40 Year Itch : Mr Jaws

Dickie Goodman : Mr Jaws

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  The man who invented the break-in record, a comedy routine broken up by radio hits, scored his biggest since 1956's "The Flying Saucer" with "Mr. Jaws", which debuted on the Hot 100 this week in 1975 at #49. It would peak at #4. This eleven year old kid was certainly amused. My dad took me to the movie after asking me to read the book first. Kind of an odd parenting decision because there's a pretty torrid sex scene involving the police chief's wife and the character Richard Dreyfuss would play. I remember following Jaws with Feral, a novel about cats terrorizing a small town.

40 Year Itch : Energy Crisis '74

In early 1974 comedic sampler Dickie Goodman hit the Top 40 with  "Energy Crisis '74" . Not that many Americans found anything amusing about odd-even gas rationing or how one out of five gas stations had run out of gas.
Goodman used the same tactic of inter-cutting fake interviews with songs when he recorded his biggest seller would the #4 1975 hit "Mr. Jaws".




The songs that were sampled are:

 Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress) by Helen Reddy
Smokin' In the Boys Room by Brownsville Station
Living for the City by Stevie Wonder
Helen Wheels by Paul McCartney and Wings
Mind Games by John Lennon
The Joker by Steve Miller Band
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John
Hello It's Me by Todd Rundgren
You're Sixteen by Ringo Starr
The Most Beautiful Girl by Charlie Rich
Top of the World by The Carpenters

40 Year Itch : Tricky Dick and The Birth of Sampling

The Watergate scandal inspired "the King of Novelty",  Dickie Goodman,  to record one of his "break-in" records, "Watergrate". With a Mad Magazine sense of humor, Goodman had been blending snippets of hit songs that seem to be answering questions from a reporter since 1959's "Flying Saucer". "Watergrate" hit #42. In 1975 Goodman's "Mr Jaws" would hit #4. You could argue these were among the first records to "sample" other artists.

Earlier in the year, Goodman wrote and produced "Superfly Meets Shaft", a blaxploitation-inspired novelty tune that hit the Top 40 in May of 1973.