B.J. Thomas
1
1968. Martin, then Bobby. Which ultimately led to Chicago. But it was also the year of “Hair”…which dominated turntables and radio.
Although “Hair” covers and ubiquity slipped into 1969, just like “Hooked on a Feeling” itself.
1969. The moon landing, Woodstock. Nothing gets that kind of ubiquity today, other than politics. One can argue nothing important really happens, but the truth is if it does, there’s so much in the channel, and it all goes by so fast, that events just don’t get the traction they used to. Even mass shootings have become de rigueur. Yup, you hear someone insane with a chip on their shoulder shot up a bunch of people and by the next day it’s not even on the front page.
Where’s the glue?
There is none.
But in ’68, ’69, it was the radio.
Television was a vast wasteland. As for movies…they were just coming into their own, the musicals and the men who greenlit them were fading and the youngsters were coming up. It started with “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate” in ’67, and by ’69 we had “Midnight Cowboy” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
Not that “Butch Cassidy” had a deeper cultural meaning, in an era when those were prevalent in cinema, and not that it was an intentional antidote, but it was a film that everybody saw, needed to see, it played in theatres for months and months and it had no mechanical shark or special effects. I can’t say I’ve ever met someone who hasn’t seen “Butch Cassidy.” Maybe if I polled youngsters…but quizzing youngsters about the films they’ve seen is no longer a thing, they want to talk about social media stars and oldsters are all about defending their turf and counting their money. It’s not only Republicans who want little change, it’s the same deal with the wealthy Democrats. Sure, I’ll pay a few million more in taxes, just don’t make me change my lifestyle, don’t make me give up any power.
But the sixties were completely different. No one was that rich, there was a strong middle class, and although we were fighting for truth and justice our culture was really dominated by the arts. You knew who all the stars were, they were famous for actually doing something. And those on the big screen were truly larger than life.
Paul Newman? Legendary, cool not only as Luke.
Robert Redford… Newman boosted him into the stratosphere, everyone knew him and he was not just a two-dimensional good-looking guy.
And then there was Katharine Ross.
It’s hard to overstate the power of screen icons on maturing males back then. The generation before had Marilyn Monroe, but for those coming of age in the late sixties and early seventies…our screen dreams were earthier, more real, and what could be better than a beautiful woman who could hold her own with the boys?
And one of the key scenes was when Ross was on front of the bicycle and B.J. Thomas was singing in the background…
“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” was one of the biggest hits of 1969, overplayed, known by heart, but rarely quoted, unlike the legendary line from the movie…”The fall’ll probably kill ya!” And it was performed by B.J. Thomas, but it was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David…yes, “Raindrops” was movie music, far from the rock and roll that was permeating the airwaves, dominating and changing the culture.
And by the fall of 1969, most Americans, at least those who cared, were now aware of FM rock, after all, “Led Zeppelin II” was released in October, but AM radio still ruled.
Almost no one had an FM radio in their car. And those that existed…they weren’t that good, if the station was more than ten or fifteen miles away, the signal would drop out. You could buy an amazing home tuner, but auto audio was positively retro.
So we knew the AM hits.
As a matter of fact, forgetting the progenitors, there was essentially no free-form underground FM radio until ’68. So, everybody tuned in in ’64 to hear the Beatles and stayed with the band, music was everything, and we knew the cool songs and the dreck, the British Invasion and the last gasps of the crooners.
But every once in a while there was a song by someone who you didn’t know, that rang your bell.
Some of them verged on bubble gum, like “Build Me Up Buttercup”…then again, no one could deny its power.
And others were just so right that they reached you immediately, you relished hearing them on the radio, you never forgot them.
2
“I can’t stop this feelin’
Deep inside in me”
The music of yore used to set you free.
The music of today is just grease for the fire, cartoons, the blatherings of nincompoops trying to make bucks or those who believe they’ve got talent when at best they’re B performers. To be a rock star in the old days was to be one of the most powerful people on earth, not only were you rich, you could do whatever you wanted. with no governor, no limit…you truly had your freedom. And believe me, they all would have lined up for vaccination against Covid-19, after all they were the first generation after polio, assuming they squeaked by that tragedy.
But it’s when music pressed that release button, untethered you from the planet, triggered your hopes and dreams, that was when it really resonated, when it was powerful, when it spread.
And as you’re growing old, you’re thinking of opportunity…and the opposite sex. Well, maybe the same sex too, but back then coming out of the closet was dicey.
“Girl you just don’t realize
What you do to me”
The power of love. Huey Lewis sang about it, but this is different. This is a cocoon, just you and them, you’re not blasting it to everybody, you’re just feeling it yourself, reveling in it, savoring it, not wanting to share it with anybody else for fear of it evaporating.
“When you hold me in your arms so tight
You let me know everything’s all right”
You didn’t always hear all of “Hooked on a Feeling”‘s intro, in the AM world fifteen seconds was interminable, oftentimes they went straight to the vocal, but we heard it enough to know it, and it was magical. This was back in the days of experimentation, when the studio was a band member and new sounds were being integrated into records on a regular basis. In this case, it was the electric sitar, played by one Reggie Young. This was not the George Harrison sound of “Within You Without You,” but a bridge between the electric guitar and the Ravi Shankar sound, and it felt so good, and nice!
And B.J. Thomas sang with power, with a rich voice, like the best person in the glee club, and unlike on today’s television competition shows, he was not showing off, he was not demonstrating melisma, this was twenty-odd years before Mariah Carey, when the song became more important than the singer. And by holding back just a touch, yet singing with power, Thomas’s rich voice resonated.
And the above words are not so magical, but it’s the way the track changed after the initial verse. Too often acts will literally repeat the same verse twice, figuring since old bluesmeisters did it they can get away with it, but “Hooked on a Feeling” is more of a theme park ride, not one where you’re scared, but one where you’re smiling and laughing.
“I
I’m hooked on a feelin’
High on believin’
That you’re in love with me”
Probably the best feeling in the world. No, definitely. You feel glad all over, you tingle.
And then a string flourish.
Strings were getting a bad name, rockers railed against them. But they hung over in the old world, like with B.J., a singer singing someone else’s composition, in this case, Thomas’s friend, Mark James.
“Lips are sweet as candy
The taste stays on my mind
Girl you keep me thirsty
For another cup of wine”
At this point, B.J. could be singing the phone book, it’s his voice, the musical bed, the sitar/guitar…you’re high on the sound of the record.
“I’ve got it bad for you girl
But I don’t need a cure
I’ll just stay addicted
And hope I can endure”
TWO VERSES! At the advent there was only one, now this is a double-dip, like at Baskin-Robbins, with the strings whisking you along.
“All the good love when we’re all alone
Keep it up girl, yeah you turn me on”
There’s that pre-chorus again, one of the track’s main hooks.
And then we get the brief Reggie Young sitar/guitar solo and…
When B.J. comes back in the track is running on all cylinders. Thomas is just riding the crest of the production, he’s the cherry on top, but without the cherry there’s no hit. At least no monster, legendary hit.
And the song ends just like the intro, with that remarkable sitar/guitar and now strings and another guitar walking over the hill into the distance and…
You were just lying on the couch, listening, now you jump up, you want to follow this sound, and chances are you lifted the needle to hear it again, because that was the game back then, to create a track so enticing, so life-affirming, so unique that you had to buy it to hear it over and over and over again.
3
B.J. Thomas went on to have country hits, back before all the country players had long hair and Stratocasters with Marshall amps, when country and rock were opposites, when country touched your soul and rock was dangerous, before they melded together in commerce and lost their essence. You could go years without knowing the country number one, but you knew the rock number one by heart, and you’d heard the AM pop one too. Musically, it was like the politics of today, the south listened to completely different music. C&W. Country and western. The western has been excised from country today, never mind the country itself.
But sometimes one song is enough to make a career. And B.J. Thomas had two. Kind of like Don McLean.
But McLean’s hits were in the seventies, they were a bridge between hip and straight, whereas Thomas was unconcerned with those descriptors back in ’68, he and his team just wanted to make a hit, they felt if they had a strong enough song they were on their way.
And if you have a strong enough song…the years go by and it’s covered and becomes a hit once again.
Jonathan King rearranged the song in 1971, when he was still best known for “Everybody’s Gone to the Moon,” before 10cc, before he went to jail.Â
And then a Swedish band, entitled Blue Swede, glommed on to King’s remake and pushed up the faders, amplified and multiplied the nonsense phrase “ooga-chaka-ooga-ooga” and had a monster worldwide hit in 1974. Despite the act disappearing from the hit parade thereafter.
And the funny thing is the Blue Swede take is now the standard-bearer, the most famous version of “Hooked on a Feeling,” it’s got 397 million plays on Spotify and B.J. isn’t even close, which is testimony to the song more than the production, which was so in-your-face as to lose almost all meaning…it could be employed in an animated movie, it was all about the groove as opposed to…
The original, which was a slice of heaven, elixir of the gods.
So B.J. Thomas just died. We knew he was sick, but in the tsunami of information we forgot that he was, and then he passed away.
And the truth is this generation, born during the war and just thereafter, is going, fast. If you want to see one of the legendary acts, go…now!
But as soon as I read B.J. passed, I started singing “Hooked on a Feeling” in my head. I thought back to those days, I thought back to Butch and Sundance, I felt once again that I’d lived through the heyday of music. Hell, name a track as magical from the nineties, never mind today.
So B.J. Thomas left his mark.
And that’s what it’s all about in music. Capturing lightning in a bottle. Sometime in the process you realize you’re doing it, and then you try not to be self-conscious, you do your best to follow through, to get it down before you screw it up. And the truth is this is a rare occurrence. No one can write and record an 11 every month, every year…you’re lucky if you do it once in a career! Do that and you’re a star for all time, irrelevant of your bank account.
And B.J. Thomas did.
He got me hooked on a feeling.
