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 May 23, 1976

I'm off to visit 1976 this time around.

Our journey this day is into the Bicentennial year where a former star of Your Hit Parade graces the cover of the Sunday Showcase. I had not heard of Snooky Lanson before reading this issue as Your Hit Parade's heyday was long before I was born, but he had a lengthy and successful career in entertainment including being a pitchman for Crown Ford.

Snooky with a jazzy take on Heartbreak Hotel

100 Oaks Shopping Center (yes, that's right - it was not called a mall officially during this point in time, but the ad does state "all this week in the Mall" which is strange) is saluting radio all week. All of the big Nashville stations were participating with remote broadcasts and live performances. 

100 Oaks Office Tower promo film which shows the shopping center

The mid-Seventies was the peak for customizing vans and here's a cool advertisement from Middle Tennessee's largest showroom and inventory of custom van parts: C & S Custom Vans. 

If you really wanted to kit the floor of your van out you might want some shag carpeting or perhaps you need it for your whole house. Shag carpet was another culture marker which peaked in the Seventies. I think the carpet makers and vacuum cleaner companies were all in on it together. 

We continue on with the fads of the Seventies with the ultra popular Earth Shoe which could be picked up at Green Hills Village Shopping Center/Lower Mall. Remember, just because a shoe looks like the Earth shoe doesn't mean it works like the Earth shoe.

After I've kitted out my custom van and bought some new Earth shoes I might head over to the Women's Building at the Fairgrounds and check out the Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy David Allen Coe in concert on May 29th. I met David Allen Coe once. He was a very tall, large man.

The Top 10 Records in Nashville for this week are once again that great hodgepodge of Seventies music with all kinds of styles to choose from. Radio and society in general had yet to be demographic-ed and segmented to death. I loved "Boogie Fever" as a 9 year old kid and still love it today. Paul McCartney & Wings are on the local chart for the 2nd week with "Silly Love Songs" which went on to be the best selling single of the year in the US. Two television themes are in the top 10 with Happy Days and Welcome Back, Kotter represented. I loved both of those shows. 

Pratt & McClain 

Welcome Back to that same old place you laughed about

Silly

Sylvers on The Midnight Special

You could boogie all night at Tuff Rocks Disco located in Tusculum Square. There were only 2 ads for it when I did a general search so I don't know if it lasted long. I like the ad and name of the disco. I assume Troy Shondell was the vocalist who had put out some records for Liberty and Sunset Records among others.

Perhaps commercial pop radio and disco wasn't your bag. KDA-FM was bringing progressive rock giants Yes to Municipal Auditorium on June 1. 

Yes live in Nashville June 1, 1976

We end the Sunday Showcase review this week by planning to get the heck out of Nashville and head to Atlanta to see ZZ Top's World Wide Texas Tour. This was the tour where they brought the livestock. I guess if you were going to fill a baseball stadium in the Seventies you needed to go big on your promotional material as this full page ad attests. I bet quite a few people from Nashville made the drive down on that day.

ZZ Top live in Maryland November 1976

World Wide Texas Tour report

Film Flashback February 21, 1970

It was a mixed bag of movies back in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on February 21, 1970. We'll head out to the Marbro Drive-In for a double feature. The Family Way is probably better known now for having its score written by Paul McCartney and arranged by George Martin, but it's quite the charming film. Hayley Mills would marry co-director Roy Boulting becoming a young newlywed in real life in addition to playing the role of one. I wish I had a trailer to share, but none can be found so a piece of music from it must suffice.  Up The Down Staircase features Sandy Dennis as a young English teacher in an inner city high school. "I want to talk about my potential."

Martin Theatre has Walt Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians during its first re-release run having originally come out in 1961. There's not much to say about this one other than it's a fantastic classic.

Last on this week's list is an X rated film. Persons under 17 not admitted even if they happened to be with a guardian. The Princess Theatre was nearing the end of its days and it tended to show more outrageous fare. More is a hippy dippy love story that turns to hard drug addiction. The movie is far more famous for it's soundtrack composed by Pink Floyd. There is nudity in the official movie trailer so don't say I didn't warn you. I'm sure the showing at the Princess was a hit with the discerning M.T.S.U. students back then. 

That's all for this week. Next week we're headed to another year and I promise it will be out of this world. 

Let The Blogging Commence Again

8 months is just too long to let this site collect dust. So let the blogging commence again. More trivial banter about music. More nostalgic looking back at my youth while I can still remember it. More music videos like this little gem with Paul & Ringo.