Instrumentals (1970-1985) R.I.P. Quiz

Answer: Outa-Space

A child prodigy, Preston was playing the keyboards for Gospel singing legend, Mahalia Jackson, when he was just ten years old in 1956. He was a much-in-demand session man throughout the 1960s for such artists as Little Richard but gained a modicum of fame when he performed on The Beatles' recording "Get Back" and on their "Let It Be" LP. As a result, some regarded him as the "5th Beatle"! This notoriety enabled him to start recording his own material especially after The Beatles split up. Despite his association with the mop-tops, he didn't quite attain the same level of success abroad in Great Britain as he did in the U.S.

Interestingly, his first four hits, all top fives, alternated in style between instrumentals and vocals. After "Outa-Space" came the Number One vocal hit "Will It Go Round in Circles", then another instrumental, "Space Race", peaked at Number Four. His last solo hit was also a chart topper, "Nothing From Nothing" in 1974. Although he continued to record for the next three decades, he only managed one more significant hit, the Number Four "With You I'm Born Again", a duet sung with Syreeta in 1980. In late 2005, Preston was stricken with pericarditis, lapsed into a coma and died six months later without ever regaining consciousness.

Your other three choices were also instrumental hits in 1972. "Popcorn" peaked at Number Nine for Moog synthesizer player, Stan Free, alias Hot Butter. Dennis Coffey and his group took "Scorpio" to Number Six and "Joy" was also a Number Six hit for the British studio group named Apollo 100.

Answer: Frankenstein

Edgar Winter and his older brother Johnny both have albinism and when their careers were on their upward arc in the early 1970s, I might have thought they were just one person without paying attention. Had I, maybe I would have recognized the traits that distinguished them.

Johnny was the guitarist who would largely specialize in the blues-rock genre and never made much of a mark on the Hot 100 despite being a big draw on the concert circuit. Edgar was the multi-instrumentalist who dabbled in various musical styles and had two significant entries on the Hot 100 chart. His biggest hit was the instrumental "Frankenstein" at Number One but perhaps he is best remembered for his follow-up hit, the Number 14 "Free Ride". But, like his brother, commercial success in the way of charting singles would elude him thereafter and he too became an active stage performer while also writing music for the movies. As this is being written in 2020, Edgar is still active in the industry, but Johnny died in 2014.

Answer: Also Sprach Zarathustra

All the choices given were in that movie's score but Deodato had the hit with his adaptation of Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra". Kubrick brilliantly used the original 1896 Strauss composition during the "dawn of man" sequence when apes were learning the power of tools as weapons.

Deodato often fused Latin, jazz, Bossa Nova, classical or contemporary pop music genres in his music but never as effectively as he did here and in many respects, his version was just as powerful and beautiful as the original. Later that year he tried to use the same formula with Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" but it stumbled to a Number 41 chart placement. He released several albums during the decade that performed reasonably well on that chart but eventually he turned his attention to arranging and producing music for such artists as Kool and the Gang, Bjork and k.d.lang.

Answer: Love's Theme

While all your other choices were very nice songs, none of them reached the celestial heights of Number One and they all dated from 1971.

The Love Unlimited Orchestra was not just a back-up band for Barry White but was indeed a full-fledged 40-piece orchestral ensemble that included a trio of female backing singers who went under the name of Love Unlimited. Virtually every Barry White recording with such long-winded titles like "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe" and "You're the First, the Last, My Everything" featured the big sound of the Orchestra. Some observers feel that "Love's Theme" was a prelude to the disco era which started to gear up the following year and over the years, it has been used in many advertisements and commercials. Golf fans might recall that it was used as the theme music for ABC's golf broadcasts for many years.

It appears that White continued to utilize the Orchestra until the early 1980s when his declining popularity made it a commodity he could no longer afford. White, himself, carried on with limited success until his death from a stroke in 2003.

Answer: TSOP

MFSB was a collection of session musicians who were assembled by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff in 1971 to provide instrumental support for their stable of recording acts affiliated with the Philadelphia International record label. Those acts included Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, The Delfonics, The O'Jays, The Stylistics, Wilson Pickett, The Spinners and many, many others that personified what came to be known as "the sound of Philadelphia" or, coincidentally, the title of the song - TSOP.

Originally, the melody was used as the theme song for Don Cornelius' TV show "Soul Train" and when this recording was made, several other variations were also taped, many of which contained lyrics sung by The Three Degrees. Among them was one which repeated the words "Soul Train, Soul Train". For some reason, Cornelius decided against using that version for his show and, as such, the instrumental recording was the one that was released. Eventually, like almost every musical fad, TSOP faded away and MFSB disbanded in 1985 without ever having another significant hit. Philadelphia International itself folded two years later.

As for your other options, "RSVP" is a track on a 2019 CD released by Maren Morris, "NASA" was a Number 17 hit for Ariana Grande in the same year, while "W.O.L.D." was recorded by Harry Chapin in 1974, peaking at Number 36 that year.

Answer: The Entertainer

Although all the titles listed were Scott Joplin compositions, only "The Entertainer" was the big hit for Hamlisch. Undoubtedly, all of them sold well for Joplin in terms of sheet music and piano rolls... but circa 1903!

Hamlisch did very well capitalizing on Joplin's work. His album of the movie score topped the Billboard Album charts for five weeks while another featuring "The Entertainer" and other Joplin compositions not included in the movie score, sold briskly as well. By 1975, the fuss was over and ragtime piano music became just another genre of the past. Hamlisch, however, went on to great heights composing music for stage and screen. He is one of only fifteen people (at the time of writing this quiz) to have won an Emmy, an Oscar, a Grammy and a Tony. Throw in his Pulitzer Prize and only he and Richard Rodgers can claim all five awards. Other than "The Sting", his greatest successes were "A Chorus Line", "The Way We Were", and "Nobody Does it Better" from the Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me". He passed away suddenly in 2012 at the age of 68.

Answer: A Fifth of Beethoven

In early 1976, 23-year-old pianist/composer Walter Murphy was writing music intended for commercials when a producer suggested he might try utilizing a "classical" theme for some of them. At his next session, he used Beethoven's 5th Symphony as the central theme for one of the four pieces he recorded that day. They were then distributed to various record labels for consideration and the owner of Private Stock Records expressed interest in that particular demo. The symphony was given a disco treatment, retitled "A Fifth of Beethoven" and within five months of its release, shot right to the top of the Hot 100 and sold 2M copies. Naturally, they tried to replicate that success with discofied versions of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee", Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and other works by Mozart and Ravel with minimal success. The decline of disco music ended further experimentation on those themes and Murphy went on to a lengthy career composing music for the screen and TV.

As an interesting sidebar, "A Fifth of Beethoven" was credited to Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band as the label thought that the public would respond to a "band" better than just Murphy as a lone soloist. After it was released, it came to light that there actually was a "Big Apple Band" already in existence and later pressings of the record were credited to just Walter Murphy. While the legalities were sorted out, the original group decided to immediately change their name to avoid confusion. They called themselves "Chic" and would go on to be one of the vanguard groups of the disco era with two Number One hits - "Le Freak" and "Good Times".

Answer: Gonna Fly Now

The movie was "Rocky" and the music was composed by Bill Conti. There were lyrics to the song contributed by Carol Connors and Ayn Robbins, a necessity to be Oscar nominated, but they were not included on Conti's recording when released as a single.

Your alternative answers were Oscar nominated songs but were neither instrumental hits nor hits from 1977. "Fame" by Irene Cara (1980) and "Theme From Shaft" by Isaac Hayes (1971) were Number Four and Number One hits respectively and both won the Oscar for their eligibility years. "Shakedown" was also a Number One hit in 1987 for Bob Seger but failed to win the Oscar that year. "Gonna Fly Now" lost the Oscar to "Evergreen" by Barbra Streisand.

Conti had earned a master's degree from the Julliard School of Music and was 35 years old when he was selected to compose the musical score for "Rocky". It was his first big assignment and it essentially set him up for life as he was also commissioned to compose the music for four "Rocky" sequels. He was responsible for the music for several other movies and TV shows and did win an Oscar for the music featured in "The Right Stuff" (1983). It seems that he has been retired from the music industry since 2005.

Answer: Star Wars Theme

John Williams has had an incredible career composing and arranging music for the screen beginning in the late 1950s. He received his first Oscar nomination in 1967 for "Valley of the Dolls", won for the first time for the music featured in "Fiddler on the Roof" in 1971, but really hit his stride with "Jaws" in 1977. Altogether he has won five Oscars out of 52 Academy Award nominations, a number only exceeded by Walt Disney with his 59 nominations. After their collaboration on "Jaws", if Spielberg did the picture, Williams did the music! Here's a list of their most notable collaborations: all nine "Star Wars" pictures, four "Indiana Jones" movies, "E.T.", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind","Jurassic Park", "Schindler's List", and "Saving Private Ryan". Beyond that, he did countless other scores for such movies as "Superman" and for three "Harry Potter" films. As of 2020, he's semi-retired at the age of 88.

Meco, born Domenico Monardo, doesn't quite have the same résumé! Born seven years later than Williams in 1939, he followed his musical studies by working as a session trombonist before moving on to production work, particularly in the burgeoning "disco" genre. When the movie "Star Wars" was released, he was enraptured, watching it at least half a dozen times in its first week and seized upon the notion of covering the theme in a disco format. Williams' majestic version recorded with the London Philharmonic was already positioned on the Hot 100 so Williams' label approved Meco's project and it wasn't much later when the cover, with the sound effect gimmicks and disco beat, overtook the original on its way to Number One. As to be expected, Meco tried the same formula with other contemporary movie themes but, like Deodato and Walter Murphy before him, with only marginal success. It appears that he hasn't been active, or at least successful, in the music business since the early 1980s coinciding with the decline of the disco movement.

Answer: The Hustle

Van McCoy was born in Washington, D.C. in 1940 and learned to play the piano at a very early age. In the early 1950s, he and his elder brother were singing with a doo-wop group but when they folded later in the decade, McCoy enrolled at Howard University in a psychology program.

After two years, he quit, moved to Philadelphia and started his own record label and began writing music and producing records for others, most notably Brenda and the Tabulations and Barbara Lewis. By the 1970s, he got the urge to perform and assembled his Soul City Symphony for that purpose.

His only significant hit was the Number One "The Hustle" (Number Three in Britain). Songs in a similar vein eked on to the Hot 100 chart but weren't quite as successful. He died tragically young in 1979 following a massive heart attack.

Answer: Chuck Mangione

Mangione was born in Rochester, New York in 1940 and studied at the Eastman School of Music from 1958 to 1963 while also playing be-bop style jazz with his brother as part of the Mangione Brothers Quintet/Sextet. Upon graduation, he played for Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and the Woody Herman Band before forming his own quartet in 1968. Now almost exclusively performing on the flugelhorn, his popularity started to build in the early 1970s. His easy listening jazz-oriented material wasn't conducive to Hot 100 chart success, "Feels So Good" excluded, but over a dozen years, he released 17 charting LPs, a couple of which reached Top Ten status on the album charts. Then, he seemingly disappeared!

I'm just speculating here, but in 1997 he re-emerged as a guest on the adult cartoon series "King of the Hill" and made several appearances over the next decade portraying himself. A standard joke during his appearances was that every song he played would always eventually segue into "Feels So Good", even the national anthem... he couldn't get that song out of his head! Maybe his extended hiatus from the music scene for so long could be attributed to writer's block?

Answer: Rise

There's a bit of irony going on here! Alpert, with his Tijuana Brass band, were arguably the premier instrumental outfit throughout the 1960s with 23 Hot 100 chart entries sans lyrics. Yet the only Number One song he would garner that decade was a solo vocal - "This Guy's in Love with You" in 1968.

Then in 1969, he disbanded the band for most of the next decade and whenever he did reassemble them, it was usually for nostalgia tours, not for recording new material. Then, out of the blue in 1979, he records "Rise", written by his nephew, Randy Alpert, and Randy's friend Andy Armer.

It was his first record release in five years and surprisingly, topped the Hot 100. Listening to it, one can hear a melody that is faintly reminiscent of the Tijuana Brass style swathed in a gentle disco rhythm consistent with the era. Now in possession of an instrumental chart topper, he became the first and, as of 2020, only artist of the rock era to have both a vocal and instrumental Billboard Hot 100 Number One hit.

Answer: Music Box Dancer

Frank Mills was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1943 and graduated from McGill University with his degree in music. He was a member of the group The Bells but left shortly before they scored a Number Seven Hot 100 hit with "Stay Awhile" in 1971. While working with CBC television as a pianist, he recorded a few of his own compositions, some of which were minor hits in Canada. "Music Box Dancer" was a cut on a 1974 LP and when he was releasing a new song in 1978, it was utilized as the "B" side. Once again, a curious DJ flipped the disc, liked the "B" side better and eventually, it became a huge success in Canada, then a few months later, a Number Three hit on the Hot 100 when released in America. Mills never again had a significant hit on either side of the border.

Answer: Vangelis

All these were Greek musicians so let's eliminate your choices one by one. Hatzidakis did win an Oscar for his music in a movie but not this one. He composed the score for "Never on Sunday" in 1960. Yanni is famous for his music worldwide but has never won an Oscar nor ever had a charting Hot 100 hit. Herodorus of Megara was the most famous Greek trumpeter of his era winning the Olympic Games' "Herald and Trumpet Contest" on ten occasions... about 2200 years ago!

Vangelis was born in Greece in 1943 and is considered one of the leading figures in the development of progressive electronic music. Although he has recorded 50+ albums over his career, it seems that his popularity has been largely confined to Europe which historically has always been more accepting of this genre. His success in North American circles was limited to this one hit single, a Number One album which also featured the song, and one other album which charted about five years later. Movie fans may also remember that he composed the musical score for the sci-fi flick "Blade Runner" in 1982. For genuine trivia, Vangelis was just one of ten recording acts whose only Hot 100 chart entry just happened to also top that chart, a pure and classic one hit wonder! Expect a quiz on the topic soon.

Answer: Harold Faltermeyer did "Axel F"; Jan Hammer did "Miami Vice Theme "

Harold Faltermeyer and Jan Hammer share some broad commonalities. Both were born in Europe, Faltermeyer in Germany in 1952, Hammer in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1948. Both learned to play the piano at a very early age but then they diverged somewhat in their early adult experiences.

Faltermeyer completed his musical studies in Germany then started working as a recording engineer while moonlighting as a keyboardist for a rock band. His work in the recording studio was admired by famed record producer, Giorgio Moroder, who convinced him to come to America in 1978 to play keyboards and arrange the music for a movie score he was producing, "Midnight Express". Five years later, he was arranging the score for "Beverly Hills Cop".

Hammer was a student in 1968 when communist forces from Warsaw Pact neighbours invaded to halt the reformist advances the government in Prague were undertaking. He left for the States to complete his education then worked as a keyboardist for over a decade touring as a sideman with Sarah Vaughan and then as a member of various jazz-oriented combos. Starting in the late 1970s, he began composing musical scores for commercials, made for TV movies and documentaries which led to his opportunity to score the music for "Miami Vice" for five years.

Once engaged in composing, arranging or producing music for the big screen or TV, it became the life work for both and they remain active in the industry as the third decade of the new millennium begins.