Last Week Tonight (50 Years Ago) #2
a sonic trip to the seventies featuring the soul hits from october, 1973
Welcome to Last Week Tonight (50 years ago), a weekly series from b*tchfork devoted to digging up old tunes. Each week I’ll be publishing an annotated playlist with the top tracks from the Billboard charts that week–just 50 years ago. Take a trip with me and see how these songs hold up!
This week, we’re diving into the top 10 songs from Billboard’s Hot Soul Singles for the week ending October 20, 1973. Listen along on Spotify here.
The Playlist
“Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight & the Pips*
One tidbit I didn’t share last week is that when Gladys Knight was recording the song, the lyrics were close to home. Knight told Marc Myers in Anatomy of a Song that her husband at the time struggled with the fact that their marriage wasn’t exactly traditional with her on the road and recording so often. It proved too much for him, and they divorced in 1973. “I was going through the exact same thing that I was singing about when recording—which is probably why it sounds so personal,” she said in the book.
Read more about this song in my first installment of Last Week Tonight (50 Years Ago)!
“Get It Together” by the Jackson 5
“Get It Together” was the title track of the Jackson 5’s reinvention album, G.I.T.: Get It Together (1973). A departure from their teen pop sound, G.I.T showcased the group’s range and ability to join the growing funk and progressive soul style. To put this album in perspective, think about “ABC” on ABC (1970), “I’ll Be There” on Third Album (1970), or even “Never Can Say Goodbye” on Maybe Tomorrow (1971). These iconic Jackson 5 tracks were released only a few years before “Get It Together,” and they could not sound more different. Sure, the boys got a little older, but their style changed, too.
One cool thing about G.I.T. is that all the songs flow together thematically—“Get It Together” grooves right into “Don’t Say Good Bye Again”—so you should check out the whole album. Despite being the title track, “Get It Together” was a modest hit, while “Dancing Machine” became huge.
The Jackson 5 performed the song on Soul Train in 1973, and though the video I found is incredibly grainy, it’s still fun to watch.
“It Hurts So Good” by Millie Jackson
While Millie Jackson is responsible for making “It Hurts So Good” a hit, the song was first recorded in 1971 by Katie Love and the Four Shades of Black. That version was such a non-hit that I couldn’t even find it on Spotify (you can listen to it in this YouTube video). The song’s writer Phillip Mitchell was a little luckier when Jackson recorded the song in 1973, and it peaked at number 24 on the Hot 100 and number three on R&B Singles. Jackson’s recording of “It Hurts So Good” was also featured in Cleopatra Jones (1973) starring Tamara Dobson, a Blaxploitation film.
“It Hurts So Good” is the title track of Jackson’s second album, the cover of which is stunning. Jackson would find more critical and chart success with her fourth album, Caught Up (1974), which earned Jackson her only Grammy nomination for her rendition of “If Loving You Is Wrong I Don’t Want to Be Right.”
Soul Train video alert! Here it is.
“Keep on Truckin’” by Eddie Kendricks*
Go, Eddie, go! I discussed this song in my last piece, so all I’ll add is that it’s pretty epic Kendricks’s break-out hit tops a song from his former group’ on this chart list. I hope he saw this way back when and it made him smile.
“Hey Girl (I Like Your Style)” by The Temptations
This is the other Temptations song with the word “girl” in the title.
“Hey Girl (I Like Your Style)” is on Masterpiece (1973), an album from The Temptations with a very distinct vision. The mastermind behind the instrumental-heavy album was writer and producer Norman Whitfield, who was stylistically building on the success of “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone.” While “Hey Girl” doesn’t sound like “Papa” at all, you can hear the similarities in the instrumental focus. Masterpiece is more of a concept album than other more popular albums from The Temptations.
I couldn’t find much on how “Hey Girl (I Like Your Style)” charted this week 50 years ago. What I can tell you is this song feels like a precursor for the Ken phenomenon: after Richard Street sings that he likes this girl’s style, he asks, “Can I stick around and rap to you a little while?”
Ask and you shall receive: a Soul Train video.
“Sexy, Sexy, Sexy/Theme from ‘Slaughter’” by James Brown
During the week of Oct. 20, 1973, “Sexy, Sexy, Sexy/Theme from ‘Slaughter’” was charting on Billboard’s Hot Soul Singles. Their placement here is a little misleading, as these are two different songs from the soundtrack of the Blaxploitation film Slaughter's Big Rip-Off (1973). James Brown composed the 13-track album for the film, which included the minor hit “Sexy, Sexy, Sexy.”
“Sexy, Sexy, Sexy” can’t be listened to without the context of James Brown’s 1966 “Money Won’t Change You,” which is almost identical—it uses the same backing track. This choice was not exactly popular with critics, and the album wasn’t nearly as critically acclaimed as other film soundtracks from prominent Black musicians at the time. A clear parallel is the soundtrack to Shaft (1971), which was composed by Isaac Hayes and earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Theme from Shaft.”
With that in mind, I can’t tell you how “Sexy, Sexy, Sexy/Theme from ‘Slaughter’” was charting in October for a film that came out in August. If I had to guess, I’d say the name-brand of James Brown did the heavy lifting.
Plot twist: Brown singing “Theme from ‘Slaughter’” on Johnny Carson’s show.
“Never Let You Go” by Bloodstone
This track comes from Bloodstone’s second album, Natural High (1973). Bloodstone started in the early 1960s as a high school doo-wop group from Kansas City, Missouri, and would move to Los Angeles, change their name, and become an instrumental part of the funk movement in the 1970s. Natural High sold over one million copies, and the title single peaked at number 10 on the pop charts (“Natural High” was also featured in Quentin Tarantino’s film Jackie Brown (1977)).
The lead vocals on “Never Let You Go” belong to Charles McCormick, an original member of Bloodstone. The success of “Never Let You Go” came shortly after the death of drummer and fellow original Bloodstone member Roger Durham, who died in July of 1973, just three months after “Natural High” was released as a single. While the title track was the more popular song on Natural High, “Never Let You Go” has a fantastic groove that is so early-’70s funk and soul you can’t help but smile.
Secret third option for this performance video: I have no idea where it’s from.
“Funky Stuff” by Kool & the Gang
This track was such a hit that the cover art for Wild and Peaceful (1973) includes a little sticker that reads, “Contains the hit single ‘Funky Stuff.’” Wild and Peaceful was Kool & the Gang’s fourth studio album and it was the first to give the group Top 10 charting singles. The album made it onto the pop chart’s Top 40 and was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). While “Jungle Boogie” might be the most popular track from Wild and Peaceful today—it has over 95 million streams on Spotify—“Funky Stuff” was certainly foundational in bringing Kool & the Gang commercial fame back in the 1970s.
“Funky Stuff” is driven by a great funk beat percussion and enlivening horns. The repetitive lyrics are a rallying cry: we simply cannot get enough of that funky stuff. Apparently, this song was banned on several radios for including the word “funky.”
This song’s fun fact is that part of it was sampled in N.W.A.’s “Appetite for Destruction,” which you can listen to here. And if you want to watch it live, here’s a video from a Kool & the Gang concert where they dedicate the song to none other than James Brown.
“Check It Out” by Tavares
This track takes us away from the funkiest of stuff and towards a much more laid-back and shimmering R&B sound. Welcome to the title track from the debut studio album for Tavares, Check It Out (1974). “Check It Out” was released as a single before the album’s drop the following year and was the group’s first Top 10 R&B and Top 40 Pop chart hit.
Tavares, also known as The Tavares Brothers, was a soul, funk, and R&B group composed of five Cape Verdean-American brothers who started performing in 1959 as Chubby and the Turnpikes. The group signed with Capitol Records in 1967, and it wasn’t until 1973, with a new name and “Check It Out,” that they produced more than a local hit. In an interesting twist, the lead vocals on “Check It Out” belong to Victor Tavares, who dropped out of the group shortly after the song’s hit.
Tavares would produce more successful albums before getting grouped into the disco craze in the latter half of the 1970s. Part of this is because they recorded a version of the Bee Gees song “More Than a Woman,” featured on the Saturday Night Fever (1977) soundtrack. Tavares’s involvement on that soundtrack would earn them their only Grammy. The group’s last major release was in 1983 with the album Words and Music.
Back to Soul Train for this track’s performance video.
“I Can’t Stand the Rain” by Ann Peebles
To end this week’s playlist, we’re listening to Ann Peebles's iconic hit single from her fourth studio album of the same name, I Can’t Stand the Rain (1974). Famously recorded by Tina Turner and Lowell George, Peebles’ original is #197 on the Rolling Stones list of the 500 Best Songs of All Time.
Peebles shared the story of this song with the GRAMMY Museum back in 2015, which you can watch here. The inspiration came quite simply: Peebles, her partner Don Bryant, and DJ Bernie Miller were going to go to a concert, but a thunderstorm in Memphis stopped them. The group decided to stay in, and in her frustration, Peebles exclaimed, “I can’t stand the rain!” They wrote the song that night and knew they had a hit. Peebles recalled it was recorded and cut in a week.
The signature opening electric timbales were added to the beginning of “I Can’t Stand the Rain” after its recording. Originally, they just played throughout, but producer Willie Mitchell suggested the timbales came in before everything else. The result is an out-of-time sound reminiscent of water drops that lays the foundation for a groovy soul track.
Watch Peebles perform this song in one of the coolest dresses I’ve ever seen.
Check out the issue of Billboard I used for this playlist here!
Tune in next week for another time travel adventure into music history. Thanks for groovin’ with me :)
~Annie