More Top Hits From 1971 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Take Me Home, Country Roads

This is one of the very few songs John Denver recorded where he was not the principle composer. It was written by Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert while driving through West Virginia on their way to the east coast. They were also musicians, part of a group named Fat City, and with Denver as the featured vocalist in a one-off venture, they recorded the song together. Prior to recording it, Denver did assist in polishing up the product and, as such, received co-writing credit. Later, Fat City became The Starland Vocal Band and would have their own big hit in 1976 with "Afternoon Delight". Of course, by then, Denver was a mega-star and would remain so until the early 1980s when he scaled back on his recording to pursue his interest in humanitarian and various ecological issues.

He tragically lost his life in 1997 when the light aircraft he was piloting crashed off the California coast.

Answer: Me And Bobby McGee

Among the tidbits about this song:
1. The hit version by Janis Joplin was cut on September 30, 1970. She died of a heroin overdose four days later at the age of 27.
2. Only two other recordings of the rock era (1955 onward) were posthumous Number One hits: "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay" by Otis Redding in 1968, and Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" in 1973.
3. Although this was her chart debut in the Top 40, Joplin did have a significant hit in 1969 with "Kozmic Blues" but it stalled at Number 41 on the Hot 100.
4. Among the artists to record this song prior to Joplin's hit being released were Roger Miller, Gordon Lightfoot and Kristofferson himself. Miller's version reached Number 12 on the country charts in 1969. Kristofferson recorded the song on his debut album "Kristofferson" in 1970 but the album went nowhere. After this song became a hit by Joplin, the album was re-released and renamed "Me And Bobby McGee". Then the LP became a big seller and climbed to Number 43 on the album charts. Lightfoot's version was included on his million selling 1970 LP "Sit Down Young Stranger" that peaked at Number 12 on the album charts. Ry Cooder played bottleneck guitar on this track. It was released as a single in Canada, received significant airplay and was a far superior rendition in my opinion.
5. The last charting cover of the song was recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis. It eked into the Top 40, on the number, in January 1972.

Answer: Rose Garden

This would be Lynn Anderson's first and only foray onto the pop chart's Top 40. Her performance on the country charts was another issue. In a recording career spanning over twenty years from 1967 to 1988, she racked up 44 charting singles, four of them Number One hits.

The daughter of country singer Liz Anderson, she was born in 1947 in Grand Forks, N.D. but moved to Sacramento as a child when her mother sought to advance her career in a bigger milieu. Lynn gravitated to the music industry naturally and often sang back-up on her mother's demos.

She also became an accomplished equestrian earning the California Horse Show Queen title in 1966. "Rose Garden" was written by Joe South, a prolific songwriter famous for such gems as "Walk A Mile In My Shoes", "Games People Play" and "Birds Of A Feather" all of which he, himself, charted with.

He also wrote "Hush" for Deep Purple and "Down In The Boondocks" for Billy Joe Royal.

Answer: Joan Baez

Born in New York City in 1941, Joan first came into prominence with an appearance at the initial Newport Folk Festival in 1959 and that exposure led to a contract with the Vanguard label. Each of her first three LPs sold a million copies and remained on Billboard's album charts for over two years. I bought those albums at the time and there were two things that endeared me to them. One was her voice, a three octave soprano totally unique to the era. The second was the content of her albums... she was a straight acoustic traditionalist and much of her material consisted of English ballads that were centuries old. No one else did that stuff!

Things would soon change. As part of the Greenwich Village scene in the early 1960s, she recognized the obvious talents of colleagues like Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs and her subsequent albums drew more and more upon contemporary resources. Her final session with Vanguard records culminated with this hit single written by Robbie Robertson of the Canadian group, The Band. She would only have one more Top 40 hit, the self penned "Diamonds And Rust" dealing with the romantic liaison she had with Dylan during those Greenwich Village years. It peaked at Number 35 in 1975. Baez has continued to be active in the studio and in concerts over the years including a CD release early in 2007.

No conversation regarding Baez could be complete without mention of her social activism. It's dubious that there has been a celebrity more engaged with such a variety of causes as she has been over the past four decades. In the early 1960s, it was civil rights and she was among Martin Luther King's staunchest allies, joining the march on Washington with him in 1963 and performing "We Shall Overcome" during the demonstration. She's a devoted anti-war critic speaking out against U.S. involvement in Viet Nam years ago and in more recent times, the Gulf War and the campaign in Iraq. Human rights have always been at the forefront of her concerns. She devoted much of her time to the formation of Amnesty International in the U.S. in the early 1970s and later created her own agency, Humanitas International, which monitored governments that abused the civil rights of their citizens, most prominently the communist regime in Viet Nam and Pinochet's Chile. Finally, she's been outspoken in her opposition to capital punishment, her support of gay rights, and has recently been involved in efforts to conserve the environment, primarily the redwood forests in California.

Answer: Ain't No Sunshine

After the string of "I know's", Bill Withers laments "Hey, I oughta leave the young thing alone, but ain't no sunshine when she's gone"

Withers joined the U.S. Navy when he was 17, remained in the service for nine years and upon his discharge, settled in L.A. in 1967. He commenced employment with the Lockheed Aircraft Company making toilet seats for Boeing 747s and spent his evenings composing songs and recording demos. Ultimately, he came to the attention of Booker T. Jones who agreed to produce Withers' first album from which this hit was culled as a single release. He continued to record until 1985, charting a total of six top 40 hits altogether. Thereafter, he would occasionally tour with Grover Washington Jr. but it seems that he retired from show business sometime during the 1990s.

Answer: Mr. Bojangles

This Mr. Bojangles was not the famous entertainer who appeared in several Shirley Temple movies, Bill "Mr. Bojangles" Robinson, but another old busker who went by that name. Jerry Jeff Walker, the composer of this song, was something of a free spirited renegade in his younger days and he met this Mr. Bojangles in a drunk tank in New Orleans in the early 1960s. Essentially, the lyrics reflect the conversation the two had while incarcerated.

This hit version was recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. They formed in 1965 and had a minor Number 45 hit in 1967 with "Buy For Me The Rain". Subsequent releases were commercial flops and they disbanded in 1969. With some personnel adjustments, they reformed in 1970, recorded the album "Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy" from which this single was taken, and haven't looked back since, although most of their releases have been oriented to the "country" market. The black entertainer alluded to in the question was Sammy Davis Jr. who adopted the song and gave it an emotive rendering whenever he performed it.

Answer: If You Could Read My Mind

Gordon Lightfoot was the artist and he would go on to have a handful of charting hits later in the decade, most notably the Number One "Sundown" in 1974 and the Number Two "Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" a couple of years later. I was a huge fan of his during the mid to late 1960s, totally enamored with his laid back folksy style and lyrics that delved into the emotions that teenagers like me experienced.

His '70s stuff was decidedly more commercial and you can't argue with success but when I pull one of his albums off the rack, it'll be one of the older ones! Another hard liver in his prime, he encountered serious health issues in the 1990s but managed to pull through and with the new millennium, continues to compose and perform for his legion of devotees.

Answer: Help Me Make It Through The Night

Unbelievably, Sammi Smith quit school at the age of 11 in 1954 to sing in honky-tonks in the Oklahoma area, was married at the age of 15 and had four children in short order before achieving success in the early 1970s, primarily on the country music charts where this song hit Number One. To a much smaller level, it reminds one of the Loretta Lynn story! Smith had a steady string of middling country chart successes throughout the 1970s and from 1973 to 1975, was a member of "the outlaws", a loose confederation of country music singers established by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.

She passed away in 2005 at the age of 61.

Answer: Your Song

It's difficult, if not impossible, to condense Elton John's career in a few brief lines. Heck, his Wikipedia entry, if printed, would probably yield 20 pages. Suffice it to say that during his most successful years, from late 1970 to 1996, he produced enough recorded material with sufficient chart success to rank third among the most popular artists of the rock era. Only Elvis and The Beatles have been deemed more successful - that's pretty elite company!

Answer: Wild World

Although this was Cat Stevens' first Top 40 hit, he actually recorded a song in 1967 that made an appearance on Billboard's Bubbling Under chart, "Matthew And Son" that, for the record, peaked at Number 115. It was, however, a Number Two hit in the U.K. and he had several hits there before his breakthrough in North America. His highest Billboard charting successes were two Number Six hits, "Morning Has Broken" in 1972 and a cover of Sam Cooke's "Another Saturday Night" in 1974. In 1977, he converted to the Islam faith and retired from the music business a couple of years later. After a hiatus of 27 years, he recorded a new CD of original compositions in 2006, his return to the studio stimulated, he said, when he observed that people were still emotionally touched in this era from his music from the 1970s.

Most of the songs chosen for this quiz were selected because of their lyrical hooks that seemed to offer good opportunities for quiz takers familiar with 1971 music to do well. But many more artists made their chart debuts in 1971 with songs that were rated among the top 100 of the year. Here's a comprehensive list of those other artists and their songs. How many of them can you recall?

16th - Mr. Big Stuff by Jean Knight (only Top 40 hit)
19th - Want Ads by Honey Cone
20th - Treat Her Like A Lady by Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose
22nd - Smiling Faces Sometimes by Undisputed Truth (only Top 40 hit)
25th - Groove Me by King Floyd
31st - Amos Moses by Jerry Reed
33rd - Tired Of Being Alone by Al Green
34th - Put Your Hand In The Hand by Ocean (only Top 40 hit)
35th - Do You Know What I Mean by Lee Michaels
41st - Signs by The Five Man Electrical Band
42nd - I've Found Someone Of My Own by Free Movement (only Top 40 hit)
48th - It Don't Come Easy by Ringo Starr
50th - Don't Pull Your Love by Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds
53rd - Chick-A-Boom by Daddy Dewdrop (only Top 40 hit)
63rd - Superstar by Murray Head
67th - Me And You And A Dog Named Boo by Lobo
70th - Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get by The Dramatics
72nd - Stay Awhile by The Bells (only Top 40 hit)
74th - That's The Way I Always Heard It Should Be by Carly Simon
77th - Easy Loving by Freddie Hart (only Top 40 hit)
78th - I Don't Know How To Love Him by Helen Reddy
79th - I Hear You Knocking by Dave Edmunds
80th - Sweet City Woman by The Stampeders
86th - One Toke Over The Line by Brewer & Shipley (only Top 40 hit)
88th - Never Ending Song Of Love by Delaney & Bonnie & Friends
89th - She's Not Just Another Woman by The 8th Day (only Top 40 hit)
90th - I Love You For All Seasons by The Fuzz (only Top 40 hit)
100th - Desiderata by Les Crane (only Top 40 hit)

Whew!