in service of a truly alarming set of lyrics about a dog drifting out to sea, never to return.  Outside of “Shannon”, I’ve never heard of such a thing happening to a domestic animal.  Occasionally there might be a news story about a human having too many beers, falling asleep in an inner tube, and getting rescued three days later by the Coast Guard.  Dogs, however, have enough innate common sense to know their limits when frolicking in the ocean.  The people of the mid-1970s were already worrying about gasoline shortages, shark attacks, and whether pieces of Jimmy Hoffa might turn up in their TV dinners, and then this song also infected everyone with an unfounded fear for their dogs’ safety.  Thanks a lot, Henry.

Nonetheless, much like the titular canine, I am going to swim against the tide in my review of “Shannon”.  While there’s nothing I particularly love about this record, there is plenty that I like.  I like Gross’s soothing guitar.  I like the melody of the verses, which is enjoyable enough that other songs have repurposed it.  (See Freddie Jackson’s “You Are My Lady”, for example.)  I like that we aren’t directly told that Shannon was a dog, so we have to use our fuckin’ brains and infer this fact like we’re Sherlock Holmes or something.  It makes us feel smart when we figure it out.  The extreme falsetto limits the replay value, but it also helps distinguish the song from its peers.  If I ever have to assemble a playlist of songs inspired by the untimely demise of dogs, cats, and goldfish belonging to the members of the Beach Boys, I will put “Shannon” near the top of that list.  I will call this collection of music “Pet Sounds”.

And there you have it.  Tune in next time for a Bad Top Ten Hit that will make “Shannon” – and even the Osmonds – seem like a delightful memory.  Until then, keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the earplugs.  You’re going to need them.

My rating:  6 / 10

“Run Joey Run” by David Geddes (1975, #4)

One person’s view:  “Melodramatic, clunky, hokey, and not even catchy or fun.  Worthy of all the mocking it gets.” – DonKarnage @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  1.79 / 5.00

Here’s a quick synopsis of “Run Joey Run”, a top ten hit that was more of a soap opera than a musical work.  Joey and Julie were teen lovers and then Julie got pregnant.  Her father went berserk because he did not want to be grandpa’d against his will.  He grabbed his gun and went looking for Joey, and Julie called her fertile young friend to warn him.  Joey thought he could outsmart his pursuer.  The angry dad would never anticipate the young man being dumb enough to show his face at Julie’s home under these circumstances, so that is exactly where Joey decided to go.  However, the expectant grandpappy actually did think Joey was an utter moron who would come right over to be shot.  He was lying in wait when Joey arrived.  Fortunately, the heroic Julie and her heroic unborn baby took the bullet for Joey and he survived to sing the tale.  Finis.  Tune in next time for another enthralling episode of The Young and the Stupid, in which Lance and Moira poke a wasp nest with a five-iron.

There is much to hate about this song, including the paradoxical details that we are given about the shooting.  For example, Joey was somehow able to see his nemesis sneaking up behind him at Julie’s house.  While this is an improbable feat, I suppose that it isn’t totally implausible.  Perhaps Joey was wearing mirrored see-behind sunglasses that he ordered from an ad in a comic book, or maybe he spotted the assassin’s reflection on Julie’s polished silver spittoon.  But I don’t get how Julie jumped in front of Joey and shielded him from this attack that was coming from the other direction, nor do I understand how Joey was able to cradle his dying girlfriend in his arms without the crazed dad finishing him off.  Firearm technology in the 1970s was not as advanced as it is today, and the gun was probably not an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine, but I still think the guy could have fired a second shot without having to wait three minutes for the muzzle to cool down.

Julie insists that the pregnancy was not Joey’s fault, and this implies astounding ignorance of the basic principles of reproductive biology.  Her pleading seems even more juvenile and naïve when it is juxtaposed against David Geddes’s mature portrayal of the title character.  This combination of serious adult and annoying child reminds me of Clint Holmes’s “Playground in My Mind” and its waifish contribution from 7-year-old Philip Vance.  It isn’t a coincidence.  It turns out that Philip’s father Paul was the producer and co-writer of both “Playground” and “Joey”, and Philip’s teen sister Paula provided the vocals for Julie’s part in “Joey”.  Paula also inspired “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini”, a 1960 song co-written by the elder Vance.  Whatever we think of these three oft-vilified records, we must salute Paul Vance for not forgetting about his children when he went off to work in the Bad Top Ten Hits factory each day.  It must have been big fun for young Paula to stand in front of a microphone and pretend that she had just been shot by her dad.

Geddes did not have the personality of a typical rock star.  Consider, for example, his nerdy obsession with the transportation infrastructure of Michigan.  He picked his stage name from a street in Ann Arbor, and his 1972 regional hit “House on Holly Road” was inspired by an interstate exit near Pontiac.  That record failed to chart nationally, despite being far superior to his later records that did, so Geddes put his singing on hold and headed to law school in Detroit.  While other musicians were snorting cocaine off of groupies’ butts, this guy was busy Shepardizing the decisions of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.  It wasn’t all work and no play, however.  I imagine he took occasional breaks from his legal studies to photograph the Davison Freeway and build models of the Mackinac Bridge.

His final semester of law school was derailed when Paul Vance convinced him to get back into the music business by singing on “Joey”.  After the success of this single, Geddes followed up with another morbid story song called “The Last Game of the Season (A Blind Man in the Bleachers)”.  It turned out to be the last game of his season in the spotlight, and he vanished shortly thereafter.  Internet searches have yielded no interviews or career updates from him in the last 50 years.  Geddes clearly values his privacy, so I dispatched a team of investigators to track him down and sift through his garbage.  They found him living quietly in upstate New York as if “Joey” had never happened.  Don’t expect him to perform at any oldies concerts, but if you ever bump into him at a map store in Schenectady please ask him whether he thinks U.S. Highway 127 through Lansing should be redesignated as Interstate 73.  Let me know his reply, because I’d like to hear some educated opinions on this matter before I vote in the midterms.

Although David Geddes is certainly an exciting individual and a capable singer, I really can’t abide “Run Joey Run”.  It is the kind of song that gives senseless gun violence a bad name.  Now I need to listen to “Pumped Up Kicks”, “Straight Outta Compton”, and “Copacabana” to cleanse my auditory palate.

My rating:  2 / 10

“Feelings” by Morris Albert (1975, #6)

One critic’s view:  “If you wonder why punk had to happen, listen to this song.” – Andy Greene @ Rolling Stone

The public’s view:  2.51 / 5.00

Morris Albert was born in Brazil as the son of Austrian immigrants.  As such, he is presumably most comfortable conversing in either Brazilian or Austrian.  Nonetheless, he summoned up his poetic talents to write a smash hit in English without needing a huge vocabulary.  He chose one word and then beat the living crap out of it until everyone was ready to banish that word from the language.  He could have selected a word like “morphological”, “Congregationalism”, or “typhoid”, but no.  Albert opted for a word that was mushy and imprecise rather than entertaining or informative.  The word that he chose was “feelings”.  Nothing more than “feelings”.

When I was a child in the 1970s, I saw “Feelings” mocked more often than I heard the actual recording.  Comedy skits and Mad Magazine cartoons depicted awful lounge singers groaning their way through painful renditions of it.  “Feelings.  Woe, woe, woe, feelings.”  “Feelings” may also be the only hit song whose lyrics have been ruled terrible by a court of law.

This was the outcome of a copyright suit in which Albert was accused of stealing the song’s melody from an obscure French tune called “Pour Toi”.  “Pour Toi” had been featured in the 1957 film Le feu aux poudres.  If I remember my high school French correctly, that title translates to The Fire in the Powder Room.  Albert vigorously denied the plagiarism allegations, claiming that he had never heard “Pour Toi” or seen the associated film.  He had better things to do than watch foreign movies about flammable toilets.  He was found liable nonetheless, because his song was deemed to have such a “striking similarity” to the other that it couldn’t be just a coincidence.  A million monkeys could each write a million songs a day for a million years, and would only come up with “Pour Toi” or “Feelings” – not both.

Albert’s best hope of averting a large payout was to explain that his lyrics, rather than the infringing melody, had made “Feelings” a commercial success.  Ordinarily, the ownership of a song is split 50-50 between the composer and the lyricist.  However, Albert retained an expert witness who testified that the lyrics were far superior to the music, and therefore the Brazilian entertainer should be allowed to keep the majority of the record’s profits.  The expert then undercut his own argument when he was asked to sing “Feelings” on the stand and was unable to remember most of the words that he had just praised.  The jury ultimately awarded Albert a mere 12% of the song, giving the “Pour Toi” fellow the other 88%.  Albert’s expert had told the court that even a “bad” lyricist always gets at least 15%.  Ouch.

How did Morris Albert get crushed so thoroughly in this trial?  My guess is that the jurors were all heavily biased against him because they had lived through the lengthy “Feelings” rampage of 1975 and 1976.  Unlike many Bad Top Ten Hits, this song did not race up the charts and right back down again.  It inexplicably stuck around for months, frustrating and angering the vast majority of people who wished it would go away.  In that respect, Albert was the forerunner of Teddy Swims.  If there is ever a copyright complaint regarding “Lose Control”, the jury will probably decide that Teddy should be tarred and feathered.

As for my opinion of “Feelings”, this is one instance where I believe the consensus view is pretty much correct.  I know I’m being vague, but it’s a feeling that I have.  Nothing more than a feeling.  Woe, woe, woe.

My rating:  3 / 10

“Morning Side of the Mountain” by Donny and Marie Osmond (1975, #8)

One person’s view:  “[T]eenage siblings should not take on the roles of star-crossed lovers pining for each other from opposite sides of a mountain.  People don’t want to hear it.” – Nic Renshaw @ Pop Goes the Year

The public’s view:  1.59 / 5.00

When I was a teenager in the 1980s, people seemed to be embarrassed that the 1970s had ever existed.  Aside from Star Wars and a handful of classic rock songs that were stuck on repeat on the radio, the cultural artifacts of the decade were now seen as shameful mistakes made by a primitive, ignorant, and immoral society.  I was sure that some of the adults I knew had once danced to disco, watched Rhoda, or hosted a fondue party, but none of them wanted to talk about it.

It wasn’t until 1989 or so that the stigma surrounding the ‘70s began to wear off.  The decade’s cast-aside icons, such as John Travolta and Jimmy Carter, eventually returned from exile to become cool, rad, and groovy once again.  The reign of the Osmonds, however, is still generally viewed as a cringeworthy goof that must be erased from humanity’s timeline.  Sure, Donny had a brief comeback as a singer, but he succeeded only by imitating George Michael and leaving his old image behind.  Other than an occasional spin of “One Bad Apple” on an oldies station, it’s as if the family’s abundant 1970s output has ceased to exist.  This is an unlucky break for all of us who were waiting on the 50th Anniversary Edition re-release of Goin’ Coconuts in 2028.  I was hoping we’d get a director’s cut that restores the controversial nude scenes.

While I’ve already covered the Osmond family in the “Puppy Love” entry, their endeavors in the field of Bad Top Ten Hits are so extensive that they merit a second post.  “Morning Side of the Mountain” is Donny and Marie’s remake of a Tommy Edwards song from the 1950s.  It is about a couple who would be perfect for each other, but they are fated to never meet because they reside on opposite sides of a mountain.  In the world outlined by this song, mountains are impassable obstacles.  Nobody climbs mountains or goes around them, and tunnels are dismissed as infeasible and foolish.  People are born on one side of a mountain or the other, and that is where they will live and die.

I prefer to think of the mountain as a metaphor for any type of impediment that might prevent a person from finding his or her true love.  For example, right now there’s a young lady in Bluefield, Virginia whose ideal husband lives on an isolated small island in the Bay of Bengal.  Ekɖaik Məəŋɖa-bāī is the only man on the planet who meets Miley Rae’s exacting age and height requirements, possesses no disqualifying political opinions, and enjoys canoeing, jewelry making, and long walks on a tropical beach.  They even have similar dietary preferences.  Ekɖaik subsists solely on fish that he has caught himself, and Miley Rae also plans to become a pescatarian just as soon as Dairy Queen brings back their tilapia sliders.  However, she has foolishly configured her Bumble account to only show matches within 5,000 miles, so she doesn’t learn of his existence.  And if the two of them were ever to hook up after a chance meeting in a Holiday Inn lounge, Ekɖaik would perish soon afterward because his tribe has not acquired immunity to the chemicals in Miley Rae’s hair conditioner.

The futility of love is a great topic for a song, and “Morning Side of the Mountain” describes it in poetic fashion.  It reminds us that virtually everyone who chooses to participate in the game of romance is settling for someone inadequate, while missing out on millions of better options.  And, although Tommy Edwards did an OK job on the original, this is one of those rare cases where you can justify turning a song into a duet.  Unfortunately, there is no justification for making this into a duet between Donny Osmond and his sister Marie.

It isn’t just that the implications are gross, though they are.  It’s that a brother and sister are the diametric opposite of the couple that is described in the lyrics.  They aren’t just from the same side of the mountain – they are from the same family.  While the couple in the song existed in complete unawareness of each other, Donny and Marie were having typical household arguments about Donny getting crumbs in the margarine and Marie using up three entire tubes of toothpaste each time she brushed.  There’s also a grating smugness to their teenage voices, and the 1950s-style orchestration only makes it worse.  Even Paul Anka, who was an actual 1950s act, had the courtesy to update his sound for the 1970s as part of his comeback.

Although I give the siblings credit for resurrecting a worthwhile song that was languishing in obscurity, they are exactly the wrong people to be singing it.  And I have to describe their version with a word that wasn’t used more than once or twice in the entire run of the Donny and Marie TV variety show:  shitty.  That’s something that both sides of the mountain can agree on.

My rating:  3 / 10

“One Man Woman / One Woman Man” by Paul Anka with Odia Coates (1975, #7)

One person’s view:  “There’s something inherently cringeworthy about a song that glorifies infidelity.” – Joe @ ILoveClassicRock

The public’s view:  2.22 / 5.00

What do you think is the snobbiest and most elitist organization in the universe?  It might be the British royalty.  Ideally, anyone would be allowed a shot at a position as duke or king or viscount.  Simply take a few community college courses in Banquet Manners, Public Family Squabbles, and Recreational Equine Usage, and then do an internship and pass a licensing exam.  Boom, now you’re the Princess of Sheffield!  In reality, however, you have to get past the toffee-nosed gatekeepers in Buckingham Palace’s HR department, and it winds up being all about who you know rather than what you know.  It’s nearly as difficult as becoming a member of Augusta National.

Radio station executive John Rook thought that one institution was even snootier than the Royal Family:  the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  The Hall portrayed its secretive selection process as the authoritative umpire of musical quality, yet so many legends of the rock genre were overlooked.  Why weren’t Rook’s friends Pat Boone and Connie Francis in the Hall?  Where were Marie Osmond and Tony Orlando?  And how, for the love of God, can you call yourself a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame if you haven’t made room for Perry Como?

It was unsurprising that the Rock Hall didn’t reflect popular tastes, as it was controlled by a shadowy cabal of critics, industry execs, and weird leftist musicians like that dude with the bandana from Springsteen’s band.  But John Rook did more than just complain about the situation.  He formed a rival institution, called the Hit Parade Hall of Fame, that was designed to appeal to mainstream music fans.  It was overseen by a committee of discerning tastemakers such as disc jockey Rick Dees, game show host Wink Martindale, and radio programmer Scott Shannon.  On the one hand, these were wild, uninhibited hellions who could probably recite the Carpenters’ entire discography from memory.  On the other, they were also folks who your grandmother would trust as spokesmen for term life insurance or adult diapers.  You couldn’t have asked for a more suitable panel for this purpose.

The Hit Parade Hall of Fame announced its first class of inductees in 2007, and John Rook must have been pleased to see Paul Anka among them.  As one of the biggest stars of pre-Beatles rock and roll to have been snubbed by the Rock Hall, Anka is exactly the type of entertainer who the Hit Parade Hall was designed for.  To be fair, however, the singer-songwriter didn’t do his legacy any favors during his 1970s comeback.  Aside from the legendarily awkward #1 hit “(You’re) Having My Baby”, he generated three other top ten singles in the ‘70s that are all viable contenders for the Bad Top Ten Hits blog.  After consulting with Rick Dees, Scott Shannon, and (via Ouija board) Wink Martindale, I’ve determined that the song we shall discuss here is “One Man Woman / One Woman Man”.

The chief complaint against “One Man Woman” is that it continues the misogyny and overall dickishness that were on display in “Having My Baby”.  It’s a song about a dude getting caught cheating on his wife – again.  She forgives him – again.  The faithless husband then declares that he has turned over a new leaf and is now a “one woman man”.  It is an unconvincing transformation, as the guy has never suffered any consequences for his misdeeds and has no incentive to change.  It would be more believable for a chronic overeater to vow to become a “one cheesecake man” while enduring an intense bout of indigestion following a dessert binge.

Although I can’t defend the lyrics of “One Man Woman”, I don’t hate the song.  It has a pleasant melody and the vocals are decent, especially Odia Coates’s performance as the woman who has put up with more horseshit than a stable hand at Churchill Downs.  I also like that Anka rhymes “sorry” with “story”, as Canadians are wont to do.  It’s a rare reminder that he grew up on the stinking streets of Ottawa and came to this country as a migrant without a farthing to his name.  The ICE agents who are grabbing Canadians out of Home Depot parking lots and sending them back to El Salvador might very well be costing us the next Paul Anka.

I wish I could close out this entry by giving you directions to the Hit Parade Hall of Fame so that you can see Anka’s exhibit in all of its glory.  Unfortunately, I can find no evidence that the Hall has yet been built.  And after the Class of 2015, which included such timeless rock and roll favorites as Charlie Rich, Air Supply, and the Captain & Tennille, no additional musicians have been inducted.  If there is ever a hall of fame for halls of fame, it is quite likely that the Hit Parade Hall will fail to make the cut.  Chalk up another win for the evil forces of elitism.

My rating:  5 / 10

“Mockingbird” by Carly Simon & James Taylor (1974, #5)

One person’s view:  “The music’s crap, the lyrics make no sense, and the message is terrible.” – Valeyard’s Music Corner

The public’s view:  2.51 / 5.00

I had always thought that James Taylor and his music were universally praised.  I never expected to encounter him in the course of documenting “bad” top ten hits, but here he is.  And now that I look into his body of work in more detail, I realize that there are really two James Taylors.  The first is a beloved singer-songwriter who brilliantly channeled his personal experiences and his substance abuse struggles into classics like “Fire and Rain” and “Sweet Baby James”.  The second James Taylor is not really a songwriter.  He specializes in radio-friendly remakes of songs that were done more soulfully by their original artists.  This latter guy has more in common with Pat Boone than he does with the other James Taylor.

The James Taylor dichotomy is evident among his fan base.  Back when there were newspapers, and newspapers printed letters from readers about matters of public concern, I once read an angry letter from a woman who had attended one of Taylor’s shows.  The correspondent was there to experience a nice relaxing evening with the second James Taylor, but she and her husband were surrounded by admirers of the first James Taylor.  These other individuals were not from the sophisticated demographic who enjoyed mailing letters to newspapers.  They expressed themselves via heavy drinking, profound displays of public vomiting, and perhaps an occasional human sacrifice.  “All this at a James Taylor concert!” the exasperated letter writer complained.  But I know what would have salvaged the messy evening for this puked-upon fan:  an encore consisting of an extended 15-minute rendition of “Mockingbird”.

Taylor and this then-wife Carly Simon had each built a substantial reservoir of goodwill with audiences and critics by 1974.  “Mockingbird” was a way for them to light it all on fire so that they could both move firmly into the world of lightweight pop without the burden of high expectations.  It was a remake of an R&B song by the sister and brother Inez and Charlie Foxx in 1963, which in turn had been based on the children’s lullaby “Hush, Little Baby”.  Right away, you can detect two of the signs of a Bad Top Ten Hit:  white people appropriating black music and adults appropriating kids’ music.  “Mockingbird” is also a duet, though this was not seen as troubling at the time.  It wasn’t until much later that the surgeon general began requiring warning labels to be affixed to duets, as part of the Reagan Administration’s response to the Willie Nelson & Julio Iglesias Crisis of 1984.

“Hush, Little Baby” concerns a phenomenon that the insurance industry calls “moral hazard”.  It is about a parent buying gifts for a child and guaranteeing that each one will be replaced with a different item if it ceases to function.  In this way, the spoiled brat is incentivized to carelessly break her things until she gets exactly what she wants.  The Foxx siblings abandoned this unique lyrical concept in “Mockingbird”, however, and reworked the lullaby into a love song.  They made it a little repetitive in the process, forcing James Taylor to add some new lyrics in his and Carly’s remake.  His changes take “Mockingbird” even further afield from its “Hush, Little Baby” roots.  The cryptic new lines about finding a “better way” sound like something out of a New Age religion.  I would have preferred to hear more couplets about stuff getting ruined:  “And if that comic book gets wet / I’m gonna buy you a private jet.”

Some listeners claim that “Mockingbird” is the low point of James Taylor’s career and also the low point of Carly Simon’s.  From that perspective, the silly record also wasted the talents of great session players such as Bobby Keys, Jim Keltner, Dr. John, Robbie Robertson, and Michael Brecker.  I have a more positive opinion of “Mockingbird”, but part of that stems from how the song has been used in the years following its release.  Carly and James sang it together at a “No Nukes” concert in 1979, and this energetic live performance blasts the earlier studio version out of the birdbath.  It was for the good cause of preserving our environmentally sound coal-fired electricity plants against the escalating threat of atoms and quarks and neutrons – all of which should be banned.

Nuclear power had one of its roughest years in 1979.  First it was blamed for the Three Mile Island peccadillo, then it had to endure a big blazing dose of “Mockingbird”.  Nevertheless, the industry has continued to limp along and so Taylor needs to do more to put the final nail in the coffin.  He should write some more new lyrics for his next performance of the song:  “Hush, little baby, don’t you snore / Mama’s gonna buy you a reactor core / And if that reactor core melts down / We’ll have to move to a different town.”  And then he should play a free show near a nuke plant and encourage his drunken fans to vomit on the precious uranium stockpile.  All this at a James Taylor concert!

My rating:  6 / 10  (The “No Nukes” live version is an 8 / 10.  Harry & Lloyd’s version in Dumb and Dumber is a 10 / 10.)

“Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose” by Dawn featuring Tony Orlando (1973, #3)

One writer’s view:  “Both ‘Sweet Gypsy Rose’ and ‘[Who’s in the Strawberry Patch with Sally]’ are performed in such hammy vaudeville fashion that it’s impossible to care about the protagonist in either one.  The arrangements are stuffed with cheesy effects – everything but slide whistles and rimshots.  The net effect of both is to make you want to pull your arm off and use it to beat yourself to death.” – J.A. Bartlett @ Pop Dose

The public’s view:  2.20 / 5.00

Tony Orlando and Dawn embarked on quite a project in 1973.  They decided to singlehandedly resurrect the vaudeville phase of the early 20th century with their album Dawn’s New Ragtime Follies.  Many Americans enthusiastically threw themselves into this fad.  Sales of cornets and straw boater hats rebounded to levels not seen since 1926, and some folks burned their Samsonite luggage and began transporting their belongings in oversized trunks.  Alas, the craze was over in a few months.  At least it was more durable than the Swing Music Revival of 1998, which ended after just 13 days when a mob of angry citizens forced the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies back into the speakeasy from which they had hatched.

The highlight of Dawn’s New Ragtime Follies was “Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose”.  It is a story song, much like others that Orlando and his group have recorded.  However, it’s a more believable tale than “Knock Three Times” or “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree”.  It describes a woman deserting her husband and children to become a stripper in New Orleans.  She adopts the alias of Gypsy Rose, because most striptease artists of the vaudeville era were named Gypsy Rose.  (It’s like how whales always used to be named Shamu.)  The husband eventually tracks her down despite having to wade through hundreds of Gypsy Roses in the Burlesque Entertainers section of the Yellow Pages, right between the listings for Burial Implements and Burro Meat.  It’s a shame that burro meat never made an appearance in a Tony Orlando story song.

This Gypsy Rose can be distinguished from other Louisiana strippers by the bells on her toes.  You may remember that toe bells were also worn by Fatima in Ray Stevens’s “Ahab, the Arab”, but they are otherwise a rare and unconventional accessory.  I can think of only one reason why someone might want to wear toe bells:  they are a deterrent to athlete’s foot germs.  No one – not even a tinea spore – wants to live in a noisy neighborhood.  Unfortunately, hit songs such as these only hint at the topic of disgusting podiatric ailments without ever diving into the meat of the matter.  We will never know whether Nancy Sinatra had to put antifungal powder in her walking boots, or whether cutting footloose and kicking off the Sunday shoes has been clinically proven to prevent painful bunions.  But at least we can assume that those bells bestowed good health upon Gypsy Rose’s feet.

Gypsy Rose’s husband suggests that people will soon tire of seeing her yawn-inducing naked body, so she might as well come home to her old life of domestic servitude.  The song leaves us to guess whether this is a winning argument, much as “Knock Three Times” never answers whether dangling an unsettling note outside a female neighbor’s window will result in a sexual encounter.  All I can say is that any man who takes relationship advice from Tony Orlando will probably wind up getting kicked in a sensitive region of his body.  Watch out, those toe bells can have some sharp edges.

I can remember “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” dominating the AM car radio for several years when I was a young ‘un.  “Sweet Gypsy Rose” did not have similar staying power.  My view is that it was not a terrible effort, but other performers have also given us musical rehashes of the 1920s.  Consider Leon Redbone, for example.  Redbone is most famous for his classic “This Bud’s for You” commercial.  Let’s compare him to Tony Orlando:

Leon Redbone	Tony Orlando
Made a song about beer	Made a song about telling a woman to put her clothes back on
Song has no boring slow-paced intro	Song has boring slow-paced intro that consumes the first 34 seconds
Awesome mustache	Pretty good mustache
Awesome Panama hat	$300 hairstyle where Panama hat should be
Performed at 0 Republican conventions	Performed at 1 Republican convention
Appeared in 0 movies with Vanilla Ice	Appeared in 1 movie with Vanilla Ice
Dead; will not do anything embarrassing	Alive; probably did something embarrassing while you were reading this post

Not only does Redbone win the coolness competition, his Budweiser ad is better than Orlando’s hit record too.  Sorry, Tony.

My rating:  4 / 10

“Playground in My Mind” by Clint Holmes (1973, #2)

One writer’s view:  “Is there anything more lovely than the voices of little children in song?  Most things, actually.” – J.A. Bartlett @ Pop Dose

The public’s view:  1.22 / 5.00

Nostalgia is a valuable defense mechanism that can protect you from the stress of existing.  Whenever life gets too tough, simply close your eyes and daydream about those childhood days when you didn’t have a care in the world.  Let someone else restock the potato chip aisle, reboot the web server, or drive Ladder Truck 66 to the scene of a working structure fire.  You cannot be bothered right now.  This is the message of Clint Holmes’s “Playground in My Mind”.

Of course, nostalgia always involves remembering events as being better than they really were.  Holmes’s narrator recalls happily taunting other kids about having a nickel and planning to buy candy with it.  This is something that no sensible child would ever do on a playground, because children learn very quickly not to flaunt their wealth.  Aside from the obvious risk of another kid knocking you down and taking your nickel, there is a chance that some adult do-gooder will intervene at the sound of your boasting.  Soon you will be taught a lesson about “sharing” and how a nickel is just five pennies that can be redistributed more equitably among you and your playmates and siblings.  It’s funny how a grown-up can vote Republican in every election but then morph into Bernie Sanders the moment a child has a financial windfall.

Holmes also reminisces about telling a girl on the playground that they will get married someday and then he will knock her up.  Again, this is not something that the narrator would have said or thought as a small child.  Kids may know how to guard a nickel properly, but they do not have conventional notions of matrimony such as those expressed in this song.  I can recall my erstwhile young friends discussing what their eventual marriages would be like, and their plans consisted mostly of bigamy, incest, and unlikely arrangements with the cast of Charlie’s Angels.  A more true-to-life chorus of “Playground” would feature the boy expressing these sorts of unrealistic and taboo nuptial ambitions.  For example, he might declare that he will marry Edith Bunker because she reminds him of his grandmother – whom he also intends to marry.

Otherwise, “Playground” consists of elements that do not belong together, starting with Clint Holmes’s lounge singer act.  He is a little too serious for a near-novelty record such as this, and comes across like a less self-aware version of Tom Jones.  He teams up with songwriter Paul Vance’s 7-year-old son on the choruses, and Holmes’s voice pretty much knocks poor little Philip Vance out of the studio.  Then comes the instrumental bridge, which sounds like an ice cream truck having a nervous breakdown.  Somehow the combination of all of these indecorous musical ideas actually yields a catchy little song.  It isn’t a masterpiece by any stretch, but it’s tolerable for about two or three listens.  I find that it helps if you make up your own words as you sing along.  (“My girl is Edith / She is a dingbat / She will divorce old Archie for me...”)

Holmes’s single languished for months after its release in June 1972, but then a radio station in Kansas started playing it as a Christmas song.  Because, of course, “Playground in My Mind” is almost as Christmasy as palm trees, Buddha, and the 4th of July.  The song got some requests, other stations picked it up, and soon Holmes was rushed into the studio to record an even more childish follow-up:  “Shiddle-Ee-Dee”.  This latter tune would prove to be a career-making record.  Not for Clint Holmes, but for Barry Manilow, because it ensured that Manilow would never have to worry about competition from Clint on the radio.

This doesn’t mean that Holmes just faded away into nothingness.  He has entertained tourists in Vegas and Atlantic City, and he wrote, produced, and starred in an autobiographical musical play that made its debut in 1996.  Can you imagine two and a half hours of watching Clint Holmes act out such personal milestones as his childhood spelling bee win, his ruined prom night, and his wedding?  There aren’t many better excuses for retreating to the playground in your mind.

My rating:  4 / 10

“Sing” by the Carpenters (1973, #3)

One person’s view:  “I don’t know what I dislike more, the slushy-pups lyric, gormlessly simple tune, the godawful children’s chorus but mostly I think it’s the utter waste of Karen Carpenter’s voice on such an undeserving song.” – Lejink @ Rate Your Music 

The public’s view:  2.88 / 5.00

When we examine the Bad Top Ten Hits of the early 1970s, we find the germ-laden fingerprints of children all over them.  Children were the subjects of questionable hit songs such as “Clair” and “Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast”.  Youngsters, usually those with names like “Donny” or “Marie”, sang on some of the era’s most reviled records.  And as if that wasn’t enough, several of the critically disparaged top tens first appeared on kids’ TV shows.  This is the lasting legacy of Little Big Time (“Gimme Dat Ding”) and Groovie Goolies (“Chick-A-Boom”), but those two obscure programs must now yield the floor.  We’re about to hear from the 800-pound gorilla of children’s television – or, more accurately, the 800-pound yellow ostrich.  “Sing” emanated from the land where everything’s A-OK, clouds are swept away like last week’s toenail clippings, and Mr. Hooper has been forced by one deranged blue-furred individual to keep all of his store’s cookies locked up behind the counter with the cigarettes and the condoms.  I am of course talking about Sesame Street, which was beamed into billions of kids’ eyeballs every day on PBS.

The debut performance of “Sing” by the Sesame Street cast must have been a fine spectacle, but I can’t find any footage of it to share with you.  You’ll just have to imagine Big Bird’s beak opening to its full extent as the notes pour out of it.  However, the tune did not go directly from Sesame Street to the pop charts.  It first made a stop on an ABC variety special emceed by Marcus Welby, M.D. actor Robert Young and featuring several celebrity guests.  The network decided that the show’s subject matter should be based on the host’s name, so they titled it “Robert Young and the Young” and built the entire program around the theme of youth.  (Good thing the host wasn’t Dick Butkus.)  To drive home the point, they assembled a generic group of children as co-stars.

ABC knew very little about people under the age of 20 who weren’t part of the Partridge Family, and they struggled with how to utilize the kids on Young’s special.  They snuck a peek at archrival PBS’s programming for ideas, but overlooked the obvious approach:  hiring the host of PBS’s Firing Line, William F. Buckley Jr., to engage the children in a lively discussion of the failures of Keynesian economics.  It is unclear why they didn’t do this.  Perhaps Buckley demanded that a working model of the Federal Reserve be built for the set, and the network couldn’t afford it.  Instead, ABC did the next best thing.  They borrowed “Sing” from Sesame Street and asked Laugh-In regular Arte Johnson to lead the little tykes in a sing-along of the tune.

Another of the show’s guests – the Carpenters – was impressed by the song.  The duo enthusiastically volunteered to take it into the studio and record a version for all of the people who never watched ABC or PBS.  There was a whole demographic who didn’t know how to get to Sesame Street and still hadn’t been subjected to “Sing”.  Many of these same individuals didn’t realize that there was a difference between Marcus Welby and Marcus Garvey, at least not until they tried to see the doctor for a sore throat and wound up on a ship to Liberia.

Karen and Richard Carpenter didn’t just believe in “Sing”’s potential to be a hit; they wanted it to be the lead single from their new album.  Richard has since remarked that their label wasn’t happy about this, and that “most of our associates thought we were nuts.”  He and his sister were correct that their rendition would sell some copies, but it did so by undercutting the song’s premise.  The message of “Sing” is that you are supposed to sing even if you stink at it and no one wants to hear you.  It’s a simplistic tune that works best in a lackadaisical TV skit with a group of untrained children, a Laugh-In comedian, or a guy in a giant bird suit.  Sesame Street proved that “Sing” can even be babbled in Spanish or signed to the deaf, and the lyrics will have just as little significance as they do in English.  The only thing that “Sing” isn’t intended for is a slick production featuring one of the best soft rock vocalists of all time.  And thus it became perhaps the least admired gold record in the Carpenters’ catalog.

You may think that we’ve hit the nadir of childish hit music of the 1970s.  Nothing could be more juvenile than a song from Sesame Street, right?  Wrong.  Stay tuned.

My rating:  4 / 10

“Clair” by Gilbert O’Sullivan (1972, #2)

One person’s view:  “Come on, you think he didn't know [the lyrics] sounded perverted?  Of course, he did.  Why he or his manager, Clair's dad, or her mom allowed this I do not know except to say that greed rules.” – Glinda47 @ Songfacts

The public’s view:  3.17 / 5.00

Gilbert O’Sullivan was bursting with a happy feeling of naïveté during his brief moment in the spotlight, having blissfully failed to anticipate the inappropriate meanings people might ascribe to his lyrics.  To use his terminology, he was cheerful, bright, and gay.  When he wrote a tune about a man who was unlucky with women, and called it “Underneath the Blanket Go”, he was genuinely surprised that everyone incorrectly assumed the title referred to masturbation.  “Clair” was even more misunderstood.  It was a tribute to his manager’s three-year-old daughter, with whom O’Sullivan had developed a close friendship.  Certainly, Gilbert thought, no one would misconstrue this beautiful song about the bond between a babysitter and a babysat?  As it turns out, he thought wrong.

The controversy might have been avoided if the lyrics were more direct.  The first verse of “Clair” lulls the listener into the belief that Clair is the singer’s girlfriend, and we don’t learn until later in the song that she’s actually a small child.  It’s an uncomfortable twist, but not an inherently disgusting one like in Billy J. Kramer’s infamous “Little Children”.  “Little Children” deliberately leads us to believe that the narrator is a pervert, and the surprise at the end is that he’s a different kind of pervert.  “Clair” is pure sugary sweetness, by contrast, except for the part where O’Sullivan complains about the girl becoming a monstrous terror in the evenings when told to go to bed.  If you hear anything untoward in it, it means you have a problem on your end.

Although I disagree with those who say “Clair” is obscene, I have to acknowledge that it’s pretty weird.  The song never explains why a man in his 20s has formed such an instant attachment to someone else’s toddler who he has been told to supervise.  It would be less bizarre if he had grown fond of his manager’s pet snake and had written lyrics praising Fluffy the Burmese python.  At least snakes are interesting and you can put them down people’s pants as an amusing prank.  You can’t use three-year-old children in this manner and instead have to intentionally lose games to them to prevent them from throwing tantrums.  The brats can’t even play Stratego at a competent level, and yet we are all expected to massage their fragile egos.

Gilbert O’Sullivan hasn’t had a hit in many decades, but his brand of oblivious innocence might be refreshing to today’s beleaguered citizenry.  Here are a few song premises that he can try out if he wants:

“Epstein Was My Friend (R.I.P.)” – an ode to the late actor Robert Hegyes, who played the beloved character of Juan Epstein on Welcome Back, Kotter

“Now I’ve Joined the Clan” – about the day that O’Sullivan’s in-laws finally accepted him as a member of their extended family

“She’s Gonna Find My Big Snake in Her Pants” – a musical guide to harmless practical jokes with a pet reptile

“Keep Our Dark Secret Forever (Clair Pt. 2)” – a reminder to Clair never to tell anyone about the time O’Sullivan dozed off while he was supposed to be watching her and she ate a cigarette butt

I promise not to sue O’Sullivan if he uses any of the above ideas.  I probably wouldn’t win anyway, as he has a pretty good track record in court.  He sued his manager, Clair’s father, and was awarded millions of pounds for unpaid royalties.  (I don’t know whether he also won back wages for babysitting.)  He later sued Biz Markie for an unauthorized sample and forced an entire album to be recalled from stores in December 1991, resulting in lots of disappointed rap fans who had expected to find some Biz under the Christmas tree.  You can call him Gilbert O’Scrooge if you like, but when it comes to any interpretations of “Clair” that aren’t cheerful, bright, and gay – don’t go there.

My rating:  4 / 10

“Convention ‘72” by the Delegates (1972, #8)

One writer’s view:  “Although to the record’s credit it does sample (a term that was not in use in 1972) a couple of good songs by groups such as the Bee Gees, Three Dog Night, and the O’Jays, most of the sampled music is [as] bad as the premise behind the song itself...” – Dr. Rick Simmons @ REBEAT

The public’s view:  2.61 / 5.00

Welcome to the great American shitshow known as a presidential election.  While all elections are painful ordeals for the citizenry, 1972 was one of the worst because voters that year didn’t really have a choice.  The Democratic candidate George McGovern was known for lunatic left-wing positions such as opposing the Vietnam War, favoring the decriminalization of marijuana, and supporting a woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions (as long as she doesn’t defy the whims of her state legislators).  Due to McGovern’s extreme views, the Republican ticket of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew was the only viable option.  The lopsided outcome was evident well in advance, and most Americans tuned out by September.  But just a few weeks before Election Day, the Delegates’ “Convention ‘72” hit the airwaves and everyone was forced to pay attention again.  A weary people emitted a tremendous national groan.

“Convention ‘72” is a political version of the comedic “break-in” records that had been pioneered by Dickie Goodman and Bill Buchanan in the 1950s.  As an amateur humor writer, I am sympathetic to the difficulties that the Delegates faced when trying to produce a funny novelty song.  I’ve spent dozens of hours meticulously crafting jokes that I later discarded after realizing that they were never as hilarious as I first thought.  (You’ve seen the material that I’ve kept, so you can imagine how awful the throw-away stuff was.)  Plus, some of my best ideas can’t be made to work in the places where I need them.  For my post about Bobby Vinton’s Bad Top Ten Hit, I wrote an extended joke involving the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.  It was witty and brilliant, and you would have loved reading it, but after I had finished three paragraphs it dawned on me that it had nothing to do with Bobby Vinton and I couldn’t use any of it.  I probably should have also stopped myself before referencing the Ayatollah Khomeini in last week’s entry on Wayne Newton.

The creators of “Convention ‘72” understood that it’s the introspection and self-editing that makes comedy writing so tedious, so they decided to skip that step.  They kept all of their material whether it was funny or not, and dwelled on some of it for far too long.  One bit, in particular, was driven into the ground:  the running joke about a horny Henry Kissinger galloping around the convention site while muttering “gotta find a woman, gotta find a woman.”  We all know that Mr. Kissinger was quite a ladies’ man.  He was a lot more popular with Hollywood starlets than he was with, say, Cambodian villagers.  But this snippet of the Jimmy Castor Bunch’s “Troglodyte (Cave Man)” wasn’t especially amusing the first time it appeared in “Convention ‘72”, and it didn’t need to resurface twice more – along with three other samples from the same godforsaken song.  The “gotta find a woman” line would have worked much better if used ironically by a political figure who no one expects to be chasing women.  However, I don’t know who the 1972 equivalent of Lindsey Graham might have been.

Incidentally, all of the “Troglodyte” samples were used without obtaining prior consent from Jimmy Castor.  Shortly after “Convention ‘72” was released, the members of the Delegates were heard muttering “gotta find a lawyer, gotta find a lawyer.”

Much of the rest of the material focuses on the choice of vice presidential running mates.  This is like someone releasing a similar record in 2016 and devoting 60% of it to those two bland slabs of Oreo filling known as Mike Pence and Tim Kaine.  Meanwhile, “Convention ‘72” leaves other potentially humorous topics untouched.  There are no lines about Ted Kennedy’s amphibious driving habits, the strange burglary at the Democrats’ headquarters in the Watergate complex, or Nixon’s fondness of pouring ketchup on his cottage cheese.  And McGovern’s wacko proposals, which were dictating the entire course of the election, go unaddressed by the Delegates like the proverbial elephant (or donkey) in the room.  This record should have concluded with the liberal hippie senator offering Nixon a joint, and the two of them smoking it together while singing “One Toke Over the Line”.

The “break-in” format serves as a handicap to novelty music writers, as it limits them to jokes based on recent hit songs.  It’s as if I committed to writing this post without using the letter “a”, or insisted on making each sentence a palindrome.  The Delegates were unable to tease McGovern for his love of abortion because there were no major singles from 1971 or 1972 with lyrics that were relevant to this topic.  It had been way too many years since the Drifters were on the charts with “There Goes My Baby”.

There is only one moment in this song that gives me a snicker:  when one of the reporters is introduced as “David Stinkley”.  But maybe the other jokes were funny to people in 1972.  This generation was taught to laugh upon hearing “Ahab, the Arab” and the phrase “Sock it to me.”  The standards for humor were pretty low.

My rating:  2 / 10

“Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast” by Wayne Newton (1972, #4)

One person’s view:  “I don’t think Sinatra could have saved this turkey.” – hanspostcard @ slicethelife

The public’s view:  2.05 / 5.00

There are few things that can boost a city’s civic pride and tourism appeal like an association with an amazing musician.  San Antonio was once known mainly for a tired old fort, but today’s visitors are more interested in seeing the high school that Christopher Cross attended.  Columbia, South Carolina will someday honor its hometown heroes Hootie & the Blowfish in the way that South Carolina honors everything:  by erecting a statue of a Confederate general at the spot where the band formed.  And can you imagine what Las Vegas would be like if Wayne Newton had never existed?  It would be little more than an I-15 truck stop with twenty gas pumps, a couple of slot machines, and one bedraggled hooker.

The 83-year-old Newton has done over 30,000 concerts in Vegas, and continues his residency at the Flamingo even as he mysteriously morphs into a wax mannequin.  This is an impressive streak, but I should mention that Vegas shows aren’t always known for their tight quality control.  If you’re going to screw up as a performer you should always try to do it in front of tired drunks who are thinking more about how to recoup their gambling losses than they are about your inadequacies.  I recall seeing a well-known magician on the Strip in the 1990s.  The show began badly, with dancers tripping on a coat hanger that had accidentally been left on the stage.  Then, having neglected to load up on alcohol beforehand, I could easily discern how several of the illusions were accomplished.  Imperfectly aligned mirrors were used to conceal parts of the set, objects “levitated” with the aid of wires that glinted in the light, and the star employed a body double who looked more like a step-cousin than an identical twin.  It was the most unconvincing magic act I’ve witnessed – and I’ve seen cruise ship magicians.

Wayne Newton’s Vegas shows are still widely praised, but recent reviews suggest that his voice might no longer pass quality control.  As a young man he was capable of an oddly high pitch, leading many listeners to erroneously assume that tunes such as “Danke Schoen” were performed by a schoolmarm.  Eventually he grew a wisp of a mustache, and this caused his voice to deepen to match his more masculine appearance.  He was no longer as distinctive of a singer, but was still a hard-working and highly talented lounge act.  Today he is in the third and possibly final phase of his career, and his concerts rely more heavily on crowd interactions and storytelling than on his legendary pipes.  I suppose we can forgive Newton if his larynx is showing signs of wear and tear after 30,000 shows.  A man’s vocal abilities might also suffer if he were to inject his facial muscles with enough Botox to take the wrinkles out of a shar-pei.  There is absolutely no proof that Newton has undergone cosmetic procedures, however, and I refuse to entertain any scurrilous rumors of that nature.

“Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast” came along as Newton was turning 30 and his voice was in the latter stages of adolescence.  The song is about a guy attempting to flee his wife, who is evidently an unmitigated horror to live with.  His escape is thwarted when his manipulative young daughter guilts him into staying in the oppressive marriage for her own selfish reasons.  And yet, some folks inexplicably describe this as a heart-warming ditty with a happy ending.  These people also think that “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” depicts a pleasant and relaxing day of boating.

Despite the maudlin subject matter and the morose lyrics, the singing and musicianship is so proficient that it’s impossible for me to thoroughly hate this record.  The piano accompaniment is nice, and I especially like the second chorus when Newton does his own thing and wanders away from the orchestra for a moment.  Good for him.  The Mafia, however, was apparently not a fan of Newton’s performance and later threatened to kill him.  That seems like a bit of an overreaction.  I would have loved to hear how the mobsters reached that decision:

Mr. Gravano:  This meeting of the Italian-American Nontraditional Commerce Society shall come to order.  Thank you for your attendance here at the Hoboken Hilton.  First on the agenda is a proposal to purchase asphalt footwear for Wayne Newton as a token of our appreciation for “Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast”.

Mr. Gotti:  So I guess we’re music critics now?  Maybe we should sell our high-interest loan venture and start a stupid blog about top ten hits.

Mr. Khomeini:  Speaking of music, I’d like to put a fatwa on Donny Osmond.  “Go Away Little Girl” offends Allah, as well as everyone else.

Mr. Gotti:  You’re in the wrong place, pal.  Ayatollahs Anonymous is in Conference Room D.

Mr. Gravano:  Hey, wait a minute.  Beardy-face here is the one who took all the bacon at the breakfast bar this morning.  Maybe our Iranian friend would enjoy a refreshing swim in Lake Mead with Mr. Las Vegas?

Mr. Khomeini:  I would like that very much.  The hospitality in this country is as amazing as the bacon.  Long live America!

My rating:  4 / 10