AM Gold 1973

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 1994

Labels: Warner Special Products, Time Life Music

Time-Life released this disc as Various - Superhits 1973 (SUD-13) in the Super Hits series in 1992, and as Various - AM Gold 1973 (AM1-03) in the AM Gold series in 1994.

℗ 1992 Warner Special Products
© 1992, 1994 Time Life Inc.

Track durations obtained from software.

Publishing:
Track 1- Big Ax Music/EMI U Catalog Inc. ASCAP
Track 2- DenJac Music ASCAP
Track 3- Levine & Brown Music Inc. BMI
Track 4- Duchess Music Corp. BMI
Track 5- Almo Music Corp. ASCAP
Track 6- Al Green Music Inc./Irving Music, Inc. BMI
Track 7- Blackwood Music, Inc./Country Road Music, Inc. BMI
Track 8- Black Bull Music/Jobete Music Co., Inc. ASCAP
Track 9- Quackenbush Music Ltd. ASCAP
Track 10- Screen Gems-EMI Music Inc. BMI
Track 11- Fox Fanfare Music Inc. BMI/Twentieth Century Fox Music Corp. ASCAP
Track 12- Duchess Music Corp. BMI
Track 13- Hudson Bay Music, Inc. BMI
Track 14- Bell Boy Music BMI
Track 15- PolyGram International Publishing Co. ASCAP
Track 16- Dawnbreaker Music Co. BMI
Track 17- Jobete Music Co., Inc. ASCAP
Track 18- Evil Eye Music, Inc. BMi
Track 19- ABC Dunhill Music, Inc./Duchess Music Corp. BMI/American Broadcasting Music/Bughouse Music/Prophecy Publishing/Speed Music ASCAP
Track 20- Edsel Music/Inaudible Music/Summerless Music Inc. PROCAM/Foster Frees Music, BMI
Track 21- Canapy Music Inc. ASCAP

Complete liner notes:

The year that saw the agony of United States troop involvement in Vietnam end-only to be replaced by the anguish of the Watergate scandal-also saw developments that affected the course of popular music. In 1973, for the first time, car radios were required by law to receive FM, and the first oil embargo drove up the price of vinyl.

The music itself was changing, with soul music receding in popularity. Stax still fielded occasional crossover hits with the Staples and Johnnie Taylor, but only Al Green charted consistently with the once-mighty Memphis sound. He reached the top 10 twice in 1973, with Call Me (Come Back Home) and Here I Am (Come and Take Me).

Even Aretha Franklin was having trouble in the pop market until she clicked at year's end with Stevie Wonder's Until You Come Back to Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do). Dobie Gray, who had one of the great soul-dance discs of the '60s with The "In" Crowd, reappeared with the haunting Drift Away.

Maureen McGovern was an unknown, part-time folk singer when 20th Century Records executive Russ Regan had her cut The Morning After, which he needed for the sound track of The Poseidon Adventure. The record took off only after the song won an Academy Award. Two years later she recorded We May Never Love like This Again, another Oscar-winning theme from another disaster film, The Towering Inferno, but lightning didn't strike twice. Nor did she score with Can You Read My Mind from the blockbuster Superman in 1979, but later that year she regained the top 20 with Different Worlds, from the TV sitcom Angie.

Diana Ross spent most of 1972 working on the movie Lady Sings the Blues and didn't put in even one appearance on the singles charts. Motown was confident about the sound-track album, but to be on the safe side they had her record the tailored composition Touch Me in the Morning as a fallback. The film fulfilled everyone's expectations. Diana received an Oscar nomination, and the sound track topped the LP chart. However, the score didn't contain a top-20 single, so Touch Me in the Morning was released. It nudged Maureen McGovern's Morning After from the No. 1 spot.

The state of Georgia cropped up in the titles of two No. 1 records in 1973:
The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia by Vicki Lawrence and Midnight Train to Georgia by Gladys Knight and the Pips. The latter song originally referred to a different locale. Jim Weatherly wrote and recorded it as Midnight Train to Houston. Then Cissy Houston (Whitney's mother) cut it, and the destination was altered for the obvious reason. Knight and the Pips retained the change.

The Spinners' first Atlantic release, I'll Be Around, far surpassed the sales of their previous efforts for Motown. They kicked off 1973 with another collaboration with producer Thom Bell and a second million-seller, Could It Be I'm Falling In Love. The Four Tops also defected from Motown, and they too experienced an immediate rejuvenation. Keeper of the Castle and Ain't No Woman (Like the One I've Got),
overseen by producer Steve Barri, returned them to the top 10 for the first time in over five years.

Jim Croce's Life and Times LP yielded his first No. 1 single, Bad, Bad Leroy Brown. At first, producers Terry Cashman and Tommy West rejected the line "meaner than a junkyard dog" as too crass, but it became the song's most memorable lyric. Time in a Bottle, from his previous LP, was released as a single after it was featured in the TV movie She Lives!, and it too topped the charts. After Jim died in an airplane crash in September 1973, album sales surged. With the release of a third album, I Got a Name, and a "greatest hits" package, Croce sold well through 1974.

Jim Seals and Dash Crofts's second top-10 single, Diamond Girl, propelled the album of the same name onto the charts while their previous LP, Summer Breeze, continued its two-year run. After Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show had a left-field hit with Shel Silverstein's country parody Sylvia's Mother, the cartoonist wrote The Cover of "Rolling Stone" for them. The public responded enthusiastically, and Rolling Stone actually put a cartoon likeness of the band on their March 23 cover.

A brush with fame In 1961 had left Tony Orlando with a preference for the business side of the music industry. By 1970 he had abandoned performing except for uncredited studio work. However, the massive popularity of Candida and Knock Three Times forced him to go back on the road and accept featured billing with Dawn. Their next big record, Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree, was covered more times than any rock song except the Beatles' Yesterday. It led to a network television variety show for the trio, and it eventually fostered a patriotic custom of displaying yellow ribbons.

Veteran British singer-songwriters Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan were virtually unknown in the United States when they hit with Stuck In the Middle with You under the name Stealers Wheel. Their success was due in part to producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, whose expertise went all the way back to Hound Dog. Stealers Wheel broke up after one more hit, Star, but Gerry Rafferty reemerged five years later with Baker Street.

Todd Rundgren's Hello It's Me was the work of one of the decade's best-known producers: himself. In 1969, dissatisfied with the mix of an earlier recording of the song by his group Nazz, Rundgren became involved in the production side of the business. He later did the honors for acts as diverse as the Band, Badfinger, the New York Dolls and Meat Loaf.

Skylark was formed in Vancouver by Ronnie Hawkins' Hawks alumni Bonnie Jean Cook and David Foster. The group did not survive Wildflower, which entered the U.S. charts via Detroit from Windsor, Ontario. Bonnie and David married, and he moved on to playing with and producing a who's who of rockdom, including the Average White Band, Chicago, Hall and Oates, Peter Allen, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

After nine top-10 hits in four years, Three Dog Night was coming unraveled. Bassist Joe Schermie was leaving the group, and their label, Dunhill, was suing them for not delivering their albums on time. Meanwhile, an unknown Texas singer, B.W. Stevenson, recorded Shambala, penned by ABC/Dunhill staff writer Daniel Moore. Three Dog Night's producer, Richie Podolor, noticed that the disc was getting heavy air play in several markets, so he quickly had the group cut a cover. It zoomed past the original, thus placating Dunhill. Two months later B.W. Stevenson finally reached the top 10 with My Maria, which he co-wrote with Moore.

Delta Dawn bounced back and forth between country and pop twice before it clicked. It was written by rockabilly pioneer Larry Collins of the Collins Kids and country "outlaw" Alexander Harvey, who recorded it for his debut LP in 1972. One of the album's backup singers, Tracy Nelson, included Delta Dawn in her stage act, and then Bette Midler copped it. Country producer Billy Sherrill heard Bette sing it on The Tonight Show, and he turned it into a country hit for Tanya Tucker. Producer Tom Catalano tried in vain to interest Barbra Streisand in it. Finally, he hooked up with Helen Reddy, who was looking for something to equal I Am Woman. Delta Dawn put her back on top.

Carly Simon generated both sales and speculation with You're So Vain. Leading candidates for the song's possible subject included her friends Warren Beatty and Kris Kristofferson, backing vocalist Mick Jagger, and her husband, James Taylor. (Simon claimed it was a composite.) Whatever his foibles, Taylor was never publicly more humble than he was in Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight.

Finally, after two years of painstaking preparation, Art Garfunkel's first solo album, Angel Clare, and its single All I Know showed that he could make it without Paul Simon.

-Dr. Oldie

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