At this time last week, my blogpost contained music videos of three of my favourite singles from 1969. It was a great year for popular and progressive music and so was the year that followed it - 1970. I became seventeen years old in the autumn of that year and music meant the world to me. Without any more ado, I give you three of my favourite singles from 1970:-
Free - "All Right Now":-
Melanie Safka - "Ruby Tuesday":-
Mungo Jerry - "In The Summertime":-
It's been so long since I've heard the Mungo Jerry song I had forgotten about it. I'm going to have to buy it and add it to my phone playlist so it doesn't happen again. I already have the other two in my playlist.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't sure that "In The Summertime" made it in America. After all these years I am pleased to learn that it did.
DeletePaul Rodgers is from Middlesborough and he later played in Bad Company. I saw Mungo Jerry in Kent in 2019 and Ruby Tuesday is about Keith Richards girlfriend going off with Jimi Hendrix. A great year for music YP.
ReplyDeleteI saw Free play several times. They always gave a great show. Such a tight little band.
DeleteThose are great choices! I often got lyrics wrong when I listened and sang along (still do!) - anyway, I think I always sang "All Night Long" instead of "All Right Now" with that first song! :)
ReplyDeleteMaybe your then lover had great stamina Ellen.
DeleteWhy do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near?
ReplyDeleteBecause I have bird seed in my pockets.
DeletePersonally I preferred the Stones version of Ruby Tuesday. And the Free track - All Right Now - was one of my favourites to play at full volume on the car stereo when I used to have a long commute for work.
ReplyDeleteMelanie edged it for me. There was a desperation about her volume.
DeleteGood choices although I prefer the Stones recording of Ruby Tuesday. I never got that grunting noise in, In the Summertime.
ReplyDeleteWasn't it a didgeridoo?
DeleteIn 1970 heavy rock so dominated the scene I was in flight from it.
ReplyDeleteToo many gorgeous hippie chicks trying to be Cool California.
Surfin' USA - only this was cold rainy Scotland.
I was in flight from the Counter Culture with the exception of Civil Rights, Martin Luther King and anti-war movement.
Timothy Lear I disliked intensely yet I loved Norman Mailer who adored the Sixties.
Instead of rock I listened to the Modern Jazz Quartet, Miles Davis, Ike Quebec, and John Coltrane only a few years dead - a tragedy.
I even liked Richard Nixon when Duke Ellington let him conduct his band.
Melodic songs were the best of Pop 1970.
I'll Be There. The Jackson Five.
Cracklin Rose. Neil Diamond.
The Long & Winding Road. The Beatles.
Close To You. The Carpenters.
Gimme Dat Thing. The Pipkins.
Bridge Over Troubled Water. Simon & Garfunkel.
Now I watch every documentary I can find on rock of that era.
I think of my late brother Brian every time I see his beloved Pink Floyd.
Tim Leary's biography *We Have America Surrounded* enthralled me.
And I did not want to see Norman Mailer when he came to Glasgow.
*Simon & Garfunkel - The Story of Bridge Over Troubled Water.*
YouTube.
"Close to You" nearly made my top three. The voice of Karen Carpenter was enchanting but her brother Richard was much harder to like. 1969/1970 was a good time to be young.
Delete'69/70: Social housing and steady jobs w/ a career structure.
DeleteUncommon to find people in their late 20s still living with their parents.
My girlfriend dragged me along to La Scala to see Love Story in '71.
Liked how Ali McGraw called Ryan O'Neil *Preppy* & pretended to hate it.
La Scala: An Art Deco cinema with a mezzanine tearoom, now Waterstones.
Here it was that Norman Mailer appeared post-Millennial with his young wife. I found an American paperback of *Miami & the Siege of Chicago* 1968.
The magic hasn't faded: Norm is brilliant on Nixon, Bobby Kennedy etc.
As my father said: *Mailer's a nutcase but he makes you laugh.*
well two of these I've heard and listened to. Can't say that I heard or remember the first one. But in 1969 I was 30 years old!
ReplyDeleteMaybe "All Right Now" was only a big hit in Great Britain.
DeleteGood music came out of the seventies but my lord the hair was awful.
ReplyDeleteWildness was the fashion.
DeleteStrange that I have never before come across "Ruby Tuesday", while I am very familiar with the other two songs here. My parents - especially my Dad - loved that kind of music, and my sister and I grew up with it. I was 2 years old in 1970 and my sister was 3, and so the music of that time represents earliest childhood memories for me.
ReplyDeleteOf course "Ruby Tuesday" is mostly associated with The Rolling Stones.
DeleteOMG! That mesh T-shirt! I'd completely forgotten about those. I love that song too. In the first clip, Free, the singer has really great hair exactly like mine was in 1970.
ReplyDeleteWas your beard the same too River?
DeleteMungo Jerry always seemed a little sinister to me back then.
ReplyDeleteThe single that I remember dancing to most was Spirit in the Sky.
That Norman Greenbaum song was certainly on my shortlist JayCee.
DeleteAgree with you YP - 1969/70 was a good time to be young. I haven't heard the first two songs for years, but Mungo Jerry's was played recently on TV as background music.
ReplyDeleteIt was a time of hope and expectation. Today things are different.
Delete"Me and Bobby McGee" by Kris Kristoffersen but the version by Janis Joplin won her a Grammy in 1970. Like Red, I was 30 then too but I've always loved this song.
ReplyDeleteI agree that is a great song. It has also stuck in my dirty red bandana,
DeleteI may have told you this, but I met Melanie Safka and interviewed her in the early '90s. I should post the clip sometime. I've long been a fan of her music, as was my dad -- we used to drive around in his Volkswagen bug listening to "Candles in the Rain."
ReplyDeleteA nice recollection of you and your dad together - something that brought you closer.. Yes please post that clip. I don't remember you mentioning that you interviewed her but I admit that my memory can be like a sieve.
Delete