132. Another one from '74-75. The album dropped early in '74. The first two single releases were underwhelming. The first single peaked at #32 on the Billboard Hot 100, while the follow up didn't make the Top 40 , peaking at #52. But it's the third release that is the subject of this question. It was a track that wasn't supposed to be anything but an afterthought, much less a hit. It was all happenstance, just a happy accident. The band liked the song, but never even considered the possibility of it being a hit. The record label agreed. The song was relegated to the indignity of being the B-side of the album's initial release in March of '74. Yes, it's one of those rare B-sides that became a bigger hit than the A-side--- A MUCH bigger hit!!!
A little of the backstory. The band's guitarist came up with this riff a year before, thinking that one day he would do something with it and write a song. This is story of how a timeless classic was crafted from that simple acoustic riff and only became known to the population at large because a disc jockey in Virginia flipped a record over. Let's get into it.
The inspirations for the song included the Mississippi River, a couple of Mark Twain classic novels, and the singer/songwriter's sojourns in and around New Orleans, visiting clubs in the French Quarter and listening to Dixieland Jazz. The band had spent a week playing in New Orleans, when the songwriter decided it was time to put words to that riff. He took a streetcar from the district around Tulane University, heading to uptown New Orleans to do some laundry. It started to rain, but the sun continued to shine as the rain poured. He jotted down some lyrics while on the trolley.
The opening section of the song draws from his childhood imaginings of the South from reading Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Subsequent lyrics, after the first chorus, including its melodious a capella section, drew upon his experiences partying in the French Quarter and listening to Dixieland jazz bands and watching the moon reflect off of the mighty Mississippi.
So how did a tune that the band and it's record label view as nothing more than a B-side become a timeless classic? Well, you see, there was this disc jockey in, of all places, Roanoke, VA, that decided to flip over the A-side record and listen to the B-side. The A-side had stalled at #32 on the Billboard chart, and was eventually pulled from radio airplay due to the lyric, "And the radio just seems to bring me down," which apparently offended a lot of people in radio.
I suspect the reason the DJ flipped the record over and played the B-side is due to the song's title having a geographical connection to Roanoke. Regardless of the reason, the DJ liked the song and , after listeners responded positively to the record, and started requesting it, the song was played in heavy rotation on the station. Then, I guess , a friend of a friend of someone in Roanoke , who lived in Minneapolis , heard about the song and got the word out to a DJ in that city. Before long, the song was in heavy rotation in Minneapolis.
From there, word of mouth resulted in the song being played on radio stations all across the country. Due to its sudden, unexpected popularity, that happened just by chance, the band released the record, this time as a A-side in November of 1974. In March of '75, it became the band's first of two #1 songs. The band's next #1 wouldn't come until 1977, when a different lead singer took a song to #1.
Can you name this most surprising #1 song, a record that began as a B-side to a mediocre offering, but became one of the most beloved classics of all time, known for its folksy, laid back charm and its evoking of imagery of the Mississippi River and New Orleans nightlife?
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