Bad day for music.
Ms. Reddy’s first hit was a 1971 cover of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” a hit from the award-winning stage show “Jesus Christ Superstar.” The success of “I Am Woman,” with Ms. Reddy’s lyrics and Ray Burton’s music, came a year later.
Ms. Reddy was a frequent guest in the early ’70s on variety, music and talk shows like “The Mike Douglas Show,” “The Carol Burnett Show,” “The David Frost Show,” “The Merv Griffin Show” and “The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.” “The Helen Reddy Show” (1973) was an eight-episode summer replacement series on NBC.
She made her big-screen debut in the disaster movie “Airport 1975” (released in 1974) as a guitar-playing nun who comforts a sick little girl (Linda Blair) on an almost certainly doomed 747. Ms. Reddy always liked to point out that Gloria Swanson and Myrna Loy were also in the cast.
,,,
Mac Davis, good Lubbock boy.
Mr. Davis enjoyed early success as a songwriter in the late 1960s, supplying Presley with Top 10 pop hits like “In the Ghetto” and “Don’t Cry Daddy” after spending much of the decade working in sales and publishing for independent record companies.
He also wrote “Something’s Burning,” a Top 20 pop single in 1970 for Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, and “I Believe in Music,” which was recorded by the Detroit pop group Gallery, reaching the Top 40 in 1972.
“I Believe in Music” was recorded by scores of artists and became Mr. Davis’s signature song; he closed his concerts with it for decades. “Watching Scotty Grow,” another of his best-known compositions, stalled just outside the pop Top 10 for Bobby Goldsboro in 1971.
…
Genial, photogenic and fit, Mr. Davis had his own television variety hour, “The Mac Davis Show,” from 1974 to 1976 on NBC and was a regular guest on “The Tonight Show” and other talk shows in those years. He made his acting debut in the 1979 movie “North Dallas Forty,” a comedy that starred Nick Nolte as an aging football star and Mr. Davis as a calculating quarterback.
More recently, after years of inactivity on the charts, Mr. Davis enjoyed a revival as a songwriter, collaborating with latter-day pop artists like Avicii, the Swedish D.J. with whom he wrote the 2014 global pop hit “Addicted to You.” (Avicii died at 28 in 2018.)
He also wrote “Young Girls” with the pop star Bruno Mars; a version released by Mr. Mars in 2012 was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Mr. Davis’s other projects over the last few years included collaborations with the country star Keith Urban and the singer Rivers Cuomo of the band Weezer.
Sorry I have been busy and haven’t been around. I did know of Helen Reddy and Mac Davis passings. I was born in 1960, so they were both popular in my teen years.
When I was playing music, we did a cover of Elvis’ Don’t Cry Daddy, and I, being the sax player, had a solo, that I played, that combined with the lyrics of the song, could bring tears to people’s eyes. It might be my favorite Elvis song, other than maybe I can’t help, falling in love with you.
I remember watching Helen Reddy on The Midnight Special. I told my wife a few weeks ago, the worst part of getting older, is that all of the musical and acting performers that we remember from our youth are getting old and dying. I know that at 60, I am in the latter part of my lifetime, but it is hard to think of some of the names in music from my teen years, and them being in their 80’s, and while they are still around, you know that it won’t be long, and they too will be passing on to that jukebox in the sky.
Sad days, for sure. But at least on the bright side, in just a few short months,2020 will be but an unpleasant memory, and 2021 will come in and once again kick snow in our faces.
I saw Mac Davis on broadway with a pre-Trump marriage Marla Maples. He was quite charismatic & after the show he came out and talked to the audience about his sobriety.
Oh & my dad bought me a 45 of Helen Ready “Leave Me Alone” (theme phrase of my teenage years)