About POPera
“Music is a world within itself with a language we all understand, with an equal opportunity for all to sing and clap their hands.”
— Stevie Wonder
Rest in Peace
Bobby Caldwell 1951-2023
His 1978 hit: “What You Won’t Do for Love” received much airtime on such stations as KBLX in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Remembering Glenn Campbell
KQED’s “Country Music” by Ken Burns made us wonder why one of country’s first, biggest crossover stars, Glen Campbell, was not included:
Gentle On My Mind
Glenn Campbell
Recorded: 17-May-67
Top 40 Debut Date: 02-Nov-68
Highest Position: 39
Songwriter: John Hartford
By The Time I Get To Phoenix
Glenn Campbell
Recorded: 29-Aug-67
Top 40 Debut Date: 25-Nov-67
Highest Position: 26
Songwriter: Jimmy Webb
Wichita Lineman
Glenn Campbell
Recorded: 27-May-68
Top 40 Debut Date: 16-Nov-68
Highest Position: 3
Songwriter: Jimmy Webb
Gentle On My Mind Live
This performance was taped during a concert called “Ryman Country Homecoming” at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tenn., which was broadcast by TNN on December 4, 1999. When Roy Clark admires your guitar playing, you know you have reached the pinnacle. 😍
Green Onions
Booker T. & The MG’s
Released: Sept. 1962
Top 40 Debut Date: 01-Sep-62
Highest Position: 3
Songwriter: Booker T. Jones
September
Earth Wind & Fire
Released: 18-Nov-78
Highest Position : 8
Songwriter(s) : Maurice White, Al McKay, Allee Willis
OK Boomer, The Story
POPera is a story of love, unrequited love and even more love. A New Yorker, following his dreams to “go west young man,” moves from the east to California during the heyday of the 1960s and 1970s music revolution. The journey is intertwined with many popular songs to which enduring memories are attached.
Reflecting the era’s groundbreaking music, those recollections range from the baroque, as in rock, to quickly moving to the beat (of disco) to baring-of-the-soul music. Welcome to the heartstrings-tugging, beat-pounding, but most of all, danceable world of POPera.
TL;DR Background 😉
Baby Boomers are without question the most influential generation in the history of modern mankind. In every aspect, the 73 million members of the Baby Boom generation changed our world view, from aspiration to technology to entertainment to governance to lifestyle choices.
America’s Boomers, however, are in a funk. A non-stop barrage of somber news is shaking the very foundations of the society they helped redefine. Meanwhile, the industry that produces one of their most cherished forms of entertainment, music, is mired in a slump.
What America needs now is an inspirational and transformational experience that will remind Boomers of all the remarkable feats they accomplished.
As Boomers age, they inevitably reminisce about the “good old days,” especially after being chided with “OK, Boomer” by younger generations. 🤯 There’s no greater emotional connection to a particular period in one’s life than the hit songs associated with it. Beginning with Elvis Presley, Baby Boomers were arguably the first generation with access to a whole new genre of music that quickly grew from its rock-and-roll roots to encompass a far richer spectrum of music than ever existed before.