Rambling Rhoads: 2025-02-23

As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)

Friday, February 28, 2025

Robert John

https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/robert-john-dead-obituary-1235910130/

Who?

Singer-songwriter Robert John seems to be best remembered for his song “Sad Eyes”, which topped the charts in 1979. Although he also reached the top 10 in 1972 with a pleasant-but-pointless remake of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, I much prefer a pair of lesser-known tracks: “If You Don’t Want My Love” (which I remember from 1968 although it missed the top 40) and “When The Party Is Over” (which had a very brief chart run in 1970 but never came to my attention until a couple of years ago). And I just found out today that he co-wrote “I Can’t Move No Mountains” for Blood, Sweat & Tears, which also deserves more love than it gets.

Chris Jasper

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/02/25/chris-jasper-dead-isley-brothers/

https://variety.com/2025/music/news/chris-jasper-dead-isley-brothers-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-inductee-1236319892/

(The Post obituary is better, if you have access to it.)

I did a rather lengthy post on The Isley Brothers three years ago. Chris Jasper was a second-generation member of the group, joining in the early 1970s with Ernie and Marvin Isley. (Jasper, although not a blood member of the Isley clan, grew up with the Isleys, and his sister married Rudolph Isley.) After contributing to such classics as “Fight The Power”, “For The Love Of You”, and “Harvest For The World”, Jasper broke off from the original group (along with Ernie and Marvin) to form Isley-Jasper-Isley, which hit #1 on Billboard’s R&B Singles chart in 1985 with “Caravan Of Love”.