Super Seventies RockSite's Seventies Daily Music Chronicle

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May 1974

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  1
The Carpenters perform at a White House state dinner at the request of Pres. Nixon in honor of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt.
2
Congress approves the creation of the Federal Energy Administration to monitor gas rationing and oil company profits and to administer and advise on further conservation.

Wielding the eternally politically incorrect N-word, Richard Pryor blasts into fame with his landmark album, That Nigger's Crazy. Recorded live at Don Cornelius's Soul Train, the manic funnyman delivers a topical stew of political, racial, and social commentary with plenty of wide-eyed, gleeful vulgarity. It goes platinum and wins a Grammy, feats Pryor repeats with his follow-up, ...Is It Something That I Said?

3
4
Top of the LP charts: The Sting (Original Soundtrack) (pop album).

The Top Five
1. "The Loco-Motion" - Grand Funk
2. "TSOP" - MFSB and the Three Degrees
3. "Bennie and the Jets" - Elton John
4. "The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me" - Gladys Knight & the Pips
5. "Dancing Machine" - Jackson 5

5
6
The Senate blocks the Defense Department's plans to give $266 million in military aid to South Vietnam.
7
8
Graham Bond, one of British rock's key figures, is found dead under a stationary train in a London subway station. Bond's early-Sixties group, the Graham Bond Organisation, included such notables of U.K. rock as Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and John McLaughlin. Bond had just recently quit heroin, and had been hospitalized for a month for treatment of a nervous breakdown. It is not clear whether Bond has committed suicide, died accidentally or was a victim of foul play.
9
Bruce Springsteen delivers a performance at Boston's Harvard Square Theatre that inspires Rolling Stone editor/critic Jon Landau to exult, "I have seen rock & roll's future, and his name is Bruce Springsteen." Landau will eventually go on to become the Boss' manager/producer.

Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Melanie and other concerned musicians participate in a "Friends of Chile" benefit at New York's Felt Forum. The show's purpose is to raise legal-aid funds for Chilean refugees and political prisoners. "You are not here to see Bob Dylan," Ochs informs the audience of 4,600 early on. The concert nets $30,000.

The House Judiciary Committee begins active hearings on impeachment proceedings. The next day, White House press secretary Ron Ziegler reaffirms that President Nixon has no intention of resigning.

10
New Jersey funk band Kool and the Gang's Wild and Peaceful album, their seventh in five years, goes gold. The album features three top-selling singles: "Jungle Boogie" (#4 on the pop chart), "Hollywood Swinging" (#6) and "Funky Stuff" (#29). Originally a jazz-oriented band, Kool and the Gang began moving toward R&B in the early Seventies, and by the time of Wild and Peaceful had perfected a protodisco style in which "party" vocal chants and staccato horn fills sparred over a stark, heavy, metronomic funk rhythm.
11
12
13
More than fifty persons are hurt when youths start hurling bottles outside a Jackson 5 concert at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. Forty-three are arrested.
14
Three Dog Night's "The Show Must Go On" becomes the hugely successful Top Forty vocal trio's last gold record. The song, which reaches #4 on the pop chart, is also their last Top Twenty single. The group had a total of eleven gold records, three of which -- "Joy to the World," "Mama Told Me Not to Come" and "Black and White" -- hit Number One on the pop chart.
15
Bill Wyman, the so-called "quiet" Rolling Stone, releases his first solo LP, Monkey Grip. It is the first solo disc by a member of the group.

Frank Zappa and his wife announce the birth of their third child, a boy named Ahmet Rodan, after the Japanese movie monster who lived on a steady diet of 707s.
16
17
L.A. police kill six SLA members, but Patty Hearst is not among them. A 16-month hiding period begins for Hearst and the other surviving SLA members.
18
Novelty-songwriter Ray Stevens tops the charts with "The Streak," a song about the bare-all craze. In recent issues, Rolling Stone reported that Todd Rundgren had pleaded with a college crowd to save their stripping for after the show, at which time he joined in. The magazine also described rock fans streaking through concerts by Yes, Gregg Allman (promoter Bill Graham was recognized as one culprit) and the Beach Boys (where two looked conspicuously like Mike Love and Dennis Wilson).

The Top Five
1. "The Streak" - Ray Stevens
2. "Dancing Machine" - Jackson 5
3. "The Entertainer" - Marvin Hamlisch
4. "The Loco-Motion" - Grand Funk
5. "The Show Must Go On" - Three Dog Night

19
20
21
One year after his firing from Columbia Records, Clive Davis is hired by Bell Records as a consultant.
22
The Stylistics have the biggest hit of their career with "You Make Me Feel Brand New," an achingly tender ballad that hits #2. The disc goes gold.
23
According to Rolling Stone, two would-be promoters, George T. McGinis and Archie McIntosh, are indicted on federal mail-fraud charges in connection with a mail-order ticket offering for an "Elton John" concert, to be held June 8. That's Elten with an e, mind you, not an o, as the real Elton spells it. Authorities confiscate about $11,000 in checks and money orders as evidence.
24
NBC's The Girl with Something Extra is canceled after one short season leaving Sally Field and John Davidson with something less.

Jazz pianist, bandleader and composer Edward "Duke" Ellington dies.

25
26
A teenage girl dies, three others are hospitalized and more than 1,000 persons are treated by ambulance orderlies afer a David Cassidy concert at London's White City athletic stadium. The head of the British Safety Council labels the show the "suicide concert" -- four of six girls taken to a hospital are admitted, and one of them suffers from uncontrolled hysteria. Bernadette Wheelen, 14, suffers cardiac arrest and dies four days later. "I do feel responsible," says Cassidy.
27
28
Emmy Awards go to M*A*S*H, The Carol Burnett Show and ABC's Wide World of Sports, and to Cicely Tyson for her role in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.
29
The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour airs its last show on CBS. This repeat episode stars Joe Namath, the Righteous Brothers, and features regulars Bobby Hatfield, Terri Garr, Billy Van, Peter Cullen, and Freeman King.
30
31
With Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's help, Israel and Syria sign a cease-fire agreement to halt the Yom Kippur War. Years of conflict and negotiation will follow, including the presence of UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights, Israeli attacks on Palestinian refugee camps in Southern Lebanon as PLO attacks escalate and Kissinger's much-publicized "shuttle diplomacy" program.

The Supreme Court informs new special prosecutor Leo Jaworski that it will hear his request for complete access to all Watergate-related White House documents.

 

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