Welcome to a new edition of Shuffle! The music blog where I take some random songs, put it under a random topic and produce a great shuffle of music for you to enjoy.
I had yet another new idea on where to take this blog (and I’m sure I will have a million more 3AM ideas in the future). After the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame series, I was thinking what my next topic would be. I went to the Billboard charts to the year I was born, 1972. I then went to the week I was born which under Billboard weeks was the week of June 10, 1972. I then proceeded to jot down in word all 100 songs. The ones I knew well I left un-italicized and the ones I didn’t know or familiar with I italicized so that I could listen to them. Then this went to the next week adding each new song that came on to the chart for the remainder of 1972. I then thought ‘Hey, let’s connect historical events, pop culture moments, etc. and see if we can wrap them up with the music of the time and create commentary around that’! Yeah, a lot of work and today I looked at several sources I will be using in order to piece together all that history and information. I love it actually. I’ve always loved connecting historical events to each other and looking at the consistencies or perhaps odd inconsistencies of a time period. In this post I only did June of 1972. I will see how it goes for now. Hope you like your music mixed with history, headlines and politics!
June 1972
I was born on June 9, 1972 which was a Friday. That day, the Staple Singers’ hit “I’ll Take You There” was number one. #TheStapleSingers
The next day, Billboard released it’s Top 100 for the week on the 10th and “Candy Man”
by Sammy Davis Jr. was #1 where it would stay for the remainder of that month. Great song since I love candy and consider myself a chocoholic! What else happened on my birth day and the remainder of June? Let’s see, on June 9, 1972, President Nixon sent a telegram to France praising their efforts against cancer. Also directly on my birth date was the Black Hills Flood in in South Dakota. Fifteen inches of rain caused the flood. One of my future favorite singers, Bruce Springsteen, signed his first official record deal with Columbia on June 9, 1972. Elvis Presley does the first of four concerts at Madison Square garden. This was his first time performing in New York City which is unbelievable given all his prior performing.
#SammyDavisJr #RichardNixon #BruceSpringsteen #June9 #MadisonSquareGarden #ElvisPresley #BlackHillsFlood #France #NewYorkCity
I was born in Bucyrus, Ohio in Crawford County. According to my mom, we were living in a tent in Upper Sandusky with my father. He was a man who did not like living indoors. I wouldn’t call my father a hippie, he was more like a “free spirit”.
#Bucyrus #Ohio #CrawfordCounty #UpperSandusky
The most famous person I share my exact birth date is Wesley Reid Scantlin who goes on to front the rock band Puddle of Mudd, known for their most famous hit “Blurry” in 2001. This song I will happen to enjoy when I’m twenty-nine years old.
#WesleyReidScantlin #PuddleOfMudd #Blurry
Overall my birth day wasn’t too bad. Some people died due to floods, some people, like me were born. People were making dreams come true like Bruce and others were going to be thought of as a bad president like Nixon. I’m actually glad that two songs by black artists were number one on my birthday and the week after. That showed promise for the future. Or what sounded like a good promise for the future. Let’s move on to the rest of June.
Other notable news of June 1972 (source for dates and events are from wikipedia.org:
- June 14 – Simon & Garfunkel reunite briefly to perform live at Madison Square Garden at a campaign benefit for Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. Other performers include Peter, Paul and Mary and Dionne Warwick.
- June 14–23: Hurricane Agnes hits the east coast, killing 117 people.
- June 14: The first Popeyes fried chicken restaurant opens in the New Orleans suburb of Arabi, Louisiana.
- June 15–18 – The first U.S. Libertarian Party National Convention is held in Denver, Colorado.
- June 17: Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee.
- June 23 – Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman are taped talking about using the C.I.A. to obstruct the F.B.I.‘s investigation into the Watergate break-ins.
- June 26 – Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney co-found Atari, Inc.
- June 28 – U.S. President Richard Nixon announces that no new draftees will be sent to Vietnam.
- June 29 – Furman v. Georgia: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that capital punishment is unconstitutional.
#SimonAndGarfunkel #DionneWarwick #PeterPaulAndMary #GeorgeMcGovern #HurricaneAgnes #Popeyes #NewOrleans #Libertarian #DenverColorado #Watergate #WhiteHouse #DemocraticNationalCommittee #CIA #FBI #NolanBushnell #TedDabney #Atari #Vietnam #SupremeCourt #CapitalPunishment
Other music news from June 1972
| 10 Jun 1972 | The Rolling Stones double album Exile on Main Street went to No.1 on the UK chart, the bands seventh UK No.1 album. In 2010, the re-released album entered the UK chart at No.1, almost 38 years to the week after it first occupied that position. The Rolling Stones are the first act to ever have a studio album return to No.1 after it was first released. (from website: https://www.thisdayinmusic.com) |
| 12 Jun 1972 | With the help of her mother, a bare footed Ronnie Spector left her husband Phil’s Beverly Hills mansion for the last time, leaving behind her adopted sons, three year old Donté and six year old twins, Louis and Gary. Within days she filed for a divorce that would be granted in 1974. (from website: https://www.thisdayinmusic.com) |
| 13 Jun 1972 | Clyde McPhatter, original lead vocalist with The Drifters, died of a heart attack in New York. Joined Billy Ward & the Dominoes in 1950, formed The Drifters in 1953, had several solo hits including 1962 ‘Lover Please,’ was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. (from website: https://www.thisdayinmusic.com) |
| 16 Jun 1972 | David Bowie released his fifth studio album The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars a concept album telling the story of a fictional bisexual alien rock star named Ziggy Stardust. The album which reached No.5 in the UK and No. 75 in the US has been consistently considered one of the greatest albums of all time. (from website: https://www.thisdayinmusic.com) |
Live performance of “Suffragette City” in 1972:
| 17 Jun 1972 | Don McLean had his first UK No.1 single with ‘Vincent.’ The song was written about the 19th century artist Vincent Van Gogh. The song is played daily at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. (from website: https://www.thisdayinmusic.com) |
Live performance of “Vincent” in 1972:
| 17 Jun 1972 | The Rolling Stones album Exile on Main Street started a four-week run at the top of the US charts. The double album, regularly regarded as one of the band’s best, features ‘Rocks Off’, ‘Rip This Joint’, ‘Happy’ and ‘Tumbling Dice’. (from website: https://www.thisdayinmusic.com) |
Live version of “Tumbling Dice” from 1972:
| 21 Jun 1972 | The first Stonehenge Free Festival was held at Stonehenge, England culminating on the summer solstice. (from website: https://www.thisdayinmusic.com) |
| 26 Jun 1972 | During sessions at Olympic Studios, London, England, David Bowie recorded ‘John, I’m Only Dancing’, with Mick Ronson on lead guitar and Lou Reed on rhythm guitar. The track which was released and became a hit single in the UK in September of this year was not released in America, being judged too risqué by RCA Records. The original video directed by Mick Rock, featuring androgynous dancers from Lindsay Kemp’s mime troupe, was banned by British music show Top Of The Pops . (from website: https://www.thisdayinmusic.com) |
Here is that risque video of “John, I’m Only Dancing”:
In my analyzing of the Billboard charts of 1972, here are some of my favorites that charted in my birth week:
“Song Sung Blues” Neil Diamond:
“Sylvia’s Mother” Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show:
“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” Roberta Flack:
“Outa-Space” Billy Preston:
“(Last Night) I Didn’t Get to Sleep At All” The 5th Dimension:
“It’s Going to Take Some Time” Carpenters:
“Troglodyte (Cave Man)” The Jimmy Castor Bunch:
“I Saw The Light” Todd Rundgren:
“Lean On Me” Bill Withers:
“Little Bitty Pretty One” Jackson 5:
“Rocket Man” Live Verson Elton John:
“I Gotcha” – Joe Tex (Soul Train Performance):
#RollingStones #JoeTex #SoulTrain #EltonJohn #RocketMan #Jackson5 #BillWithers #ToddRundgren #TheJimmyCastorBunch #Carpenters #The5thDimension #BillyPreston #RobertaFlack #DrHookAndTheMedicineShow #NeilDiamond
I hope you have enjoyed this trip down memory lane if you were born at or around this time or perhaps born before 1972. For those of you who were born after the decade of the seventies, now you have a view of what life was like back then. There is an innocence to it all but an undercurrent of political change as well. There was a lot of black artists doing well at this time and androgyny was a key element in what a rock star looked like. You can begin to see all the influences of eighties and nineties artists.
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