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."
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