The AT40 Blog/May 25, 1974: A true "oldie but goodie" returns

Most people consider it the greatest song of the early days of Rock 'n Roll. Some call it the song that kicked off that genre of music in 1955.

Either way, Bill Haley & The Comets' "Rock Around The Clock" is a classic without question. But in 1974, the song was all over a very popular movie that had been released a year before and was the theme song to a new television sitcom on ABC. So it was only prophetic that the song that kicked off Rock 'n Roll's run 19 years earlier would make history on this particular week a generation later.

The song itself was written in 1952 by two men -- Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers, who went under the pseudonym Jimmy De Knight. Two years later, a band called Sonny Dae & His Knights, led by Paschal Vennitti, recorded a version of the song, but as boogie-woogie as it sounded, it simply didn't resonate. In the next recording room over, meanwhile, was Bill Haley and his group, The Comets, recording a version of "Chattanooga Choo-Choo." He was shown a copy of the song, and after showing it to the rest of The Comets, he felt he could do something with the song.

But there was one problem -- a record producer named Dave Miller, who didn't want Haley and his band to do the song for one reason: He had a reported feud going with Myers, according to John Swenson in his biography on Haley called Bill Haley. Still, Haley couldn't resist what he was reading on the sheet music and stories came bounding that Haley and The Comets were doing "Rock Around The Clock" on a regular basis at a place called Phil & Eddie's Surf Shop in Wildwood, N.J.

Signed to a new record label, Decca Records, Haley and the band were to begin recording songs for a debut album on Decca with a new producer, Milt Gabler, the uncle of famed comedian/actor Billy Crystal. Gabler and his engineer had just so much time to work on songs the day of April 12, 1954, at the Pythian Temple studios in New York City and the time was wearing thinner because members of The Comets were taking a ferry back from Philadelphia to New York and it got stuck in a sandbar that day, so they were late getting in.

Once the guys got there, they got right down to business, recording first the song that would be the group's debut hit, "Thirteen Women (And Only One Man In Town)." They got through the session rather easily for guys rushed to get a job done. And with the extra time they had, Haley wanted to give "Rock Around The Clock" a whirl. So Gabler hit the production button and what he heard was simply magic, a song that made the Dae & The Knights version sound awfully weak. It was highlighted by the saxophone work of Joey D'Amborsio, the upright bass of Marshall Lyle and the blinding quick guitar solos and work of Danny Cedrone. Sadly, Cedrone never saw the song become historic -- he died in a tragic fall down a flight of stairs on June 17, 1954, breaking his neck, just three days from his 34th birthday, leaving behind his wife, Millie, and their four daughters.

When the session was finished, Gabler was thrilled. Well, almost thrilled -- he thought the band sounded great, but were so good, they drowned out Haley's vocals. So with minimal musical accompaniment, Haley recorded his vocal again -- while Sammy Davis Jr. was reportedly waiting outside the studio for his chance to go in and record. Stories have been abound for years that the only reason they recorded a second time was because the drummer, Billy Gussak, made a slight error on the first recording.

Less than two months later, the band recorded "Shake, Rattle & Roll" and it took off, becoming a Top 10 hit in 1954, released before "Rock Around The Clock." In 1953, Haley and his band had first made waves with this blues-style dance music with the recording "Crazy Man, Crazy," which peaked at No. 12.

Still, no one thought the music Haley and his Comets were making was going to make seismic waves.

But before "Shake, Rattle & Roll" became a smash hit, Decca released the song it intended to be the hit in the first place -- "Thirteen Women." It flopped. It didn't even dent the charts. However, the "B" side did, peaking at No. 29 in December 1954, and spending one week within the Top 40.

Then fate intervened in a most amazing way. In early 1955, producers were looking for the one song that would represent a new movie about the division in the generation gap between the square-pegged older folks and the hipper, fashionable younger generation. That movie was called Blackboard Jungle. One day, the star of the movie, Glenn Ford, was going through the record collection of his son, Peter. One of the songs he randomly took was "Rock Around The Clock."

Producer Pandro Berman heard "Rock Around The Clock" and knew that was the song he was looking for. And so in the opening credits of Blackboard Jungle came the song that changed everything, Haley's memorable vocals starting, "One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock rock ... five, six, seven o'clock, eight o'clock rock ... nine, 10, 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock rock, we're gonna rock (drum) around (drum) the clock tonight ... "

The movie made its debut on March 19, 1955, and if ever a song represented a movie like this in history, they were hard-pressed to find one. A month later, "Rock Around The Clock" was re-released as a single by Decca and started climbing the charts throughout the spring. And on the week of July 9, 1955, "(We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock" became the No. 1 song in America, spending an astounding eight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard chart and also gaining enough steam to be a No. 3 hit on the R&B chart ... not bad for some white boys who sure had a lot of soul in them.

Not only was a legendary song born, but an entire genre of music was born as well. And though Haley had other hits after "Rock Around The Clock," none ever got to the levels of that record-breaking hit. But Haley would trudge on with his band, doing tours and playing "Rock Around The Clock" every time out.

That served as the framework for the "comeback" in 1974. George Lucas, who was 11 years old when "Rock Around The Clock" became the signature song of Rock 'n Roll, was making his directorial debut with American Graffiti, a coming-of-age piece of the early 1960s starring Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss, Paul LeMat, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips, Cindy Williams and radio disc jockey Wolfman Jack. For the theme song to the movie released on August 11, 1973, the movie opened with the same song as Blackboard Jungle did 18 years earlier ... with "Rock Around The Clock."

And if you needed further evidence that "Rock Around The Clock" was leading a resurrection of "oldies" music, just look to a brand new TV series on ABC called Happy Days, whose link between the show and the movie American Graffiti was the nostalgia-based pre-Beatles years of the Rock 'n Roll era and Howard, the former child star of The Andy Griffith Show who was now 20 years old and had been a star in both, the television show based in Milwaukee around teens growing up in the 1950s, having to go through resurrections in their own lives. Before the show made its ABC debut on January 15, 1974, Haley had agreed to re-record "Rock Around The Clock" for the show as that show's theme song. For the first two seasons of Happy Days, "Rock Around The Clock" opened every episode. That would be replaced by "Happy Days" by Pratt & McClain, who took their theme song to the show to No. 5 in the spring of 1976, making Happy Days the only show in TV history in which two theme songs became Top 40 hits.

With that kind of power behind it thanks to a movie and a TV show, Decca Records re-released "Rock Around The Clock" in February 1974. And on the week of March 16, 1974, that No. 1 hit from 19 years earlier re-debuted in the Hot 100 at No. 99. And slowly, the song began to rise on the chart. It went from No. 99 to No. 94 to No. 86 to No. 81 to No. 72 to No. 59 to No. 52 and finally into the Top 50 at No. 49 on May 4, 1974.

Then it jumped up to No. 46 the next week. After that, it moved up to No. 44, losing its bullet. It was uncertain how much more this classic from a generation ago would move up.

And then it happened: On May 25, 1974, "(We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock" moved up five places, again without its bullet on the chart, to No. 39, among five debut hits that saw two remakes make it into the Top 40 the same week -- the DeFranco Family featuring Tony DeFranco's remake of the Drifters' No. 1 hit, "Save The Last Dance For Me" at No. 37 and Anne Murray's re-do of the Beatles' "Rubber Soul" album cut "You Won't See Me," the highest debut of the week at No. 33.

When it got to the Top 40, Casey Kasem pointed out that it broke the record for the longest wait between original Top 40 appearances of the song, breaking the old mark held by Bobby "Boris" Pickett & The Crypt-Kicker's smash 1962 No. 1 hit "Monster Mash," which 11 years later was back in the Top 40 and peaked at No. 10 in late summer 1973. And Haley's record of 19 years would last for another 12 years until the Beatles' "Twist And Shout" re-debuted in the Top 40 in the summer of 1986, 22 years after hitting No. 2, and was broken after that a few months later by Ben E. King's "Stand By Me," which hit No. 9 in December 1986, 25 1/2 years after hitting No. 4.

"Rock Around The Clock" would spend just one week in the Top 40 at No. 39 in its second go-around. By June 1, 1974, the song would drop to No. 48 and disappear a few weeks later.

Over 60 years later, "Rock Around The Clock" is still a classic. Crystal said his uncle told him that "Rock Around The Clock" was the greatest piece of work he ever produced. Though Rock 'n Roll has changed and sliced and diced its music and image throughout the last four generations, it can always point back to that one record that changed a culture.

And brought it back a generation later when nostalgia in a movie and television show still proved the song had power.

The AT40 Blog/May 18, 1974: Ray Stevens "streaks" to No. 1

To hear Casey Kasem tell the story himself, there were 16 separate single releases in 1974 alone on the topic of "streaking." Not one single version of those records found its way onto the Billboard Hot 100.

Then one of music's funniest musicians came along to give it a shot ... and got some help from one of the most widely watched television shows throughout the world in the process.

To talk about the art of streaking – the art of parading around or running around or walking around, for that matter, without any clothes on – you have to go back to the very first "story" on the subject. That dates back to 1799 to the Mansion House of London, England, where the Lord Mayor resides. It was there on a Friday night in July of that year that a man was arrested for just walking around without clothes on as the story goes he accepted of £930 (10 guineas back in that time period) to run from Cornwall to Cheapside without any clothes on.

In the United States, the first story involving streaking came on a college campus. It was in 1804 when a senior at Washington College (now Washington and Lee) named George William Crump was arrested after running through the town of Lexington, Va., without his clothes on. Crump was given a suspension of an academic season. He would go on to Princeton, get a degree, then move on to the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied medicine and nearly 20 years later, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Jacksonian Democrat.

And streaking was all the rave throughout the 1800s and 1900s, mostly on college campuses. But no one really cared about this "art" form until the 1960s when the media finally did feature stories on various campuses where streaking was taking place on a nearly regular basis. The term "streaking" itself didn't become a fad until one day in 1973 when a local television station in Washington, D.C. reported on the new fad taking place at the University of Maryland campus with 533 students involved.

The term became a part of the pop culture of the time.

Streakers, male and female, were being found more and more on campuses and in the fall 1973, it hit an epidemic all over the campus at Stephen F. Austin University in Texas. University president Ralph Steen, stopped the fad by ordering that a day be held for streakers to go do their thing the length of East College Street in the college's town, Nacogdoches. At the University of Notre Dame, they held an Olympics style event in 1972. The more media coverage, the better.

So by 1974, streaking was just about everywhere. And where everyone else tried to lay a song down about it, Stevens, best known for his funny hits like "Gitarzan," "Ahab The Arab" and the longest-titled Top 40 single in history, "Jeremiah Peabody's Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills," took his crack at the new fad.

He, though, took it from a far different angle. He composed his song in three separate scenarios. And each one had him playing not only a television reporter on the street getting the story, but the husband of the woman who both witnessed this streaker doing his thing. In the first scenario, it's the grocery store where he came through "the fruits and vegetables, nekkid as a jay-bird." The second scenario was at the gas station where the car was getting checked and that's where his wife got flashed again going for a cold drink. Had nothing on, but a smile. He flashed her right in front of "the shock absorbers." The third scenario takes place at the basketball playoff where the streaker "comes in wearing nothing but his PFs. Made a hook shot and got out through the concession stands."

Each time out, he claims he yelled out to his wife, "Don't look Ethel!" but it was too late. And in the third scenario, story goes she's taken her clothes off and is streaking around with the streaker, much to the chagrin of the husband who demands she "gets her clothes back on!" calling her a "shameless hussy."

"The Streak" was released as a single written and produced as well as sung by the 35-year-old Stevens (born Harold Ray Ragsdale on January 24, 1939, in Clarksdale, Ga.) on March 27, 1974, by Barnaby Records, his label.

Then fate intervened on Monday night, April 2, 1974.

During the 46th Academy Awards presentation on NBC, show co-host David Niven, a tremendously talented British actor, was set to introduce Elizabeth Taylor, who was to announce the nominees and winner for Best Picture, the final award of the show. Out of nowhere, a photographer named Robert Opel came streaking behind Niven, gave a famous "V" finger salute for peace and continued on to the other side of the stage and out of sight. It prompted Niven to tongue-in-cheek utter the most famous words in Oscar history: "Well ladies and gentleman, that was almost bound to happen. But isn't it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?"

Rumor has it years later, the incident was a "stunt" involving show producer Jack Haley Jr., and that Niven knew what was to happen and he wanted to write down the words that came to his mind before the moment would take place. Whether true or not, Opel, a photographer who had gotten media access for the show, became an overnight celebrity.

And with that indelible event in the minds of those who watched the next day – as well as opportunistic DJs  and program directors – "The Streak" became the soundtrack of that moment. The song made its Top 40 debut at No. 84 on April 13, 1974, jumped to No. 54 the next week and then made its Top 40 debut in a huge way when it leaped from No. 54 to No. 19 on April 27, 1974.

Relentless on its chart course, "The Streak" moved up to No. 6 on May 4, 1974. From there, it moved up to No. 2 on May 11 and on May 18, 1974, almost seven weeks after the infamous moment at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, "The Streak" was the No. 1 song in America and second for Georgia-born Stevens since his serious hit "Everything Is Beautiful" in 1970.

The Funny Man finally did it – a No. 1 novelty hit. And it had staying power at the top, staying there for three straight weeks. "The Streak" also gave Stevens back his Top 40 career because after "Everything Is Beautiful" landed him at the top in 1970, he had six chart singles, none getting any higher than No. 45.

However as great as "The Streak" turned out for Stevens and the fad of the moment, he would score only two more Top 40 hits – his country-laced version of the Johnny Mathis classic "Misty" reached No. 14 in 1975 and in 1977, he put together an amusing cover of the 1940s classic "In The Mood" done to the sounds of chickens clucking – well, not real chickens anyway. In February 1977, The Henhouse Five Plus Two hit No. 40 with their "amusing" version of "In The Mood."

Stevens continued to have a country music career into the 1980s. He's a proud member of the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, the Christian Music Hall of Fame, as well as the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. And he is still out there performing his songs, even if it is to an older audience like he is, and still enjoying it.

His songbook is plentiful. His funny songs will still make those in the audience laugh.

"The Streak" still finds a way to get to people, long after the fad ended.

It was the one song of the fad that "made it."

The AT40 Blog/May 4, 1985: First the music video, then the TV episode ... and THEN a hit.

Before "Smuggler's Blues" could ever be a Top 40 hit in the spring of 1985, the song had already gained fame within the previous nine months.

It became Glenn Frey's second Top 40 hit from his 1984 album, "The Allnighter," but rewind back to 1984 when Frey was putting together the album, co-writing all of the tunes from it with longtime friend Jack Tempchin. They wrote 10 songs for what would be Frey's follow-up to his 1982 debut album, "No Fun Aloud."

When it came to "Smuggler's Blues," both Frey and Tempchin framed the story of a drug dealer having to go through all sorts of hoops to make a deal in another country, only to have to do his best to get through customs without being suspicious ... but gets caught nonetheless. The 4-minute, 17-second record was more of a mini-drama and placed on "The Allnighter."

In June 1984, the album was released, but Frey's record label, MCA Records, had other plans for a first single. That single would be "Sexy Girl," which Frey filmed a silly music video for about a guy who meets a beautiful girl who turns out to be a neighbor of his, asks her out and finds out she's dating someone else, in the case of the video, that guy was Los Angeles Raiders defensive lineman  Howie Long.

However, MCA still had plans for "Smuggler's Blues." So at the same time Frey was filming "Sexy Girl," they had him do a music video for the "next" single. And the music video turned into more of a short movie, lasting eight minutes, in which Frey and an associate go to make a drug deal, but shooting starts to take place and just when it looks as if the deal goes down without a hitch, Frey, driving the car, finds his associated dead in the front seat.

And like in the song, Frey has to assume the role alone of the drug dealer having to get the goods in a foreign land, while being pursued by a couple of bad guys who ware trying to get the goods from him. All the while, his female accomplice in the video, who was played Frey's first wife, actress Janie Beggs, is also trying to get the dope out of the foreign country. She arrives in the airport only to find security agents are there waiting to take her in. Same thing with Frey, who escapes trouble, only to have agents pull up to his car as he is ready to pull away in his back home.

At the end of the video, Frey's character is let go and as he is heading back to his Miami home, he is stopped by a motorcycle-riding cop. He goes to pull out his license and registration, only to see the face of his pursuer from the foreign country dressed as a cop and with a gun in his hand. In the last scene, you see Frey's body slumped over the car as the news of a killing in Dade County is announced in a news report on the radio.

Well just when MCA was about to release the next single from the album, they threw a curveball at Frey and his fans. "Smuggler's Blues" was not going to be released, even though the music video was now on heavy rotation in the late summer of 1984 on MTV. Instead, the label went for the title track from "The Allnighter."

But just when it looked as if "Smuggler's Blues" was a literal losing proposition musically and commercially, a new television show was beginning to make traction on NBC. The show was Miami Vice, starring Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as a pair of narcotics cops who worked mainly undercover to wipe drug activity off the streets of Miami.

The producer of the new show, Michael Mann, was looking for ideas for screenplays that summer as filming had already commenced on the first season. Then he heard "Smuggler's Blues," especially the premise of the song and a phone call went out. Paul Michael Glasser, most famous for playing Starsky on the 1970s hit television cop drama Starksy And Hutch, was asked to direct the episode and Miguel Pinero, who made an amazing impression on the show as drug kingpin Esteban Calderone, was asked to write the script off of the song and the music video's premise.

And starring in the role of helping Detectives Crockett (Johnson) and Tubbs (Thomas) in the episode? None other than the man who co-wrote the song himself, Glenn Frey. Frey is a pilot who is asked by Crockett and Tubbs to fly them down to South America portraying drug smugglers, trying to solve the mystery as to why drug informants are being shot and killed.

The episode, the 15th episode of the show -- called "Smuggler's Blues," no less -- made its network debut on NBC on February 1, 1985. Frey's appearance and the episode itself had a high rating that particular week.

By now, though, MCA had stopped releasing songs from Frey's album as "The Allnighter" was nothing more than a No. 54 single. However, the positive reaction from that one episode of the top-rated new TV show gave the record label encouragement. Over a month and a half after that episode appeared, MCA finally released "Smuggler's Blues," the song.

And on the Billboard Hot 100 chart of April 6, 1985, "Smuggler's Blues" debuted at No. 74. After a jump to No. 61 the next week, "Smuggler's Blues" was up to No. 49. Then it went up to No. 42 the next week.

Then on the week of May 4, 1985, "Smuggler's Blues" made the highest Top 40 debut of the week at No. 38. From there, the song made modest moves up the chart all throughout the spring -- from No. 38 to No. 33 to No. 28 to No. 23 to No. 18 to No. 14, where it would hold for two straight weeks. It slowed down, but then moved to No. 12 the week of June 22, 1985. One year and three days after the album "The Allnighter" was released, "Smuggler's Blues" had hit its highest points on the singles chart, peaking at No. 12, before falling back the next week.

Ultimately, "Smuggler's Blues" would make its way to another vehicle musically -- the Miami Vice soundtrack album later in 1985 where the album hit No. 1 and stayed at the top for nine weeks.

The song became a success, even if it didn't hit the Top 10. It also became one of Frey's most popular songs as a solo performer and from time to time, he'd perform the song in concert when his old group, The Eagles, reunited in 1994.

They would still do the song in concert for years until Frey fell ill in late 2015. On January 18, 2016, Frey passed away after battling rheumatoid arthritis for years. The medication he was taking for it, unfortunately and reportedly, was causing Frey to contract acute ulcerative colitis. He had gastrointestinal tract surgery done, but it led to him getting pneumonia. Frey was 67 years old. Soon after, the rest of his bandmates in the Eagles performed a tribute to Frey at The Grammys show and bandmate Don Henley would say after that to BBC radio, "I don't think you'll see us performing again."

"Smuggler's Blues" remain as a favorite hit by a solo Eagles member.

And a year after the album's release -- one that saw it all but quit having singles from it -- "Smuggler's Blues" became a hit ... after it became a successful music video and the basis for an episode on a fast-rising television series.

Not a whole lot of artists can say that about their own material.