Chuck’s Record Collection: “Hit Machine”

This time, let’s take a look at K-tel’s 1976 collection, Hit Machine.

It’s a reminder that at its essence, “Top 40” music isn’t primarily a genre…

but a descriptive phrase for songs that sell well enough, and are played most often to rank highly on music industry charts.

This collection goes all over the place.

In doing so, it reminds listeners that, with one exception, what these songs had in common was: they were hits.

Side Note # 1:
Let’s address that one exception right away:

If you’re going to emblazon “All Top 10 Hits” on the cover of your collection, it’s a good idea to make sure that’s the case. Unless, either you don’t care about accuracy, or you’re planning to market only to Anniston, Alabama, and Greenville, South Carolina. These were two radio markets where Rick Springfield’s Take a Hand did go Top 10. As far as the rest of the U.S. was concerned? It was a “so close” moment for American Top 40, peaking at No. 41 in Billboard in the fall of 1976.

When I was 13, I bought this album for one reason only: It had my favorite song of 1976 on it, Billy Ocean’s Love Really Hurts Without You, another song that was a “Top 10 Hit” only in certain markets.

That song was on the Ariola America Records label, a smaller label that didn’t have widespread distribution in department stores like songs on Capitol or Columbia. In Chicago, it peaked at a lowly Number 38 on WLS and didn’t have the chance to do better on WCFL, which shifted format to “beautiful music” earlier in the year. So I was thrilled to see it on “Hit Machine” and snapped it right up.

Side note # 2: It’s amusing in this era of Spotify, YouTube and the internet as a whole to remember a time when scarcity was a concept in music consumption. Years later, I did get my hands on a 45RPM copy of Love Really Hurts Without You.

The best – and the worst thing about “Hit Machine” is its stylistic diversity.

You’ll find the lovely, laidback jazzy soul of War’s Summer and the dreamy pop-country of the Bellamy Brothers’ Let Your Love Flow. You’ll also find the TV themes for two major ABC hits of the year, Pratt & McClain’s Happy Days and John Sebastian’s “Welcome Back.”

(Sorry, SWAT and Laverne & Shirley fans: you’ll have to look elsewhere for those 1976 hits.)

And then …

There’s Paul Anka’s (You’re) Having My Baby.

Really, there’s little I can say that TNOCS hasn’t already said about this bottom-feeder. I will only add that if they went back two years to snatch this one, K-tel must have had no confidence in Anka’s Times of Your Life, a true 1976 Top 10 hit, or Anytime (I’ll Be There). Which was a song I actually liked, but, like the Ocean and Springfield songs, not one that meets the cover criterion.

Anka’s hit is the oldest song in the collection; other non-1976 songs include Linda Ronstadt’s When Will I Be Loved, KISS’ inferior studio version of Rock and Roll All Nite (which I took to task in a previous K-tel review) and Jessi Colter’s “I’m Not Lisa.”

Finally, there’s a set of songs that hung on from late 1975, and just into 1976. Electric Light Orchestra’s Evil Woman, the Four Seasons’ Who Loves You, Frankie Valli’s discofied cover of Our Day Will Come, and a No. 1 hit by Elton John – not a staple K-tel artist in the mid-‘70s. Unfortunately, it’s Island Girl, a song whose lyrics were borderline even then, and really unlistenable now.

Top-shelf:

• War’s Summer
• Billy Ocean’s Love Really Hurts Without You
• Bellamy Brothers’ Let Your Love Flow
• ELO’s Evil Woman
• The Four Seasons’ Who Loves You
• Maxine Nightingale’s Right Back Where We Started From
• Starbuck’s ’ Moonlight Feels Right

Decent:

• KC and the Sunshine Band’s Shake Your Booty
• Johnnie Taylor’s Disco Lady
• Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band’s A Fifth of Beethoven
• Pratt & McClain’s Happy Days
• John Sebastian’s Welcome Back
• Rick Springfield’s Take a Hand
• Jessi Colter’s I’m Not Lisa

Yuck:

• KISS’ Rock and Roll All Nite
• Paul Anka’s (You’re) Having My Baby
• Elton John’s’ Island Girl

Question Marks:

Ah, Disco Duck.

Rick Dees’ novelty song is one that I can sometimes chuckle at, and other times can’t wait to turn off. It was a No. 1 song and – along with the KC and Murphy tunes – one of the most current hits on the collection.  

If you keep in mind the title conceit – that these were big, big songs – it’s easier to take the bad with the good, and there’s a lot of good.

(Sorry, no podcast link this time – the Adventures in Vinyl folks haven’t gotten around to this one yet.)

With a dozen Billboard Top 3 hits out of its 20 cuts, it’s impossible to deny:

This album is a Hit Machine.

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