From 1954 to the mid ’80’s, KIMN was Denver’s #1 Top 40 station. It’s changed hands, formats, and call letter several times since then, and is now KKSE, running a sports-talk format. Craig over at the blog PopRockBopTilUDrop worked for KIMN for many years and talks about all sorts of popular music on his blog, so if you like music, you’ll love his blog.
On a personal note, this is music from the period right before my high school graduation in June 1974, so it has many memories associated with it (some of them good, too).
# | Song & Artist | Comments |
---|---|---|
10 | Tubular Bells (Theme from The Exorcist) Mike Oldfield |
Mike Oldfield was 19 in 1973, when he released Tubular Bells, a 49-minute long song that took up both sides of an LP. Typically, radio stations only played a segment of it at a time, most frequently this portion that was used as the opening theme for the 1973 movie The Exorcist. Released as a single, that portion reached #7 on the Hot 100 and #3 in Canada. |
9 | Let It Ride Bachman-Turner Overdrive |
“Let It Ride” was recorded for BTO’s 1973 album Bachman-Turner Overdrive II. It was written by Randy Bachman and Fred Turner, who did vocals on the track. It peaked at #23 on the Hot 100 in the US and #3 in Canada. |
8 | T. S. O. P. MFSB |
“T. S. O. P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)” was written by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff as the theme song for the syndicated TV show Soul Train. It was recorded by MFSB (which stood for “Mother, Father, Sister, Brother”) with vocals by The Three Degrees (who later had a hit with “When Will I See You Again”). It is both the first television theme song to reach #1 on the Hot 100 as well as the first disco tune to do so. Creator,producer and host Don Cornelius refused to allow Gamble and Huff to name the song “Soul Train,” a move that he admitted he regretted later. |
7 | The Entertainer Marvin Hamlisch |
“The Entertainer” was a ragtime piece written by Scott Joplin and used as the theme song for the 1973 film The Sting starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Ragtime was already regaining an audience in the early ’70’s due to a series of unrelated events, and Marvin Hamlisch’s recording of rags for the soundtrack albums brought it to a head. The song reached #3 on the Hot 100. |
6 | Band On The Run Paul McCartney & Wings |
Title track from Paul McCartney & Wings’s third album (McCartney’s fifth since leaving The Beatles). The song was the second single from the album after “Jet,” and peaked at #1 in both the US and Canada. |
5 | I’ll Have To Say I Love You In A Song Jim Croce |
The third posthumous release by Jim Croce, from his 1973 album I Got A Name, completed before Jim’s death in a plane crash in September 1973. The song peaked at #9 on the Hot 100, #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and #4 in Canada. |
4 | (I’ve Been) Searching So Long Chicago |
From Chicago’s recently-released seventh album, Chicago VII (they come up with such original titles), a song written by Jim Pankow. In a foreshadowing of what was to come, it was a ballad sung by Peter Cetera. It reached #9 on the Hot 100, #8 on the US Adult Contemporary chart, and #5 in Canada. |
3 | The Show Must Go On Three Dog Night |
written by Leo Sayer, whose record reached #2, and David Courtney, Three Dog Night decided to cover it, with Chuck Negron doing the lead vocal. The original song had the line “I won’t let the show go on,” but Negron changed it to “I must let the show go on,” which Sayer was reportedly not happy about. It peaked at #1 on the Cash Box Pop chart, #4 on the Hot 100, and #2 in Canada, and was certified Gold. |
2 | The Loco-Motion Grand Funk Railroad |
“The Loco-Motion” was written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King and originally recorded by Little Eva (Gerry and Carole’s babysitter), who took it to #1 in 1962. Grand Funk Railroad did a slightly heavier version (this one) and also took it to #1 in 1974, then Kylie Minogue did a version in 1983 that reached #3. Rare that a song would be a Top Ten hit in three different decades… |
1 | The Streak Ray Stevens |
A new craze hit college campuses in the US in 1974: streaking, essentially running around with no clothes on. The epicenter of the streaking fad in the Chicago area was Northwestern University, where I was about to matriculate in September, but by then the fad had died out. (One of the more prominent victims was Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who ran the Astronomy department at NU and had also written several books about UFO sightings. During one of his lectures, a young man, wearing only a coat of green paint, ran onstage and took his picture.) Anyway, Ray Stevens decided that the fad was important enough to record a novelty song about, and it reached #1 on the Hot 100, #3 on the Country chart, and #1 in the UK. It sold over a million copies. The video I selected is an updated version of it. |
We’ll pick this up on Monday with the letter J. See you then!
