January 2 – Something Was A Bit Off About Angie, Baby

If the early-’60s were obsessed with songs about teens dying young, often in cars, the early-’70s obsession seemed to be songs about slightly off-kilter, creepy women. Among many such tunes, there was Cher’s “Dark Lady”, the Eagles’ “Witchy Woman”, Cliff Richard’s “Devil Woman”, Vickie Lawrence’s “Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia”… and Helen Reddy‘s “Angie Baby” which rose to #1 on Billboard on to start off 1975, giving Australian Reddy her third American chart-topper in as many years. She’d previously been on top with “I Am Woman” and “Delta Dawn”.

Her parents were likely proud; both were actors and they instilled “you are going to be a star” into the little girl Helen. After winning an American Idol-like TV show Down Under in 1966, she moved to the U.S. and by 1968 had a record deal with Fontana Records. Her big break was when Canadian radio began playing the B-side to a 1971 single and made a hit out of “I Don’t Know How To Love Him“, garnering her attention world-wide and opening the door for her feminist anthem “I am Woman” the next year. Of that, she said she wanted a song about a strong, proud woman but “I realized that the song I was looking for didn’t exist. I was going to have to write it”.

“Angie Baby” seemed a less strong and admirable lass, but of the record, Reddy says it was “the one song I never had to push radio stations into playing.” The song about the mentally-disturbed young woman who lived in a dream world (and appeared to be responsible for the disappearance of a “neighbor boy” who dropped by to see her) was written by Alan O’Day. O’Day would have a major chart hit himself with a song about an unusual girl – “Undercover Angel.” He says “Angie Baby” was loosely inspired, lyrically, by the Beatles “Lady Madonna”, about a girl living in her own “reality” but he made her a bit creepy and “the intent was to show that the Angie character had more power than (the boy who disappeared) or the listeer expected.

The song, which hit the top 5 in both the UK and Canada as well, would be Helen’s last #1 hit, and fifth-straight #1 on Adult Contemporary charts. It helped push her Free & Easy album into the American top 10 – one of three for her – and gold-selling, her fourth. By the mid-’70s, Helen had put out six hit albums and even briefly had her own network variety show. Sadly she passed away of unknown causes in 2020.

October 3 – Undercover Alan More Than A One Hit Wonder

When you’re in a small “club” that includes Neil Diamond and Carole King, you’ve done pretty well. So then, we remember Alan O’Day today, on what would have been his 83^rd birthday. O’Day isn’t anywhere near as famous as those two, but he is among the few songwriters who’ve written #1 songs for other stars as well as themselves.

O’Day seemed set early on to live a life in music. He was playing a xylophone and making his own songs up by six, three or four years later he was playing ukulele to impress his friends at school. By high school, he was in two bands, one he started, The Shoves, influenced by his musical heroes back then – Elvis, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Little Richard. One of his bands made it onto a local TV talent show then, and Johnny Otis took notice. He recorded a song or two Alan had written, but they didn’t end up getting released. But it no doubt gave the lad confidence in his skills in music. After high school, he got work doing music editing for a small studio in his hometown of Hollywood. Around that time as well, his then-current band, The Archers, got to tour as the backing band for Dobie Gray.

As the ’60s wore on, he started to drift away (to borrow a term from Dobie) from performing and concentrate on writing songs, one or two of which Dobie had already done. By 1971 he was a staff writer at Warner Bros., and quickly penned his first hit song, “The Drum”, which was a top 30 hit for teen heartthrob Bobby Sherman. In the early-’70s he was very prolific, writing songs recorded by artists including Steppenwolf, David Clayton Thomas, Anne Murray, Dave Mason and many more. “Easy Evil” of his has been done by several dozen artists ranging from Tony Orlando to Dusty Springfield to Long John Baldry. But his first real big break was a song he wrote when inspired by the Beatles character “Lady Madonna” and partly by a girl he knew from his childhood neighborhood who was …socially awkward to say the very least. “Angie Baby” became a #1, gold-selling single for Helen Reddy.

He’d have one more big hit from one of his songs in that time period, “Rock & Roll Heaven” for the Righteous Brothers.

O’Day recorded a solo album in ’73, but it flopped, so he kept writing. However, in 1977, WB started a division called Pacific Records. Somehow he was the only artist they signed or put out! But their one artist did well for them. His song “Undercover Angel” was a #1 hit in both the U.S. and Canada and sold past two million copies. He pretty much disappeared from the radio after that, at least here, despite recording another album in 1979, which included his own version of “Angie Baby” and one more lesser hit in Australia, “Skinny Girls”. But in North America, he’s clearly marked as simply one of the big One Hit Wonders of the decade.

Although he didn’t create many more hit records after then, he kept busy. He did music for Jim Henson, writing 100 or so kids songs for the Muppet Babies TV show, and later, music for National Geographic shows as well. He’d also collaborate with a popular Japanese composer/producer, Tatsuro Yamashita, and together they wrote several Japanese hits like “Magic Ways.”

In the 21^st Century, he’d moved to Nashville and begun working as a producer and once again had a tune that was noticed – “Nascar Crazy”, a sort of theme for that car race circuit.

His career seemed to be finding a second wind in country but sadly before it really took off, he died of brain cancer at age 72, in 2013. A one hit wonder, perhaps, but a pretty good resume for that… and one that gets him mentioned with the likes of Carole King. Not too bad for someone who was so largely “undercover” .

February 2 – Being Up Late Sounded Better 50 Years Ago

Two things were probably true if you were a cool kid 50 years ago. One, you’d not be up watching TV too late at night. Because most TV stations signed off – simply stopped running any shows – for the night by 1 AM at latest. And two, that if you were lucky, you noticed that changed on this very night in 1973, when the Midnight Special officially began.

The Midnight Special was a pretty revolutionary show therefore, because in most time zones it came on at 1 AM, following Johnny Carson’s late-night Tonight Show on NBC on Fridays. The show’s creator, Burt Sugarman, had the idea that lots of people were up late on Fridays, and Carson drew a huge audience. Why not capitalize on it and run another show afterwards? Especially one that would appeal to teenagers and college kids, most likely to be night owls? He pitched the network the idea of running a music-based show at that time, with various live acts playing. Oddly, despite the seeming soundness of the idea and the idea that they would have no competition at all on air in that timeslot, they didn’t like it. But they ran a one-off special, a sort of pilot, in the fall of ’72 and the reviews of that, coupled with Chevy signing on to sponsor the program, made them willing to give it a try. Tellingly, within months they were so impressed they added another post-Carson late show, Tomorrow, for the other four weeknights.

They got Johnny Rivers song of the same name to be the title theme song, and brought in none other than Wolfman Jack to do the voice-overs. While the idea of a nighttime TV show that had current music had been done before – American Bandstand, Soul Train, Britain’s Top of the Pops, etc – Midnight Special offered up a couple of then-unique things. It had on more rock performers than the competition, and more importantly, it generally had the artists playing live, not lip-synching. It also broke ground by at times running old film footage or early rock videos.

While the ’72 pilot had John Denver as a host and hadn’t quite found its form, the first official episode was hosted by Helen Reddy (who’d be the only full-time host for the show, in 1975-76; typically they had guest hosts changing from week to week.) She did three songs, including her recent #1 hit “I Am Woman”, and she was joined by the likes of Curtis Mayfield, who did “Superfly”, Ike & Tina Turner, the Byrds (who performed “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star”), Don McLean and even George Carlin, who did a standup routine. Throughout its run, it would periodically showcase up-and-coming comedians, including Carlin, Steve Martin, Andy Kaufman and Richard Pryor. The second episode, hosted by Johnny Rivers himself, had Wolfman Jack singing. Now that’s something you don’t see every day.

The show ran for an impressive 450 episodes, finally being canceled in spring 1981. It seemed to have lost some of its focus or edge by then; the last show was hosted by the network’s reality show Real People‘s hosts and had less music and more off-music features like an interview with actor Robert Ulrich. Then-president Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, hosted the penultimate episode. But in between, Midnight Special had some of the best, and most varied, musical performances on TV with a bevy of stars ranging from Dolly Parton (who actually hosted a 1978 episode) to Barry Manilow to Gordon Lightfoot to Kiss to Aerosmith to KC & the Sunshine Band to Elton John to Tom Petty to Marvin Gaye to Abba to the New York Dolls to Blondie to David Bowie in his final “Ziggy Stardust” persona appearance to Steely Dan to ELO, who were on it a record seven times , to… well, you get the idea.

Although doubtless there are bits of it lost to history, much of the show ‘s highlights are available, on several DVD releases including an 11-disc offering in 2014.

December 28 – Special Was One Word For Reddy’s Angie

If the early-’60s were obsessed with songs about teens dying young, often in cars, the early-’70s obsession seemed to be songs about slightly off-kilter, creepy women. Among many such tunes, there was Cher’s “Dark Lady”, the Eagles’ “Witchy Woman”, Cliff Richard’s “Devil Woman,” the protagonist in Vickie Lawrence’s “Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia”… and Helen Reddy‘s “Angie Baby” which rose to #1 on Billboard on this day in 1974, giving Australian Reddy her third American chart-topper in as many years. She’d previously been on top with “I Am Woman” and “Delta Dawn”.

Her parents were likely proud; both were actors and they instilled “you are going to be a star” into the little girl Helen. After winning an American Idol-like TV show Down Under in 1966, she moved to the U.S. and by 1968 had a record deal with Fontana Records. Her big break was when Canadian radio began playing the B-side to a 1971 single and made a hit out of “I Don’t Know How To Love Him”, garnering her attention world-wide and opening the door for her feminist anthem “I am Woman” the next year. Of that, she said she wanted a song about a strong, proud woman but “I realized that the song I was looking for didn’t exist. I was going to have to write it”.

“Angie Baby” seemed a less strong and admirable lass, but of the record, Reddy says it was “the one song I never had to push radio stations into playing.” The song about the mentally-disturbed young woman who lived in a dream world (and appeared to be responsible for the disappearance of a “neighbor boy” who dropped by to see her) was written by Alan O’Day. O’Day would have a major chart hit himself with a song about an unusual girl – “Undercover Angel.” He says “Angie Baby” was loosely inspired, lyrically, by the Beatles “Lady Madonna”, about a girl living in her own “reality” but he made her a bit creepy and “the intent was to show that the Angie character had more power than (the boy who disappeared) or the listener expected.

The song, which hit the top 5 in both the UK and Canada as well, would be Helen’s last #1 hit, and helped push her Free & Easy album into the American top 10 – one of three for her. By the mid-’70s, Helen had put out six hit albums and even briefly had her own network variety show. Sadly she passed away of unknown causes at age 79 last year.

December 28 – Helen Was ‘Reddy’ For Another #1 Hit

If the early-’60s were obsessed with songs about teens dying young, often in cars, the early-’70s obsession seemed to be songs about slightly off-kilter, creepy women. Among many such tunes, there was Cher’s “Dark Lady”, the Eagles’ “Witchy Woman”, Cliff Richard’s “Devil Woman”… and Helen Reddy‘s “Angie Baby” which rose to #1 on Billboard on this day in 1974, giving Australian Reddy her third American chart-topper in as many years. She’d previously been on top with “I Am Woman” and “Delta Dawn”.

Her parents were likely proud; both were actors and they instilled “you are going to be a star” into the little girl Helen. After winning an American Idol-like TV show Down Under in 1966, she moved to the U.S. and by 1968 had a record deal with Fontana Records. Her big break was when Canadian radio began playing the B-side to a 1971 single and made a hit out of “I Don’t Know How To Love Him”, garnering her attention world-wide and opening the door for her feminist anthem “I am Woman” the next year. Of that, she said she wanted a song about a strong, proud woman but “I realized that the song I was looking for didn’t exist. I was going to have to write it”.

“Angie Baby” seemed a less strong and admirable lass, but of the record, Reddy says it was “the one song I never had to push radio stations into playing.” The song about the mentally-disturbed young woman who lived in a dream world (and appeared to be responsible for the disappearance of a “neighbor boy” who dropped by to see her) was written by Alan O’Day. O’Day would have a major chart hit himself with a song about an unusual girl – “Undercover Angel.” He says “Angie Baby” was loosely inspired, lyrically, by the Beatles “Lady Madonna”, about a girl living in her own “reality” but he made her a bit creepy and “the intent was to show that the Angie character had more power than (the boy who disappeared) or the listener expected.

The song, which hit the top 5 in both the UK and Canada as well, would be Helen’s last #1 hit, and helped push her Free & Easy album into the American top 10 – one of three for her. By the mid-’70s, Helen had put out six hit albums and even briefly had her own network variety show. Sadly she passed away of unknown causes earlier this year at age 79.

December 9 – People Were Ready For Reddy To Roar

“Zeitgeist” perhaps best describes the song which hit #1 this day in 1972. Ms magazine had just launched, the National Organization of Women was gaining in clout and membership, and Billie Jean King was about to take on arrogant Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match. Women’s Lib was running in high gear… and needed an anthem. Enter “I Am Woman” by Helen Reddy.

“I couldn’t find any songs that I thought being a woman was about. I thought about all the strong women in my family who had gotten through the Depression, World Wars, and drunken, abusive husbands, but nothing in music reflected that,” she says. “I never thought of myself as a songwriter, but it came down to having to do it.”

Do it she did! The feisty Australian singer was discovered on a TV talent contest in her homeland in the ’60s which rewarded her with a trip to the U.S.; soon she relocated there and started a successful career, signing with Capitol Records and quickly having a top 20 hit with her take on “I Don’t Know How To Love Him” from the Jesus Christ Superstar stage show. That had been the title of her second album, from which “I Am Woman” was first recorded. However, it went all but unnoticed and she re-recorded it a year later and made it the title of her third album. This time it clicked.

She says she wanted to write a song about strong women, and that the chorus of “I am strong, I am invincible, I am Woman” came to her at night in her sleep and kept running through her head. “That part I consider to be divinely inspired,” she says. She then penned the lyrics and handed them to guitarist Ray Burton, another Aussie living in California. He put together the music in three hours. Unfortunately the pair didn’t remain friends; he’d sue her for royalties he said she withheld in 1988 and recalls her inspiration for the song being not the Voice of God but rather women’s meetings she’d host in her apartment. “They would sit around and whine about their boyfriends” he says, and he wrote the music because the life of a songwriter was hard and “I figured it was a way to make a few dollars and up the quality of my life. I had a hunch it was bound to be a hit.”

A hit it was in its second go-round, which utilized session musicians like Derek & the Dominoes drummer Jim Gordon and pianist Mike Melvoin (his son Jonathan also was a keyboard player, best known unfortunately for dying of an OD while touring with Smashing Pumpkins.) The single would hit #1 in Canada as well as the States, where she’d have another #1 hit the following two years – “Delta Dawn” and “Angie Baby.” Perhaps surprisingly, she was the first Australian artist to have a #1 hit in the U.S. It pushed the album into the top 20 and the first of 7-straight of hers to go gold or platinum in the U.S. So popular was she that in 1973, she briefly had her own TV variety show, ala Sonny & Cher.

The song was unofficially adopted by the Nat. Org. of Women as their theme and one member recalls going to the 1973 convention when they played it in the conference room. Suddenly “maybe a thousand of us were dancing and singing ‘I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman!’. It was a spontaneous, beautiful expression of the exhilaration we all felt in those years.”

“I Am Woman” won Reddy the Grammy for Best Female Pop Performance,. Accepting the award, she caused a stir by thanking God because “SHE makes all things possible.” At least Dishwalla probably weren’t mad!

December 28 – Angie Got Helen ‘Reddy’ For Another Hit

If the early-’60s were obsessed with songs about teens dying young, often in cars, the early-’70s obsession seemed to be songs about slightly off-kilter, creepy women. Among many such tunes, there was Cher’s “Dark Lady”, Cliff Richard’s “Devil Woman”… and Helen Reddy’s “Angie Baby” which rose to #1 on Billboard on this day in 1974. In so doing it gave Australian Reddy her third American chart-topper.

Her parents were likely proud; both were actors and they instilled “you are going to be a star” into the little girl Helen. After winning an American Idol-like TV show Down Under in 1966, she moved to the U.S. and by 1968 had a record deal with Fontana Records. Her big break was when Canadian radio began playing the B-side to a 1971 single and made a hit out of “I Don’t Know How To Love Him”, garnering her attention world-wide and opening the door for her feminist anthem “I am Woman” the next year. Of that, she said she wanted a song about a strong, proud woman but “I realized that the song I was looking for didn’t exist. I was going to have to write it”.

“Angie Baby” seemed a less strong and admirable lass, but of the record, Reddy says it was “the one song I never had to push radio stations into playing.” The song about the mentally-disturbed young woman who lived in a dream world (and appeared to be responsible for the disappearance of a “neighbor boy” who dropped by to see her) was written by Alan O’Day. O’Day would have a major chart hit himself with a song about an unusual girl – “Undercover angel.” He says “Angie Baby” was loosely inspired, lyrically, by the Beatles “Lady Madonna”, about a girl living in her own “reality” but he made her a bit creepy and “the intent was to show that the Angie character had more power than (the boy who disappeared) or the listener expected.

By the mid-’70s, Helen had put out six hit albums and even briefly had her own network variety show. She is now semi-retired and works at times as a motivational speaker, singing only occasionally.

Sep. 22 – Mrs. Bowie? Toddler Richards? Who Cares…Angie Was A Great Song

Sometimes doing the unexpected can work out well. Like releasing a slow hurting “ballad” when people expect you to be in-your-face rockers. Or eating a bit of goat’s head soup perhaps. Well, the latter probably not so much, but the former worked wonders for the Rolling Stones this day in 1973 when they hit #1 on the US singles chart for the 7th time with “Angie.” They’d go on to have one more chart-topper over here, five years later with “Miss You.”

“Angie”, the soft-sounding, desperate song about a breakup was the lead release from Goat’s Head Soup, which would be their third-straight #1 in the UK, US and Canada alike. However, with the aching lyrics and string section, it didn’t sound like a quintessential Stones song, and apparently the label didn’t want it out as a 7”. They wanted something more typical, something that sounded like a natural follow-up to their previous couple of top 10s, “Tumblin’ Dice” and “Brown Sugar.” The band thought differently, and wisely. The song became one of their biggest hits and opened some new ears to them, and also hit #1 in places like Norway, Switzerland and Canada, where it stayed on top for 5 weeks, longer than any other single that year.

“Angie” is an undeniably good, listenable song about a guy hurting over a tough relationship – with a gal called Angie – but its real meaning has been debated ad nauseum through the decades with no definitive answer. Many thought it was written for Angela Bowie, David’s first wife but everyone except her seem to deny that. We do know that Keith came up with the title while Mick wrote most of the lyrics. Jagger says Keith picked the name because it was the latter’s daughter’s middle name, but Keith points out she wasn’t born yet when they were recording it .

“I just went, ‘Angie, Annnngie…’.It wasn’t about any particular person, it was a name. Like ‘Ohh, Diana,” Richards recalls. Most figure the bulk of the lyrics were written about Mick’s breakup with Marianne Faithful.

We may never know who inspired the song, but we don’t really need to. We can just enjoy it as one of the best soft-rock songs of the era, and one that came from an unexpected source. Curiously enough, it wasn’t the last we’d hear about an “Angie”…Helen Reddy hit #1 about one year afterwards with “Angie Baby.”