The Music of 1972

In 1972 I was a youngster who heard a lot of music from WRAW AM radio in Reading Pennsylvania as well as the music playing in either my parent’s car or a radio that sat on the counter in the kitchen. The thing about radio back then was that the format on the radio was top forty, I believe top forty radio was easily defined as simply that, the radio stations played the same 40 songs pretty much on repeat all day long.

This brief reflection was inspired by a talk we heard last night by Ta Nehisi Coates. He read from his latest novel and answered a series of questions from the brilliant bestselling author Renée Watson. One of her questions was about how music guided his writing. He reportedly has a soundtrack to his latest book. He talked about the music of Donny Hathaway and how it was calming influence on his writing. I had always appreciated his music and I honestly can admit, “Where is the Love” a duet with Roberta Flack is one of my favorite songs. I remember hearing that song when I was a young boy and for me it become to me something we could define as a classic.

The loose definition, of a classic for me has always been, music that which withstands the test of time. I sat today with headphones and found the song on a collection called billboard top 100 songs of 1972.  So I put that collection on random play as I did some business analysis during my workday.

One of the first songs to come on in fact was Hathaway and Flack’s duet which sounded brand sparkling new and beautiful. I was surprised to hear Todd Rundgren and BadFinger’s ‘Day after Day.’ Those songs were far too cool to make anybody’s top 100 list.

There were some truly bad songs that made into the top 100.  There were some real howlers in there including a song called ‘My DingALing’,  ‘Puppy Love” by Donnie Osmond and Donna Fargo’s , ‘Happiest Girl in the World’ . These songs are seriously off the charts bad but somehow they made it onto the charts. Seriously go listen to Miss Fargo’s song. She was damn happy this song made the top 100.

It was also great to listen to the Soul and or Rhythm and Blues of the day. They sounded much better today than in mono AM radio. The Stylistics ‘Betcha By Golly Why’ is a masterpiece, Al Green’s ‘Look What You Have Done For Me” was beautiful and touching and another favorite by Cornelius Brothers and Sisters Rose hit my ear perfectly It was pleasure to take in the music and give it a long hard listen.

Then there is Sly and the Family Stone. Man, that is some seriously good music.

Yes somewhere in the year Don Mclean sang about Vincent Van Gogh, people got into Alice Cooper and somewhere along the line Dr. Hook made it onto the cover of the Rolling Stone.

Namaste