Raise All Kinds Of Candy To The Stars

The seventies begin with a glance back to 1963, when Ruby and The Romantics made the Top 30 with their song “Hey There Lonely Boy.” Former child star Holman had been recording since 1962, had already amassed several useful records, including Northern Soul favourite “Eddie’s My Name,” and appears to have sung in early manifestations of The Delfonics and The Stylistics, but “Hey There Lonely Girl” was his moment, a fabulous, dreamlike rhapsody of romantic redemption, so flawlessly done that you don’t initially notice his extraordinary falsetto or wonder at all about androgyny. Yet Holman’s falsetto is one of the best there is, technically adept and emotionally satisfying, a clear precursor of Russell Thompkins, Jr., and in this context the song can be interpreted as an invitation to one battle-scarred casualty of a tumultuous decade to seek sanctuary in the (hopefully) better light of a new one. Date Record Made Number Two: 21 February 1970 Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 1...

In Britain, the last number two of the sixties was “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town” by Kenny Rogers and The First Edition – downbeat (in mood if not in key or tempo), introspective, menacing, fearful. In contrast, America saw out the decade with a defiant upbeat flourish. It is not generally known that after Al Kooper quit BS&T, Laura Nyro was approached ahead of David Clayton-Thomas to be their new singer; she apparently was in a relationship with bassist Jim Fielder and was friendly with drummer Bobby Colomby. However, after consulting with her manager, David Geffen, she opted to continue her own solo career, and given subsequent masterpieces such as Eli And The Thirteenth Confession and New York Tendaberry , who is to say she was wrong? Nyro recorded “And When I Die” as a teenager in 1966, for her first album More Than A New Discovery (or, as we have it on CD, The First Songs ) as a fairly standard gospel workout. She sold the song for $5000 to Peter, Paul an...

“Sam Cooke lives,” it was said of his nephew at the time. Then again, so did – and, at the time of writing, still does – Tony Orlando. If you must hear the song, try the excellent 1970 cover by Jamaica-to-Toronto singer Wayne McGhie (who passed away last July ) and The Sounds Of Joy, who make it sound as though The Band gave it a good, benign going-over: Date Record Made Number Two: 22 November 1969 Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 1 Record At Number One: “Wedding Bell Blues” by The Fifth Dimension UK Chart Position: None

Fresh from their triumph at Woodstock, the Family Stone immediately set to work on a new conceptual album, although for one reason or another only three tracks were completed; this one, and the 1970 double-sided number one “Thank You (Falettin’ Me Be Mice Elf Again)”/”Everybody Is A Star,” all of which appeared on their 1970 Greatest Hits album (this was very much a last-minute substitute for a new LP, but is one of the least dispensable LPs of which I can think). Hence “Hot Fun” could be seen as an attempt by the band to reach out to their new, wider audience – or perhaps to disturb them in deeper ways. On its surface, “Hot Fun” is a rolling, anthemic thing with some trademark jazz changes which must have inspired the youthful Prince, complete with a 6/8 staccato piano which could have emerged from a fifties Platters record. The record seems to fit in with that period’s general move towards sunshine pop, but is actually a very subtle subversion of it. Over fanfares o...

The story of Jean Brodie is one which perhaps could only have taken place in Edinburgh. It is very difficult to picture it set in Glasgow – for her brutalist equivalent in the West, see Patrick Doyle in Kelman’s A Disaffection . The two are morally not that far apart since, to paraphrase Kelman, Miss Brodie is dangerous to herself and the weans she professes to teach on a daily basis. Those who imagine a pre- Dead Poets Society halcyon era of golden rulebook-out-the-window teaching may be subtly startled by Muriel Spark’s cumulatively quite unforgiving (if frequently very funny) prose. Few people are less capable of teaching than Jean Brodie. The film of The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie was adapted from Jay Prosser Allen’s 1966 adaptation of the book (which in itself had initially been serialised in The New Yorker ) which was not really the same as the novel; sections are pulled out of context for dramatic impact, and the final melodramatic showdown between Brodie and Sandy...