Post by erik on Feb 13, 2012 9:47:59 GMT -5
Coming off having won her second Grammy, appearing at a presidential inaugural ball, and having albums that were selling ridiculously well, Linda was, however, not content to rest on her laurels. During the first half of 1977, she enhanced her reputation as one of the premiere backing vocalists, appearing on her good friend Neil Young's American Stars 'N Bars, along with Emmy, and another new friend, Nicolette Larson; the three women made up Neil's backing vocal trio known alternately as The Bullets and The Saddlebags. Linda also had to fight off the tabloid rumors, including the one about her having been offered $1 million by Larry Flynt to appear in the buff on the cover of Hustler. That never happened (thankfully), because she remembered the advice her father gave her when she left Tucson for L.A. in 1964: "Never let anyone take your picture with your clothes off."
Even so, Linda was cultivating a sexy but not sexually threatening image that year. And before the summer was over, she had released what would be her most successful studio album ever, Simple Dreams.
This was as musically stripped down an album as she had done in a while, but also as eclectic as all get out: a tale about an L.A. junkie, courtesy of Warren Zevon ("Carmelita"); a J.D. Souther lament ("Simple Man, Simple Dream", which served as the album's de facto title track); a ballad by her lead guitarist Waddy Wachtel ("Maybe I'm Right"); an Appalachian folk ballad ("I Never Will Marry", with Linda on acoustic guitar and her pal Dolly Parton on harmony, that would hit #8 on the C&W singles chart the following spring); an Old West folk song ("Old Paint", again with Linda on guitar); and the wrenching "Sorrow Lives Here", written by Eric Kaz.
Then, of course, there were the hits; and this is where everyone involved, from Linda and Peter Asher on up to the execs at Elektra/Asylum, showed that they had the nerves of riverboat gamblers. Linda's aching version of Roy Orbison's 1963 hit "Blue Bayou" came out as a single at the beginning of September; and only three weeks later, her spunky, amped-up rockabilly version of Buddy Holly's 1958 hit "It's So Easy" was released as well. It seemed weird for the folks at Asylum to do this, to have two singles by one artist somehow "competing" with one another. But the end result was riotously successful.
BLUE BAYOU
09/10/77--#84 (her seventeenth Hot 100 entry)
09/17/77--#74
09/24/77--#64
10/01/77--#51
10/08/77--#40 (her eighth Top 40 hit)
10/15/77--#36
10/22/77--#32
10/29/77--#21
11/05/77--#16
11/12/77--#11
11/19/77--#9 (her fourth Top 10 hit)
11/26/77--#8
12/03/77--#5
12/10/77--#4
12/17/77--#3
12/24/77--#3
12/31/77--#3
01/07/78--#3
01/14/78--#13
01/21/78--#26
01/28/78--#41
02/04/78--#56
02/11/78--#98
IT'S SO EASY
10/08/77--#77 (her eighteenth Hot 100 entry)
10/15/77--#65
10/22/77--#49
10/29/77--#34 (her ninth Top 40 hit)
11/05/77--#29
11/12/77--#22
11/19/77--#16
11/26/77--#10 (her fifth Top 10 hit)
12/03/77--#9
12/10/77--#5
12/17/77--#5
12/24/77--#5
12/31/77--#5
01/07/78--#15
01/14/78--#30
01/21/78--#57
01/28/78--#59
02/04/78--#97
A pair of movie smashes, namely Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life", and the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love?", were what kept Linda from getting to the summit of the Billboard Hot 100 at Christmastime with "Blue Bayou", though the song did crest at #2 on the C&W singles chart and #3 on the Adult Contemporary chart (becoming her first-ever million-selling single), while "It's So Easy" got to #37 AC, and #81 C&W. But Linda established a troika of benchmarks with those two songs. No female singer before her had ever had two songs within striking distance of #1 simultaneously before. No female singer had ever had two songs adjacent to one another on the Top Five, as happened on 12/10/77 ("Blue Bayou" at #4; "It's So Easy" at #5). And nobody had managed to put two singles in the Top Five on the Billboard Hot 100 since April 1964, when the Beatles owned the entire Top Five. This, and the fact that Simple Dreams, having spent ten weeks in the #2 position on the album chart behind Fleetwood Mac's Rumors that fall, sat atop that same chart for the entire month of December (also spending one week at #1 on the C&W Album Chart), made 1977 the most successful year of Linda's entire career. Linda also got Grammy nods for Record Of The Year for "Blue Bayou" (which went to her good buddies the Eagles, for 'Hotel California") and for Best Pop Female Vocal (Barbra Streisand won for "Evergreen"). Simple Dreams won for Best Album Package, and Linda's producer Peter Asher snagged Producer of the Year honors.
Due to the Mexican lilt of "Blue Bayou", Linda later re-recorded a Spanish vocal over the existing musical track with a translation by her father. Although this version ("Lago Azul") did extremely well, especially in Mexico and on Spanish-language stations in the western United States, not every Spanish-speaking listener was amused. According to Linda, one irate listener from Spain said she sounded like "a hermaphrodite in a time machine."
Amidst all this, Linda's stock as the premiere female singer of her generation shot right through the roof, with a tour for the album that was among the most successful of all of 1977, culminating with her end-of-summer stint at the Universal Amphitheatre in L.A. in which she did twelve straight sold-out shows, a record for that venue that still stands to this day. On October 14th, in front of 58,000, and with millions more watching on TV, she gamely sang the National Anthem at Game 3 of that year's World Series between the Dodgers and the New York Yankees at Dodger Stadium; and though she was reluctant to do it at first, she was won over when the Dodgers gave her an honorary jacket to wear.
And even though Linda was kind of worried about giving off the image of a hooker with her dress wear (something not lost on Mr. Blackwell, who put her on his Worst Dressed List two years straight), she need not have worried. She showed a lot of spunk, even going so far as to don what would be one of her many iconic images, that of a Cub Scout:
In the meantime, Linda continued to musically shock. After years of whining from critics that she was so self-pitying, Linda dipped into Warren Zevon's bag of tricks and came out with her grisliest and most blackly comic song ever.
POOR, POOR, PITIFUL ME
01/28/78--#78 (her nineteenth Hot 100 entry)
02/04/78--#65
02/11/78--#52
02/18/78--#41
02/25/78--#36 (her tenth Top 40 hit)
03/04/78--#32
03/11/78--#31
03/18/78--#49
03/25/78--#98
Despite the song's only modest chart performance, in comparison with its two predecessors (in fact, it entered the Hot 100 when "Blue Bayou" and "It's So Easy" were still on it, giving Linda three songs on the Hot 100 at the same time), "Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me" would remain one of Linda's greatest raise-the-roof hits, with its being more or less an ironic ode to suicide and gang rape, and an irony nowhere near as lost on Linda as critics thought. It also peaked at #27 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and got enough country airplay to peak at #46 on the C&W chart (eighteen years later, Canadian-born "cat in the hat" Terri Clark would cover it).
The fourth hit from Simple Dreams was something that Linda did as a good-natured favor to Mick Jagger, who thought (as did so many critics, and even some fans) that she did too many ballads. He offered her his band's 1972 hit "Tumbling Dice", and it turned out to be one of those numbers that people would always remember Linda for, even if its chart performance didn't necessarily show it.
TUMBLING DICE
04/22/78--#70 (her twentieth Hot 100 entry)
04/29/78--#60
05/06/78--#50
05/13/78--#43
05/20/78--#37 (her eleventh Top 40 hit)
05/27/78--#32
06/03/78--#32
06/10/78--#93
Both "Tumbling Dice" and "I Never Will Marry" were paired together, and both also hit #30 on the Adult Contemporary Chart.
During early 1978, Linda also made her debut movie appearance in FM, which was about the efforts of a group of DJs at an ultra-popular L.A. radio station to keep their station from turning into an infomercial outlet. Although it was not a blockbuster hit, it did well enough at the box office, and its soundtrack did even better. Live versions of "Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me" and "Tumbling Dice", from Linda's appearance in Houston in November 1977, were culled for the soundtrack, which hit #5 on the album chart. And although movie audiences didn't get to hear all of it (and it wasn't on the soundtrack album), Linda paid tribute to one of her idols, the King, by tremulously reviving Elvis' classic 1956 ballad "Love Me Tender." It seemed quite appropriate, since Linda had begun her Simple Dreams tour right about the time that Elvis died his tragically early death.
She would go back to the studio in the late spring to put that song, and more, onto another album that would shatter a few records. That album will be looked at next time.
Even so, Linda was cultivating a sexy but not sexually threatening image that year. And before the summer was over, she had released what would be her most successful studio album ever, Simple Dreams.
This was as musically stripped down an album as she had done in a while, but also as eclectic as all get out: a tale about an L.A. junkie, courtesy of Warren Zevon ("Carmelita"); a J.D. Souther lament ("Simple Man, Simple Dream", which served as the album's de facto title track); a ballad by her lead guitarist Waddy Wachtel ("Maybe I'm Right"); an Appalachian folk ballad ("I Never Will Marry", with Linda on acoustic guitar and her pal Dolly Parton on harmony, that would hit #8 on the C&W singles chart the following spring); an Old West folk song ("Old Paint", again with Linda on guitar); and the wrenching "Sorrow Lives Here", written by Eric Kaz.
Then, of course, there were the hits; and this is where everyone involved, from Linda and Peter Asher on up to the execs at Elektra/Asylum, showed that they had the nerves of riverboat gamblers. Linda's aching version of Roy Orbison's 1963 hit "Blue Bayou" came out as a single at the beginning of September; and only three weeks later, her spunky, amped-up rockabilly version of Buddy Holly's 1958 hit "It's So Easy" was released as well. It seemed weird for the folks at Asylum to do this, to have two singles by one artist somehow "competing" with one another. But the end result was riotously successful.
BLUE BAYOU
09/10/77--#84 (her seventeenth Hot 100 entry)
09/17/77--#74
09/24/77--#64
10/01/77--#51
10/08/77--#40 (her eighth Top 40 hit)
10/15/77--#36
10/22/77--#32
10/29/77--#21
11/05/77--#16
11/12/77--#11
11/19/77--#9 (her fourth Top 10 hit)
11/26/77--#8
12/03/77--#5
12/10/77--#4
12/17/77--#3
12/24/77--#3
12/31/77--#3
01/07/78--#3
01/14/78--#13
01/21/78--#26
01/28/78--#41
02/04/78--#56
02/11/78--#98
IT'S SO EASY
10/08/77--#77 (her eighteenth Hot 100 entry)
10/15/77--#65
10/22/77--#49
10/29/77--#34 (her ninth Top 40 hit)
11/05/77--#29
11/12/77--#22
11/19/77--#16
11/26/77--#10 (her fifth Top 10 hit)
12/03/77--#9
12/10/77--#5
12/17/77--#5
12/24/77--#5
12/31/77--#5
01/07/78--#15
01/14/78--#30
01/21/78--#57
01/28/78--#59
02/04/78--#97
A pair of movie smashes, namely Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life", and the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love?", were what kept Linda from getting to the summit of the Billboard Hot 100 at Christmastime with "Blue Bayou", though the song did crest at #2 on the C&W singles chart and #3 on the Adult Contemporary chart (becoming her first-ever million-selling single), while "It's So Easy" got to #37 AC, and #81 C&W. But Linda established a troika of benchmarks with those two songs. No female singer before her had ever had two songs within striking distance of #1 simultaneously before. No female singer had ever had two songs adjacent to one another on the Top Five, as happened on 12/10/77 ("Blue Bayou" at #4; "It's So Easy" at #5). And nobody had managed to put two singles in the Top Five on the Billboard Hot 100 since April 1964, when the Beatles owned the entire Top Five. This, and the fact that Simple Dreams, having spent ten weeks in the #2 position on the album chart behind Fleetwood Mac's Rumors that fall, sat atop that same chart for the entire month of December (also spending one week at #1 on the C&W Album Chart), made 1977 the most successful year of Linda's entire career. Linda also got Grammy nods for Record Of The Year for "Blue Bayou" (which went to her good buddies the Eagles, for 'Hotel California") and for Best Pop Female Vocal (Barbra Streisand won for "Evergreen"). Simple Dreams won for Best Album Package, and Linda's producer Peter Asher snagged Producer of the Year honors.
Due to the Mexican lilt of "Blue Bayou", Linda later re-recorded a Spanish vocal over the existing musical track with a translation by her father. Although this version ("Lago Azul") did extremely well, especially in Mexico and on Spanish-language stations in the western United States, not every Spanish-speaking listener was amused. According to Linda, one irate listener from Spain said she sounded like "a hermaphrodite in a time machine."
Amidst all this, Linda's stock as the premiere female singer of her generation shot right through the roof, with a tour for the album that was among the most successful of all of 1977, culminating with her end-of-summer stint at the Universal Amphitheatre in L.A. in which she did twelve straight sold-out shows, a record for that venue that still stands to this day. On October 14th, in front of 58,000, and with millions more watching on TV, she gamely sang the National Anthem at Game 3 of that year's World Series between the Dodgers and the New York Yankees at Dodger Stadium; and though she was reluctant to do it at first, she was won over when the Dodgers gave her an honorary jacket to wear.
And even though Linda was kind of worried about giving off the image of a hooker with her dress wear (something not lost on Mr. Blackwell, who put her on his Worst Dressed List two years straight), she need not have worried. She showed a lot of spunk, even going so far as to don what would be one of her many iconic images, that of a Cub Scout:
In the meantime, Linda continued to musically shock. After years of whining from critics that she was so self-pitying, Linda dipped into Warren Zevon's bag of tricks and came out with her grisliest and most blackly comic song ever.
POOR, POOR, PITIFUL ME
01/28/78--#78 (her nineteenth Hot 100 entry)
02/04/78--#65
02/11/78--#52
02/18/78--#41
02/25/78--#36 (her tenth Top 40 hit)
03/04/78--#32
03/11/78--#31
03/18/78--#49
03/25/78--#98
Despite the song's only modest chart performance, in comparison with its two predecessors (in fact, it entered the Hot 100 when "Blue Bayou" and "It's So Easy" were still on it, giving Linda three songs on the Hot 100 at the same time), "Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me" would remain one of Linda's greatest raise-the-roof hits, with its being more or less an ironic ode to suicide and gang rape, and an irony nowhere near as lost on Linda as critics thought. It also peaked at #27 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and got enough country airplay to peak at #46 on the C&W chart (eighteen years later, Canadian-born "cat in the hat" Terri Clark would cover it).
The fourth hit from Simple Dreams was something that Linda did as a good-natured favor to Mick Jagger, who thought (as did so many critics, and even some fans) that she did too many ballads. He offered her his band's 1972 hit "Tumbling Dice", and it turned out to be one of those numbers that people would always remember Linda for, even if its chart performance didn't necessarily show it.
TUMBLING DICE
04/22/78--#70 (her twentieth Hot 100 entry)
04/29/78--#60
05/06/78--#50
05/13/78--#43
05/20/78--#37 (her eleventh Top 40 hit)
05/27/78--#32
06/03/78--#32
06/10/78--#93
Both "Tumbling Dice" and "I Never Will Marry" were paired together, and both also hit #30 on the Adult Contemporary Chart.
During early 1978, Linda also made her debut movie appearance in FM, which was about the efforts of a group of DJs at an ultra-popular L.A. radio station to keep their station from turning into an infomercial outlet. Although it was not a blockbuster hit, it did well enough at the box office, and its soundtrack did even better. Live versions of "Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me" and "Tumbling Dice", from Linda's appearance in Houston in November 1977, were culled for the soundtrack, which hit #5 on the album chart. And although movie audiences didn't get to hear all of it (and it wasn't on the soundtrack album), Linda paid tribute to one of her idols, the King, by tremulously reviving Elvis' classic 1956 ballad "Love Me Tender." It seemed quite appropriate, since Linda had begun her Simple Dreams tour right about the time that Elvis died his tragically early death.
She would go back to the studio in the late spring to put that song, and more, onto another album that would shatter a few records. That album will be looked at next time.
