Retro Roundup: 1970s hits outside the top 10 Part 77

We now resume after a vacation and change-the-subject break with the more significant non top-10 Billboard pop hits of the 1970s, beginning with a singer more well known for his 1960s country hits.

Jimmy Dean-IOU (#35): A tearjerker if there ever was one that I could not see being released in this day and age, as the world is too cynical. Dean remembers all that his mother did for him from childhood on, compiled in a bunch of IOUs, and concludes with the extra tearjerking fact that they "she had marked the entire bill 'Paid In Full' for just one kiss and four little words, 'Mom, I love you.'" This is a variation of the spoken-word song No Charge, also from the 1970s, in which an ungrateful brat wants to charge his mother for chores he did, and the mother reminds him of all she has done for him. The teary son sees the obvious light and says his bill was "paid in full." What an era for weepy songs!

Kiki Dee-I've Got The Music In Me (#12): A wonderful combination of disco (of sorts) and classic rock, with a very tough-voiced Dee. This should definitely have been a top-10 hit. Of course, Dee was also Elton John's duet partner for the #1 hit Don't Go Breaking My Heart, one of my favourite songs of all time. The video of the latter song was exceptionally charming.

Deep Purple-Woman From Tokyo (#60): Okay, I'm biased, but this is an absolute travesty. In my humble musical opinion, this is by far Deep Purple's best song, with the group's most assured singing and playing, a piano part so pounding and '50s-rockabilly sounding that someone hearing me play the song asked if I was listening to Elvis Presley, and a great semi-psychedelic part in the middle. This should have gone to at least the #5 spot, if not higher. I find it to be a lot more interesting than the great but overplayed Smoke On the Water.

The DeFranco Family- Abra-Ca-Dabra (#32), Save the Last Dance For Me (#18): This Canadian group with child lead singer Tony DeFranco was inevitably considered to be Canada's version of the Osmonds with Donny Osmond. Their three hits, including the #3 Heartbeat-It's A Love Beat, were perfect pop, and their version of the Drifters hit was one of the better, more poppy songs on my cherished first album, K-Tel's Canadian Mint, which really should be reissued in some way.

The Delfonics - Ready Or Not Here I Come (#35): This hit from one of the best soul groups of the late 1960s and early 1970s was sandwiched between two top-tenners, the absolute classics La-La-Means I Love You and Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time). (The latter was so highly regarded that it was the title of a Rhino Records various-artists series of soul songs of the 1970s). Ready Or Not, to me, is just as good, with a very dramatic near-symphonic instrumental start. The problem is that this instrumental part is clearly recorded, while mush of the rest of the song was rather roughly recorded, and the effect is kind of jarring.

John Denver-Fly Away (#13): Denver had plenty of top-10 hits during his early to mid-1970s peak. This late-1975 song should have been one of them, for me mainly because of Olivia Newton-John's gorgeous backing vocal. Interestingly, I first heard Denver's classic Take Me Home, Country Roads in the summer of 1975 in a version by Newton-John on my way to my first year of sleepaway camp, and it stuck in my homesick head all summer. It was the first time I really related to the lyrics of a song.

Next time: Rick Derringer and others.