A few more random observations about the American Top 40 show from August 1, 1970:
In all my experience, there’s never been another record remotely like “(If You Let Me Make Love to You Then) Why Can’t I Touch You” by Ronnie Dyson, which was at Number 21 that week: its jaunty opening, Dyson’s pure, clear voice, and the lyric, which was quite an enigma to me when I first heard the song—just as enigmatic as the relationship Dyson is singing about. (The AT40 show was in mono, as all of the shows were until sometime in 1972, but “Why Can’t I Touch You” in stereo is glorious.)
I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be a young, politically aware person in the summer of 1970, hearing CSNY’s “Ohio” on the radio every three or four hours, and having to repeatedly contemplate the enormity of the government’s willingness to kill you if you opposed the Vietnam War. “Ohio” appeared back-to-back on that week’s countdown with “Teach Your Children,” at Number 17 and 16 respectively. The two songs together present a pretty rich text regarding America in 1970—about the trouble we were in, and the counterculture’s idealistic prescription for getting out of it.
A couple of times during the show, Casey explained the methodology used to develop the Billboard Hot 100 at the time. Sales statistics from 100 record stores and airplay from 54 major radio stations were analyzed by “computerized data processing,” as Casey put it, to develop the chart. That strikes me as a remarkably small sample size, even for an era when big radio markets had just two Top-40 stations competing head-to-head, simply because there was a far greater number of record stores then. Perhaps it was small sample size that permitted charmless sludge like “Can’t You See My Love” by Jr. Walker and the All-Stars to creep into the Top 40.
Despite the countdown’s awful first hour, it’s pure Top-40 pleasure by the end: “Ooh Child,” “Tighter & Tighter,” “Spill the Wine,” “Signed Sealed Delivered,” “Band of Gold.” The top song of the week was “Close to You” by the Carpenters, spending the second of four weeks at Number One. Because “Close to You” hasn’t gotten 41 years of continuous radio play, it seems out of place with the others now. I remember playing it on the radio a few years back and saying it was from the summer of 1970, “exactly one million years ago.”
We haven’t had an Off-Topic Tuesday for a while, but today we do, on the flip.