Sunday Showcase June 29, 1975

This week's Sunday Showcase review is for the June 29 - July 5, 1975 issue which features Bo Svenson on its cover along with Richard Jaeckel as Walking Tall Part 2 gets some heavy promotion. The Walking Tall movies were hits nationwide, but they were huge smashes in the state of Tennessee. 

Monday July 14, 1975 you could have seen a great night of country music at the Grand Ole Opry House with Johnny Cash topping the bill. All of the artists on the bill are Country Music Hall of Fame members except for June Carter (her family is in, but she's not listed as an inductee) which is a shame as she was a great entertainer in her own right. 

dancing on a pony keg

The Osmonds were coming to town on August 1 with Marie and Jimmy Osmond too. How about some bonus Osmonds material below the video.

Rock n Roll Medley 1975

The July 27, 1975 Sunday Showcase would feature the Osmonds along with Marie and Jimmy on the cover as they were the featured story. I think we might have crested peak Osmonds fever and started down the other side as they were still touting good seats available on the ad for the show. 

Here's the article which features an interview with Donny and Marie. I learned that Donny was an electronics whiz and that Marie couldn't date until she was 16. I'll cover the Top 10 Records for the June 29th Showcase soon, but I will note that 4 of the songs in that Top 10 are still in the Top 10 almost a month later. Don't look ahead and guess which one's were in the Top 10 on June 29th. If you guess right you'll get a No Prize from the ghost of Stan Lee. 

The summer's only major outdoor concert was coming soon to the Tennessee State Fairground Speedway Grandstand with Manitoba's finest rockers Bachman-Turner Overdrive hitting the stage with special guests Elvin Bishop and Wet Willie for a good dose of Southern rock and Canadian roll. 

They rented a semi and came to Nashville

Prog rockers Yes were coming to town a few days earlier with a show on July 8, 1975 at Municipal Auditorium.  A $6.50 ticket would run you around $31 today according to an inflation calculator site. You'd be lucky to find any concert tickets for less than $40 at an arena today and would be much more likely to spend hundreds of dollars for a decent seat (at least in a pandemic free world where rock concerts would happen) so this Yes show back in 1975 was a bargain. Yes toured a lot back in the Seventies and played Nashville multiple times. Forgotten Yesterdays has a rundown on this show.

Yes live 1975

I have an entire post filled with Ask Showcase questions coming soon, so here's a little taste with a question about Paul and Linda McCartney's stay in Nashville.

Those photos that Linda took can be seen at this website: Kenneth DeGraff along with a plethora of other info about when the McCartney's stayed in Nashville in 1975. My favorite song that came out of the Nashville visit was ostensibly about Curly "Junior" Putnam's farm where they stayed. 

Let's go down to Junior's farm where I want to lay low

M*A*S*H had aired the "Abyssinia, Henry" episode on March 18, 1975 and people were still talking about Col. Henry Blake's exit from the show.

Charlie Rich had a song in the local Top 10 and an album that would hit number 1 on the country charts. My father would tell me that he used to see Charlie play live in a bar on Getwell Road in Memphis before I was born. Later in the year Charlie Rich would set fire to the slip of paper announcing John Denver as the Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year Award and the Tennessean only noted that Rich was "apparently disorganized" in its October 14 write-up the next day. Some speculated it was a protest against Denver, but I have come to think Rich was just trying to be funny. He's one of my favorite entertainers.

CMA Awards 1975

A very jazzy tune - should have left the strings off it.

Did you get the acts right that would still have their songs in the Top 10? It was the Captain & Tennille, The Bee Gees, The Amazing Rhythm Aces, and The Eagles. 10cc's "I'm Not In Love" is my favorite from this list, "Jive Talkin'" is awesome too, plus I was nuts over "Love Will Keep Us Together" when I was 9 years old.

Amazing Rhythm Aces

10cc

love didn't keep them together - it's still a great tune

Bee Gees

I'll wrap up this Sunday Showcase review with a couple of ads for great places to go to during the summer. I hope your 1975 was filled with joy if you were there and if you weren't there I hope this summer rocks.

Sunday Showcase March 26, 1978

This week I'm looking through the March 26, 1978 Sunday Showcase. The cover promotes the 50th anniversary of CBS special which aired that Sunday night with so many stars featured an identity key was added to the Ask Showcase section. I've included the opening segment which has an amazing amount of star power. I much preferred ABC during this era, but as I was a TV junkie this is still very cool. I highly recommend you watch all 13:43 minutes as the nostalgia overload is great.

Sound Seventy has a few spring concerts right around the corner. You could check out Jackson Browne at Municipal Auditorium on Monday night March 27, 1978. Randy Newman had finally crossed over to the pop scene with his song "Short People" and he was coming to the War Memorial Auditorium on April 12th. 

That is....if there was anything left of the War Memorial after the April 7th concert which features Van Halen, Ronnie Montrose, and Journey! Journey toured all the time during the 70's and early 80's truly earning their fame and this tour was their first headlining one and and going to feature new lead singer Steve Perry. Ronnie Montrose was playing strictly instrumentals since Sammy Hagar had left the band. But the big story was Van Halen on their very first opening tour!!! This predated their opening spot for Black Sabbath, but the story is much the same. They were incendiary live. Here is a great article about those days: Van Halen & Journey: Sharing Stage, Rivalry In 1978. If you got to see Van Halen on this date please leave a comment. I would love to hear how amazing it must have been.

Of course, if hard rock was not your thing you could head down to M.T.S.U. and check out John Denver. I know where I'd have rather been. 

Van Halen later in 1978 when they were opening for Black Sabbath

methinks the Beatles influenced this one

Rock and roll wasn't the only thing on tap as Vandy's Rites of Spring festival was bringing in a couple of heavyweights to play. I would have enjoyed hanging out on Alumni Lawn on April 15th for sure.

As those of you who read these posts know, David Bowie played Nashville often (half a dozen times) during the 1970's. This April 13th Isolar II Tour date was going to be the last time he played Nashville. My friend the X Man was at this show and I do believe it changed his life. There is a bootleg of this show out there which is pretty darn cool. I'm sharing a YouTube clip of it below, but it may not last long. It is quite good audio wise.

Bowie live in Nashville April 13, 1978

I know what I was watching on Sunday March 26, 1978. I was nuts about The Wizard Of Oz when I was young and I looked forward to seeing it once a year on CBS. This aired right before the gala CBS: On The Air 50th anniversary special that night.

Looking ahead to later in the week there is a local show that I would love to see again. The Tennessee Story airs on Channel 8 with its last installment. I don't know how many of these were made, but they were required viewing for us Mitchell-Neilson Elementary 5th graders. I still vividly remember one which featured Fall Creek Falls. I had never been to see the waterfall and the show featured just the sound of it before showing it. I was mesmerized by it. I have been to it many times over the years since seeing it on The Tennessee Story.

Later on in the week The Bob Newhart Show would air its finale. The show was a bit over my head, but I later watched it in reruns and loved it. The theme song is one of my favorites. 

Finally we check out the Top 10 Records in Nashville for the past week. The Bee Gees are strong with 2 singles in the top ten, perhaps 3 if you count younger brother Andy's "Love Is Thicker Than Water" which was co-written by Barry Gibb who would become the only person in history to write 4 consecutive number one songs as the number one Billboard tunes went like this: "Stayin' Alive", "Love Is Thicker Than Water", "Night Fever", and then Yvonne Elliman's performance of "If I Can't Have You." Rod Stewart's "Hot Legs" is a great rocking boogie tune. I do not care much for Clapton's country boogie "Lay Down Sally" though. 

heaven's angel devil's daughter

I'm glowing in the dark I give you warning

you're making me a physical wreck

That does it for this week. Come back next week to see for another one.

Sunday Showcase Top Pop Songs In Nashville October 13, 1968

I wasn't living in Nashville in 1968. I was just a toddler in the Frayser neighborhood of Memphis. I would imagine that the number 1 song in Nashville from the October 13, 1968 Tennessean Sunday Showcase was probably the number 1 song in Memphis too. The Beatles were atop the charts with "Hey Jude" which was a juggernaut ending up as the best selling single on the Billboard Hot 100 of 1968 which makes sense as it is their longest running number 1 in the US. I like how the Top 10 is bookended with future 70's superstars Bee Gees whose "I've Gotta Get A Message To You" ended up 59th on the Top 100 for the year. Barry is wearing a gold medallion in the video....perhaps foreshadowing their disco ascendancy.        

Bee Gees vs. Kiss, sorta

When I was a young lad toiling away at Mitchell-Neilson Elmentary School my music teacher was a young lady named Miss Kidd. She rocked the Dorothy Hamill haircut and had the obligatory amount of folk singing fervor and enthusiasm that was the hallmark of elementary education music instructors perhaps the world over. I don't remember much about what we actually did in the class that met a few times a week. I believe there were xylophones involved. And those dread recorders that all children are made to suffer with, I've never met anybody that could actually play those plastic flutes well. The thing I do remember is that she gave us a poll on what bands we liked the most. Once the results came in she would then devote one class a week to the history of the artist and we could bring records to play of their music.

The most popular band was the Bee Gees. So I learned all about the Aussies and how they had this awesome Beatles inspired early success singing about mining disasters or shipwrecks or something or other before they got all falsetto'ed and Stigwood'ed out. Did I care alot for this? Nope. I was bummed because the band I voted for didn't come in first in the elementary world.

Kiss came in second in Miss Kidd's demographic survey. So I had to wait a week before I could bring in my Destroyer album and play the class "God Of Thunder" and "Beth." Miss Kidd gave us the history of the band which I knew by heart, but instead of praising their music or success like she did the Bee Gees, she disparaged them.

So I'm always up for a Kiss versus Bee Gees throwdown. WFMU details a showdown between tribute bands Mini Kiss and Tragedy. It makes me feel like I'm back in elementary school all over again.