Popular Music Through the Years

“Purple People Eater” Great Novelty Song of 1958

My wife writes a blog about her life which you can read here. She talked about a song she sang as a little girl called “The Little Blue Man” by Betty Johnson. This was a very cool song in the fifties and you can hear it at her blog. The Little Blue Man was one of many novelty songs which came out of the fifties. It made us think of a famous number one which I’d like to spotlight in this post. That was “Purple People Eater” by Sheb Wooley.

Wooley grew up on a ranch in Oklahoma and did everything a cowboy does. But, music was his first love, even though he was not that successful at it. He first auditioned for the president of MGM records and sang all of his ballads. MGM didn’t think much of them and asked if he had anything else. He reluctantly brought out “Purple People Eater”. Three weeks later it was number one where it stayed for 6 weeks. Truly one of the great novelty songs of the fifties.

Sheb Wooley never again had that kind of success on the charts, but he became a fairly big actor. He’s most known for his role on “Rawhide” which starred a very young Clint Eastwood.

“Purple People Eater” hit number one on Jun 9, 1958. Of all the years of the 20th Century, I think 1958 is my favorite. This was the summer between my Sophomore and Junior years in high school. Eisenhower (Ike) was president and Khrushchev was in charge of Russia. You remember him and his banging his shoe on the table at the U.N. That happened later during Kennedy’s reign, I think. I saw a cool story from the week of Jun 9, 1958.

“Britain’s girl soldiers were up in arms today because the army says holding hands with boy soldiers is illegal. Members of the Women’s Royal Army Corps at Camp Hounslow, complaining that the army has cracked down on kissing and cuddling on or off the camp premises, cited the case of a girl lance-corporal and her soldier boy friend. They were court-martialed for kissing. She was demoted to private and transferred. He spent 14 days in the stockade. “It’s not fair,” the girls claim.”

I’d love to see a story like that today. In 1958, food was a little cheaper than today. Coffee was 79 cents a pound. Butter was 67 cents a pound and hot dogs could be bought for 39 cents a pound. Does anybody remember the Studebaker. A car that advertised 33.9 miles per gallon and this was when a gallon of gas cost about a quarter. You could buy a Studebaker for $1795. It was an automatic (which had to be mentioned in those days when everything was stick) and would easily hold 6 people.

There were only 16 teams in all of baseball. 8 in the National League and 8 in the American League. In June of 1958, San Francisco and the New York Yankees were number one in their respective leagues. Pogo, Joe Palooka and Mark Trail were comics that we read in the paper. And, of course, one of my favorites, Capt Easy was solving crimes and saving the world. On TV, we watched Wyatt Earp, Combat and Sergeant Bilko. I love the fifties and I particularly love 1958.

Here’s Sheb Wooley:

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Disco Has Begun: “Car Wash”

Disco was alive and well in 1977. I am probably in the minority but I loved Disco. Truth be told, I still do. There are many number one Disco songs that we will talk about, but I am sitting here watching the Olympics on TV and they played a snippet from the 1977 number one by Rose Royce, “Car Wash”. I thought, “Wow, what a great song.”

“Car Wash” was the theme from the movie by the same name. It was about a day in the life of a L.A. Car Wash, the men who worked there and the crazy customers who came to have their cars washed. Written by Norman Whitfield, the song took about 3 months to get to number one. Whitfield worked for Motown and wrote and produced songs for the Temptations, Marvin Gaye and Edwin Starr.

Rose Royce started out as an eight man ensemble, when Whitfield decided to add a woman, Gwen Dickey, to the mix. She ended up singing lead for the group. The song hit the top of the charts on January 29, 1977. Car Wash was the only number they had, but they had a decent run on the charts during the late seventies.

I just realized that I was in the hospital when Rose Royce hit number one. I remember that month very well. The main show on TV was “Roots”. I watched the entire thing. Weather was a major story that week as a major winter storm blasted through the east killing at least 54 people. President Jimmy Carter was said to be thinking about a 4-day work week in order to save fuel. Thirty years later, the state of Utah makes the news by doing that very thing. Progress is indeed slow.

Bad news that we all remember was the actor Freddie Prinze star of the TV show “Chico and the Man” died on this January day after a self-inflected gun shot. A sad day for the fans of that show. Besides “Roots”, we were watching “Little House on the Prairie”, “The Captain and Tennille”, whose number one song we will cover in this blog and “The Jeffersons”, among others.

In the grocery store, chicken could be bought for 39 cents a pound. Bananas were 12 cents a pound. You could get four cans of Del Monte vegetables for a dollar. A 25 pound of dog chow was $4.99. At the movie theater “Rocky” was doing a great run. Clint Eastwood was Dirty Harry in “The Enforcer” and Barbara Streisand stared in “A Star is Born”.

Put your dancing shoes on for “Car Wash” by Rose Royce.

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RIP Isaac Hayes and “Shaft”

As you probably already know, Issac Hayes died today. This was really a shock, especially after hearing about Bernie Mac. They say tragedy comes in threes. Who’s next? Hearing about Hayes made me think about my own life. He and I were the same age, almost exactly. Puts your life in perspective. Since I’m writing this just hours after he was discovered, no cause of death has been announced yet.

Hayes was only the third person to to win a Academy Award with a number one song. The song, of course, “Theme from Shaft”. He also won a Grammy for the song. Isaac Hayes had been in the business since he was hired by Stax Records in Memphis in 1964. He wrote and co-wrote songs for years, doing work for Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, among others. It wasn’t until he put out an album called “Hot Buttered Soul” that he became known nationally. He was actually up for the role of Shaft in the movie, but eventually lost the role to Richard Roundtree. He went on to compose the theme for the movie and, as they say, music history would never be the same.

Some say Hayes was the Father of Disco, but I’m not sure he would have agreed with that. He certainly couldn’t be called the Father of Soul, since soul had been around for years, but he did his part to keep it alive. We’re about 20 years too soon, but if anything could be said for Isaac Hayes, it might be that he was the father of Rap. (”Shut Your Mouth!”) “Theme from Shaft” hit number one on November 20, 1971 and stayed there for two weeks. It was the only number one he ever had.

The news story I liked the best from this week in history was this “Foothills Combed for Parachuting Hijacker”. A hijacker who apparently knew precisely what he wanted to do and how to do it had vanished
after bailing out of a commandeered jet airliner with $200,000. This was, of course, D.B.Cooper. Authorities held out little hope, however, that the hijacker would be found soon. “He’s probably long gone,” a Clark county, Wash., sheriff’s deputy said.

In late November of 1971, Christmas Sales were starting. You could get a men’s white dress shirts for $5.00 and a tie to go with it for $3 or $4. Have a flat? Get a new tire as low as $12.00 and running as high as $35.00 depending on your size and where you shopped. You could get an 8-track player for your car for only $48.88 installed. I wish I still had one of those, they still sell on eBay. Not everything was cheaper. A 23 inch color TV made by Zenith cost $497 (with trade). On TV, we were watching “Ironside”, “The Flip Wilson Show”, “The Dean Martin Show” and Johnny Carson was at the top of his game on the Tonight Show.

I would have loved the comics back then. We still had “Lil Abner”, “Steve Canyon”, “Buz Sawyer” and many other great story comics. I used to love reading them, as I’ve mentioned in other posts.

Here is a cool version of “Theme from Shaft”. We will always remember Isaac Hayes. Enjoy…