RIGHT ON [1976]

Looks like ol' HERC spoke too soon last time out - this is his final post covering the K-Tel albums from 1976. Featuring 20 ORIGINAL HITS by 20 ORIGINAL STARS, Right On features Kerry Ciardelli in the commercial as well as both the front and back covers of the album. There's a tiny caption on the back cover, beneath the album image of Nadia's Theme and the "Made & Printed in U.S.A." declaration. It says our cover girl, Miss Kerry, is "lead vocalist, FREE FALL".

As part of our efforts to get organized and know what lies within the HERChives here at The Hideaway, we recently catalogued our collection of 45s. Now we can tell at a glance what we have. Of the twenty songs on Right On, we have two of them on 45s:

Given that 75% of the songs on Right On were Top 10 hits, it should produce a fairly high score on the K-tel Scale. A couple of songs are from 1973, some from 1974 and 1975, with the majority being from 1976. We'd guess that this album was released in the latter part of 1976, between October and December.

One of the surprises in researching the music on Right On was finding out "Nadia's Theme" was a #1 hit on Chicago's WLS, the station I was listening to at the time. Perhaps I blocked it out, but I don't remember hearing it that much on the radio during its chart run of 22 weeks in Oct-Dec 1976. Having heard that song again recently, I can say with complete confidence that I don't have to hear it again for another 30 years.

RIGHT ON [1976]		K-tel Scale:				34.25
		Top 40 chart peaks
		Pop	R&B	DISCO	AC	CB	WLS
The Boys Are Back In Town	Thin Lizzy	12				10	2
Magic Man	Heart	9				7	7
You Are The Woman	Firefall	9			6	8	2
Strange Magic	Electric Light Orchestra	14			24	14	33
Nadia's Theme (The Young And The Restless)	Berry DeVorzon & Perry Botkin, Jr.	8			8	5	1
Kiss And Say Goodbye	The Manhattans	1	1		12	1	23
Saturday Night	Bay City Rollers	1				1	1
Love Machine (Part 1)	The Miracles	1	5	20		1	16
Love Hangover	Diana Ross	1	1	1	19	1	2
You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine	Lou Rawls	2	1	4	1	4	4
Daniel	Elton John	2			1	2	3
Just Be Close To You	Commodores	7	1			11	19
One Man Woman/One Woman Man	Paul Anka with Odia Coates	7			5	7	10
I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do	ABBA	15			8	19
You Are My Starship	Norman Connors	27	4			26	23
The Cisco Kid	War	2	5			2	2
All By Myself	Eric Carmen	2			6	1	4
Magic	Pilot	5				5	2
Did You Boogie (With Your Baby)	Flash Cadillac & the Continental Kids	29				25	33
Dazz	Brick	3	1	7		5	3

With a K-tel Scale score of 34.25, Right On enters the Top 10 chart at Number Three. Having five songs with no crossover success on other charts handicapped the score a bit. Half of the album's twenty tracks did manage to hit the Top 25 on the Adult Contemporary chart, so that was a score booster.

Eleven of the tracks migrated over to the Canadian version of Right On, featuring a less concentrated 60% Top 10 hit ratio. Only two songs failed to make the US Top 40; another song only registered on the Adult Contemporary Top 40 - it came in at #43 on the Pop chart. Despite this, the Canadian configuration of Right On scored just over 29 on the U.S.-biased K-tel Scale, barely missing the K-Tel Kollection Top 10.

RIGHT ON [1976]		K-tel Scale:				29.05
		Top 40 chart peaks
		Pop	R&B	DISCO	AC	CB	WLS
(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty	KC & The Sunshine Band	1	1			1	3
I'd Really Love To See You Tonight	England Dan & John Ford Coley	2			1	4	3
You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine	Lou Rawls	2	1	4	1	4	4
Strange Magic	Electric Light Orchestra	14			24	14	33
Getaway	Earth, Wind & Fire	12	1	12		10	23
The Cisco Kid	War	2	5			2	2
I Got To Know	Starbuck				11	40
Take It Or Leave It	Moxy
Magic Man	Heart	9				7	7
The Best Disco In Town	Ritchie Family	17	12	1		18
Daniel	Elton John	2			1	2	3
Just Be Close To You	Commodores	7	1			11	19
She's Gone	Hall & Oates	7			6	6	9
Love Machine (Part 1)	The Miracles	1	5	20		1	16
One Man Woman/One Woman Man	Paul Anka with Odia Coates	7			5	7	10
Who'd She Coo	Ohio Players	18	1			35
Did You Boogie (With Your Baby)	Flash Cadillac & the Continental Kids	29				25	33
I Don't Believe In Miracles	C.B. Victoria
Nadia's Theme (The Young And The Restless)	Berry DeVorzon & Perry Botkin, Jr.	8			8	5	1
Love Hangover	Diana Ross	1	1	1	19	1	2

BONUS RESEARCH 

As usual, the eight-track tape has the album's playlist slightly rearranged to yield four equal programs.  The length of each program is listed as 14:30, so the total length is approximately 58:00. Using the listed length of each single, we calculated how long an unedited tracklist would run, and it turns out it would be 10:29 longer. That's a solid ten and a half minutes, people. K-Tel Kollection viewer Jon went a few steps further and re-created the Right On playlist using all full-length album versions of the songs, coming in at ninety-one minutes, an amazing thirty-three minutes longer, people.

* 8-track scans courtesy of the 8-Track Shack