In the era prior to the advent of music videos, the only genuine recordings (singles, albums) was often the recorded music itself (artist performances on film did not really exist, and tended to be exceptions). However, television performances on TV variety shows of the era were fairly close. Those recordings represent what we have for musical performances before music videos became routine.
Musical artists regularly guest starred on different variety programs of the day, including the legendary "The Ed Sullivan Show" which ran from 1948-71, "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" which ran from 1967-69, "The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour" which ran from 1969-72, "The Johnny Cash Show" which ran from 1969-71 on a different network, several incarnations of the "Sonny & Cher Show" which collectively ran from 1971-77, "Tony Orlando & Dawn Rainbow Hour" which ran from 1974-76, "The Captain and Tennille Show" which ran for one season between 1976-77, "The Jacksons" which also ran for one season between 1976-77, and of course, the legendary "Tonight Show" starring Johnny Carson which was really more than a late-night talk show.
The legendary "Carol Burnett Show" focus was really more on comedy, while musical performances were a secondary program idea.
While Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, Tony Orlando & Dawn and The Jacksons all got their start in music, aside from Sonny & Cher, their variety shows were not primarily focused on music. They covered the full entertainment spectrum including TV, comedy and movies as well as music.
A relative late-comer to the music-themed variety show scene which ran from 1980-1982 on the NBC television network was "Barbara Mandrell & the Mandrell Sisters" which was co-produced by Sid and Marty Krofft who were better known for producing odd and vaguely sci-fi children's shows as "H.R. Pufnstuf" and "Land of the Lost". A brief fill-in known as "Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris" ran for just a few months in 2015, but the genre proved far less suitable from a ratings perspective during an era where Americans enjoyed unprecedented access to hundreds of broadcast and cable TV stations (and this happened as even more choices became available with free ad-supported streaming TV ["FAST"] platforms such as PlutoTV had just emerged).
But in 1972, the U.S. TV business was still dominated by a few major broadcast networks (whose origins were in radio broadcast networks of the same names in the decades before), hence producer Burt Sugarman pitched a unique program which he called "Midnight Special" as a means for NBC to capitalize on a potential audience in a late-night time-slot. Mr. Sugarman said "Our aim was to reach for the 18-33 age bracket, the young married and daters who attend concerts and movies but don't watch much television".
NBC initially rejected the idea for Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special. None of the Big Three broadcast television networks had any recurring programming on after 1:00 am ET, and common practice by most network stations was to sign-off after the final program (some local affiliate stations ran old reruns after to entice viewers and advertisers alike). Despite a lack of competition in the late night time-slot, NBC was not interested…
But the NBC rejection led Mr. Sugarman to instead buy the air time for a premiere on his own as a brokered show, and he managed to persuade Chevrolet to become the show's first sponsor. The show premiered with ratings high enough for NBC to subsequently reconsider its original denial decision, and the network ultimately bought the program.
The Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special's original time slot was on Saturdays from 1:00–2:30 AM in the Eastern and Pacific time zones (Midnight to 1:30 AM Central and Mountain). Midnight Special ran from 1972–1981. By 1981, however, cable television had become commonplace in the U.S., and with it a number of cable-only television stations, including the original iteration of MTV: Music Television which was inaugurated in 1981 (although the cable network later shifted away from music in 1992 to cheap, low-quality "reality" show programming and has since abandoned music content completely).
One of the things which made Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special is it had musical performances from anyone who was anyone in the music industry between 1972-81. Those musical performances were recorded on film rather than video, meaning the quality of the performances has held up better than lower-quality video recordings of the same era have without digital remastering.
Alas, due to the many thorny issues with licensing of music, many of Midnight Special musical performances were presumed out of reach.
But on YouTube, Mr. Sugarman has released a surprising number of the original Midnight Special musical performances which are worth revisiting (if you saw them originally), or seeing for the first time now because they are a truly unique window into the music of that era.
I have created the following YouTube playlist for a sampling of some of the memorable music performances which aired on Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special. Have a look (and listen!), the list can be seen below, or by visiting https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7002826672729120464/8742372143663920791#
I follow a guy on Twitter called DrPopCultureBGSU from Bowling Green, Ohio. He happens to share a TON of interesting pop culture images. The other day, he shared a picture of seventies pop music idol Andy Gibb (initially, I wrote Barry Gibb which was a mistake ... sorry!) wearing a muscle-shirt (even though he was a skinny kid who didn't really have very big muscles) with an image that struck me: Creem magazine.
Creem magazine was an alternative to Rolling Stone magazine or Billboard back in the seventies with a somewhat provocative title that evoked porn during a period when even THAT was still pretty taboo in mainstream culture, only the magazine's music coverage was unique in that it covered hard-rock, punk, alternative and new wave music which Rolling Stone and Billboard did not dare touch until those bands had already made it to the Billboard top 40. Creem began in 1969 (the year I was born), and continued publication until 1989. Its peak was arguably during the seventies.
I was listening to groups like Blondie, The Ramones, and Martha Davis and The Motels, or if I was feeling up to something a bit harder with more guitars, Iron Maiden or Def Leppard, while Rolling Stone was covering my parents' (Baby Boomer) music like Bob Dylan and James Taylor which we kids felt was more of a sedative.
Indeed, Creem was based in Detroit which most people believe gave it an editorial edge, hence its musical coverage was different from a New York or Los Angeles-based magazine likely was. As a result, Creem was favored by many people who didn't really like or consider reading mainstream musical coverage. Creem was edgy. The magazine covers were provocative, and article headlines were irreverant.
I also grew up on a street where the litter-bugs of the world literally threw Creem and other magazines out their car windows, so as kids we got to see Creem and read it. Initially, it looked like porn, but when I actually read it, I was impressed with Creem's musical coverage because it covered bands I actually listened to on college radio stations in the seventies into the early eighties. Creem spoke to me in a way that mainstream music magazines did not. Rolling Stone was for our parents, yet Creem was listening to what I listened to.
Apparently, Creem magazine is enjoying something of a resurgence thanks to a hit 2020 Netflix documentary called "CREEM: America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine". The trailer for that film can be seen below, or at https://youtu.be/GUcCMNRTZpI:
Perhaps as noteworthy as the documentary, the old magazine now has a newly available digital archive where the old issues can be read again online (find it at https://archive.creem.com/ to read some of Creem's old coverage).
Which brings me to the Andy Gibb Creem picture. Sure, Andy Gibb was a teen idol at the time, but he was also an image of youth, and no mainstream music magazine was focused on youth at the time, they were all aging with Baby Boomers. They were becoming Yuppies.
The revival of Creem magazine was a passion product of JJ Kramer, the son of the magazine's founder, the late Barry Kramer. The original Creem magazine ceased publication in 1989. I was in college in the Boston area at the time. There were still other (now defunct) publications, such as Boston-based newspaper The Phoenix (and its radio station WFNX which sadly, today, is a lame country station which I would never listen to) which I read instead of Creem because it had news of bands which were coming to and/or playing around Boston at the time.
Capturing the messy upheaval of the '70s just as rock was re-inventing itself, the film explores Creem Magazine's humble beginnings in post-riot Detroit, follows its upward trajectory from underground paper to national powerhouse.
Then it bears witness to its imminent demise following the tragic and untimely deaths of its visionary publisher, Barry Kramer, and its most famous alum and genius clown prince, Lester Bangs, a year later.
Fifty years after publishing its first issue, "America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine" remains a seditious spirit in music and culture.
Be sure to catch the Netflix documentary "CREEM: America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine". It will be an interesting flashback to a time when music journalism was still in print.
In the mid-1970's, mobile phones weren't even invented yet. The few who actually had "car phones" at the time had special, analog radio phones, but those were so large they had to be hard-wired into the car and so power-hungry they needed access to the car’s alternator for power. Mobile service was controlled by the Ma Bell monopoly and the cost was prohibitively expensive. Plus, no one was carrying them around in their pockets. But, there was kind of an analog alternative: the Citizens Band Radio, better known by the acronym CB radio. Originally started in the 1940's and used by truckers, these inexpensive radios also made various forms of chatter over the public airwaves possible. CB radio communication wasn’t private, but neither were old party line telephones which had only been phased-out in the last parts of the country just a decade earlier.
Partly because of the 1973 oil crisis caused by the OPEC Oil Embargo of that year, and a new, nationwide 55 mph speed limit meant to save U.S. fuel consumption, the use of CB radios served a genuine need. Truckers found their CB’s to be very valuable in to help organize blockades and convoys in protest to the newly-imposed 55 mph speed limit. CB’s helped truck drivers locate service stations that actually had fuel available for sale, and also to warn other drivers of speed traps ahead. Remember: GPS was unavailable outside of the U.S. military at the time. But CB's were really enabled by the advent of solid state electronics technology which emerged and became commonplace starting in the early 1970's, which also enabled prices of the radios themselves to plummet and made them feasible as a mass market item which was not possible previously.
CB radios also enabled drivers to alert and/or seek assistance in case of an emergency. Ordinary people soon discovered that CB radios were also a great way to find where to get the cheapest gas, plus communicating and cooperating with other drivers on the road. They were adopted by the masses as part of a temporary (but big) fad during that period of time. In fact, they had become so popular that more than 2 million CB radio licenses were issued in 1974 alone. Eventually, there were so many idiots clogging the CB airwaves that more channels were needed, so 40 channel models were released instead of just 23.
Along with this technology came adoption of common user protocols, most notably the use of the relevant lingo or slang that existing CB radio users were already accustomed to using. Virtually all of this originated with truck drivers. "Breaker 19" was a way to introduce yourself to the people tuned into channel 19, whereas "That’s a 10-4" meant everything was OK and you understood, and "What's your 10-20?" meant someone was asking what your location on the road was. A much longer list of CB radio slang is currently available online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CB_slang or at http://www.cbgazette.com/slang.html if you're interested in reading more.
But as the CB radio technology became more widespread, soon the unique vernacular made it made its way into pop culture, including in broadcast radio, movies, television, news and even pop music.
Handles were what people called themselves over the airwaves without giving out their real names. Anonymity made it easier to evade police enforcement for telling others about police speed enforcement locations. Handles were akin to what screen names were in the era of internet chat rooms which are also now history. In fact, even former First Lady Betty Ford got into the act back in the day, admitting to using the handle "First Mama," while voice actor Mel Blanc (known as the voices in many original Warner Brothers and later, Hanna Barbera cartoons) talked over the airwaves using the guise of Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck!
In 1975, the country music singer Merle Haggard released a song called "Movin' On" about truck-drivers who put CB radios and the lingo associated with CB's into wider use. Also in 1975, a novelty, one-hit-wonder song performed by C.W. McCall (a pseudonym of Bill Fries) became a #1 song on both the country and pop charts in the U.S. That song was "Convoy".
A brief snippet of the song "Convoy" can be listened to below, or at http://www.madmusic.com/song_details.aspx?SongID=2829 — because of byzantine copyright laws, only a short segment of the song is available. YouTube has a licensed copy of the original track from the Mike Douglas Show at https://youtu.be/j3VN54M1OXA if you want something more.
Convoys were essentially huge lines of trucks that traveled together down the nation's highways (often at higher than the posted speed limits), usually in protest to the new slower speed limits and police enforcement of those new speed limits (it's tough for police to pull over and ticket dozens of trucks travelling the same high speed simultaneously, hence they were pretty effective). They were most prevalent along the vast, empty stretches of highway so prevalent in Western states, "Convoy" was also the theme song for an eponymous movie released under the same name. That song was, in fact, written by C.W. McCall and Chip Davis who were a couple of ad guys from Omaha, Nebraska — their song "Convoy" was actually written initially for an ad campaign they were doing for a bread company at the time — but the single managed to land on and spent an impressive 6 weeks at number #1 on the Billboard country charts, an indication of just how big the CB fad had become.
On television, we saw the CB radio subculture showed up in the broadcast news, and in regular programming. For example, a television series "Movin' On" debuted in 1974 and ran to 1976 on NBC. The 1976 "Paul Lynde Halloween Special" on ABC (which, by the way, is currently available on Netflix, catch my blog about that TV special at http://hgm.sstrumello.com/2012/10/paul-lynde-1976-halloween-special.html for more) featured an entire segment about using a CB radio. In that segment, Paul Lynde was an 18-wheeled, white-pleathered rhinestone trucker. Tim Conway, best known for his comedic roles on the iconic "Carol Burnett Show" played his CB-buddy, while both of them fought over truckstop waitress Roz "Pinky Tuscadero" Kelly. She is remembered as someone who briefly starred as the Fonz's temporary girlfriend on the hit ABC sitcom "Happy Days" at the time.
By 1979, another NBC sitcom called "B.J. and the Bear" was introduced and that show ran until 1981. "B.J. and the Bear" was about a truck driver named B.J. (played by Greg Evigan) and his travelling companion, a monkey named "Bear" which featured routine CB radio usage, along with the then-popular CB lingo (catch a Retroist podcast about that particular TV series at https://archive.org/details/retroistbjandthebear for more info.). Again, CB radios were featured prominently in the show. Perhaps even bigger was the hit CBS TV show "The Dukes of Hazzard" (which also debuted 1979, running until 1985) and that also featured CB radios prominently throughout the series. CB radios were prominent throughout that show's six-season tenure as a means for the law-bending Duke brothers to avoid Sheriff Boss Hogg, Deputy Cletus Hogg, who was Boss Hogg's cousin and his dim-witted Deputy Sheriff Enos Strate. These days, due to the show's unapologetic romanticism of southern Confederacy (including a car named the General Lee) and the essential racism that drove it, that show is now rather limited in the rerun circuit, limited to a few cable stations such as CMT which has high viewership in the southern states that were home to the Confederacy.
On the big screen, there were several movies including "Smokey and the Bandit" (1977) which co-starred Burt Reynolds (he had already built a name for himself not for his acting but for being Cosmopolitan magazine's first-ever nude, male centerfold in 1972) and Sally Field plus Jackie Gleason and Jerry Reed. Of course, there was also the other big film "Convoy" (1978) which I previously noted. "Convoy" starred Kris Kristofferson — a Nashville singer-songwriter who was also, briefly, a pretty busy film star also willing to get semi-naked on screen, with one of his earlier starring roles in the award-winning film "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" (1974) which was also the basis for a subsequent TV sitcom on CBS that starred Linda Lavin known simply as "Alice". Kristofferson would also subsequently co-star in the romantic drama reboot of the movie "A Star Is Born" (1976) with Barbra Streisand, for which he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.
Like many things, the public fixation about CB Radios was definitely a genuine fad with its roots in utility. Today, the idea of CB radios seems more quaint than anything else, with mobile phones as portable, internet-connected devices being as ubiquitous and cheap as they are now. But, as noted, those simply weren’t around in those days, and car phones were prohibitively expensive and not at all portable, having to be hard-wired into the trunk of one's car and requiring a car alternator to power them, plus the service was controlled by the Ma Bell monopoly and prohibitively expensive, with metered, per-minute charges for every single call plus a hefty monthly service fee. That meant making only a few phone calls like that would exceed the prices people pay for 6 months of unlimited mobile service now, only without the internet.
I am of the opinion that even in 2020, mobile phones are still not exactly the pinnacle of modern technology (I wrote a post about how the iPhone did not kill the landline phone, the internet did, catch my post at http://hgm.sstrumello.com/2017/10/iphone-didnt-kill-landline-telephones.html for more), as they are first and foremost, one-on-one communications platforms (although internet connected apps may enable group platforms, such as Google Hangouts). The real benefit of a CB radio was that someone several miles ahead of you on a particular highway could warn you of upcoming traffic conditions, police activity, accidents, and most importantly: places where fuel was available, all of which you had yet to encounter on the road ahead. Hence, CB radios served a rather unique and useful purpose among truckers, plus CB's (aside from the initial purchase price) were free to use. CB radios had a range of about 3 to 20 miles, depending on the terrain. Originally there were only 23 channels, but subsequently expanded to about 40 stations. Police and firefighters used different radio bands that were not open to the public.
For whatever reason, the brief obsession with CB radios in the United States also likely stemmed from people’s desire to indulge their weird fantasies. This was in an era following the sexual revolution of the late 1960's and women's liberation. That's not to say that society wasn't still repressive, because it remained controlled by older people who were happy with the repressive 1950's. But CB radios provided anonymity for people to act as though they were someone else, plus is coincided with a public valorization of truckers and cops and people's desires of them (for women to be romantic with them, and for men to be like them).
"Instead of being relegated as a fleeting trend of the 1970s, perhaps CB radios were a precursor to the use of technology to create friendships and communicate anonymously with others." In other words, it was a precursor to modern social media, only it appeared 45 years ago!
The book "Whatever Became of Pudding Pops" which partially helped spawn this blog, wrote about the CB radio fad other the late 1970's and it was pretty interesting and entertaining reading. The chapter content was essentially as follows:
"Convoy"
Breaker one-nine, you got your ears on? Kids had no idea what CB chatter meant, but it sure was fun to pretend, holding a Romper Stomper to your mouth like it was a microphone and blabbing about "putting the hammer down" and "bears in the air."
We discovered the citizen's-band phenomenon when C.W. McCall recorded the 1976 hit "Convoy." You didn't have to understand the exotic new language (what in the world was a "cab-over Pete with a reefer on"?) to immediately fall in love with the romance of the eighteen-wheel lifestyle. "Convoy" told a classic tale of fighting authority, with the truckers crashing roadblocks and flaunting toll bridges.
Kids weren't the only ones who loved it. Adults started buying CBs for their Dodge Darts at such a frantic pace, the FCC doubled the number of available channels. Of course, no one knew any real CB lingo outside of the song lyrics, so real truckers had to suffer through listening to kids, desk jockeys, and housewives calling them "good buddy" until we grew sick of the craze and moved on to the next fad.
Today, the closest kids come to talking to truckers is when they pull an imaginary cord to try and get passing drivers to honk their horns. Still awesome? That's a big 10-4.
X-TINCTION RATING:
Gone for good.
REPLACED BY:
Cell phones made it much easier — if more dangerous — to communicate while driving, and personal radar detectors help modern drivers stay alert for smokeys.
FUN FACT:
C. W. McCall was the creation of a couple of ad guys from Omaha. Bill Fries and Chip Davis (who went on to launch electronic-music group Mannheim Steamroller) concocted the character and named him after McCall's magazine. The C. W. stood for country and western.
Back in the early 1970's, the feminist movement was newly-ascendant in the U.S. At the time, the Equal Rights Amendment, which ultimately failed to secure sufficient votes to amend the U.S. Constitution (its tough to amend the Constitution, but that was the last serious attempt to amend the Constitution as of 2018), was being advanced by women of all types, led by American feminists. Songs such as Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" topped the charts in 1972 (catch my post on that by visiting http://hgm.sstrumello.com/2015/02/helen-reddy-who-gave-modern-feminism.html for more).
To capitalize on the feminist trend of that era, packaged goods makers did their own part.
For example, by the late 1970's, Procter & Gamble's laundry detergent brand managers introduced a new, stain-fighting liquid laundry detergent they called "ERA" (in all caps, the name, not coincidentally, was also the acronym of the amendment being advanced by feminists at the time). That brand continued well into the 1980's. As of 2018, Era remains available in a limited fashion (for example, in certain bigger stores, or it can be ordered online), its no longer featured in the end-aisle displays of supermarket shelves as of 2018 (end-aisles cost money). In 2014, the Cincinnati Enquirer (the hometown newspaper of Procter & Gamble, which calls that city home) reported that the Era brand of detergent which had become a low-cost product since its initial heyday was potentially at risk of being cut, as the company was cutting many smaller labels with flat retail sales. Era remains around today, but could go in future brand-management decisions at the company.
Enter Green Goddess Salad Dressing as a Mass-Marketed Consumer Product
Another consumer products manufacturer, in this case salad dressing maker Seven Seas (which was subsequently acquired by Kraft in 1987 -- Kraft acquired the Seven Seas brand of salad dressings that belonged to Anderson Clayton Foods, which was acquired by Quaker Oats, but antitrust regulators made them divest Seven Seas, and Kraft was the winning acquirer) produced a bottled version of a salad dressing known as "Green Goddess" salad dressing. It was a green colored (for which it was named), garlicky-flavored salad dressing recipe that had several strong flavors (including vinegar, cilantro, tarragon and anchovy paste).
A 1973 television advertisement for Seven Seas salad dressing starring the 1950's-era cowboy Roy Rogers and his wife Dale Evans even mentions Green Goddess dressing in the dialogue. That ad can be seen below, or by visiting https://youtu.be/0utafzUPWq4:
The origins of Green Goddess dressings are usually attributed to the Palace Hotel in San Francisco way back in 1923, when that hotel's executive chef Philip Roemer wanted to make something to for a banquet being held at the hotel to pay tribute to actor George Arliss and his hit play, "The Green Goddess". He then concocted this dressing, which like the play, also became a hit. As noted, the original version of the dressing contained anchovies, scallions, parsley, tarragon, mayonnaise, vinegar, and chives. But it is considered to be a variation of a dressing that originated in France by a chef to Louis XIII who made a sauce called "au vert" (green sauce) which was traditionally served with green eel. In 1948, the New York Times published a recipe for Green Goddess salad dressing that also included salty Worcestershire sauce. Later versions of the recipe have also included variations such as the addition of yogurt instead of mayonnaise, avocado and/or basil (both also green in color). One version of that recipe can be seen at https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/magazine/09Food-t-000.html if you're interested.
Kraft still occasionally sells Green Goddess dressing under the Kraft label (and sometimes even under the Seven Seas label!), but within a matter of months after its late 1960's packaged food introduction fueled by feminism of the era, other salad dressing manufacturers had pretty quickly copied the Seven Seas version.
For example, Unilever's Wish-Bone salad dressing brand (itself acquired by CPC Best Foods from a Kansas City restaurateur back in 1958), for example, offered its own version. Today, while bottled salad dressings are no longer quite as popular as they once were, (today, home cooks regularly try home-made dressing versions inspired by cable cooking show programs which have proven how home-made salad dressings are very easy to make and often taste better), bottled dressings still sell a lot for time-constrained consumers in need of flavors to dress their salads. But basics including Italian, French, Ranch and others dominate supermarket shelves. Unfortunately, Green Goddess dressing isn't quite as popular as it was in the seventies when modern-day feminism really began.
Just as we have seen with many original food recipes, today, there's a much more conscious effort to rehabilitate tasty-but-fattening recipes with leaner varieties (which in this case might omit fattening mayonnaise, for example). However, the fundamental taste of a strongly-flavored (and colored) recipe made in a blender is likely to re-emerge as cooks seek something that is out-of-the-ordinary. With its bold flavor, Green Goddess dressing is likely to re-emerge in one form or anther.
Annie's Homegrown (which was founded as a natural foods company in 1989), best known for selling organic products was itself sold to packaged food giant General Mills for $820 million back in 2014. Nevertheless, General Mills also sells its own version of Green Goddess salad dressing under the Annie's Homegrown brand, although the brand has since been expanded to various other "Goddess" dressing varieties. Oddly, General Mills' Annie's Homegrown Green Goddess salad dressing is less-green than Kraft's or even home made varieties, which defies the "green" in its name, as something closer to ranch dressing, although it has strong hints of Caesar salad dressing.
Writer, speaker, brother, son, friend, spouse, advocate for people with autoimmune (type 1) diabetes, thinker, dreamer. Reading and writing is becoming a lost art, but we can learn a lot from reading the medical and scientific literature before drawing conclusions. The press publishes abbreviated facts to fit into limited space, I don't mince words or omit facts.
