Welcome another Sun-Soaked episode of The Songs Of The Summer Series from friend and Contributing Author Ozmoe!
We’re almost at the finish line! This week:
Remembering 1977…
As a reminder or for those just joining us, I categorize a summer song basically as the fun tune you’d like to do at karaoke with your friends. It’s hummable, singable, danceable, and probably some other kind of optimistic labels I can’t think of right now.
tnocs.com summer charts expert ozmoe
Well, that’s the case for me for 1977.
That summer, I went to a tennis camp for a week with only a portable radio to keep me company. So, my introverted self listened to the radio constantly when I wasn’t learning tennis (badly). That meant I soaked up everything being played.
I marveled at how Ariel by Dean Friedman peaked at Number 26 in June… and then fell out… and returned to the top 40 in July before finally leaving the Hot 100 in late August. I cheered for the ballads It’s Sad to Belong and Luckenbach, Texas to crack the top 20…
…but they didn’t.
And then after I got back home, Elvis Presley died. Even then he was an object of nostalgia to me, but I knew what a huge impact he had on pop culture.
I’ll try to put my personal biases aside to offer what I think are the best Summer Song candidates for that year. These are the ones that made many people feel good singing along then and feel the same way now, listed chronologically based on their Hot 100 peak.
Rank the top three, with one being your favorite, in the comments and along with any other choices you think should be here.
• Jimmy Buffett: Margaritaville
When you create a song that become a philosophy of life for some people … I mean, what can say but “Whoa!” Let me be clear that while I’m not a Parrot Head, I am impressed that this composition had enough power to inspire a best-selling book by Buffett, a restaurant chain, a radio station and plenty of food and drink spinoffs too numerous to list here.
As for the song itself, it goes down very easy like a margarita even though it follows the classic country trope of a man bemoaning a failed relationship and he was the one at fault. Pass the salt shaker, please.
Andy Gibb: I Just Want to Be Your Everything
Let Andy Gibb describe this hit’s appeal. From the book, The Top Ten:
“If you release a song in the summer that’s right for the summer, and it’s a happy song, then it’s bound to become a hit. I Just Want to Be Your Everything was that perfect song. Everybody sang along to it. In fact, it was a big hit within the industry before it was released.”
It was an even bigger hit outside the industry when released. In fact, from July 30 through September 24, 1977, the number one song in the United States was I Just Want to Be Your Everything, alternating with …
Andy Gibb
• The Emotions: Best of My Love
This song was so nice, it knocked I Just Want to Be Your Everything from the top twice. It was one of two “girl group” hits that summer, but whereas the middle-paced Angel in Your Arms by Hot promised revenge on their two-timing lovers, the livelier Best of My Love just celebrated romance. Lead singer Wanda Hutchinson trilled a high note delightfully and also did a great job enunciating “Devastating” twice before the chorus, which was just the title with a bunch of “Whoa, whoa” lyrics interspersed between it. Even so, it was catchy then and catchy now.
• Supertramp: Give a Little Bit
According to the always reliable Wikipedia, this song’s genre is “progressive pop-folk rock-soft rock.” It’s a testament to what Give a Little Bit achieves that writers of that entry have a hard time defining what exactly the song is. We do know that there’s a soaring sax solo, guitar licks that seem urgent yet laidback at the same time, and Roger Hodgson’s lead vocal is as heartfelt as the lyrics. Ultimately, it all works together beautifully. Give a Little Bit paved the way for Supertramp’s bigger success two years later with its classic Breakfast in America album.
• Ram Jam: Black Betty
Well, this was one heck of a way to reinterpret a classic folk song. Ram Jam was formed around Bill Bartlett, a former member of the one-hit wonder group the Lemon Pipers (Green Tambourine). He expanded upon the length of Black Betty with wild guitar lickzs and drumbeats and got his new band Ram Jam a recording deal in the process.
The result was … well, this reaction compilation explains it better than anything I can say.
Unfortunately, like Bartlett’s previous group, Ram Jam became a one-hit wonder as well.
• The Sanford-Townsend Band: Smoke from a Distant Fire
Since Ed Sanford and Johnny Townsend are from Alabama, some consider this song Southern rock. As a resident of Dixie, I’d rather call it an enjoyable earworm. Smoke from a Distant Fire was reportedly an expensive production, which makes sense when you hear all the overdubs of instruments near the end courtesy of co-producer superstar Jerry Wexler. But as with fellow summer hit Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl), the Sanford-Townsend Band couldn’t recreate that sound for follow-ups, leading the act into becoming a one-hit wonder. Still, it’s a heck of a hit.
• The Brothers Johnson: Strawberry Letter 23
One of the brothers Johnson walked down the aisle with this song’s original version playing during his wedding. It was Louis Johnson, who loved Strawberry Letter 23 when he heard it on an album in 1971 by its writer, Shuggie Otis. He brought the composition to Quincy Jones, producer of the Brothers Johnson. Jones added his “ear candy” to make the final product richer and more dynamic than the original. Strawberry Letter 23 apparently made quite an impression on Jones as well as Louis Johnson, as the producer remade the song with Tevin Campbell in 1992.
• Fleetwood Mac: Don’t Stop
There was no stopping Fleetwood Mac on pop radio in the summer of 1977. The group’s album Rumours topped the LP chart and four tracks became top 10 singles, a rare feat then. The first, Go Your Own Way, was Lindsay Buckingham’s stinging statement to his ex, Stevie Nicks, who gave a mellow retort in the follow-up, Dreams. The third, Don’t Stop, came from another separation in the band, between its writer Christie McVie and group founder Mick Fleetwood.
But its optimistic nature made it more engaging than the previous two. Bill Clinton used it for his successful 1992 presidential campaign, which had its own romantic entanglements.
Now, choose the song that you like the most…
[ays_poll id=4]
… along with your #2 and #3 choices, and any other comments below:
And with summer ending next weekend: We’ll recap the Top Three for all the years surveyed!
We’ll ask you to choose your favorites to determine:
The Ultimate Summer Song (patent pending). Ought to be fun!
Thank You For Your Vote!
Sorry You have Already Voted!
OK, gang, by popular demand: I took a flyer on cooking up an embedded poll as seen above. (Not a lot of window dressing, just functionality for now. We’ll shine ‘er up later.)
For starters, it just “your favorite,” and not “ranked choice.” I’ll work on it some more tonight.
If y’all can try it out and let me know how (and if) it works. Thanks!
Codeboy58
Voted; looks like it worked. Nice work!
Yep, it worked. Good show MT!
Just voted.
Good on you, mt. 😉
I think it may have let me vote twice… I voted, went to “like” a comment and realized I wasn’t logged in, so I logged in, and then I voted again just to see if I could.
(I promise I don’t do this in actual real-life elections.)
Ok, I just went to a different page, came back here, and it let me vote again… I’ll stop now, but there may be issues with the voting machines…
Good grief…
OK, sorry everybody. So much for my coding skills.
Double and triple voting. Totally inexcusable. I’ll get on this in a little bit, but right now I have to take a call.
There’s some guy named Mike Lindell on the phone and he says he really, really, really wants to talk to me…
Voted! (But just once).
…
Not me. I’m going to keep voting until “Distant Fire” is the winner.
Hmmmm….1977, you know I gotta list off some punk picks. It’s just required.
But first: from your picks, I would rank thusly:
3) Strawberry Letter 23 (though I prefer the original)
2) Margaritaville
1) Best of My Love
Other hits to consider: “Car Wash” by Rose Royce (makes me think of washing the family car as a kid!), “Sir Duke” by Stevie Wonder, and “Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy” by Queen.
And some not-hits: “Breaking Glass” by David Bowie, “Venus” by Television, “The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes” by Elvis Costello, “Neat Neat Neat” by The Damned, “Seventeen” by Sex Pistols, “Dangerous Rhythm” by Ultravox!, and “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” by The Ramones.
Hard to pass on “Car Wash” and “Sir Duke” – they were all over the radio.
My write-in votes for this week are both covers (but not the one by Shaun Cassidy): Steve Miller’s “Jet Airliner” and Rita Coolidge’s “Higher and Higher”. Another contender is “Easy” by the Commodores. And I’ll even go to bat for “Undercover Angel” (don’t judge).
But… here are my top three:
1. Best of My Love
2. Margaritaville
3. Strawberry Letter 23
Strong set, and “Black Betty” nearly made it as well, the video of Ram Jam jamming in someone’s backyard just screams Summer.
The Sandford Townsend Band played my college. Dean Friedman opened, but it didn’t go well. There was very little applause and he saved “Ariel” for the encore, except the audience didn’t ask for an encore. He came back out, took a bow, and played “Ariel” anyway. I felt bad for the guy but it really wasn’t a good set.
Sandford Townsend saved the day, and “Smoke From A Distant Fire” gets my vote. I didn’t realize what a good composition it is until I had to learn it for a cover band. I’ve been trying to get other cover bands to do it ever since and no one wants to tackle it. You need some pretty good chops to do a credible version.
For my other two choices, I’ll pick Pylum’s suggestions of “Sheena Is A Punk Rocker” and Elvis Costello’s “The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes.”
In college, thanks largely to Bruce Springsteen, having a good sax player in the band was something that people wanted to see, and bands aspired to deliver.
Whenever we’d have a college dance (they were called “mixers” – yikes -when did that term stop being a thing?) there was a phase where a lot of the local bands tried to sound as much as possible like Beaver Brown, Southside Johnny, or even Sanford Townsend. In Boston, “The Chris Rhodes Band” was among the local versions of such a thing. Good players with a good sound.
Smoke From A Distant Fire has also been on my band-bucket-list since it first came out. With those sax and guitar harmony hooks, it always seemed an obvious choice for a bar-band cover treatment. But not once have I ever been able to sell it to any other group of players.
You’re right that some parts can be a little tricky, but it does seem do-able with a little concentration and practice. It feels like one of those kinds of tunes that if you pulled it off at “85%” or more, the audience would understand and appreciate the effort.
The lead vocal register is pretty high. Maybe that what scares people off from giving it a go. I used to be able to get through it OK enough. But now I have a hard time with it – especially the ending – even on my best days.
Let’s keep it on the short list for our TNOCS cover band, The Rockin’ Commenters!
Upvote, but you need a flashier band name… I hear tell someone’s been keeping a list of good ones…
Added a new one to my list today. My friend was trying to remember Bad Bunny but came up with Savage Rabbit.
Close enough.
Question: I think MORE people would visit the site and respond to these polls if a poll was included. Is that a possibility?
Might help with traffic!
The short answer is, yes, it’s a good idea. Can you or someone point to the format of a poll that would be what you had in mind? Do you mean adjacent to these kinds of articles, or something else?
Re: increased users and traffic: Currently, the best path to that end would be mentions at SG. It doesn’t feel appropriate for me as a site owner to do too much of it, but if any of you name-drops or perhaps posts an article link, that seems legit and respectful to me. Thoughts?
I thought at the end of the article, but I wouldn’t know the coding to make it happen, or if it could be dropped in like the polls over at the Mothership.
At the end of the article makes sense – great catch on all of this, @thegue.
Ozmoe’s terrific series ends next week. Let me see if I can cook up something for his finale.
First of all, I despise “Margaritaville” with a burning passion. However it may rank in some sort of “objective” ranking, I cannot allow myself to vote for this excrement.
When I lived in Parker, AZ, I was just down the road from Lake Havasu City, which is this very depressing burnout destination. Middle-aged guys pretending they were still teenagers, getting shitfaced and screaming the lyrics of “Margaritaville” like it’s some sort of credo. Like it was their living souls made manifest in a song. It was the song that united the local cracker population.
I couldn’t run away fast enough…
Anyway, I’d probably go like this:
So here we are, 1977 probably the year that brought more changes than any other single year in my life. And all of them were accompanied by music.
#1 Smoke from a Distant Fire
#2 Black Betty
#3 Don’t Stop
These are based on the summer song criteria and personal memories. Soo many songs and memories from that summer.
I feel like you and I have doppelganger experiences. 1977 was a magic time.
Obviously, the top song from the summer of ’77 for me was “Gonna Fly Now”(Theme from Rocky)” Bill Conti ( but I stand by Maynard Ferguson’s interpretation).
It was also the summer of Disco! Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up”, K.C.’s “I’m Your Boogie Man”, CC and Company “Devil’s Gun” and probably one of the most overlooked dance numbers of the year, Celi Bee and the Buzzy Bunch’s “Suprman” which just missed the Top 40 (it hit #45).
For Ozmoe’s picks
Number One. Easy Peazy. “Best of My Love”
Number Two. “Margaritaville”. It’s still a great summer song.
Number Three. “Smoke From a Distant Fire”
Honorable Mention. “Don’t Stop”
This has been fun and I wish it didn’t end next week but there’s next summer to look forward to!
>Obviously, the top song from the summer of ’77 for me was “Gonna Fly Now”(Theme from Rocky)”
Well remembered!
There’s always the possibility of a Songs of Autumn column if anyone wants to take it up…
Fine if someone wants to do that, but that someone ain’t gonna be me.
14 articles in a series! You’ve paid your dues!
Did you see Burt Young in Win Win? The National’s “Think You Can Wait” was definitely snubbed for Best Original Song in 2011. The music short makes me smile. It contain outtakes from the film. Young has his moments.
A friend at work showed his son Rocky to get him psyched up for a junior tennis match against the state’s top player. Dude, I said, he’s fourteen. He lost 6-0, 6-1. After the match, the father told me, Alright. We’ll go with The Karate Kid the next time. To his son, I asked him faux angrily: You’re Asian. You’re local. How have you not seen The Karate Kid?
Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now” in a virtual tie with “Theme from Shaft” as greatest movie song ever.
By the way, Ozmoe (and mt58) it wouldn’t let me give a heart vote for the posting, it actually took one away! So a big HEART vote for 1977.
Sorry, all.
The heart thingy is becoming my personal albatross. My lame response is to tell you to refresh the page. A better solution is on my to-do list of fixes.
Thanks for the update, DanceFever. Glad you’re loving this.
Verbena is my favorite Alabama band. Souls for Sale rocks. Looking at their Wikipedia page, I get the impression they were signed in the UK. I knew them as a Merge band. These guys deserved better.
1) Best of My Love: I see Rollergirl.
2) I Just Want to Be Your Everything: Oh, here, Andy. You take this number one song. I’ll just write another.
3) Give it A Little Bit: I didn’t realize this was Supertramp until I bought their CDs. Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous made such an impression on me, I got into Supertramp. I always had liked “The Logical Song” because it reminded me of Star Trek. “The Logical Song(Spock’s Thoughts)”. The parenthetical is an actual Leonard Nimoy spoken piece.
Thanks, Ozmoe. As usual, this is a fun exercise.
You’re welcome, cappiethedog.
Oh, and it’s strictly for summer nights, but let’s not forget about Donna Summer’s classic “I Feel Love.”
Its an easy choice; there’s several that I don’t know and of the ones that I recognise Don’t Stop is far and away the best. The others don’t do enough for me to list a top 3 this week.
Over here the big summer hits were three weeks at the top for Hot Chocolate with So You Win Again then four for Donna Summer with I Feel Love. Elswhere the charts were a varied mix of punk, soul, disco, soft rock, prog rock, reggae, manufactured pop amongst other genres. Sex Pistols; Pretty Vacant was in the top 10 while Commodores soothed the raging beast with Easy. Personal favourite though was Jonathan Richman reaching #11 with Roadrunner.
{ i just excitedly typed a response to jj }
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From the choices given:
1) I Just Want To Be Your Everything
2) Don’t Stop
3) Best Of My Love
I grew to love “Margaritaville” but it was a slow build. It got some airplay but to me is one of those songs whose popularity peaked well after it’s time.
The summer of 77 was my first summer with a drivers license. My boundary’s were greatly expanded and newfound personal freedom was empowering. Memories from that time have an extra coat of sealant. Songs from that summer that are the most evocative are:
1) Lido Shuffle – summer job
2) You Made Me Believe In Magic – summer cruising
3) Undercover Angel – summer girlfriend
If I had a time machine one-way ticket, the destination would be June 1977.
My first summer with a driver’s license was…
…
…2017!
Ha! Assuming I started driving at birth I am still older. Enjoy the ride my friend, it goes sooo fast!
I was born in 81, so a good chunk of life went by before I started driving! Was not very fun learning to drive without the teenage sense of reckless immortality to keep the nerves from fraying, I’ll tell you that.
But learning new stuff later in life is good for the brain. Maybe I’ll take up…a sport of some kind? Golf? Quidditch? They all bleed together in my head (whoops, did it again, mt).
I was all prepared to select Andy Gibb, but Ozmoe, you did it again with some great competitors, and Mr. Gibb had to console himself with being No. 1 on AT40’s year-end countdown.
My top 3:
3) Strawberry Letter 23 — what an amazing jam (strawberry jam, of course)
2) Smoke from a Distant Fire — someday I’ll write about that song and Chicago’s WMET (mt, remind me of this at some point)
1) Best of My Love — this comes very close to my “song for all seasons” disclaimer, but truly every time I hear it I think summer ’77.
Other songs not on your list: Telephone Line, and its so-bad-it’s-good sibling, Telephone Man; Jet Airliner; and Life in the Fast Lane.