Hit Songs of 1976 – #23

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Diana Ross began her solo career in 1970, Since then she has sold over 100 million records worldwide. In 1976 she released “Long Hangover.” That song had also been recorded by the 5th Dimension. But it was the version by Diana that got the most airplay. The song starts out as a ballad and a couple of minutes into the song it switches to a disco song. It is said that during the recording they had a strobe light installed so that Diana would get the disco vibe.

This was a time when Diana was very popular. She was between her movies, Mahogony (1975) and The Wiz (1978).

The song was at the top of the Cash Box chart for the week of June 6 – 12. On the Billboard chart it was at #1 for two weeks (May 23 – June 5).  Diana would be nominated for a Grammy award as Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for this song.

The video is the album version and runs 7:48. AM radio stations would play a version that only ran 3:48.

Good News on NY Vital Records Department

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Last week New York State passed their 2026-27 budget. It was almost two months late as the budget is supposed to be passed before April 1.

There is some good news for us genealogists. There is a significant increase for the Vital Record Office of NY Department of Health. That means they might finally start again fulfilling genealogy requests for birth, marriage, and death certificates.

First, I will refer to two blog posts that I wrote last year about the Department of Health (DOH). In May there was this long post that included my recollections about DOH all the way back  to 1990. Then I had  this post in November after a Bill to film all the old vital records and put them online for free went all the way through both Houses of the NY State government only to have it vetoed by the Governor.

So let’s look at the money for the Vital Records Office… In both last year’s and this year’s budgets there is a  line called “Personal Service.” That really should read “Personnel Costs”  as the next budget line is for overtime and holiday expenses. In the 2025-26 budget the cost was $776,000. In the 2026-27 budget that cost is $1.9 million. That is an almost 250% increase. So it appears that they will be able to hire some new people. That is what they needed to do for many years.

The 2025-26 budget had a line for “Contractual Services” at $431,000. In my November post I had found out that eBizDocs had digitized over 37 million records for the DOH from 2015 to 2021. I believe that they have been digitizing current vital records and that is most of the “Contractual Services” costs. The 2026-27 budget for “Contractual Services” is $4.9 million. That is an 11 times increase. This document from Governor Hockul says that this “will make overdue technological improvements to the vital records system, launching an effort to digitize records for genealogical requests.” Finally the NY DOH will enter into the twenty first century. I would bet that the contract to digitize the records will go to eBizDocs who has an office about a half mile from DOH’s vital records office.

eBizDocs says that they scan and also use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on documents. Hopefully they will use the old vital records indexes and OCR. That is because OCR isn’t perfect and a small percentage of records could be misread and lost. Can eBizDocs scan all the old vital records in a year? Probably not. I don’t think anyone has a clear idea of how many vital records DOH has to be scanned.

Don’t expect miracles from the DOH. That document, above, from Governor Hockul says that there is a backlog of 12,000 genealogy vital records requests. Those go back to late 2019 or early 2020 depending on various sources. In my May post I had found out that DOH only gets an average of 2,700 genealogy requests per year; which seems kind of low. It would be a lot more except a lot of people have given up requesting any NY genealogy records. I still think that a few years ago there were only two people working on fulfilling the genealogy requests. DOH didn’t fulfill any genealogy requests in 2025. It is going to take them a LONG time to dig out of the hole that they made.

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Reference: NY 2026-27 Budget (see Vital Records Program about half down that document).

Taylor Instrument Catalog

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Last week I scanned a catalog from Taylor Instrument Companies  from 1919. Already by that time they are manufacturing thermometers, barometers, hydrometers, compasses, and more. The price list is at the front (pages 3 – 34) so the actual title page for the catalog is at page 35. That price list actually came inside a pocket in the front of the catalog. It appears that this is a wholesale catalog as most smaller items had to be bought by the dozen.

Not sure why they use the plural “Companies” in the name of their company. It may be because they had offices in other cities. Note also they used “Tycos” as a brand for some of the instruments. It was just a shorten version of the company name.

This catalog is in poor condition with the covers detached. It has also been wet at sometime in the past 100 years. Then while handling it my hands got covered with a white powder. Is it powdered paper? I don’t think so. It is dried mold? Possibly. My best guess is that it is baking soda used to get rid of musty smelling pages.

Hit Songs of 1976 – #22

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“Rhiannon ” is a song written by Stevie Nicks. The Goddess Rhiannon is a prominent figure in Welsh Mythology.

Fleetwood Mac was formed in 1967 but had many changes in the members of the group over the first 7 years. The classic group was put together in 1975 when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined. Other members at that time were Mick Fleetwood along with John and Christie McVie. The groups’ Rumours album was released in February 1977. Lindsey Buckingham would leave the group in 1987. He would later return. Other members would also leave for a while and then later return. Christie McVie died  in Nov. 2022.

“Rhiannon” got up to #9 on the Cash Box chart for the week of May 23 – 29. It got up to #11 for 2 weeks  (May 30 – June 12) on the Billboard chart.

Whoever put the video together only used pictures of Stevie Nicks.