We're going way back this week to 1968. Swinging London was the place to be, but if you were stuck in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on this date don't worry as the Martin Theatre was bringing Swinging London to you. Rat Pack buddies Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr. star in Salt and Pepper. They are owners of a SoHo nightclub where a murdered lady secret agent is found and it's up to them to solve the case which involves an evil plot to overthrow the government. Of course, Sammy is salt and Peter is Pepper. The movie is directed by Richard Donner who also directed Superman (1978) and even better directed 3 episodes of Gilligan's Island. This movie is lots of fun, especially if you are a huge fan of Sammy like me, you shouldn't miss it.
The Princess Theatre has Killers Three from American International. The tagline on the poster is brilliant. It is produced by the Dick Clark who also is one of the stars. It features a Merle Haggard soundtrack and he plays one of the sheriffs in the film. Backwoods and moonshine was a popular topic back then. I would guess it was made in the wake of the huge success of Bonnie and Clyde. I may have seen it on television during the 70's, but I don't recall it if I did. The trailer makes it seem like a fun b-movie.
If the popcorn and candy at the movies weren't enough for you, then how about heading over to Shoney's where you could enjoy a fried oyster dinner and the "sock it to me" psychedelic ice cream goodie. Hmmm, I think I will pass.
The Marbro Drive-In has a couple of films on the big screen tonight. Better bring a blanket. There's the always irascible Lee Marvin as Sergeant Ryker...is he a Commie spy....or is he not? It's funny that Alison Sie also describes Lee as irascible in the YouTube clip I found. The other feature is the western comedy Texas Across The River starring Dean Martin. It also stars Joey Bishop as Kronk which is probably considered offensive today. It's pretty cheesy and funny to me.
Bonus: The Daily News Journal would feature a family every year going out and shopping for Christmas. It was obvious that the places they visited had paid for these entries and the Martin Theatre made sure they were a part of these pieces that ran in November and December for years. I've been sharing them the last few weeks. Here's the one from 1979 that ran in the November 18th paper.
It looks like the Harris family is going to the Martin where they can either see National Lampoon's Animal House or Bo Derek in 10. Children under 17 were allowed into rated R films with an accompanying parent or guardian so who are we to judge, plus it is just a thinly disguised ad. I doubt the Martin family actually took their small children to see either movie. That's it for this film flashback. There's one more this month so make sure you reserve your spot here next week via Fandango.
The Sunday Showcase review this week is of December 12, 1976. Christmas was coming fast and The Nutcracker graces the cover along with the ever delightful Peter Sellers. You would be having a Merry Christmas if you managed to get a video game from Santa Claus or how about a television with the video game built in. I played one of these built in Magnavox Odyssey systems decades later even.
Perhaps you were really cool and underground and your better half had some gift wrapped tickets for the Lou Reed show that was going to happen at the War Memorial Auditorium on December 29. It was going to be his First Nashville Appearance!
BUT NO. It wasn't meant to be. The Lou Reed show would be cancelled. What a bummer. This notice was in the paper a few days before the show. I don't know how many shows Lou ever played in Nashville, but he definitely played the Ryman on May 2, 2008.
Nashville would get no Kicks from Lou in 1976, but other cities did. Enjoy this little taste.
There's some heavyweight musical talent over at a club called Mississippi Whiskers located at 1712 Church Street.
Exit/In had a future hip hop legend and a future chicken restauranteur this week. Tennessean Alexander Harvey's version of "Tulsa Turnaround" has been sampled by several hip-hop artists. He was mostly known as a songwriter. I'm sure you've heard of "Delta Dawn" and "Reuben James." The future chicken king Kenny Rogers had recorded "Reuben James" back when he was with The First Edition along with "Tulsa Turnaround" which he would record yet again as a solo artist in a few years. He was already a music star, but within a year he would become a music superstar before branching out into movies and later into cofounding Kenny Rogers Roasters with the former governor of Kentucky and ex KFC CEO John Y. Brown. Note that comedian Jim Varney opened for both performers. Jim would later gain fame as Ernest P. Worrell.
Anybody in Nashville ever dance the night away at the Runway 22 club located in the Holiday Inn on Murfreesboro Road? I would guess it's by the airport judging by the fantastic ad. Good boogie sounds with a Latin Flavor.....hmmmm I bet the group Casablanca was going for a K.C. and the Sunshine Band vibe.
There's a few dance tunes in the Top 10 Records in Nashville this week. It's a very solid bunch of songs. My faves as a kid would be "More Than A Feeling", "Muskrat Love", "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing", "Hot Line", and most of all "Beth" by Kiss. I became a Kiss fanatic after their appearance on the Paul Lynde Halloween Special that fall. I got Destroyer for my birthday in November that year.
The Greatest New Year's Eve Blast Ever was coming to the Tennessee State Fairgrounds Agricultural Building. If you were into disco this was the place to be.
The biggest musical event in the near future was the Volunteer Jam coming up on January 6, 1977. It's billed as the concert event of the year with tickets going on sale on December 18th. It will definitely sell out. It was the 3rd annual charity concert with special unannounced guests joining the Charlie Daniels Band for a marathon night full of music. So we'll close this post out with trio of tracks from Charlie. I have always loved his music.
We begin our trip back in time this week to what was showing in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on December 13, 1978 with a strange film in which Atticus Finch falls into some warped fabric of time becoming US diplomat Robert Thorn and perhaps due to the influence of his adopted son Damien he decides to mutate into Dr. Josef Mengele in the movie The Boys From Brazil. It's a rather bizarre turn to the dark side for actor Gregory Peck and the trailer shows him chewing up the scenery. Sir Laurence Olivier is also in the cast of this weird movie. I remember it showing up in the little HBO guide we'd get when we had cable and the blurb for it seemed pretty creepy scary to me. I have yet to see it and doubt I will, but the fact that YouTube advised me I might find the trailer offensive tempts me to want to watch it. It seems an odd movie to be showing around Christmas.
I say let's skip that one and head to the outskirts of Murfreesboro to see what's playing at the theater I always called the Marlboro even though it was really the Marbro Drive In. You get a double shot of Cheri Caffaro tonight. Girls Are For Loving is a sleazy sexploitation film which involves insider trading and the CIA. She's Too Hot To Handle has Cheri playing a hit lady involved in spy capers in Manila. Both films are quite funky and fun.
The Martin Twin has got a couple of comedies. There's Almost Summer with Bruno Kirby and the very adorable Didi Conn. The title song is by Celebration featuring Mike Love with music by Brian Wilson. The other film playing is the now classic CHEECHyCHONG's Up In Smoke. It will make you feel very funny! Lots of great music in it too!
Bonus: The Daily News Journal would feature a family every year going out and shopping for Christmas. It was obvious that the places they visited had paid for these entries and the Martin Theatre made sure they were a part of these pieces that ran in November and December for years. I've been sharing them the last few weeks. Here's the one from 1978 that ran in the November 19th paper. The movies playing that week were National Lampoon's Animal House and Smokey And The Bandit. Not mentioned is the movie that the Mathieu family appears to be going to see: The Alaska Wilderness Adventure. It was a true story about a family moving to Alaska.
I have always loved Polaroid cameras. So how about some old Polaroid advertisements from Murfreesboro, Tennessee's paper The Daily News Journal from the the 1960's and 1970's. My all time favorite Polaroid is the SX-70. It's design was pure perfection.
Time to wax rhapsodic about a podcast as I like to do on occasion. As some of you know I spend 3 hours a day driving to work so I listen to lots of podcasts and I definitely know a good one when I hear it. Forgotten TV is right in my Generation X television zone as it concentrates on 70's and 80's TV. Chris Cooling does a great job whether he's talking about CBS's Marvel Comics related shows or if he's discussing Lucan or Kolchak: The Night Stalker. He plays lots of clips and bumpers from the television shows of the era which I love to hear. He's extremely knowledgeable without being pedantic and best of all is he keeps his podcasts focused on the best parts of the shows he covers. He does get critical sometimes, but it's never snarky like most podcasters tend to be. So check it out at Forgotten.TV or look it up on Apple.
This trip back in time lands us in December of 1980. This Sunday Showcase came out a day before John Lennon was murdered in New York City. The December 14 issue will feature an interview with Yoko Ono done before his Lennon's tragic death and it will also see "Starting Over" break into the Top Ten records in Nashville. The cover of the December 7, 1980 Showcase features Marie Osmond promoting her new show sans Donny, Robert Urich, and The Marshall Tucker Band.
Those Tucker boys from Caroline would be in Nashville with .38 Special to play Municipal on December 13th. This is a classic case of the opening band being on the rise while the headliners had peaked and were starting to go down in popularity. I like both groups so it would have been a great night of Southern rock and roll if I could have gone, but I was still a few years away from enjoying the confines of Municipal. Plus, there was a competing show in town that I would have preferred to attend if able.
Christmas is fast approaching now as it was then, but if you want pictures with Santa Claus these days I don't Hickory Hollow Mall is an option. I spent lots of time at that mall in the late 70's and 80's. It was really a wonderful place for a teenager. This ad, however, is a creepy. I don't think people want "A Touch of Claus", but I would love to see if anyone had photos made with Santa there.
Later in the month you could see some more Southern rock with the partially resurrected Lynyrd Skynyrd; Rossington Collins Band. It became crystal clear a few years later that a reconstituted Lynyrd Skynyrd was what the fans really wanted, but back in 1979/80 the Rossington Collins Band was a huge deal to Southern rock fans. They would end their shows with an instrumental version of the obligatory "Free Bird" and I bet there wouldn't be a dry eye in the place. Mother's Finest and LeRoux were also on the bill.
You could go ice skating at Municipal Auditorium too! I don't really know why a spectator would need to pay 50 cents to watch though. Roller skating was my thing back in 1980 and I always wanted to try ice skating too, but I never have. I doubt my weak ankles would like it.
Check out the stellar lineup you could see at Exit/In during this time. It's amazing.
The Top Ten best selling pop records in Nashville list was always a part of the Sunday Showcase I looked forward to each week. The number one song is Leo Sayer's "More Than I Can Say." The song would never hit the top spot in the US being kept out by "Lady" by Kenny Rogers and Lennon's "Starting Over." The music video for it is interesting. Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust" had been on the Nashville charts for 12 weeks! The Dukes of Hazzard became a smash it during this time and so Waylon Jennings's theme song hits the Nashville Top Ten for the first time. I would switch out my roller skating night from Friday to Saturday just to watch them Duke boys and Daisy...especially Daisy. Kool & The Gang's "Celebration" was heating up the charts and it ended up being the song I associated the most with the upcoming New Year's celebration. Most of these tunes would be played at the skating rink and that's where I came to love Air Supply's "Every Woman In The World." I still have the 45 I bought back then. "Freedom" by Grand Master Flash stands out for me on this list. First, the tune is by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five so they got the name wrong. Secondly, this is a tune that didn't even hit the top 100 nationally. It didn't even make the top ten R & B charts. But here it is in it's second week in the Top Ten Nashville charts. It would drop out in the next week, but it shows Nashville had a nascent hip-hop rap scene back then. New Life Records, which just closed permanently this year after having been open since April 1, 1976, had to have been a huge reason for this as they could provide fans of the music the records. Nashville was always way more than just country music and I am glad to have grown up right down the road from it.
Some more live music you could see: How about Juke at the Ramada Inn South. I don't know a thing about these guys. They were probably a cover band. I just love the ad mentioning that Tuesday is "Foxy Lady Night" because it looks like the guys in Juke are checking out the foxy ladies.
The best upcoming music concert is Nashville is by an up and coming young guy from Minnesota. He'd had a hit on his last record with "I Wanna Be Your Lover", but massive mainstream success was still a few years away. He would be booed when he opened for The Rolling Stones in 1981. Prince is headed to town on his Dirty Mind tour to play not one, but two shows on December 13th at the Tennessee Theater. Forget Marshall Tucker and .38 Special, this would have been the place to be on that particular night. If I was forced to only own the records of one artist, Prince would probably be the one I would want. My love for his music only grows as the years go by. His tunes always make me feel good. Teena Marie was another one of my favorites from this time too. If you were there that night, please let me know with a comment. He played Municipal the next time he came to town for the Controversy Tour.
I don't have a setlist for either of these shows in Nashville, but a typical Dirty Mind setlist looks like this:
1. Do It All Night
2. Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?
3. Gotta Broken Heart Again
4. Broken
5. When You Were Mine
6. Sexy Dancer
7. Sister
8. I Wanna Be Your Lover
9. Head
10. Still Waiting
11. Uptown
12. Gotta Stop (Messin' About)
13. Dirty Mind
That's it for this week. I hope you enjoyed this post. I'll be back next week with another look back at a random Sunday Showcase. Leave a comment, tell your friends, spread the word, or go outside and take a walk. That's what I'm going to do.
I belong to a Facebook group called What's Spinning. You post photos of whatever record you're spinning. People sometimes share their thoughts or brag about how little they paid for the record. I don't post much besides the artist name and the record title. I also don't post everything I spin especially if I've posted the record before. So this isn't going up on Facebook. I reserve the greatest stuff for my blog from now on since I can go on and on about the record here. This morning I'm spinning Controversy.
Prince's Controversy album came out in the fall of my freshman year of high school. That year of school was the worst ever. I had gone to Thurman Francis Junior High School in Smyrna for 8th grade and would have been a 9th grader there, but my parents moved back to Murfreesboro so it was off to Oakland. Instead of being on top of the food chain I was at the bottom again and most of my Murfreesboro friends were attending Riverdale. One of the few bright spots for me was there was a guy in my science class who loved Saturday Night Live (this was the Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy era) and Prince. I'd only get to talk to him class began, but Mondays were always days to go over what bits we thought were the funniest on SNL. He'd sometimes offer me "Black Beauties", but I while I might have looked like a drug user to my classmates, I was fairly straight only messing around with liquor on occasion back then.
I found out he liked Prince after Controversy came out on October 14, 1981. He came in and asked me if I had heard the new Prince record yet. I hadn't so he said he'd tape it for me. I forgot it about it, but sure enough a few days later he brought the tape. I'd liked Prince from the moment I was him perform "I Wanna Be Your Lover" from his second self titled album on American Bandstand so it was a treat to have a copy of his followup to his third album Dirty Mind. It was rare to have a complete album in those days for me. I would either have to wait for my birthday or until a record hit the cutout bins in order to afford it. Controversy was interesting to me as Prince branched out into songs more varied and some with political ideas behind them. Even though the album went platinum Prince was still sort of an underground artist too. That appealed to my sense of being a misfit at Oakland High School. Here was Prince in but not of the mainstream at the moment. 1999 and Purple Rain would bring the mainstream into his orbit. Prince was truly a one of a kind musical legend. Tomorrow's Sunday Showcase will have more on him.
The first movie that I saw by myself at the Martin Twin was Rocky. I was 10 or 11 years old. I wonder how many people would let their 11 year old only child take in a movie by themselves these days? As I've written before, I couldn't ride my bicycle on city streets, but I got to wander for miles on foot and I got to see movies alone. My parents were a bit strange when it came to what I was allowed and not allowed to do. It didn't matter in December of 1977 if I could ride my bike on the street since we had moved out into the country into a 2 story farm house with 5 acres earlier in the year. That house and land has been supplanted by the hospital now. The movie Rocky mesmerized me. It still does. Here it was on a second or maybe even third run in Murfreesboro playing the Martin. It was not uncommon for movies to play at one theatre and then play across town later. I was happy Apollo defended his title and happy that Rocky went the distance and got his girl in the end. Plus Bill Conti's music is quite stirring. The Last Remake Of Beau Geste is a movie I haven't seen, but the trailer makes me want to see it since they made sure to note that Ann-Margret is in it.
Cinema One was playing One On One. It's the story of a winner. I haven't seen this movie, but I remember Robby Benson getting pushed like a street drug back in the Seventies. He reminds me of Pete Maravich in the trailers and scenes I've watched on YouTube. Which takes me right back to that farm home out on Manson Pike we lived in during 1977 and some of 1978. It had a small barn in the back and after we moved in I found a cache of old Sports Illustrated magazines stored in it. There was hundreds of issues and many featured Pete Maravich.
The Marbro Drive-In had a couple of b movies with the common theme this time being hell. Hughes & Harlow is about Howard Hughes and Jean Harlow and the filming of the movie Hell's Angels. It gets a pretty lackluster review on IMDB and the trailer gives us a small taste of what must be a pretty bad film.
Part Time Wife is really A Woman For All Men with a new title. It has a decent cast with Judith Brown and Keenan Wynn featured in it, but I couldn't find a trailer for it. The whole movie is floating around on YouTube.
Bonus: The Daily News Journal would feature a family every year going out and shopping for Christmas. It was obvious that the places they visited had paid for these entries and the Martin theatre made sure they were a part of these pieces that ran in November and December for years. Here's the one from 1977 that ran in the November 20th paper. The movie being promoted to the Craig family is Charge Of The Model T's.
The original mall in Murfreesboro, Tennessee celebrated its 2nd anniversary in May 1979 with a special visit from Darth Vader. The Empire Struck Back long before the movie came out. I was living on Jones Boulevard at the time only minutes away from Jackson Heights, but the Mall wasn't too far away either. I have very vague memories of this event. I didn't find the key. My favorite places there were Readmore Book, Silver Shack, and Port O'Call. I could lose myself for hours in the magazines and books at Readmore. I could also spend lots of time at the arcade called Silver Shack. One of my holy grails is to find a photograph of the interior of this game room from this era right before video games became a nationwide craze. I love video games, but I love pinball games even more and that is what I would spend my time playing there. I wrote a post about this place and pinball way back in 2010 so check it out if you've got the time. I remember usually going there first and then I'd walk down to Readmore passing Radio Shack on the way. Sometimes Radio Shack would be blasting music and I dug that. After Readmore I'd wander down to Port O'Call Records and buy 45's except when it was my birthday and I would get a full LP record. The old mall is one of the places I'd definitely time travel back to if given the chance. This post will suffice for today. The ad is from the May 3, 1979 issue of the Murfreesboro Press.
I doubt I will be able to make this shindig, but I'm sure it will be one heck of a time. If only The Gold Rush and Mosko's were still around. Anarchy In Music City happens this Saturday night at the End.
This Sunday Showcase review is from the December 3, 1972 edition. I was a mere 6 years old. Apollo 16 had successfully gone to the Moon earlier in the year and the last manned mission, Apollo 17, was going to launch in just a few days so my head was filled with visions of outer space around this time. It would have been apropos for someone to gift me with the last David Bowie record for Christmas, but I think I got a Sesame Street one instead. My parents should have shopped at 100 Oaks Mall.
The Top Ten Records in Nashville for this week are a mix of soul, singer songwriter, rock, and pop. It's interesting to see old rockabilly cat Billy Lee Riley in the top ten with the Tony Joe White penned tune "I've Got A Thing About You Baby." It was recorded at American Recording Studio in Memphis by Chips Moman and was probably just a local Southeastern hit since it only hit #93 nationwide. This is really quite a good top 10.
There were a couple of concerts coming up at Municipal Auditorium in the next few weeks. The country rock band Poco was playing December 8, 1972 with It's A Beautiful Day and Jim Croce. You could have picked up tickets for as low as $4 at Sgt. Pepper's record store in Rivergate Mall. I wish I could find a photo of that store. I'm sure it was cool. I was way too young to attend this concert, but I would have loved to have been there, admittedly mainly because of Jim Croce. He was truly one of a kind.
If you had some gifts you needed perhaps you could do some Christmas shopping at The Hobbit with 2 locations. Perhaps some older Nashvillians can comment and let me know exactly what sort of store The Hobbit was. I found an ad a year later noting they were a licensed seller of Sony stereo products, but maybe they sold more than audio equipment.
Another big concert coming to town was the Godfather of Soul himself; James Brown. The whole James Brown Show would be at Municipal on December 9, 1972. Funny Man Clay Tyson, female preacher Lynn Collins, and the J.B. Blues Band are on the bill. If you were either there, or been reading my Sunday Showcase posts, you know that James Brown played Nashville often in the early 70's. I hope many reading this got to see him. I'm sure it was incredible.
Finally, if you still hadn't made your New Year's plans back in December of 1972 and you considered yourself an "Action People" you could get tickets to the King of the Road Motor Inn's big New Year's Eve Party. Ronnie Milsap was the featured attraction. That's it for this trip back into the past. Next week we'll be in December 1980 which will see the arrival of a bikini brief wearing guy from Minnesota for a show. Hope to see you there.
