{"id":13063,"date":"2026-05-10T14:52:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T19:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rochistory.com\/blog\/?p=13063"},"modified":"2026-05-10T14:52:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T19:52:00","slug":"hit-songs-of-1976-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rochistory.com\/blog\/?p=13063","title":{"rendered":"Hit Songs of 1976 \u2013 #19"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome Back, Kotter<\/em> was a popular TV show that was on ABC from Sept. 1975\u00a0 to June 1979. The producers wanted a good theme song and they were able to get John Sebastian to write the theme which is just called “Welcome Back.” The TV series was originally just going to be Kotter<\/em> but Sebastian couldn’t find anything meaningful to rhyme with “Kotter” so he wrote about going back to his old neighborhood. The producers changed the name of the series after they heard the song.<\/p>\n

The song is a lot longer than you heard at the beginning of the TV series. It got up to #1 on the\u00a0Billboard<\/em> chart for the week of May 2 -8.\u00a0 Then on the\u00a0Cash Box<\/em> chart it was at the top spot for two weeks (May 9 – 22).<\/p>\n

John Sebastian had been part of The Lovin’ Spoonful from 1965 to 1968. That group had a string of hits. Sebastian was attending the 1969 Woodstock when they asked him to fill in while another group was setting up. He only did about 30 minutes of music there. Although a well respected musician and song writer his later works only met with moderate success.I did see him in the early 80s at R.I.T. He was really good and played without a back-up band.<\/p>\n

The star of Welcome Back, Kotter<\/em> was Gabe Kaplan who never had another successful TVseries. He went back to doing stand-up. He also became a successful poker player. He won some very large amounts of money in tournaments. He has also been a commentator on online poker tournaments. It wasn’t on his Wikipedia page but I know he did work as a DJ on a radio station for a while.<\/p>\n

The break0out start of Welcome Back, Kotter<\/em> was John Travolta playing Vinny Barbarino. In 1976 he would appear twice on American Bandstand.<\/em> First singing “Let Her In” in July and September singing “Whenever I’m Away From You.” After the song he mentions to Dick Clark that in January 1977 he will be filming a movie about a dancer at a discotheque.\u00a0 That would become\u00a0Saturday Nigh Fever<\/em>. By the last year of\u00a0Kotter<\/em> he only appeared in a few episodes as his career had taken off.<\/p>\n