AM Gold 1972

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 1994

Labels: Warner Special Products, Time Life Music

Time-Life released this disc as Various - Superhits 1972 (SUD-11) in the Super Hits series in 1991. Track 7 on Superhits is "Nice To Be With You".

Time-Life reissued this disc (in its original pressing) as Various - AM Gold 1972 (AM1-07) in the AM Gold series in 1994. Track 7 on the original pressing of AM Gold is "Nice To Be With You".

Time-Life reissued this disc again (with RE-1 in the matrix number) as Various - AM Gold 1972. Track 7 on the RE-1 reissue of AM Gold is "Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress)".

℗ 1991 Warner Special Products
© 1991, 1994 Time Life Inc.

Track durations obtained from software.

Publishing:
Track 1- Templeton Publishing Co., Inc. ASCAP
Track 2- DenJac Music/MCA Music Publishing ASCAP
Track 3- Cayman Music ASCAP
Track 4- Al Green Music Inc./Irving Music Inc. BMI
Track 5- O.S. M. Inc. BMi
Track 6- Macaulay Music Ltd. ASCAP
Track 7- Interior Music Corp. BMI
Track 8- Matragun Music Inc. BMI
Track 9- Dawnbreaker Music Co. BMI
Track 10- Famous Music Corp./Kaiser Music ASCAP
Track 11- Famous Music Corp. ASCAP
Track 12- WB Music Corp. ASCAP
Track 13- Chappell & Co. Inc./Evie Music, Inc./Spruce Run Music ASCAP
Track 14- Giant Enterprise BMI
Track 15- Evil Eye Music, Inc. BMI
Track 16- Unichappell Music Inc. BMI
Track 17- Warner-Tamerlane Publ. Corp. BMI
Track 18- Assorted Music BMI
Track 19- Screen Gems-EMI Music, Inc./Songpainter Music BMI
Track 20- Apple Music Publishing Co., Inc. ASCAP
Track 21- TOR-Essex Music Inc. ASCAP

Complete liner notes:

In 1972, the rock musical Hair closed after 1,742 performances on Broadway. Coincidentally, the new '50s rock 'n' roll musical Grease began its extended run that same year. For the first time since the oldies revival of the early '60s, the rock audience was looking to the past as well as the future.

One result of this nostalgia was the increased viability of black vocal groups steeped in the smooth harmony style of the '50s. The Dells, who had been around since 1953, were already experiencing a resurgence of pop sales. Another Chicago group, the Chi-Lites (formed as the Hi-Lites in 1963), set the tone of this group­harmony revival late in 1971 with Have You Seen Her, then topped themselves with Oh Girl.

In New York, Atlantic Records turned Detroit's Spinners into superstars after eight relatively unproductive years at Motown. A local group, Harlem's Main Ingredient (formerly the Poets), with­stood the death of their lead singer, Donald McPherson, and reached the top 5 with Cuba Gooding doing the honors on Everybody Plays the Fool.

In Philadelphia, where the vocal­group tradition was just as entrenched as in the Big Apple, producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff were forging a dynasty with veteran groups Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes (with roots going back to 1953), the O'Jays (1958), and the Three Degrees (1964), often backing them with a disco beat. Gamble and Huff's first release to go to No. 1 pop was Me and Mrs. Jones, featuring the testifying of Billy Paul, an unknown who had cut his first record 20 years earlier.

Ricky Nelson was purged from the musical pantheon by rock critics in the late '60s because he was a teen idol and appeared in his family's TV sitcom. But his recordings had been successful primarily because they were substantial. His knowledge of rockabilly was exhaustive, and his patronage of songwriters Johnny and Dorsey Burnette and guitarist James Burton displayed keen musical perception.

Rick's resentment over his lack of acceptance as a rock artist boiled to the surface in the bittersweet Garden Party, which put him back in the top 10 for the first time since the British Invasion. Unfortunately, his belated resurrection had more to do with "American pie" nostalgia than with any appreciation of his Stone Canyon Band as part of the developing country-rock scene.

Although FM rock stations were springing up and catering to the more progressive-oriented listeners, Top-40 stations, as usual, played a wide spectrum of styles. Post-bubblegum tunes like Brandy by Looking Glass and Lobo's I'd Love You to Want Me, Gilbert O'Sullivan's music-hallish Alone Again (Naturally) and the 5th Dimension's (Last Night) I Didn't Get to Sleep at All were all too square for the hip stations. However, America's debut single, A Horse with No Name, zoomed to No. 1 on both sides of the dial as the three-man band filled the niche vacated by the faltering Crosby, Stills, Nash and no more Young. Similarly, former Champs Jim Seals and Dash Crofts got air play everywhere with their Summer Breeze.

During the '60s, the terms "folk music" and "folk-rock" had been so abused by self-styled, musically inclined political activists that when Jim Croce surfaced in 1972 with You Don't Mess Around with Jim, he was labeled a singer­songwriter instead of a folk musician. Croce's years of playing in coffee­houses, his catchy melodies and his vivid blue-collar imagery grabbed audiences so hard that he became probably the most overplayed artist of the decade on AM and FM. Atlantic Records must have thought they had the next Jim Croce when Buffalo Springfield producers Charlie Greene and Brian Stone brought them Danny O'Keefe, but he never came up with another song equal to Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues.

Mac Davis scuffled through the '60s trying to make it as a writer and performer, and hanging on to his day jobs. Then Elvis recorded Davis' In the Ghetto in 1969 and returned to the top 10 after a four-year absence. Suddenly everybody wanted Mac and his songs. In 1972 his recording of Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me shot to the top of the charts, and Gallery cut his song I Believe in Music as the follow-up to their debut smash, Nice to Be with You.

Harry Nilsson also broke through in 1969. Three Dog Night had their first top 10 with his composition One. Several months later, Harry's 1968 flop of Fred Neil's Everybody's Talkin' reached the same heights after it was featured in the film Midnight Cowboy instead of Nilsson's original submission, his own song I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City. Although he continued charting with his own compositions, Nilsson had his biggest seller and won a Grammy for best male vocal performance with 1972's Without You, which was penned by Tom Evans and Peter Ham of Badfinger.

Danny Hutton started out in show business doing voices for Hanna­Barbera cartoons. He cut several sides for their HBR label when it branched out from kiddie records. A year later, he moved to MGM where he met Cory Wells, then of the Enemies. In 1968 he recruited a third singer, Charles Negron, and formed Three Dog Night. The group had ears for hit material. Black and White is a good example. Written in 1955 by a folk duet, the song kicked around for years. Sammy Davis Jr. and Pete Seeger made recordings of it. It was even used in a CBS film about Peace Corps efforts to teach English to Africans. Three Dog Night heard the reggae group Greyhound sing Black and White in 1971 and "rockalized" it for their third No. 1 song.

In the '50s, Johnny Nash was a member of Arthur Godfrey's radio and television troupe and had a recording contract with ABC-Paramount. He had one hit with A Very Special Love and teamed up with Paul Anka and George Hamilton IV for a second, The Teen Commandments. He acted in several movies, including Key Witness and Take a Giant Step, which was shot in Jamaica. In the '60s Nash's musical horizons expanded to include soul and reggae. Hold Me Tight on Nash's own Jad label made the top 5 here and in Britain in 1968. His early-'70s collaboration with the virtually unknown Bob Marley produced two monsters, Stir It Up and I Can See Clearly Now, which established both artists worldwide.

Al Green was born less than 50 miles from Memphis, where he would record more than a dozen hits, but, as Mott the Hoople reflected, "It's a mighty long way down rock 'n' roll." At the age of 13 Al moved to Michigan, where he sang in gospel and secular groups, eventually scoring a national hit with Back Up Train. Producer Willie Mitchell found Green stranded in Midland, Texas, in 1968 and persuaded him to come to Hi Records in Memphis. For the rest of the decade, discs like I'm Stlll In Love with You made Green a fixture on the charts.

Nights In White Satin was released in 1968 on the Moody Blues' psychedelic second LP, Days of Future Passed. As a single, it merely bubbled under Billboard's Hot 100. Four years later, public taste had caught up with the Moody's bombastic style, and both the 45 and the album sold like crazy.

Many a truth is written in jest, and sometimes that goes for hit songs as well. Cartoonist Shel Silverstein wrote Sylvia's Mother as a spoof for Playboy, but when Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show recorded it, the public bought it for real. (Johnny Cash had turned the same trick with Shel's A Boy Named Sue in 1969.)

In 1966 the Outsiders were Cleveland's version of the Young Rascals, turning out Time Won't Let Me and three other hits. Singer Sonny Geraci and guitarist Walter Nims promptly split to Los Angeles and formed Climax. The group struggled until the 5th Dimension's manager, Marc Gordon, signed them to his Carousel label (soon to be renamed Rocky Road). A year later, they zoomed up the charts with Precious and Few.

-Dr. Oldie

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