Sadie got a little creative with her intro this week…
…all her idea and Dad’s terrible edit! Anyway, let’s listen to September, 1976…
The Chart
It’s a week at number one for “You Should Be Dancing” by the Bee Gees and “Shake Your Booty” by K.C And The Sunshine Band before Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” has two at the top.
- “A Fifth Of Beethoven” – Walter Murphy
- “A Little Bit More” – Dr. Hook
- “Baby I Love Your Way” – Peter Frampton
- “Devil Woman” – Cliff Richard
- [new] “Disco Duck” – Rick Dees & Cast Of Idiots
- [new] “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” – Elton John & Kiki Dee
- “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” – Elton John And Kiki Dee
- “Get Closer” – Seals And Crofts
- [new] “Getaway” – “Earth Wind & Fire”
- “Getaway” – “Earth Wind And Fire”
- “Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel” – Tavares
- [new] “I Can’t Hear You No More” – Helen Reddy
- [new] “I Only Want To Be With You” – Bay City Rollers
- “I’d Really Love To See You Tonight” – England Dan And John Ford Coley
- “If You Leave Me Now” – Chicago
- “Kiss And Say Goodbye” – Manhattans
- “Let ’em In” – Wings
- “Love Is Alive” – Gary Wright
- “Lowdown” – Boz Scaggs
- [new] “Magic Man” – Heart
- [new] “One Love In My Lifetime” – Diana Ross
- “Play That Funky Music” – Wild Cherry
- “Rock & Roll Music” – Beach Boys
- [new] “Rock N Me” – Steve Miller Band
- “Say You Love Me” – Fleetwood Mac
- “Shake Your Booty” – K.C And The Sunshine Band
- [new] “She’s Gone” – Hall And Oates
- “Shower The People” – James Taylor
- “Still The One” – Orleans
- [new] “Street Singin’” – Lady Flash
- “Summer” – War
- [new] “That’ll Be The Day” – Linda Ronstadt
- “This Masquerade” – George Benson
- “Wham Bam Shang-A-Lang” – Silver
- “Who’d She Coo” – Ohio Players
- “With Your Love” – Jefferson Starship
- “You Should Be Dancing” – Bee Gees
- “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine” – Lou Rawls
[new] = New to the chart this week.
You can listen to the full playlist on Youtube via this link.
The Times
On September 22, 1976, ABC premiered the regular series of Charlie’s Angels, created by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg. Starring Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Kate Jackson, and Jaclyn Smith as private investigators working for the unseen Charles Townsend (voiced by John Forsythe), the show was an explosive overnight ratings triumph.
While critics dismissed the high-glamour action formula as “Jiggle TV,” audiences turned it into an international phenomenon. Fawcett in particular skyrocketed into pop-icon territory – her iconic red-swimsuit poster, released around the same time, went on to sell over 12 million copies, becoming the best-selling poster in history.
On September 17, 1976, NASA officially unveiled its first space shuttle orbiter at the Rockwell International facility in Palmdale, California. Originally slated to be named Constitution in honor of the U.S. Bicentennial, an unprecedented letter-writing campaign by hundreds of thousands of Star Trek fans convinced President Gerald Ford to rename the prototype Enterprise.
In a surreal convergence of aerospace science and pop culture, series creator Gene Roddenberry and the original cast of Star Trek – including Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, and George Takei – attended the rollout ceremony as guests of honor while the Air Force band played Alexander Courage’s iconic Star Trek theme music.
The Take
Novelty song alert! This time its “Disco Duck” by Rick Dees And ‘His Cast Of Idiots’. Written by Dees, “Disco Duck” was inspired by a 1960s novelty dance song called “The Duck”, recorded by Jackie Lee (Earl Lee Nelson) in 1965. According to Dees, it took one day to write the song, but three months to convince anyone to perform it.
Combining orchestral disco styles with a Donald Duck–esque voice (actually that of Yakky Doodle) as the main plot point, the story within “Disco Duck” centers on a man at a dance party who is overcome by the urge to get up and “get down” in a duck-like manner. When the music stops, he sits down, but when he decides to get up and dance again, he finds that everyone in the room is now doing his dance. Heartwarming…
For all its success, “Disco Duck” got very little airplay in Memphis where Dees was a DJ, including at WMPS, the station Dees worked for at the time. Dees was forbidden by station management to play the record on his own show, and rival stations refused to play it for fear of promoting the competition. When Dees merely mentioned the song on his show one morning, WMPS management fired him citing conflict of interest. After a brief mandatory hiatus, Dees was hired on at WMPS’ primary competition, WHBQ, who gave him permission to play his song.
Dees later became famous for this Weekly Top 40 show that was syndicated across the USA and even globally – its one of the first chart shows I remember on the radio.
Then we have a real classic duet with “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” by Elton John & Kiki Dee…
And a couple of “live” TV performances to watch for new charting tracks. “Magic Man” by Heart on UK’s Top of the Pops:
And “She’s Gone” by Hall And Oates on The Old Grey Whistle Test.
The latter was a show that ran on the BBC from ’71 to ’88 that, unlike ToTP, I can’t remember. I have come across it before but just sought to understood the name…
Launched on BBC2, the series focused on albums, rather than chart hits covered on BBC1 by Top of the Pops. According to presenter Bob Harris, it derived its name from a Tin Pan Alley phrase from years before. When they got the first pressing of a record they would play it to people they called “the old greys” – doormen in grey suits. Any song the doormen could remember and whistle, having heard it just once or twice, had passed the old grey whistle test.
Now go listen to the full playlist on Youtube via this link.