Don’s Top 10 From January 4, 1975

(Re-add at 10) Congrats to Al Green for his Kennedy Center Honors inclusion. The highest entertainment honor this country gives! Well-deserved.

(#14 last week) Recorded on a farm in Nashville, hence the title, altough it was actually a man named Curly they were at. The flip side was even more blatantly country-sounding, "Sally G".

(#6 last week) Haunting and unusual-sounding, this is the Helen Reddy hit for people who didn't like Helen Reddy hits. Reddy said that  "Angie Baby" was the one song she never had to push radio stations into playing. Written by the late Alan O'Day, who hit #1 as an artist in 1977 with "Undercover Angel".

(#3 last week) This is the hit that gave Bobby Vinton the nickname "The Polish Prince". Ironically, Vinton adapted this from a GERMAN song!

(#7 last week) Swan was a one-hit wonder as a singer, but had another hit as a songwriter, the 1962 top 10 hit "Lover Please" by Clyde McPhatter. Very catchy tune that went #1 nationally on both the pop and country charts.

(#10 last week) The only Beatles cover song to reach #1 on the Billboard Chart, Elton almost never plays this live in concert. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is a song that I never do in a set at a concert simply because it reminds me too much of John Lennon. This is the same with Empty Garden". Recorded at the Caribou Ranch in Colorado, it featured backing vocals and guitar by Lennon under the pseudonym Dr. Winston O'Boogie (Winston being Lennon's middle name).

(#5 last week) "Cat's In The Cradle" was based upon a poem written by Harry's wife Sandy; the poem itself was inspired by the uncomfortable relationship between her first husband, James Cashmore, & his father, a New York City polititical figure. She was also inspired by a country music song she had heard on the radio.Harry has also said that the song was about his father-son relationship with his son, Josh, saying that "Frankly, this song scares me to death". Fathers & sons everywhere were touched enough to make this song a classic.

(#4 last week) Hard to imagine, but song co-writer Peter Radcliffe originally wrote "You're the First, The Last, My Everything" as a country song with the title "You're My First, You're My Last, My In-Between", & went unrecorded for over 20 years. Barry White recorded it as a disco song, keeping most of the structure and 2/3 of the title, but he rewrote the lyrics.

(#2 last week) The song was written and produced by the famous duo Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff. It was one of the most successful recordings of the "Philly Soul" era. The Three Degrees had been together since the late 60s & had charted on the pop side with a remake of the 50s hit "Maybe" in the summer of 1970, but this was their biggest hit. Just months earlier, the ladies contributed to the #1 hit "TSOP" with their singing "it's time to get down!" over & over at the end of the song.

(#1 last week; 2nd week at #1) Perfectly timed to hit the then-budding disco craze & the then-peaking martial arts craze, the song was originally meant to be a B-side to "I Want to Give You My Everything".The producer Biddu originally hiredCarl Douglas to sing "I Want to Give You My Everything" but needed something to record for the B-side,& asked Douglas if he had any lyrics they could use. Douglas showed several, out of which Biddu chose the one that would later be called "Kung Fu Fighting" and worked out a melody for it without taking it too seriously. After having spent over two hours recording the A-side and then taking a break, "Kung Fu Fighting" was recorded quickly in the last ten minutes of studio time, in only two takes, due to a three-hour time constraint for the entire session. According to Biddu, "Kung Fu Fighting was the B-side so I went over the top on the 'huhs' & the 'hahs' and the chopping sounds. It was a B-side: who was going to listen?" After hearing both songs, Pye Records insisted that "Kung Fu Fighting" should be the A-side instead. Good ears!