We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago….today we once again visit the world of Top 40 radio with some hit singles that we listened to in 1971.
Nothing screams “the 70’s” than Issac Hayes in a chain mail shirt lip synching his funky classic “Theme from Shaft” at the Academy Awards. Hayes won the best song Oscar for the tune which came from the film “Shaft” starring Richard Roundtree as “the private dick who was a sex machine for all the chicks”.
It hit #1 in 1971 driven by Charles Pitts wah-wah guitar and Willie Hall’s insistent refrain on the high-hat.
He was a “bad mutha” but we can could dig it.
The Five Man Electrical Band was a Canadian outfit who had originally released the song “Signs” as the B-side on a single in 1970. Re-released as an A side a year later it cracked the Top 5 hitting #3 on the Billboard charts and immortalized the line “And the sign said, long haired, freaky people need not apply”. When “us vs them” was almost as pronounced as it it today.
Johnny Cash never fit the classic “Nashville” role as a country crooner. He made his own choices. In the songs he sang and in the political positions he took. He liked rock music and featured it on his TV show. And he saw what was happening in the country and didn’t like it. So, he wrote “The Man in Black” and released it in 1971. He wrote the song after having a discussion with some college students at Vanderbilt University and sang it at the college for the first time that same weekend, revising the lyrics on stage. He takes to task what he saw as the poor treatment of the down-trodden in the country and also voices his opposition to our involvement in Viet Nam. I’m sure the song cost him some fans and record sales even though it hit # 3 on the country charts…I’m sure he didn’t care.
The term “cultural appropriation” was not used alot in the 1960’s and 70’s although it was happening on a regular basis in films, tv shows and music. As an example, the song “Indian Reservation”. It had been been written by John Loudermilk and was first recorded by white, country singer Marvin Rainwater in 1959 titled “The Pale-Faced Indian….it was later recorded with some revised lyrics by Don Fardon in 1968 still filled with inaccuracies about the Cherokee people.
In 1971 Mark Lindsay, the lead singer of Paul Revere & The Raiders was looking for a song to sing for his budding solo career. He went into the studio with The Wrecking Crew (veteran session folks Hal Blaine, Al Casey, Carol Kaye and Artie Butler and produced it himself. He decided to bill it as a Raiders song and after a four year lull of hit records, the band had their first (and last) #1 single .
Here are all three versions…including the Raiders lip-synching it on a Kenny Rogers TV show.
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