Seventies Daily Music Chronicle - December 1975

December 1975
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
	1 Bette Midler has an emergency appendectomy. President Ford visits China.	2 Disco group Silver Convention earn a gold record for "Fly, Robin Fly," which hit Number One on the pop chart for three weeks starting November 29. Along with Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby," a big hit earlier in the year, "Fly, Robin, Fly" is the first in a series of disco triumphs by producers/ arrangers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, better known as "The Munich Machine," because they work in Munich, Germany, and because their productions invariably revolve around metronomic, machinelike pulses played on electronic sequencers and rhythm machines.	3	4 Alive!, the fourth album by what has by now become America's most popular rock band -- those comic-book crazies of heavy-metal glitter rock, Kiss -- goes gold, as has every one of the band's other albums.	5 Fleetwood Mac's eponymously titled tenth album goes gold and is on its way to a platinum citation as well. This is the first album by the reconstituted band -- including founders Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, veteran Christine McVie and newcomers Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham -- that, having started as blues rockers, now purveys a slick brand of California pop. This album contains the hit singles "Rhiannon," "Say You Love Me" and "Over My Head," and initiates a remarkably consitent hitmaking streak that will establish the band as one of the most popular and successful in the world. Gratitude, a double album by funk-fusion band Earth, Wind and Fire (half of the album is live, the other half studio), becomes their fifth album to go gold.	6 Top of the charts: Silver Convention's "Fly, Robin, Fly" (pop single); Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years (pop album). Disco queen Donna Summer's sex-saturated single "Love to Love You Baby" enters the Hot 100 on its way to #2. It is her first of 32 charting singles through 1991. Soul singer Tyrone Davis (of "If I Could Turn Back the Hands of Time" fame) enters the R&B chart with "Turning Point," which -- though it will never enter the pop chart -- will hit Number One in early 1976.
7 Joey Stivic is born to Mike and Gloria on 1975's #1-rated TV series All in the Family.	8 A "Night of the Hurricane" benefit show at Madison Square Garden brings the Rolling Thunder Revue to a climax. Organized by Bob Dylan, the tour kicked off last fall in a string of mostly Northeast concerts at small venues with little publicity and an eclectic lineup that included Joan Baez, Nashville star Ronee Blakley, Roger McGuinn (Byrds), Joni Mitchell, David Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson, beat poet Allen Ginsburg, and more. In addition to Dylan and his comrades, Muhammed Ali, Roberta Flack, Coretta King and assorted celebrities all show up for tonight's swansong concert. The highlight of the evening comes when Ali takes a phone call from the imprisoned ex-boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. The show raises $100,000 toward legal fees for Carter and alleged accomplice John Artis	9	10 The Who by Numbers, which contains minor hit singles in "Squeeze Box" and "Slip Kid," earns the Who another gold record. Yelena Bonner, the wife of Andrei Sakharov, accepts the Nobel Peace Prize her husband won earlier in the year in Oslo, Norway but wasn't allowed himself to claim it.	11	12 California State Senator George R. Moscone, a Democrat, is elected Mayor of San Francisco in a close runoff race against a conservative challenger, winning by only 4,315 votes out of 200,000.	13
14	15	16 British teen idols the Bay City Rollers garner their first U.S. gold record for their first U.S. hit single, "Saturday Night," which will reach Number One on the pop chart in early 1976. On December 31, the album Bay City Rollers will also go gold. They will go on to have five more Top Forty hits in the U.S. -- nothing to sneeze at, but no match for their string of British hits. One Day at a Time premieres on CBS-TV. The series, which is set in Indianapolis, Indiana, depicts incidents in the lives of Ann Romano (Bonnie Franklin) a 34-year-old divorcee and her teenage daughters, Julie (Mackenzie Phillips) and Barbara (Valeri Bertinelli). Mark Hamill, later of Luke Skywalker/Star Wars fame, makes sporadic appearances as Harvey, the nephew of nosy, posturing apartment building superintendent Dwayene Schneider (Pat Harrington).	17 Chicago bluesman Theodore "Hound Dog" Taylor, 59, dies in Chicago's Cook County Hospital, of lung cancer. Hound Dog, who remained spry until near the time of his death, enjoyed fame only recently with his group, the Houserockers, whose specialty was the type of bar-band blues boogie that dominated the city's South Side scene. Judith Campbell Exner declares although she was a close friend of former president John F. Kennedy, she did not serve as a go-between for the White House and the Mafia. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme is sentenced to life in prison for the attempted assassination of President Ford.	18 Bonnie Raitt makes the front of Rolling Stone in a cover story titled "Daughter of the Blues." Raitt, a politically active white girl singing the blues, has never exactly set the charts on fire, but she's developed a devoted fan base and five mostly praised Warner Bros. albums. Yet her bluesy, R&B style, mean slide guitar, and strong songwriting skills won't produce that elusive commercial success for another 14 years, when in 1989 her tenth album, Nick of Time, soars to the top of the album charts and wins three Grammy Awards. For an encore she wins a fourth for her duet, "In the Mood," with John Lee Hooker. "There's nothing like living a long time," says Raitt, "to create a depth and soulfulness in your music.	19 Guitarist Ron Wood is officially named as Mick Taylor's replacement in The Rolling Stones. C.W. McCall earns a gold record for his novelty hit "Convoy," which will hit Number One on the pop chart in early 1976. The song, a saga of interstate truck drivers and their run-ins with the law, makes extensive use of -- and helps popularize -- the vernacular of citizens' band radio. The George Lutz family moves into the home of convicted mass murderer Ronald Defeo Jr. of The Amityville Horror infamy, eventually fleeing on January 14, 1976, with claims of the residence being haunted after a string of mishaps plagues their family.	20 Guitarist Joe Walsh joins forces with the Eagles, replacing original member Bernie Leadon, who leaves for a solo career.
21	22	23	24	25	26	27 The Four Seasons enter the Hot 100 with "December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)." It will spend three weeks at the top of the charts beginning in mid-March of 1976, and becomes their first chart topper since 1964's "Rag Doll." "December" will have an unusual rebirth when a dance remix of the song rises to #44 nineteen years later in 1994. English art-rockers Roxy Music, led by charismatic Bryan Ferry, get their first American chart record today with "Love Is the Drug." Listeners quickly "catch that buzz," sending the quirky pop-dance track into the Top 30. Although they've done well in their homeland, until now the band has been known more across the pond for their racy album covers. In fact, the cover for their 1975 LP Country Life propelled the album into the US Top 40, and the cover of Siren, which includes their current hit single, features a leggy young Texas model named Jerry Hall, to whom Ferry is romantically linked, but will soon become Mrs. Mick Jagger after the Rolling Stones frontman divorces his wife Bianca and falls for this siren's song. The Top Five 1. "Let's Do It Again" - Staple Singers 2. "Saturday Night" - Bay City Rollers 3. "That's the Way (I Like It)" - K.C. & The Sunshine Band 4. "Love Rollercoaster" - Ohio Players 5. "Theme from 'Mohogany' (Do You Know Where You're Going To)" - Diana Ross
28 Ted Nugent, known for gun-toting hunting forays in his native Michigan, ends up looking at the wrong end of the barrel at a show in Spokane, Washington. Twenty-five- year-old David Gelfer points a .44 magnum at the Motor City musician but is wrestled to the ground by members of the audience and security guards. He is charged later with "intimidating with a weapon."	29	30 A Minneapolis district court strikes down the NFL's "Rozelle rule," which gives its commissioner arbitration powers over free-agent compensation, stating that it violates antitrust regulations.	31 Most popular music, books and film - 1975: Captain & Tennille's "Love Will Keep Us Together" (pop single); Elton John's Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (pop album); the Isley Brothers' "Fight the Power (Part 1)" (R&B single); C.W. McCall's "Convoy" (C&W single); James Michener's Centennial (fiction); Charles Berlitz's The Bermuda Triangle (nonfiction); Jaws (film).

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