AM Gold 1970

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 1994

Labels: Warner Special Products, Time Life Music

Time-Life released this disc as Various - Superhits 1970 (SUD-04) in the Super Hits series in 1990, and as Various - AM Gold 1970 (AM1-02) in the AM Gold series in 1994.

℗ 1990 Warner Special Products
© 1990, 1994 Time Life Inc.

Track durations obtained from software.

Publishing:
Track 1- Jobete Music Company ASCAP
Track 2- Claridge Music Inc. ASCAP
Track 3, 6- Screen Gems-EMI Music Inc. BMI
Track 4- Dick James Music, Inc. BMI
Track 5- Bienstock Music Publishing Co./Jerry Leiber Music/Mike Stoller Music ASCAP
Track 7- Kama Sutra Music, Inc./Sleeping Sun BMI
Track 8- Unichappell Music Inc./Super Songs Unlimited/Aimi Music BMi
Track 9- Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. BMI
Track 10- Famous Music ASCAP
Track 11- Combine Music BMI
Track 12- ATV Music Corp. BMI/Our Music Ltd. PRS
Track 13- Shillelagh Music Co. PROCAN
Track 14- Forty West Music Corp./Children of Charles Music Inc./Two One Two Music Co. BMI
Track 15- Stone Agate Music Corp. BMI
Track 16-Legacy Music Inc. BMI/Dayglow Muziekuitgeverij NV BUMA
Track 17, 21- Blue Seas Music, Inc./Jac Music Co. Inc. ASCAP
Track 18- Ahab Music co. BMI
Track 19- Beechwood Music BMI
Track 20- Gold Forever Music BMI
Track 22- Jobete Music Co., Inc. ASCAP

Complete liner notes:

Singer-songwriters made the early '70s a great time for soft rock, and black music picked up on the trend, too. In 1970, after three straight soul-­rocking No. 1 hits at Motown since their late-1969 debut with I Want You Back, the Jackson 5 cut their first ballad in I'll Be There. It shot to the top as fast as its predecessors, becoming the kiddie group's fourth straight No. 1 of the year.

I'll Be There was also the first J5 record that wasn't written and produced by "the Corporation," the umbrella name for the in-house team of Freddie Perren, Fonce Mizell, Deke Richards and Berry Gordy Jr. The honors this time went to producer Hal Davis, along with Bob West, Willie Hutch and (reflecting his continuing interest in this project) Gordy.

Davis had been Motown's surrogate father for the youths since they signed. He'd been running the label's West Coast operations almost from the beginning, and when the Jacksons flew out from Gary, Indiana, to begin a year of grooming before their debut release, it was Davis who picked them up at the airport and got them settled in. His friend Bob West wrote I'll Be There with the Jacksons in mind, but only Davis believed the quintet was ready for a ballad so early on. West, Davis and Willie Hutch revised the arrangement and cut the instrumental track. To everyone's surprise, Gordy loved it, and he polished the lyrics personally before sending the boys into the studio to overdub vocals.

Diana Ross, who had just gone solo, was credited with discovering the Jacksons, an attempt by the label to boost the chances for both acts. It must have worked, because after one disappointment-Reach Out and Touch, which later became her signature song, reached only No. 20-she took Ain't No Mountain High Enough all the way.

Nick Ashford conceived the song, when he first moved to New York, as an expression of his determination to be part of the music biz, and he and his collaborator and wife, Valerie Simpson, wrote it as a duet for Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. But when they took over the job of producing Diana's first solo LP from Bones Howe, Ashford and Simpson made use of her distinctive speaking voice by rearranging the song as a narrative that builds to a stirring climax.

Nobody at Motown liked it, especially because it clocked in at an unwieldy six minutes, and Gordy only reluctantly allowed it on the album. But disc jockeys began doing their own edits so they could play it on the radio, and before long Gordy himself cut the track down and released it as a single.

The Partridge Family was one of several white corollaries to the Jacksons, but they had the advantage of their own TV show. According to the original story line, the five kids form a garage band to cut I Think I Love You, which becomes a No. 1 smash before the half hour is up. In real life, the triumph took several weeks longer, and only Shirley Jones and her stepson David Cassidy (who played her oldest son on the show) even appeared on the record.

Ray Stevens' Everything Is Beautiful also had a TV connection. Though the Georgian had entered music in 1961 as a country novelty act, by 1970 he was lined up as a summer replacement for Andy Williams. Needing the kind of big, anthemic tune that would work as both a TV theme and the first single for his new label, he wrote Everything Is Beautiful. For the vocal backing, his two daughters sang with the second-grade class at Oak Hill Elementary School in Nashville.

Bread was formed when Oklahoman David Gates, seeing the Hollywood success of his old Tulsa crony Leon Russell, went west and wound up producing Pleasure Faire, a group of studio players. He soon joined the group, and the name was changed. Make It with You, pulled from their second album, became an easy-­listening standard.

Dawn was even more of an accident. Tony Orlando, an early-'60s semistar, was working behind a desk at April-Blackwood (the publishing arm of CBS) when he was approached by his old friend Hank Medress, once of the Tokens. Medress had a demo of Candida with two Motown backup singers (Joyce Vincent and Telma Hopkins) and a lead voice he didn't like; Bell Records had already told him they would release it as a single if a better frontman could be found. Orlando, who had done plenty of demos in his day, agreed to add his voice if he remained anonymous. When the tune went to No. 3, he overdubbed his voice on a follow-up, Knock Three Times, and that went to No. 1. Only then did Orlando actually meet the two California women who made up Dawn (the name was taken from the daughter of one of the Tokens).

Other soft-rock stars included the 5th Dimension, who had cut several flower-power hits for Johnny Rivers' Soul City label before going over to Bell. One Less Bell to Answer marked their move to a more middle-of-the-­road sound. British writer-producer Tony Macaulay put Edison Lighthouse together by pairing singer Tony Burrows with the virtually unheard-of group Greenwich Hammer, and Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes) was Macaulay's first project for Bell.

Mungo Jerry was a British skiffle band known as the Good Earth until a couple weeks before the release of In the Summertime. That single kicked off a brief skiffle craze in England, but America would have no more of it. The Dutch group the Tee Set got its break when Jerry Ross of Colossus Records heard Ma Belle Amie in a Zurich disco and leased it for American distribution. The 5 Stairsteps were the Burke brothers of Chicago, who parlayed a well-received showcase at Harlem's Apollo Theater into a deal for O-o-h Child, but they were unable to follow it up in their bid to become the next Jacksons.

The wave of new singer-writers was led by Elton John with Your Song, his first American Top 40 single. Melanie Safko, who recorded under her first name, was a former drama student whose Look What They've Done to My Song Ma was a French hit for her and an American hit for the New Seekers. Her manager-husband was able to get her onto the bill at Woodstock, where she performed through a rainstorm, inspiring Lay Down (Candles In the Rain). The backup choir on Lay Down was the Edwin Hawkins Singers from Oakland, California, whose Oh Happy Day was one of the era's biggest fluke successes. In response to her song, Melanie's fans originated the practice of lighting matches at rock shows.

Among interpreters of soul material, journeyman Eddie Holman got back on the charts with his reworking of a 1963 Ruby and the Romantics hit, Hey There Lonely Girl. Brook Benton made his first real showing In six years with Tony Joe White's definitive swamp-pop ballad, Rainy Night In Georgia. Brian Hyland returned to the charts with his remake of Curtis Mayfield's fanciful Gypsy Woman, which Del Shannon produced. And Dionne Warwick continued her impressive string of hits with I'll Never Fall In Love Again, from the Broadway musical Promises, Promises.

Clarence Carter, a blind Alabama singer and guitarist, made his final visit to the top 10 with Patches, a Southern throwback co-written by General Johnson, who had once been lead singer of the New Orleans vocal group the Showmen (It Will Stand) and then Detroit's Chairmen of the Board (Give Me Just a Little More Time). And Canadian Anne Murray, a former physical education teacher with her own TV series north of the border, became an American country-pop star with Snowbird. She'd first heard the tune when she saw its writer, Gene Maclellan, sing it on Canadian TV. Before long, she was singing it on Glen Campbell's U.S. show, dramatizing once again the interrelationship of pop music and television.

-John Morthland

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