The Premiere Episode of Chuck Small’s “Who Sings It ? “

Recently, I spent a weekend readjusting the contents of three rooms in my house to better accommodate a collection of scrapbooks I’ve created over the years.

This became one of those projects where one task spawns another.

By the end of the weekend, I had:

• Reorganized our library room, donating or tossing a few dozen books my husband and I never re-read.

• Thinned boxes of memorabilia, asking myself if someone looking through it after I’m gone would know what it was or why it was important to me.

• And shifted personally created compact discs to a closet to make room for displaced books from the “new” scrapbook shelves.

That last task re-engaged me with lots of music I hadn’t heard in a while.

Between 2000 and 2010, as listening to digital music became dominant, I converted hundreds of 45s, album cuts and cassette tracks to mp3s to put them on my iPod. While doing that, I created a series of compact discs to house the digital files and listen to on the stereo or in the car.

One series I developed was:

“Who Sings It?”

Realizing I had a host of songs that, even if not always technically “one-hit wonders,” still inspired that question from a casual listener, I decided to collect them.

Not all of them hit the Top 40, and I’ll note when that’s the case.

Over the next several weeks, I look forward to sharing these with you. I’m re-creating the sets on Spotify.

Here’s the playlist for this week – but some songs aren’t on the streaming service. (Others are in re-recorded versions that don’t have the full charm of the vinyl.)

Who Sings It – Volume One:

When I can find the missing tracks on YouTube, I’ll share those links here:

Cymarron’s “Rings”
(1971):

This isn’t on Spotify, though Lobo’s (not quite as good) remake of a few years later is. Here’s a YouTube link:

Stallion’s “Old-Fashioned Boy (You’re the One)”
(1977):

I remember watching this faceless group lip-synch this on a Howard Cosell variety show on ABC. The show didn’t last long, and neither did Stallion.

Stonebolt’s “I Will Still Love You”
(1978):

This song by a Canadian group seems a little ahead of its time. To me, it feels of a piece with Journey’s “Open Arms,” REO Speedwagon’s “Keep on Loving You” and other pop-rock ballads of the early ’80s:

Side Effect’s “Keep That Same Old Feeling”
(1976):

This is one of those tracks that I owned because I heard it initially on Chicago radio. In this case: R&B/disco standout WGCI-FM. It didn’t chart on the Hot 100. It’s evidently a remake of a song by the Crusaders, though I didn’t know that at the time.

Mary Welch’s “Take It Like a Woman”
(1979):

Another non-Hot 100 hit, this one I heard on suburban Chicago’s adult contemporary outlet WYEN-FM. Evidently, Debby Boone covered it a few years later, which I guess makes sense given the sound and lyrical content of this track. (This one isn’t available on YouTube or Spotify. Guess some songs aren’t meant to stand the test of time.)

I intended to put the tracks in chronological order (when I could – for example, I originally thought the Side Effect track was from 1978 instead of 1976). But the discs themselves bounced all over the ’70s before later installments tackled the ’80s and ’90s.

I’ll go through the ’70s first and we’ll see whether there’s enough enthusiasm to dive into the later decades.

Which ones do you like? Hate? Share your thoughts in the comments:

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