Forty Years Ago This Week: WLS Music Survey - August 27, 1977 (Part Three)

We wrap up our look at the WLS street sheet from August 27, 1977, with a perusal of the Forty-fives chart. Jumping back a week, both Steve Miller Band's "Jet Airliner" and Bill Conti's former Number One "Gonna Fly Now" flew off the chart to make room for B.J. Thomas's cover of "Don't Worry Baby" debut at number 45 and Peter Brown's invite "Do Ya Wanna Get Funky With Me" up at number 35 this week.

The biggest gainer on this week's chart is Foreigner's "Cold As Ice" leaping up from dead last at number 45 to number 30, leap-frogging their previous hit "Feels Like The First Time" as it stumbles from 34 to 42. The biggest fall goes to Andrew Gold's "Lonely Boy", dropping twelve spots from 31 to 43. It would slide off the chart the following week.

Fleetwood Mac (44 and 17) and Shaun Cassidy (32 and 16) join Foreigner (42 and 30) as the only artists with a pair of singles on the list of Forty-fives though there are two Orchestras on the chart this week back-to-back at 24 (London Symphony Orchestra) and 23 (Electric Light Orchestra) and two Bands at 34 (KC & the Sunshine Band) and 31 (The Sanford-Townsend Band).

The Top 9 of the chart was virtually unchanged from the prior week with only some minor shuffling and rearranging: four songs fell, two songs rose and the Top 2 (along with number 5) remained stationary. As we mentioned in Part One, Helen Reddy was at Number 5 with "You're My World" and the song's lyrics appear on the reverse side of the survey this week:

The Bay City Rollers "You Made Me Believe in Magic" came in at number 10 last week but dropped to number 12 this week allowing James Taylor's slowed-down cover of "Handy Man" to take the spot. Sliding in right behind Taylor were Crosby, Stills & Nash with "Just A Song Before I Go" at number 11 - the other song with its lyrics printed on the back of this week's survey:

The week's hit singles according to WLS bare little resemblance to Casey Kasem's American (Billboard) Top 40 this week with a solitary single occupying the same spot on both charts: Pablo Cruise's "Whatcha Gonna Do" at number 6. The single is one of fourteen 45s from this week's Forty-fives list that I still have from back then. It is also one of four 45s with a picture sleeve in that group of fourteen. Though I don't have any specific memories related to these songs, many of them rank among my all-time favorites with only Meri Wilson's "Telephone Man" singled out as a song that would make me change the station if it came on. I'll have more to say about thirty-eight of these songs as they appear on the upcoming 1977 Hideaway 100!

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