Blazing Saddles was #1 at the box office.  All in the Family was #1 on TV.  Gasoline was only 53 cents a gallon.  First class postage was only a dime.  And the stories on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite were about people named Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Patty Hearst, and Muhammed Ali.

Quite a few things have changed since 1974.  But remarkably, a lot of the music that came out that year still sounds great!

Paul McCartney released a single he had recorded at Abbey Road Studios, and it went into the Top 10, while John Lennon got some assistance from Elton John and had his first #1 hit.

The Eagles also enjoyed their first #1.  And so did Eric Clapton…with a song he didn’t like and had to be talked into putting out.

The Electric Light Orchestra made the Top 10 themselves.  And so did Lynyrd Skynyrd.  Plus Steely Dan had the biggest hit of their career.  And an unknown band named Supertramp reached the Top 40 with a B-side that was their breakthrough in the U. S.

Meanwhile, Led Zeppelin had taken the year off and only launched their new record label, Swan Song.  But The Rolling Stones were back with a new album that was the first to be produced exclusively by the duo that was known as “The Glimmer Twins” (aka Mick Jagger and Keith Richards).

And that’s just scratching the vinyl surface.  We’ll have more hit songs and highlights to treat you to plus a handful of surprises when Great Moments in Vinyl pays tribute to The Hits of 1974.