TOP TWELVE, May 27, 1971
🌞Hot Summer Hits📻
Welcome back for another cruise into the charts from back in the day, when the Top 40 ruled a sizable chunk of the culture and everybody listened to the same songs over and over and over!
Ask anyone who has served a long jail sentence or can remember when these songs were new. Fifty years is a big chunk of time. Oddly enough, a handful of these tunes are still being heard on Oldies radio, Classic rock, or commercials that are tinted blue and air in the middle of the night when old people are up thinking about reverse mortgages.
That’s a longer rant for another time, but trust me, the airwaves of 1971 weren’t filled with music from 1921. And “Ain’t We Got Fun?” and “I’m a Jazz Vampire” were good songs!
Videos of every song are coming up, chosen like this: First and most desirable is the original video if there is such a thing. Secondly would be video of the band performing the track, hopefully near to the time it was new. Third on down, whatever video might exist in some fashion, even if it's a single going around on a turntable.
A couple of notes up front as we lay the hottest tunes of unsettled and troubled 1971 on to 2021, where everything is mellow and all figured out.
First of all, the band in the top position is still together. Going back to the last statistics from an intact world, 2019, The Rolling Stones were the THIRD highest grossing tour of the year, making $177.8 million. (Ed Sheeran was #1, Metallica was #2. (Maybe they should go out together next year? Sheeran and Destroy Tour?)
Just a few years before he co-starred on the sitcom That’s My Mama, Clifton Davis wrote “Never Can Say Goodbye” for The Supremes. The Motown think tank thought it would work out better for the Jackson Five. Our video is from a little later, but not much. #4 is a clip from Soul Train, a show which always brought joy alongside love, peace, and soul. RIP Don Cornelius.
#5 was Ringo’s first big solo hit following the breakup of his band the year before. George Harrison was his co-writer and producer. #6 was gospel pop gold for Canada’s Ocean, although the song originally hadn’t done so well with the Anne Murray original. Aretha’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” is truly a religious experience. If she could make an Otis song her own, she could do the same with Paul Simon. Respect.
The Osmonds, a dog named Boo, and Daddy Dewdrop? Hey it’s the pre-disco ‘70s. Somebody shelled out to get them that high on the charts.
At #11 something new musically. A sensitive, quiet, musically gifted older brother quietly takes a step back every time the spotlight falls on his sister. There she is, frail and a force all at once, singing with quiet bravura that is so mysterious but so pop.
And finally Jim Morrison with the penultimate single of his life, off the album L.A. Woman. The single Riders on the Storm, released toward the end of June, would be the #1 song on the charts on July 3, the day Morrison was found dead in a bathtub in Paris. The Doors closed.
Future bummers and realizations aside, late May 1971 is the usual Top 40 mixed bag. Fifty years. Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good?
TW LW SONG –•– Artist (Label)-Weeks on Chart (Peak to Date)
1️⃣3 BROWN SUGAR –•–The Rolling Stones (Rolling Stones)-5 (1 week at #1) (1)
2️⃣1 JOY TO THE WORLD –•– Three Dog Night (Dunhill)-12 (1)
3️⃣2 NEVER CAN SAY GOODBYE –•– Jackson 5 (Motown)-9 (2)
4️⃣6 WANT ADS –•– The Honey Cone (Hot Wax)-8 (4)
5️⃣8 IT DON’T COME EASY –•– Ringo Starr (Apple)-5 (5)
6️⃣4 PUT YOUR HAND IN THE HAND –•– Ocean (Kama Sutra)-12 (2)
7️⃣7 BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER –•– Aretha Franklin (Atlantic)-7 (7)
8️⃣13 SWEET AND INNOCENT –•– Donny Osmond (MGM)-10 (8)
9️⃣5 ME AND YOU AND A DOG NAMED BOO –•– Lobo (Big Tree)-9 (5)
🔟10 CHICK-A-BOOM (Don’t Ya Jes’ Love It) –•– Daddy Dewdrop (Sunflower)-13 (9)
1️⃣1️⃣20 RAINY DAYS AND MONDAYS –•– The Carpenters (A&M)-3 (11)
1️⃣2️⃣11 LOVE HER MADLY –•– The Doors (Elektra)-8 (11)
THE VIDEOS
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Best, Professor Mikey
