It just doesn't have quite the same ring that Saturday has, does it? But a couple of recent events make this evening's post (if nothing else) necessary ...
We lost singer Chuck Negron, the high tenor / soprano voice of Three Dog Night, on Monday, October 2nd. He was 83.
As most every knows, Chuck had been battling health issues for the past several years and had been off the road for quite some time. And all this after successfully beating his drug addiction problem that crippled him and broke up the band in the ‘70’s. (Danny Hutton, now the only surviving member, has continued to tour as Three Dog Night for the past several years, although HIS voice is probably the least recognizable of the unique three lead vocalists that fronted this band. (We lost Cory Wells in 2015.)
Chuck had toured for many years as part of the annual Happy Together Tour … we saw him several times performing his set of Three Dog Night hits. [That’s Chuck’s voice you hear handling the leads on “One” (#1, 1969), “Easy To Be Hard” (#1, 1969), “Joy To The World” (#1, 1971), “An Old Fashioned Love Song” (#4, 1971) and “Pieces Of April” (#18, 1972). While he brought the "sweetness" to their sound, he could also belt them out with the best of them.]
His autobiography “Three Dog Nightmare” is MUST reading for any fan of his music and the sex, drugs and rock and roll genre. This group had it all, the most popular group in the world, and watched it slip away due to out-of-control drug problems.
We got to meet him a couple of times and kept in touch on several occasions. Chuck said he owed his earliest musical success to Chicagoland Disc Jockey Dick Biondi, who first got him booked on some package tours when he was just starting out in the business.
Sadly, the foreseeable end to this story has haunted us for years now … but it still doesn’t hurt any less to know that he’s now officially gone. (kk)
BELOW:
Photos of Me and Chuck backstage at one of those Happy Together shows; Forgotten Hits Reader Stuart Hersh with Chuck; And Forgotten Hits Reader Rich Turner and Chuck
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I woke up to a computer full of Chuck Negron tributes. He fought a long hard battle. The last pictures sent to me this Christmas were heart breaking, but not unexpected. He was always gracious at concerts and up until his last Happy Together Tour was able to mingle with his audiences. Many hard- won battles in his lifetime.
Shelley
From Danny Hutton ...
I received the news today that my former bandmate from Three Dog Night, Chuck Negron, passed away peacefully at his home.
When
Chuck left the band 40 years ago, we rarely spoke and lost touch for
much of that time. Five months ago, his wife Ami called to tell me he
was very sick, and I decided I should go see him.
When
I arrived at his house, we hugged, cried, reminisced, and shared many
stories. In that moment, we realized how much time had been lost by not
being in each other’s lives. It was a beautiful and deeply meaningful
reunion.
Besides being a phenomenal singer, Chuck was a good college basketball player and had a great sense of humor.
I will always be grateful for the music we made together.
I also got the sad news this morning that our good friend Gary Theroux had passed away. It's one of those moments that makes you question everything ... define "good friend" and how do you not know of his passing six months ago? It certainly seemed like we talked more recently than that. There was a period of time where we talked (either by email or phone) several times a week. Gary was a music historian who was involved with the original History Of Rock And Roll Series, a platform he took up again over the last several years, recording brand new chapters for a weekly syndicated series featuring Wink Martindale (who also recently passed) as the host. They put together The 100 Greatest Hits Of Christmas that airs annually, too.
Along the way, Gary has done it all ... writing, acting, producing, directing, working as a radio deejay and documenting a wealth of interviews and information that in MY world can only be deemed as "priceless." What touched me most is that he viewed me as a "colleague" ... no higher tribute could be paid. He respected the work we did here in Forgotten Hits and contributed frequently with interesting tidbits and commentary.
Although we talked and emailed often, I only met him one time ... he was in town for (I believe) either a family wedding or family reunion of some sort, which brought him to the Palatine, IL area. I remember meeting him for breakfast at Palatine's Bakers Square Restaurant, along with Ray Graffia, Jr., of The New Colony Six, whom he had never met or interviewed before. (Growing up in this area, Gary was a HUGE New Colony Six fan. In fact, back in the day when he was putting together pop music record collections for Readers Digest, he made it a point to include a couple of NC6 tracks in an effort to introduce their music to a wider audience.)
Gary first got interested in radio when he was a student at Illinois State University and it was here that he first pursued his deejay dreams. (It is ALSO here where he met his wife Joan, described as the love of his life ... and also the one who notified me of Gary's passing this morning.)
I met Gary thru legendary radio programmer John Rook (who we also lost a few years back) and we just instantly hit it off ... kindred spirits, if you will. I am very much touched and saddened by this news and it will haunt me for a while. I knew he wasn't the healthiest guy around (although he would never make mention of it), but I had no idea he was perhaps as sick as he was. I will miss him.
I hope his collection of interviews can live on in some fashion. Any radio stations still airing his History Of Rock And Roll segments in syndication would do well to hang on to these memories, as they are one of a kind and cannot be duplicated. (kk)
This is my first time seeing Barbara Ann at the top spot.
The Beach Boys are normally credited with four #1 songs but that does not include their top spot on the chart you posted.
The four #1's are from Billboard; the one you posted today was probably from Cash Box?
Thanks for all the digging and treasure finding you do!
Love your site, Kent!
Phil
Incredibly, "Barbara Ann" only failed to hit #1 in Billboard ... it topped both the Cash Box and Record World Top 100 Singles Charts … but it’s Billboard’s Chart that is considered to be the industry standard.
The charts WE post each Saturday is our own exclusive Super Chart, which takes the COMBINED information of the three major trades at the time and consolidates them all into one master listing. (Sometimes chart position discrepancies of 20+ places could be found between the three trades ... this is our way of presenting a more literal view of what was really going on)
These charts run EXCLUSIVELY in Forgotten Hits and were compiled for us by chart guru Randy Price. You’ll find them every Saturday this year (as well as every Saturday for the past two years) ONLY in Forgotten Hits. To my mind, there is no more accurate chart available than our Super Charts … as they draw from ALL sources available at the time to most accurately project their popularity as it happened … no hindsight here … these are the real deal! (kk)
Hi there FH Readers,
Well, once again it is time to reflect on the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. Richardson the Big Bopper. It is now the 67th anniversary of that plane crash which is hard to believe.
This also means that fewer and fewer people are alive now that remember that day back in 1959. Ever since Don McLean wrote and recorded his immortal American Pie, that day has been referred to as "The day the music died."
When I still had my Audioldies website, I wrote this piece as a reflection of the 44th anniversary of that plane crash.
Did The Music Really Die?
The question has often been raised, how could the music really have died after the plane crash of February 3, 1959? After all, only three rock artists died in the crash, and there were certainly more rock musicians around. Perhaps the music didn't die, but it certainly started getting awfully syrupy.
When rock and roll first burst onto the scene, the year was 1955. As the rock era began, the music was loud, raucous and rebellious! It was music that irritated parents and scared authorities. At the dawn of the rock era, the artists themselves were predominantly black, with people like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Bo Diddley, The Penguins, The Moonglows, The Cadillacs, The El Dorados, the Nutmegs and the Five Keys. That same year, a song that was a year old exploded onto the scene, called We're Gonna Rock Around The Clock, recorded by a white artist named Bill Haley and his group the Comets.
But Bill Haley was not a young man … he was almost 30 when Rock Around The Clock burst onto the rock scene. So although teenagers liked Haley's music, Haley was no teen idol. On the other hand, Elvis Presley was!
In 1956, Elvis was exposed to a national audience for the first time on the Tommy Dorsey and the Jack Parr TV shows. He had been recording for a year and a half down in Memphis, but his music was restricted to the south and was considered country western music at the time. In fact, Elvis even appeared on the Grand Ole Oprey as early as 1954.
But now it was 1956, and Elvis with his good looks and his natural gyrating movements, paved the way for other white acts to try their hand at rock and roll. Some of the first generation of white rockers included Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, the Rock And Roll Trio featuring Johnny Burnett and Jerry Lee Lewis.
The establishment hated rock and roll, and some people even went so far as to call it the devil's music. So almost immediately, the record industry tried to find a way to tame rock and roll.
One way was to issue a white cover version of a song originally recorded by a black artist. Pat Boone seemed to be the "king" of the cover record. He covered everything from Fats Domino's Ain't That A Shame to Ivory Joe Hunter's I Almost Lost My Mind to Little Richard's Tutti Fruitti to the El Dorados At My Front Door. The Diamonds and Gail Storm were other recording artists that covered rock songs.
As 1956 gave way to 1957, even then you could see changes in the music. New rock stars were making their way onto the charts, people like Paul Anka, the Everly Brothers and Ricky Nelson. In 1958, it was discovered that the big money television quiz shows like the 64 Thousand Dollar Question were actually rigged. With this revelation having been made to the American public, the music industry along with many US government officials were sure that disc jockeys were being paid by record companies to play this trashy rock and roll on the radio. Payola, they called it, and they felt that they had to put a stop to it, and save all those teenagers from becoming juvenile delinquents from listening to that awful music. Payola was not new, however. It had been around for a long time, going back to the twenties. But 1960 was fast approaching, and that was going to be an election year. So many US senators and congressmen who themselves missed the so-called "good music" on the radio were determined to get to the bottom of why Billboard's charts were being dominated by all these terrible records which were on small independent labels.
That was another thing that was changing in the music industry. Up until now, most hits were on major record labels like Columbia, Decca, RCA and Capitol. But now, there were all these small independent labels that were dominating the music charts, labels like ABC Parimount, Aladdin, Atco, Atlantic, Brunswick, Cadence, Chanselor, Del-Fi, Dot, Ember, Flip, Gee, Imperial, Okeh, Roulette, Specialty and many more. The government was hell bent on getting to the bottom of this mess and returning decent music to the airwaves of the nation's radio stations.
It seemed to many, that one man was responsible for the rise of this music, and that was Alan Freed. It was known that he absolutely refused to play Pat Boone’s versions of certain records, and would opt for the black artist's versions instead. Freed was the culprit, he was the man bringing rock and roll into the homes of all these senator's daughters. So when Freed held a concert on May 3, 1958, in Boston and when the police had to stop the show because a few people were jumping up and down and standing on their seats, and when Freed allegedly said, "The police don't want you kids to have a good time tonight," the Boston police had it in for Mr. Freed. Every single incident around the stadium where the concert took place, whether it had anything to do with the concert or not, was blamed on Freed. He was charged with inciting a riot, and within months of this incident, Freed's radio career in New York was in trouble. Within weeks, WINS had let Freed go, and for a while, he moved over to TV to do the Big Beat, an afternoon TV Show on WNEW TV, Channel 5 in New York. Eventually he wound up at WABC radio in the "Big Apple," but by the end of 1959, the station and the network wanted him to sign a sworn statement stating that he had never accepted any money for playing certain records on the air. This he would not do, so Freed was fired from WABC as well, and his radio career was pretty much ruined.
By the beginning of 1959, Elvis had been in the Army for nearly a year, Little Richard had quit show business after seeing a shooting star while flying to Sydney, Australia, which he was sure was a sign from God that he should quit rock and roll and begin preaching the word of God. Jerry Lee Lewis had married his 13 year old second cousin, and this scandalous piece of news broke while he was on tour in England, and his career was nearly ruined. Frankie Lymon had split with the Teenagers and a new kind of rock star was surfacing, the manufactured teen idol. Yes, now there were people like Frankie Avalon and Fabian looking pretty and making records. If there was ever any doubt that rock stars were being manufactured, Fabian was it. He could hardly sing, but it didn't matter, because he looked clean cut, non-threatening and wholesome.
Something else was happening, too. The gritty saxophones of earlier rock songs were
being replaced by lush string arrangements, and the whole sound of rock music was starting to sound more adult, like easy listening music. On the other hand, Ritchie Valens’ song Come On Let's Go rocked. It was full of energy and it was driving and pulsating. Buddy Holly rocked as well, when he wasn't doing lovely ballads like True Love Ways and Raining In My Heart.
So, when we lost Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper that night, their deaths made way for such songs to infiltrate the Top 40 surveys as Venus by Frankie Avallon, What A Difference A Day Makes by Dinah Washington, It's Just A Matter Of Time and Thank You Pretty Baby by Brook Benton, Since I Don't Have You by the Skyliners, Sixteen Candles by the Crests, Mack The Knife (which had originally been called the Theme From The Three Penney Opera) by Bobby Darin, which went on to become the Number 1 Song of the year 1959, Deck Of Cards by Wink Martindale, Where Or When by Dion and the Belmonts, Theme From A Summer Place by Percy Faith, which was the Number 1 Song for the year 1960, I'm Sorry and I Want To Be Wanted by Brenda Lee, Everybody's Somebody's Fool and My Heart Has A Mind Of Its Own by Connie Francis and many, many more.
Yes, rock and roll music had certainly strayed a long way from its roots. It was now very saccharin, syrupy and manufactured and manipulated, and people often speak of rock music of this time period from 1959 to 1963 as being stuck in the doldrums.
It would take a group from across the Atlantic, who had grown up listening to American rhythm and blues, to give rock music the shot in the arm that it needed to regain its excitement and vitality.
Did the music really die after that night? Well, I'll let you be the judge.
Sam Ward
Hugh Jackson's Neil Diamond Experience …
Here's a very short interview with Hugh Jackson, who played half of the Neil DiamondTribute Couple in the movie "Song Sung Blue!"
Hugh Jackman on his Experience with Neil Diamond
It's so good! ( "So Good! So Good!" { Get it?! } )
CB!
