Best of On My Mind part 6: The 70's A Decade of Change Part 4

This was #4 in a 5 part series that I wrote on the 1970's. What I like about this is that Randy Badazz who wrote the song Rise left a comment on it. It was really about a posting that I had on the song Rise where he corrected some misconceptions that I had heard about the origins of the song. I was very happy that people whose work I like and respect were actually reading what I put on the site.

In the 70’s Broadway had a surge in mass appeal. Beginning in the late 60’s Jesus Rock, which later became known as Contemporary Christian Music, was born when people from the hippie generation became Christians and turned on to Christ. They expressed their love through their music. Usually TV or the movie industry is quick to try and get the attention of any new demographic but this time it was Broadway that took the lead with plays like Godspell or Jesus Christ Superstar. The soundtrack albums became hits and had hit songs such as “Day By Day” or “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.” For Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim the 70’s was a golden era. One of his most popular tunes was “Send In The Clowns” from the play A Little Night Music. According to my research this song was licensed for more music boxes then any other song in history.
Another Broadway composer that the 70’s was kind to was Marvin Hamlisch. His songs have been recorded for plays, movies, TV shows and been hits for many popular singers of the day. His biggest smash was the play A Chorus Line. The story line was just telling the individual story of people trying our for the chorus line of a play. It told the stories of how they got to this point in their lives and their hopes and dreams of wanting to hit the big time. The most popular songs from the show were “What I Did For Love” and the showstopper “One” You know the first line. It starts out…One! Singular sensation. Every little step she takes.
Broadway has never been shy about building a play around comic characters. One of the biggest plays of the 70’s was Annie, based on the comic strip Little Orphan Annie. It ran for years and was one of the best plays to be adapted to film a few years later. To this day everyone knows the big song from the play and they still sing the song. It is “Tomorrow”
This will continue at a later date. Perhaps…Tomorrow!

Now here is what Randy had to say about his song Rise.

Hi Rick:

Thanks for the nice words about "Rise" last week. Just to set the record straight:

I was 22 in January 1979 and producing funk records for Columbia. Uncle Herb called me up and asked if I would work up some disco versions of some of his old Tijuana Brass songs. I never ever presented him with the idea of doing disco versions of anything. I was never a disco fan. My thing was James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Funkadelics, Aretha, etc.

At our fiest meeting in Herb's office at A&M I played him Rise and he loved it however he still asked me to work up a disco version of the Lonely Bull and 2 other songs. I hated the idea then and never wanted to even attempt to record them. I had new songs and new ideas and thankfully when we went in to record them in early February, Herb did not like what he heard so we did Rise.

Please note that I did not just pull out Rise because we had extra time booked in the studio. I had music charts drawn up for the musicians and we picked the musicians with the mind of recording Rise. I'm not sure how this all got started about me wanting to do disco. Not true at all. In fact I never wanted to work with Herb. I changed my name to Badazz because I wanted to be my own person totally out of the shadow of Herb. It took quite a bit of persuading by Herb to even get me to work with him. However, I'm glad that we worked together because we had a lot of fun and we created a classic record that went to #1 around the world.

There sure haven't been a lot of #1 pop instrumental records during the past 27 years and I'm fortunate to have been a part of it.

Thank you again for your kind words and sharing your happy memories..

randy badazz alpert