Well, look at that ...
Cashman and West topped last week's survey with "American City Suite," one of my favorite tunes from this era. (This one got a ton of airplay here on WBBM-FM during their short-lived foray into Top 40 Music ... but nationally it crapped out at #27 in Billboard ... although it DID rise to #19 in Record World.)
There really aren't any huge surprises anywhere in this week's Top 30 list ...
But check out "Stairway To Heaven" by Led Zeppelin at #31 ... and "One Way Out" by The Allman Brothers at #33! Ranked right up there in the same breath with Bread, Neil Diamond and Tony Orlando and Dawn!!! (God, radio was SO much more interesting then!!!) Seeing these two FM Classic Rock staples chart LOWER THAN the break-in hit we just featured last week, "Convention '72" by The Delegates, is an absolute hoot!
"Stairway," of course, was never released as a single ... so it had to be airplay and listener requests that propelled it up five places this week from #36 to #31. (It probably would have been an across-the-boards #1 Hit, had they decided to release it as a single ... but it's corporate decisions like these that create multi-platinum album sales!!!)
The Allman Brothers' record was hardly what one could consider an AM Pop Hit ... it peaked at #86 in Billboard and didn't even make The Top 100 in Cash Box or Record World ... but it was another FM track that you heard all the time so this is likely more a case of WPOP trying to sound "contemporary" based on the changing trends and taste in radio going on at the time.
The Delbert and Glen record poised at #38 is Delbert McClinton, who has always enjoyed a bit of a cult following ... that one only reached #90 in Billboard. The "Glen" listed on the record is Glen Clark, whose chart career pretty much started and ended with this release.
