Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies (1974 & 1975)

An old elementary school classmate of mine died a couple of weeks ago. I can't call him a "friend", per se, but he was an essential presence in my childhood experience.

I've mentioned in previous postings that my Navy officer dad's next duty station after the conclusion of our time in Wisconsin was serving as a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. We arrived there that summer, and settled into a two-story townhouse in military housing directly across from one of the main academy gates, directly behind the neighborhood pool and adjacent to the neighborhood of West Annapolis.

West Annapolis is about a forty square block area, bounded by Rowe Boulevard to the south, Weems Creek to the west, the Severn River to the north, and government property along its eastern edge. The neighborhood is pretty much cut off from the rest of the city of Annapolis proper due to its proximity to said "government property" - namely, the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy and the adjacent housing areas for officers and their families stationed there, where I lived. As such, West Annapolis has over the decades developed a somewhat insular, go-it-alone stance among the longtime residents there, not mixing much with regular Annapolitans and maintaining a cool attitude towards the "interloping" military families living just on the other side of the old wooded Baltimore & Annapolis Railroad right-of-way.

However, the young children of area officers had to go to school somewhere. And since the Naval Academy Primary School, a K-through-5 private school located across the Severn at the Naval Station, had limited enrollment, for many years the majority of kids living in Arundel Estates and Perry Circle (the military housing areas) were required to attend local facilities, the first and closest one being West Annapolis Elementary School (WAES). So in 1974, that's where the majority of my siblings and I began our latest academic year.

For the most part, relations between the local youngsters and the relatively more transient military offspring at the school were tranquil. I know that some of the West Annapolis boys and girls considered many from my area as "rich kids" and elitist snobs (believe me, we were most decidedly not!), while some of my Navy acquaintances thought many of the locals were lower-class lowlifes (again, not remotely true). But in those years, that tranquility was constantly being roiled by one boy, Frederick, the Terror of West Annapolis.

Frederick (or "Freddie" as he was more commonly known) was a short, wiry redhead with a fiery temper and rock-hard fists that he seldom hesitated to make use of, if the situation called for it. He was a year behind me in grade; however, for a few years in the early/mid '70s, WAES administration decided to experiment with a new teaching approach whereby instead of having the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grades in four separate classrooms, each classroom would contain a combination of ALL FOUR GRADES. So each individual teacher was were forced to provide instruction to all of the learning levels simultaneously, every day - which must have been a nightmare for them. In hindsight, it was a nutty idea, and I don't recall learning very much that year. WAES finally abandoned that practice before the 1970s ended, segregating the grades into separate classrooms, like most other schools in the nation do. But I went to school there through the brunt of this experimental period... and as 'luck' would have it, Freddie was one of my classmates.

Freddie's fearsome reputation, cultivated by classroom and schoolyard incidents that landed him in the Principal's office several times that year, and nurtured by juvenile word-of-mouth, was such that he became, in many of our minds, the pre-teen 'crime boss' and 'bete noire' of West Annapolis. Outside of attending school there, most Navy kids avoided the neighborhood, especially the area close by Freddie's house, lest they run afoul of "Freddie's gang" of area kids he reportedly controlled.

There used to be a little neighborhood store directly across the street from WAES, on the corner of Melvin Avenue and Annapolis Street about a block away from his home, called Waxman's Grocery. Mr. Waxman was the sour and crotchety proprietor of this old-fashioned one=room store, and he seemed to hate kids (many years later, I learned that Mr. Waxman's son, a WAES graduate, had been killed in Vietnam in his teens shortly after arriving over there as a new enlistee in the late 1960s... so it was then I began to understand Mr. Waxman's demeanor and feel some sympathy for him). Despite his cantankerous nature, children flocked to his shop after classes ended for the day, as Mr. Waxman stocked every brand and variety of popular candy then available - Atomic Fireballs, Mike & Ikes, Lemonheads, Pop Rocks, Marathon bars, Chunky Bars, you name it. The store owner was well aware of the individuals who kept him in business. The store was Ground Zero for the local Wacky Packages craze of the mid-70s; students would buy the packs by the dozen, trading the adhesive parody renditions of popular consumer products with others in the school or otherwise sticking them to their school folders and lockers.

Bubble Yum, the first soft chunk bubble gum, was released by LifeSavers (in limited quantities) in the Western U.S. in late 1974, and the company began a gradual national rollout later that year, with the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area serving as an early East Coast test
market. When it initially appeared, it was shipped to only a few stores in our area in very small quantities, and Waxman's Grocery, with its proven track record of moving vast amounts of confectionery product, was one of the stores selected. When Freddie and his boys discovered this, they staked out Waxman's for hours on end, watching for the delivery trucks and, by their presence, "discouraging" (so to speak) non-neighborhood kids from going there. Freddie's gang would buy up every pack of Bubble Yum available, at 30 cents for a pack of five pieces, then take them to school and resell them to children craving the new gum for upwards of fifty cents to a dollar for each individual chunk. Those guys ended up making a small fortune that winter and spring, until increased product distribution and availability put Bubble Yum in more local stores. But for a long while, they were the preteen Gum Mafia.

As much as I've detailed the fearsome, threatening antics and actions of Freddie and his gang here, I did have some normal interactions with him from time to time. More that once, I recall heading over to West Annapolis to hang out and play with him and his friends, and during the winter he and his crew gathered with the Navy kids sledding down Suicide Hill directly adjacent to Perry Circle, the only decent place to slide in the immediate area. In our few playtimes, a sort of detente existed between us, as it does between kids. Still, Freddie would sometimes suggest we do activities that I wasn't comfortable with, such as shoplift sweets at the local 7-11. In those situations, I would demur, then try to quickly and quietly remove myself from his presence and head back home, as the unspoken threat of drawing the ire of "Freddie's gang" was always present.

The mid-70s period was a transitional period for music. AM radio fare, consisting of lite rock, novelty songs and other lightweight fare, still ruled the airwaves, but harder-edged punk, reggae and hard rock music was bubbling just below the surface, ready to break out. Songs that were giant hits and schoolyard favorites during that time included "Up In A Puff Of Smoke" by an obscure (for the U.S.) British singer named Polly Brown:

For some reason, this song was HUGE as WAES - never did much for me, though (in a related story, Polly Brown never had another charting song in America...).

Another massive song from that time was "Billy, Don't Be A Hero" by Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods:

Although the premise was hokey and overly sentimental (a young woman begs her love not to go off to war, but stay and marry her; he goes anyway and, of course, buys the farm in his first battle), this song still went to #1 in America in the summer of 1974, selling nearly four million copies. However, it was hated as much as it was loved, voted No. 8 on Rolling Stone magazine's readers' poll of "10 Worst Songs of the 1970s".

What I didn't know at the time that this song was a remake of a British hit from earlier that year. Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods were an obscure group of journeymen from Ohio who hadn't had much success in the prior ten years of their music career, until they glommed on to "Billy, Don't Be A Hero", originally penned by a British group, Paper Lace, who took their version to the top of the UK charts just three months prior. Understandably pissed at seeing their thunder and stateside glory stolen by Bo Donaldson et al., Paper Lace quickly released their follow-up single, which made it to US #1 six weeks later, the group's first (and only) American hit - "The Night Chicago Died":

Children couldn't get enough of songs like this back then!

Freddie and I weren't close friends, only casual acquaintances at best, and I didn't keep in close contact with him after I left elementary school and moved on to Bates Junior High the next year. I would, however, continue to hear stories about him from some of my younger friends who still attended WAES - from all reports, his attitude and demeanor didn't change an iota. And after my family left Maryland in the late 1970s, he all but completely faded off of my radar. I learned more about him in recent years through my contact via Facebook with his older brother, who I didn't know at all back during my Annapolis childhood but got to know later. Through him, I learned that after Freddie left high school, he served a short stint as an enlisted Navy man, then quickly returned to the Annapolis area, where for decades he worked as a local handyman and house painter.

My single interaction with Freddie since our school days ended occurred a couple of years ago, when I repeated to his brother a funny (and probably apocryphal) story about a practical joke Freddie reputedly played on one of his West Annapolis cronies, that quickly made the schoolyard rounds. Freddie fired off a blistering response through his brother's thread, angrily denying the legend and castigating me up and down for even INSINUATING that it was true. Mind you, I was retelling the tale of a harmless and minor childhood prank that allegedly occurred... but still, almost fifty years later, it managed to set him off. Apparently, some things - and some people - never change. Freddie's brother is friendly, stable and accomplished, and managed to put together a pretty good life for himself and his family - in other words, the complete opposite of Freddie.

So, as such, I don't have any particularly deep feeling of loss regarding Freddie's demise - he was a bully, and sort of a dick, and from all reports and indications remained so up to his dying day. I wasn't the only one with this reaction; for decades, I've remained in close contact with several of my old Arundel Estates childhood friends. Their feelings on Freddie's death can be summarized in a single comment one of them made to me: "He was the 'bogeyman' for a lot of kids back then." Can't really refute that assessment.

With that being said, Freddie was an integral part of that fondly remembered time and place in my life, and his presence and actions have done little to obscure the happy times I recall living in Annapolis as a child (prior to my return there as a Naval Academy midshipmen almost a decade later). If anything, Freddie was like a grain of sand in an oyster shell - an irritant whose presence still ended up creating something lasting and cherished.

So, in honor of his passing, and in homage to that time, here are a few music compilations from that period that will give you a sense of what was being listened to in the mid-70s. These are part of a forty-volume(!) series of recordings released by Time-Life Music between 1989 and 1999, covering the entirety of the 1970s. I only picked up a few of these, since I had other compilations that covered this same general time period. But the ones provided here, covering 1974 and 1975, are an excellent summation of music from that time.

In case you're wondering, here's the lineup:

Sounds Of The Seventies: 1974:

1. Can't Get Enough – Bad Company
2. Show and Tell – Al Wilson
3. Come and Get Your Love – Redbone
4. I Shot the Sheriff – Eric Clapton
5. Help Me – Joni Mitchell
6. I Can Help – Billy Swan
7. Sha-La-La (Make Me Happy) – Al Green
8. Rock the Boat – The Hues Corporation
9. Bennie and the Jets – Elton John
10. Midnight Rider – Gregg Allman
11. Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd
12. The Loco-Motion – Grand Funk Railroad
13. Smokin' in the Boys' Room – Brownsville Station
14. Rikki Don't Lose That Number – Steely Dan
15. Rock On – David Essex
16. Midnight at the Oasis – Maria Muldaur
17. Kung Fu Fighting – Carl Douglas
18. Keep on Smilin' – Wet Willie
19. Then Came You – Dionne Warwick & The Spinners
20. The Bitch Is Back – Elton John

Sounds Of The Seventies: 1974 - Take Two:

1. Lookin' for a Love – Bobby Womack
2. You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet – Bachman-Turner Overdrive
3. The Joker – Steve Miller Band
4. Until You Come Back to Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do) – Aretha Franklin
5. Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe – Barry White
6. Mockingbird – Carly Simon with James Taylor
7. I've Got to Use My Imagination – Gladys Knight & The Pips
8. Sundown – Gordon Lightfoot
9. Everlasting Love – Carl Carlton
10. Shinin' On – Grand Funk Railroad
11. Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo – Rick Derringer
12. Takin' Care of Business – Bachman-Turner Overdrive
13. Rock Your Baby – George McCrae
14. Sideshow – Blue Magic
15. Haven't Got Time for the Pain – Carly Simon
16. Tin Man – America
17. Dancing Machine – Jackson Five
18. Jungle Boogie – Kool & the Gang
19. Nothing from Nothing – Billy Preston
20. I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song – Jim Croce
21. Radar Love – Golden Earring

Sounds Of The Seventies: 1975:

1. You're No Good – Linda Ronstadt
2. Jackie Blue – Ozark Mountain Daredevils
3. That's the Way (I Like It) – KC & the Sunshine Band
4. Must of Got Lost – J. Geils Band
5. Why Can't We Be Friends? – War
6. Sister Golden Hair – America
7. Philadelphia Freedom – Elton John
8. Black Water – Doobie Brothers
9. Love Is a Rose – Linda Ronstadt
10. How Long – Ace
11. Dance with Me – Orleans
12. Free Bird – Lynyrd Skynyrd
13. You Are So Beautiful – Joe Cocker
14. Feel Like Makin' Love – Bad Company
15. Lady Marmalade – Labelle
16. Pick Up the Pieces – Average White Band
17. Island Girl – Elton John
18. Some Kind of Wonderful – Grand Funk Railroad
19. The Hustle – Van McCoy & Soul City Symphony
20. Let's Do It Again – Staple Singers

Sounds Of The Seventies: 1975 - Take Two:

1. When Will I Be Loved – Linda Ronstadt
2. Bad Time – Grand Funk Railroad
3. Roll On Down the Highway – Bachman-Turner Overdrive
4. Movin' On – Bad Company
5. Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While) – The Doobie Brother
6. They Just Can't Stop It (The Games People Play) – The Spinners
7. L-O-V-E (Love) – Al Green
8. Shining Star – Earth, Wind & Fire
9. Get Down Tonight – KC & the Sunshine Band
10. I'm on Fire – Dwight Twilley
11. SOS – ABBA
12. Shame, Shame, Shame – Shirley & Company
13. Cut the Cake – Average White Band
14. You're the First, the Last, My Everything – Barry White
15. Low Rider – War
16. Fight the Power (Part 1 & 2) – Isley Brothers
17. Bungle in the Jungle – Jethro Tull
18. Only Women Bleed – Alice Cooper
19. Can't Get It Out of My Head – Electric Light Orchestra
20. Poetry Man – Phoebe Snow
21. I'm Not in Love – 10CC

Enjoy these discs, released in 1990 and 1991 (for the "Take Two" versions), and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email links below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

• Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies: 1974: Send Email
• Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies: 1975: Send Email
• Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies: 1974 - Take Two: Send Email
• Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies: 1975 - Take Two: Send Email