Hit Songs of 1976 – #16

Posted by on

Maxine Nightingale only had this one major hit; “Right Back Where We Started From.” She had previously been in the London production of Hair. She then moved to Germany where she was again in Hair (as Sheila), Jesus Christ Superstar, and Godspell.

“Right Back Where We Started From” got up to #2 on the Billboard chart for two weeks (April 25 – May 8). It was the top song on the Cash Box chart for the week of April 18 – 24.

By the early 80s disco was starting to die and Maxine dropped out of the pop mainstream, working for some 20 years as a more jazz-oriented live performer.

I love that crazy background in the video.

RPL Links

Posted by on

The links to the collections on Rochester Public Library appear to be working again. That means that you can again view their historic books, newspaper indexes, and city directories.

It appears that they changed their website to make it more secure by changing from HTTP to HTTPS. Some browsers no longer will longer open old unsecured websites.

Search engines like Google prefer HTTPS, often ranking secure sites higher, whereas non-secure HTTP sites may be penalized or flagged.

Brand New Scans from Last Week

Posted by on

The Greece Historical Society let me scan Northampton; A Town Center from 1973. This was an ambitious plan to create a new center in the Town of Greece. It would have a giant circle 1,500 feet in diameter encompassing the intersection of Long Pond and Latta Road. On the circle were to be some stores, a new town hall and maybe a new library. The area outside of the circle would have new single family homes and possibly a senior living center.

What killed the project was that Latta Road is a State highway (Rt. 18) and they wouldn’t allow the circle at the intersection with Long Pond Road.

The Town of Greece did eventually moved their Town Hall to a location ton the northwest of the intersection. That circle would have been way to small for the complex  that they have now.  Instead of housing the intersection has lots of retail including one of those giant Wegmans grocery store complexes.

The PDF files has two section. The first one is a large sized booklet of 36 pages with an overview of the plans. Then there is a 16 page supplement from the Greece Post newspaper with a long description of the project.

I scanned two issues of The Pioneer, the student newspaper of Chesbrough Seminary (now Roberts Wesleyan University); Oct. 1927 and Nov. 1927. I checked the catalog for the library of Roberts and I didn’t see this publication listed in their catalog.  I think they do have some of their student publication in their college archives but they are not cataloged.

Then I scanned two very old menus. The first is from Hotel Seneca in Rochester and is dated Oct. 15, 1926. The second is from Hotel Rochester and is date March 10, 1927.

Hit Songs of 1976 – #15

Posted by on

What do you think that currently is the most streamed song from the 20th century? No, not a song from Taylor Swift because she is from this century. “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen has been streamed more than 2.8 billion plays on Spotify alone. The video, below from YouTube, has been viewed over 2 billion times.

So you would think that a song that popular over the years would have spent many weeks at the top of the charts in 1976. No. On the Billboard chart it only got up to #9 for the week of April 25 – May 1. On the Cash Box chart it got up to #6 for two weeks (April 18 – May 1). The problem was that it is long at 5 minutes and 55 seconds. The Top 40 radio stations didn’t like to play songs over 3 minutes so they didn’t play it a lot, if at all. WCMF in those days was considered a “progressive” station and they did play the song more.

The video was recorded so that it could be played on music programs without having to make an appearance. This was years before MTV started playing videos 24 hours a day. The video was recorded in just four hours.