Dickie Goodman--Mr. Jaws (1975)

     The novelty record is all but gone from today's landscape. In fact, except for the work of "Weird" Al Yankovic it has all but faded from view. Back in the 50's especially there was no end to songs that could be put into this category. One particular type became known as the "cut in" record. This was the kind of disc where an "interview" would take place and the questions asked would be "answered" by snippets of popular records of the day. The first one was done in 1956 by Dickie Goodman and his partner, Bill Buchanan ...

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Ian Gomm--Hold On (1979)

     Ian Gomm had only one hit in the US, but left a lasting mark in the UK throughout the 70s. He had started in pop bands as early as 1962, and even spent some time living in Australia honing his craft. In 1971, he was brought in as rhythm guitarist of the pup rock band, Brinsley Schwartz just as they were recording their third album, "Silver Pistol". Up until their break up in 1975, they were supported by the critics, but never could break through to a wide audience in the UK or here in the states.     ...

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Bobby Goldsboro--Honey (1968)

     There is nothing personal against Bobby Goldsboro. I've always kinda liked, "Watching Scotty Grow", and "Summer (The First Time") was downright provocative to a 12 year old boys ears. He could also make a cool cricket sound (am not kidding...every time I saw him on TV the host would beg he do it), but his only number 1 was, "Honey" which is a calling card is another kind entirely.      The best way to describe this is an aural version of a Lifetime Network movie, complete with angelic chorus in the last verse....

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Golden Earring--Radar Love (1973)/Twilight Zone (1982)

     Any artist that can stay in the game for over 50 years has my respect, and the group Golden Earring has done just that. Although the majority of their success has been initially in their homeland (the Netherlands), they have maintained a level of popularity that most other bands couldn't touch. They began as a pop band in 1961, and with their first top ten single in 1965, began a career which has brought 51 top forty singles in their homeland along with 32 albums, first in pop, then into a more mainstream rock sound. ...

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Andrew Gold--Lonely Boy (1977)/Thank You For Being a Friend (1978)

     It's not often that we have a blog that deals with two songs, but thought it was a great example of how two songs take wildly diverting paths to success. "Lonely Boy" was the highest charting song of Gold's career, but one could argue that "Thank You For Being a Friend" is by far the most popular....      Andrew came from very successful parents. His Mother, Marni Nixon, was a singer who provided the voices for many actresses in the movies, most notably Natalie Wood in "West Side Story" and Audrey Hepburn...

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The Go-Go's--We Got the Beat (1982)

     The history of girl groups on the pop/rock charts is woefully low compared to solo artists. There was a burst of activity in the early 60's, as groups like The Shrielles, The Ronettes, The Cookies under the producing hand of Phil Spector were all over the charts. Motown also had early success with groups like Martha & the Vandellas and of course, The Supremes. As the the rock and roll era morphed into the modern rock era, most groups involving all women were left behind. The early 70's brought the group Fanny and guitarist...

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Godspell--Day by Day (1972)

    The musical Godspell is based on a series of parables (or stories) in the book of Matthew and Luke from the New Testament in the Bible. It began as a Master's thesis from student John-Michael Tebelak who was a student at Carnegie Mellon University in 1970. After being presented by the members of the student body, it was done in Greenwich Village for a ten day run at La MaMa Experimental Theater Club in February 1971.      Charles Haid, who was the associate director, and who would become very popular as an...

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Gary Glitter--Rock and Roll (Pt. 1 & 2)--1972

     In the U.S., Gary Glitter is known for one top ten hit in 1972, which has become one of the best known sports arena anthems in history. In Britain he had a major string of top five hits, including three number one's going up til 1975. Even after that, he would be in and out of the charts all the way to the mid-90s. He is probably known more so for a string of convictions beginning in the 80's which ranged from a series of DUI's and public intoxication, to the last 20 years fighting child abuse and child porn convictions...

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Nick Gilder--Hot Child in the City (1978)

     Nick Gilder was born in London, but raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. His professional career began as the lead singer in the 70's Canadian glam band Sweeney Todd. They had quite a bit of success in the mid 70's and won a Juno award (the Canadian version of the Grammy) in 1977. By that time, Gilder had chose to attempt a solo career and focus his attentions on America.      He was signed by Chrysails Records and his first album, "You Know Who You Are" went nowhere. But his follow-up, "City Nights"...

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Don Gibson--Oh, Lonesome Me (1958)

     Don Gibson was born in Shelby, North Carolina in a poor family, and had dropped out of school by the second grade. He began playing the guitar as a young teenager and progressed to the point that with a few other local musicians formed the group, Sons of the Soil who recorded a side or two in 1948, but broke up the next year. In 1950 he formed a new group called, King Cotton Kinfolk who spent the early 50's signed to RCA then Columbia developing his sound and his songwriting abilities.      In 1955, he had...

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Debbie Gibson--Lost In Your Eyes (1989)

     As I listened to this song again for the first time in a couple of decades, the first question that leaped in my mind was, "Why wasn't this woman more popular?", especially in wake of the massive success of Taylor Swift. For many of Ms. Swift's fans who were much to young to remember Debbie Gibson, she is the youngest to ever write, record, AND produce a  number 1 single on the Hot 100. One of the reasons is the country music crowd is much more flexible when it comes to the age of their stars. The country charts are...

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Barry Gibb--Shadow Dancing (1978)

     It seemed for a time in the late 70s that the Gibb brothers could do no wrong. The Bee Gees were flying high on the disco wave that was fueled to stratospheric heights by the soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever". The three brothers were prolific songwriters and each contributed not only to their own performing careers, but wrote songs for many others during that period that were near the top of the charts as well. So when youngest brother Andy began performing, it wasn't surprising that his star began to take off as well.      ...

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Stan Getz w/Astrud Gilberto--The Girl from Ipanema (1964)

     The story for this song begins in a seaside suburb of Rio de Janerio in 1962. Musicians Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes were writing about a girl they would see just about every day. The girl, later identified as 17 year old Helo Pinhero, would walk into the Veloso cafe-bar to buy cigarettes for her mother to the admiration of many of the men in the cafe, incluing Jobim and Moraes. The next year Jobim began a collaboration with tenor sax player Stan Getz, guitarist Joao Gilberto and Gilberto's wife Astrud.  ...

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Gerry and the Pacemakers--How Do You Do It? (1964)

     George Martin felt he had a hit on his hand, but no one seemed to want it. It was offered to pop singer Adam Faith and he turned it down. The young producer felt sure the new group from Liverpool, The Beatles, could have a hit with it, but they didn't like the song either. (Martin told Lennon/McCartney they could shelve it if they could write something better...they came up with 'Please Please Me') Manager Brian Epstein however had another group he had just signed who would be interested in recording the Mitch Murray song.      ...

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The Georgia Satellites--Keep Your Hands To Yourself (1986)

     Rock music is almost always an amalgamation of the influences that come before it. There are those times that something fresh and truly innovative comes along, but for the most part music points as much to it's past as is does to it's future. The key is to put them together in combinations that sound fresh and exciting. There are times however, that a group or a song come along at a time that is totally out of time with the other music that goes on around it, and because of this is never quite as appreciated as it should...

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Barbara George--I Know (You Don't Love Me No More)--1961

     New Orleans has always been a hotbed of music and in the early 60's, many record companies sent their scouts to that great city to find new talent. One who decided there needed to be a local company that catered to the needs of the black musician was Harold Battiste. More can be read about him and the AFO (All For One) record label here:  http://www.rockandrollomnibus.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-weekend-vault-afo-executives-and.html and http://www.rockandrollomnibus.blogspot.com/2013/03/weekend-vault-afo-executives-with-tammy.html     ...

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The Gentrys--Keep On Dancing (1965)

     The Gentrys were another one of the many bands who got their start out of high school. Most of the members (with the exception of Larry Butler on keyboards) all come out of Treadwell High School in Memphis. The first lineup consisted of Bruce Bowles and Jimmy Hart on vocals, Bobby Fisher on sax and keyboards, Jimmy Johnson on trumpet, Pat Neal on bass, Larry Raspberry on guitar and lead vocals (he was the lead on 'Keep On Dancing'), Larry Wall on drums, and Butler.      The boys founded the group in...

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Genesis--Land of Confusion (1986)

     When we left things yesterday, Peter Gabriel left to pursue a solo career. The band tried out around 400 singers to replace him before settling on Phil Collins. Over 30 years later, it's easy to think that the band's move to more pop oriented material was a sharp line between the two singers. This was far from the truth as several of the albums post-Gabriel were progressive in nature as well. "A Trick of the Tail" (1976),  "Wind & Wuthering" (1976), and "Seconds Out" (1977--a live album). Of course, you can hear...

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Genesis--The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974)

     The story of Genesis is truly one of two different bands, which made if difficult to choose which one of those incarnations to write about. So to be fair, I am writing about the Peter Gabriel era group today, and the Phil Collins era group tomorrow.      The story begins in 1967 with schoolmates Peter Gabriel and Tony Banks. The other members drawn from bands which came from other schools included Mike Rutherford, Anthony Phillips, and Chris Stewart. Their original intention was to become a songwriting cooperative,...

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Gene and Debbe--Playboy (1968)

     The duo of Gene Thomas (born Thomasson) and Debbe Neville had a trio of songs on the top 100 in 1967 and 68, with "Playboy" being by far the most successful. Thomas had been recording since the early 60's with some minor success, but was mostly into songwriting when meeting Neville. Their style was county/pop romantic songs in a Everly Brothers type harmonic style. They never had a song reach near the heights of this song (#17), and by the end of 1969 had gone their separate ways with Gene continuing his career as a songwriter,...

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J. Geils Band--Centerfold (1981)

     For those who just kept up with the top 40, the number one success of, "Centerfold" must have come as a bit of a shock, but in actually it was just a culmination of years of work      The group had it's beginnings at Worcester, Massachusetts as an acoustic blues band in 1967. John Geils (guitar, vocals), Danny Klein aka Dr. Funk (Bass), and Richard Salwitz aka Magic Dick (harmonica) made up the band under the name "Snoopy and the Sopwith Camels". It wasn't long however before they went electric and added...

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David Geddes--Run Joey Run (1975)

     It might have just been because I grew up in the 70's, but it seems that for all of the good music that was around, there was also a high amount of musical debris floating on the landscape. This song was one of them. In pop music, there has always been a fascination with death and dying. Sometimes it would be wrapped in romance ("Last Kiss" by J. Frank Wilson & the Cavaliers--1964) or just a graphic description of the event (D.O.A. by Bloodrock--1971). Others were just sappy (I direct you to "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro--1968...

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Gloria Gaynor--Never Can Say Goodbye (1974)

     In music, there are examples of an artist who become so associated with one song that it literally overshadows everything else they do. Thus is the case with Gloria Gaynor. As we'll see with this song, she was a successful recording artist long before that song identified her forever with a specific time and place.      The album of the same name was one of the first major disco recordings with it's title track being part of a 19 minute suite designed specifically for the dance floor.  In fact,...

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Crystal Gayle--Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue (1977)

     Crystal Gayle was born Brenda Gail Webb in November of 1951 in Paintsville, Kentucky, although was moved to Indiana when she was four, and it was here she was raised. She was the youngest of eight siblings. with Loretta Lynn being the second of that group (Lynn was 19 when Brenda was born). By the time Brenda was in high school, her older sister was starting to spend major time on the US country charts. This inspired the younger sister to take up the guitar and sing backup in her brother's folk band. During the summers...

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