Sunday Showcase Review August 25, 1974

I was 7 years old going on 8 in 1974 and Evel Knievel was definitely a boyhood hero for the majority of my Generation X peers. I would have loved to have gotten a ticket to the Snake River Canyon jump which was going to be broadcast on big screen closed circuit TV at Municipal Auditorium on September 8, but I would have to wait like millions more and see it later when ABC's Wide World of Sports showed it. 42 years later Hollywood stuntman, Eddie Braun, would make the jump successfully.

Evel

42 years later

Esther Phillips was coming to the Exit/In

Kudu recording artist Esther Phillip would be playing Exit/In, but notice the blurb at the bottom of the ad: Aug. 25 Special Evening of Music & Entertainment by the cast of Robert Altman's Movie "Nashville." The Altman classic with its massive cast along with hundreds of local extras was being filmed. You could have seen Keith Carradine at the Exit/In back when it was truly a listening room. Then on August 30th you could have gone to the Parthenon as the final concert scene was being shot. "You can be in the movie." 

Keith Carradine "I'm Easy"

Nashville closing scenes SPOILER WARNING Y'ALL

Nashville trailer

The Tennessee State Fair was coming in a few weeks and three music heavyweights had been booked with Mac Davis, Black Oak Arkansas, and Lynyrd Skynyrd coming to play at the Speedway Grandstand. Who would you have seen if you could only see one? 

I can't take no clinging vine

I went to Cal Jam and got hit in the head with a Black Oak Arkansas visor

along comes a Yankee slicker

Wednesday night would be a funktastic trip with Rufus, The Ohio Players, and the mighty Sly & The Family Stone. Sly wasn't the most reliable performer by this point so I wonder if he was on or not on this weeknight show. I hope he was awesome on that particular evening. Sly is an absolute creative giant. 

tell me something good was a top 10 Nashville tune this week

the way you walk and talk really sets me off

Sly live in 1974

Don Sumner, Sean Nielsen, and Tim Beatty were the main guys in Voice which was the legit show band for Elvis. They played at the Villa often. The Tennessean had a nice write up on them a few years ago.

We end this review with a look at the Top 10 Records. Olivia Newton-John honestly loves you and Rufus wants us tell Chaka Khan something good. Donny and Marie left it all up to Eric Clapton to shoot the sheriff. My favorites as a 7 year old going on 8 was "The Night Chicago Died" and "Billy, Don't Be A Hero."  

don't be a fool with your life

a man named Al Capone

Sunday Showcase December 28, 1975

It's Orange Bowl time in the December 28, 1975-January 3, 1976 edition of the Tennessean Sunday Showcase. The Orange Bowl game on January 1, 1976 was the first ever matchup between the Michigan Wolverines and the Oklahoma Sooners with the Sooners victorious 14-6. It was the sixth and final Orange Bowl played on artificial turf. This win would give the Sooners a consensus National Championship with the coaches and AP polls ranking them number 1.

WNGE2 (later to be WKRN) was excited about the coming New Year as they would be broadcasting all night six nights a week. I am just old enough to remember when television stations used to sign off for the day. I am also old enough to remember when that was the Nashville skyline.

Rock and roll was being brought to Yugoslavia by one Mr. Frank Zappa. He says he's doing the same shows for them he did everywhere.

There were a couple of big January rock and roll concerts coming up in the first month of 1976. The mighty Lynyrd Skynyrd with Atlanta Rhythm Section were set to rock Municipal Auditorium on January 17th. If you happened to be there let me know in the comments.  

Glam rockers Sweet will play War Memorial Auditorium on January 22, 1976. The Sweet were touring hard as they would play Chattanooga on the 21st and Terre Haute, Indiana on the 23rd. I think they are fabulous and would have loved to have seen them live then.

If rock and roll wasn't your cup of tea the piano tinkling skills of Ferrante and Teicher would be on full display on January 14.

It's much more fun to see a show with that special someone and if you need a date why not let a computer pick it for you. 

The Top 10 Records in Nashville for this week is filled with tunes I would sing along with as a kid. "Convoy" was my favorite of the bunch, but there's lot of great options.

New Year's Eve was a few days away and there were lots of places to celebrate in Nashville on December 31, 1975. You could attend the most unusual New Year's Party at Fanny's which was having what was billed as "The Freakers Ball" with music by Silver Tongue. I wonder if Shel Silverstein would have liked it. George Jones had his own club in those days and I don't guess he would have no showed there. I don't know how all of the breakfast food listed in the ad would have gone down, but perhaps country ham would be okay at 2am to get you through that last hour. Joyce Cobb was the attraction at the Ramada Inn on Spence Lane and that would have been a dynamite night of music. She's cut some great records over the years and surely deserves more fame than she has gotten. 

If you wanted some seasonal employment and had some talent the annual Opryland auditions were coming up. I never performed at Opryland, but I did spend many days there enjoying the park. I would have loved to take my kids there, but the idiots at Gaylord decided to turn it into a mall which I have never set foot inside. 

That's it for this week. I hope all of you readers have a great year in 2020. There's plenty more of these Sunday Showcase posts on the way.