"Ode To Billie Joe" unseats "It Could Be We're In Love" this week on both the WLS and the WCFL Chart.
The WLS Chart shows only 30 positions this week due to a special recap of the biggest hits of their now seven year history and the kick-off of their Music Spectacular Week, saluting the most popular "oldies" of their Top 40 existence.
Note, too, that "Never My Love" is already a Top Ten Record here in Chicago as it is first making the national charts.
From Jeff March and Marti Smiley Childs ...
"Requiem for the Masses," the flip side of the Association's top-5 hit "Never My Love" and the band's seventh chart recording, made its debut on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on September 2, 1967. Association member Terry Kirkman wrote the Vietnam war protest song for the band's "Insight Out" album. In the Catholic church, a Requiem Mass is a ceremonial prayer for the souls of the deceased. The Association's "Requiem for the Masses," produced by Bones Howe and released on the Warner Bros. label, perched at No. 100 and remained on the chart for two weeks. But pioneering album rock FM station programmers who understood the persuasive power of music to convey messages of social importance, played "Requiem for the Masses," which likely contributed to sales of "Insight Out."
It truly is a remarkable recording, unlike anything else we'd heard up to that point in time outside a church setting ... and still "pop enough" to chart. But musically speaking, this was the "anything goes" year of 1967 ... where not only could The Association chart with their "Requiem For The Masses" but Harpers Bizarre could score a hit by recording a thirty-something year old Cole Porter tune called ... "Anything Goes"!!! (kk)
