Re-Animator (also known as H. P. Lovecraft's Re-Animator) is a 1985 American comedy horror film loosely based on the 1922 H. P. Lovecraft serial novelette "Herbert West–Reanimator". Directed by Stuart Gordon and produced by Brian Yuzna, the film stars Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West, a medical student who has invented a reagent which can re-animate deceased bodies. He and his classmate Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) begin to test the serum on dead human bodies, and conflict with Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), who is infatuated with Cain's fiancée (Barbara Crampton) and wants to claim the invention as his own.

Originally devised by Gordon as a theatrical stage production and later a half-hour television pilot, the television script was revised to become a feature film. Filmed in Hollywood, the film originally was released without a rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, and was later edited to obtain an R rating. It garnered its largest audience through the unrated cut's release on home video.

Re-Animator is the first film collaboration between Gordon and Combs, the second being From Beyond, released in 1986. It is the first film in the Re-Animator film series, followed by Bride of Re-Animator in 1990 and Beyond Re-Animator in 2003. Released to mostly positive reviews, Re-Animator has since been considered a cult film.

Plot
At the University of Zurich Institute of Medicine in Switzerland, Herbert West brings his dead professor, Dr. Hans Gruber, back to life. There are horrific side-effects, however; as West explains, the dosage was too large. When accused of killing Gruber, West counters: "I gave him life!"

West arrives at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts in order to further his studies as a medical student. He rents a room from fellow medical student Dan Cain and converts the house's basement into his own personal laboratory. West demonstrates his reanimating reagent to Dan by reanimating Dan's dead cat Rufus.  The cat behaves viciously that night forcing Dan to kill it again before West reanimates what is left of it, convincing Dan that West's reagent works. Dan's fiancée Megan Halsey, daughter of the medical school's dean, walks in on this experiment and is horrified.

Dan tries to tell the dean about West's success in reanimating the dead cat, but the dean does not believe him. When Dan insists, the dean implies that Dan and West have gone mad. Barred from the school, West and Dan sneak into the morgue to test the reagent on a human subject in an attempt to prove that the reagent works, and thereby salvage their medical careers. The corpse they inject comes back to life, but in a frenetic and violent zombie-like state. Dr. Halsey stumbles upon the scene and is killed by the reanimated corpse, which West then kills with a bone-saw. Excited at the prospect of working with a freshly dead specimen, West injects Dr. Halsey's body with his reanimating reagent. Dr. Halsey returns to life, also in a zombie-like state. Megan chances upon the scene, and is hysterical. Dan collapses in shock.

Dr. Halsey's colleague Dr. Carl Hill, a professor and researcher at the hospital, takes charge of Dr. Halsey, whom he puts in a padded observation cell adjacent to his office. He carries out a surgical operation on him, lobotomizing him. During the course of this operation, he discovers that Dr. Halsey is not sick, but dead and reanimated.

Dr. Hill goes to West's basement lab and attempts to blackmail him into surrendering his reagent and notes, hoping to take credit for West's discovery. West offers to demonstrate the reagent and puts a few drops of it onto a microscope slide with dead cat tissue. As Dr. Hill peers through the microscope at this slide, West clobbers him from behind with a shovel, and then decapitates him with it. West then reanimates Dr. Hill's head and body separately. While West is questioning Dr. Hill's head and taking notes, Dr. Hill's body sneaks up behind him and knocks him unconscious. The body carries the head back to Dr. Hill's office, with West's reagent and notes.

In his re-animated state, Dr. Hill acquires the ability to control other re-animated corpses telepathically, after conducting brain surgery on them. He then directs Dr. Halsey to snatch Megan away from Dan. While being carried to the morgue by her reanimated father, Megan faints. When she arrives, Dr. Hill strips her naked and straps her unconscious body to a table. She regains consciousness as Hill's body and bloody, severed head begin to sexually assault her.

Hill's body starts to place his head between Megan's legs, but is interrupted by the arrival of West and Dan. West distracts Dr. Hill while Dan frees Megan. Dr. Hill reveals that he has reanimated and lobotomized several corpses from the morgue, rendering them susceptible to mind control as Halsey is. However, Megan's voice reawakens a protectiveness in her father, who fights off the other corpses as Dan and Megan escape. In the ensuing chaos, West injects Dr. Hill's body with a lethal overdose of the reagent. Dr. Hill's body mutates rapidly and attacks West, who screams out to Dan to save his work before being pulled away by Dr. Hill's monstrous entrails.

Dan retrieves the satchel containing West's reagent and notes. As Dan and Megan flee the morgue, one of the reanimated corpses attacks and strangles Megan. Dan takes her to the hospital emergency room and tries to revive her, but she is dead. In despair, he injects her with West's reagent. After the scene fades to black, Megan, apparently revived, can be heard screaming.

Cast
 Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West
 Bruce Abbott as Daniel Cain
 Barbara Crampton as Megan Halsey
 David Gale as Dr. Carl Hill
 Robert Sampson as Dean Alan Halsey
 Al Berry as Dr. Hans Gruber
 Carolyn Purdy-Gordon as Dr. Harrod
 Ian Patrick Williams as the Swiss Professor
 Gerry Black as Mace
 Peter Kent as Melvin the Re-Animated
 Craig Reed as the One Arm Man Corpse a.k.a. the Burn Victim

Production
The idea to make Re-Animator came from a discussion Stuart Gordon had with friends one night about vampire films. He felt that there were too many Dracula films and expressed a desire to see a Frankenstein film. Someone asked if he had read "Herbert West–Reanimator" by H. P. Lovecraft. Gordon had read most of the author's works, but not that story, which was long out of print. He went to the Chicago Public Library and read their copy.

Originally, Gordon was going to adapt Lovecraft's story for the stage, but eventually decided along with writers Dennis Paoli and William Norris to make it as a half-hour television pilot. The story was set around the turn of the century, and they soon realized that it would be too expensive to recreate. They updated it to the present day in Chicago with the intention of using actors from the Organic Theater company. They were told that the half hour format was not saleable and so they made it an hour, writing 13 episodes. Special effects technician Bob Greenberg, who had worked on John Carpenter's Dark Star, repeatedly told Gordon that the only market for horror was in feature films, and introduced him to producer Brian Yuzna. Gordon showed Yuzna the script for the pilot and the 12 additional episodes. The producer liked what he read and convinced Gordon to shoot the film in Hollywood, because of all the special effects involved. Yuzna made a distribution deal with Charles Band's Empire Pictures in return for post-production services. However, after viewing the initial dailies Empire became involved in the actual production, making a number of suggestions, including the recruitment of Mac Ahlberg as cinematographer.

According to Paoli, the first draft of the script contained no humor whatsoever, and the film's comedic elements only came out over further revisions and during the actual production.

Yuzna described the film as having the "sort of shock sensibility of an Evil Dead with the production values of, hopefully, The Howling." Gordon cited The Revenge of Frankenstein as a major inspiration for the film. John Naulin worked on the film's gruesome makeup effects, using what he described as "disgusting shots brought out from the Cook County morgue of all kinds of different lividities and different corpses." The morgue set was based on the aforementioned Cook County morgue, which was newly built and featured cutting-edge technology; Gordon opted for this look since he felt old morgues had been overdone in horror films. Naulin and Gordon also used a book of forensic pathology in order to present how a corpse looks once the blood settles in the body, creating a variety of odd skin tones. Naulin said that Re-Animator was the bloodiest film he had ever worked on: in the past, he had never used more than a couple of gallons (7.6liters) of blood on a film, but on Re-Animator he used twelve times as much.

Jeffrey Combs was cast as Herbert West. Combs had never read any H. P. Lovecraft before his casting and was taken aback by the script; he later said he only took the role because he needed the work and assumed the film would never reach a large audience.

Principal photography began on November 28, 1984, with a six-week shooting schedule, though Gordon has boasted that they finished shooting the film in just four weeks. The biggest makeup challenge in the film was the headless Dr. Hill zombie. Tony Doublin designed the mechanical effects and was faced with the problem of proportion once the 9–10 inches of the head were removed from the body. Each scene forced him to use a different technique. For example, one technique involved building an upper torso that actor David Gale could bend over and stick his head through so that it appeared to be the one that the walking corpse was carrying around.

The "reanimating agent" was simply luminol.

Soundtrack
The score for the film was composed by Richard Band, and has been noted for its similarities to Bernard Herrmann's score for Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho. The score took about three and a half weeks to complete, and was recorded in Italy with the Rome Philharmonic. In regards to the influence of Herrmann's Psycho score, Band has noted that the similarities were intentional, and that he "used that as a base and modified the theme but kept that Herrmannesque feeling."

The film soundtrack was released by Waxwork Records on vinyl and includes liner notes by composer Richard Band and director Stuart Gordon, with album artwork by Gary Pullin.

Release
Re-Animator was released on October 18, 1985, in 129 theaters, and grossed $543,728 during its opening weekend. It went on to make $2,023,414 in North America, above its estimated $900,000 budget. However, it experienced its greatest commercial success when released on home video. The film was re-released with a premiere on May 21, 2010, as part of Creation Entertainment's Weekends of Horror.

Home video
The film was originally released on VHS, LaserDisc and Betamax by Vestron Video, and was later released on DVD by Elite Entertainment on April 30, 2002 in two versions: a standard DVD edition, and a "Millennium Edition" featuring a remastered picture and two commentary tracks, one by writer/director Stuart Gordon and the other by the entire main cast except for David Gale, who died in 1991.

R-rated version
When Re-Animator was originally released in theaters, the filmmakers did not submit it for rating by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), for fear that it would receive an X rating. However, this presented advertising restrictions, since many media outlets had policies against promoting unrated films. In early 1986, the filmmakers submitted a re-edited version of Re-Animator to the MPAA, which received an R rating. In the US, the vast majority of home media releases of the film used the unrated version.

The R-rated version runs 93 minutes and has much of the gore edited out and replaced with various scenes which had been deleted for pacing purposes, including a subplot involving Dr. Hill hypnotizing several of the characters to make them more suggestible to his will (in this version, Dean Halsey is hypnotized early on to turn him against West, and then later is hypnotized again after he has been re-animated; in the theatrical film, the re-animated Halsey's submission is merely a result of the lobotomy). In addition, a short scene was added showing Herbert West injecting himself with small amounts of the reagent to stay awake and energized; this may have affected his thinking over the course of the film.

The unrated version is often labeled as a "director's cut", which strictly speaking is false; director Stuart Gordon was not allowed to determine the final cut on any version of the film. However, Gordon has expressed his preference for the unrated version over the R-rated version.

Integral cut
A 2013 German Blu-ray release of Re-Animator also included a new "Integral cut," wherein the extra material from the R-rated version was incorporated into the unrated version, expanding the film from 86 minutes to just under 105 minutes. This extended cut has also been included with other non-US releases.

Reception
The film was well received by critics, earning mostly positive reviews. Pauline Kael enjoyed the film's "indigenous American junkiness" and called it "pop Buñuel; the jokes hit you in a subterranean comic zone that the surrealists' pranks sometimes reached, but without the surrealists' self-consciousness (and art-consciousness)." Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "I walked out somewhat surprised and reinvigorated (if not re-animated) by a movie that had the audience emitting taxi whistles and wild goat cries." In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "Re-Animator has a fast pace and a good deal of grisly vitality. It even has a sense of humor, albeit one that would be lost on 99.9 percent of any ordinary moviegoing crowd".<ref name= "Maslin">{{cite web | last= Maslin |first=Janet | author-link= Janet Maslin | title = Re Animator (1985) SCREEN: STUART GORDON DIRECTS 'RE-ANIMATOR | work = The New York Times | date = October 18, 1985 | url = https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?_r=1&res=9E04EED91E39F93BA25753C1A963948260 }}</ref>

Paul Attanasio, in his review for The Washington Post, praised Jeffrey Combs' performance: "Beady-eyed, his face hard, almost lacquered, Combs makes West into a brittle, slightly fey psychotic in the Anthony Perkins mold. West is a figure of fun, but Combs doesn't spoof him." In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas wrote, "The big noise is Combs, a small, compact man of terrific intensity and concentration." David Edelstein, writing for Village Voice, placed the film in his year-end Top Ten Movies list.

In their book Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft, Andrew Migliore and John Strysik write: "Re-Animator took First Prize at the Paris Festival of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror, a Special Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and even spawned a short-lived series of comic books. Even though it was a hit with audiences, the film generated a huge amount of controversy among Lovecraft readers. Fans thought the film a desecration of Lovecraft; their literary hero would never write such obvious exploitation! But the final criticism of the film might have been a bit more muted if these fans had actually read the 'West' stories, which are pure exploitation. Lovecraft himself acknowledged as much, and female love interest and black sex humor aside, Re-Animator really is one of the more faithful and effective adaptations." Bruce C. Hallenbeck, in his book Comedy-Horror Films: A Chronological History, 1914-2008, said the film was one of the few to successfully combine genuine scares with genuine laughs, and praised Combs's performance as retaining the theatricality of classic horror stars. He remarked that "Re-Animator broke down the barriers between 'splatter movies' and comedy-horror films. Its buckets of gore mixed with barrels of laughs, and it opened up a whole new realm where nothing was sacred and nothing was taboo."

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected 62 reviews and gave the film an approval rating of 94%, with an average rating of 7.81/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Perfectly mixing humor and horror, the only thing more effective than Re-Animators gory scares are its dry, deadpan jokes." Metacritic gave the film a rating of 73 out of 100 based on reviews from 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Entertainment Weekly ranked the film number 32 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films," and number 14 on their "The Cult 25: The Essential Left-Field Movie Hits Since '83" list.

LegacyRe-Animator was followed by two sequels: Bride of Re-Animator in 1990 and Beyond Re-Animator in 2003. Re-Animator director Stuart Gordon directed another film based on an H. P. Lovecraft story, From Beyond (1986); though it featured a story unrelated to Re-Animator, it also starred both Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton.

In the book Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft, producer-director Brian Yuzna mentions an idea that he had for a fourth Re-Animator. This version would have been titled Island of Re-Animator, and would have been strongly influenced by the H. G. Wells novel The Island of Doctor Moreau.

In the 1999 film American Beauty, Kevin Spacey and Wes Bentley's characters Lester Burnham and Ricky Fitts make mention of the film: while both are high on marijuana, Lester asks Ricky, "Did you ever see that movie where the body is walking around carrying its own head and then the head goes down on that babe?" They both laugh and Ricky replies, "Re-Animator."

In 2011, a musical adaptation opened in New York, which director Gordon participated in.

The character of Herbert West starred in a number of comic book adaptations by different companies, such as Adventure Comics (Re-Animator in Full Color and Re-Animator: Dawn of the Re-Animator), Zenescope Entertainment (The Chronicles of Dr. Herbert West), and Dynamite Entertainment (Re-Animator). West also appeared in Devil's Due Publishing's Hack/Slash series as a side character, and in three crossover comics by Dynamite Entertainment: Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator, Army of Darkness/Re-Animator, in which Ash Williams of the Evil Dead series confronts West of the Re-Animator series. and Vampirella vs. Re-Animator''.

References

External links

1985 comedy horror films
1985 directorial debut films
1985 films
1985 independent films
1985 multilingual films
1980s American films
1980s English-language films
1980s German-language films
1980s monster movies
American body horror films
American exploitation films
American independent films
American multilingual films
American splatter films
Empire International Pictures films
Films about father–daughter relationships
Films based on short fiction
Films based on works by H. P. Lovecraft
Films directed by Stuart Gordon
Films scored by Richard Band
Films set in Massachusetts
Films set in Zürich
Films shot in Los Angeles
Re-Animator (film series)
Resurrection in film

Re-Animator


In Sufism, a murīd (Arabic مُرِيد 'one who seeks') is a novice committed to spiritual enlightenment by sulūk (traversing a path) under a spiritual guide, who may take the title murshid, pir or shaykh. A sālik or Sufi follower only becomes a murīd when he makes a pledge (bayʿah) to a murshid. The equivalent Persian term is shāgird.

The initiation process of a murīd is known as ʿahd () or bai'ath. Before initiation, a murid is instructed by his guide, who must first accept the initiate as his disciple. Throughout the instruction period, the murīd typically experiences waridates like visions and dreams during personal spiritual awrads and exercises. These visions are interpreted by the murshid. A common practice among the early Sufi orders was to grant a khirqa or a robe to the murīd upon the initiation or after he had progressed through a series of increasingly difficult and significant tasks on the path of mystical development until attaining wasil stage. This practice is not very common now. Murīds often receive books of instruction from murshids and often accompany itinerant murshids on their wanderings.

See also
Murīdūn, Andalusian movement that revolted against Almoravid authority in 1144
Murid War, war between Russia and a Caucasian Naqshbandi movement in the 19th century
Mouride brotherhood, a prominent Sufi tariqa in West Africa, founded in 1883
 Talibe
 Salik
 Wasil
 Majzoob
 Muqarrab

References

External links

 Sufi Live

Arabic words and phrases
Sufism

Murid


Pure Luck is a 1991 American comedy film starring Martin Short and Danny Glover. It is a remake of the popular French comedy film La Chèvre (1981).

Plot
The film opens as the klutzy Valerie Highsmith arrives at an airport in Puerto Vallarta. She calls her father, a wealthy businessman, to let him know that she has arrived. While she is on the phone, she clumsily leans on the railing of her balcony and falls several stories onto a canvas. Soon after, an encounter with some street thieves knocks her unconscious and she loses her memory, then a local criminal named Frank Grimes spirits Valerie away from her hotel.

A psychologist named Monosoff, knowing that Valerie has ultra bad luck, persuades her father to send one of his employees, Eugene Proctor, an accountant with super bad luck, to find her. Perhaps he will be lucky, and his bad luck could help to find the unlucky girl. Eugene is partnered with Raymond Campanella , a hardnosed investigator, who bristles at Eugene's every move.

As they travel to Mexico together, they endure one mishap after another, from damaged luggage and bad hotel rooms to bar fights with strangers. Eventually, they are told by the local police that Valerie was last seen with Frank Grimes. Eugene thinks that he can press a local prostitute for information, but she robs him. Raymond tracks the prostitute down at a gambling club (run by a man named Fernando) and confronts several men at gunpoint to retrieve Eugene's money. Neither of them realizes that Frank Grimes is seated at the table, until after they drive away and look at his picture one more time.

Raymond and Eugene return to the club and abduct Grimes to find out where Valerie is. He confesses that Valerie's extreme clumsiness required him to keep going to hospitals with her, wiping out all his money. He could no longer afford to keep her hostage. So, Grimes turned Valerie over to Fernando (Puebla). Before Grimes can take them to Valerie, he is killed in a drive-by shooting. The police arrest Raymond and Eugene by mistake. After a short stint in jail, they find out that Grimes had put Valerie on a plane to Mexico City which never arrived, and Valerie is presumed dead in a plane crash.

They charter a plane to look for Valerie's wreckage, hoping that she might have survived. During the flight, Eugene is stung by a bee and swells to an enormous size, due to an allergy. As he recovers at a field hospital, he talks to a local man who tells about a strange woman who wandered into their village one day. She was so grateful for being taken in by the villagers that she offered to make them all breakfast in the morning, but she ended up burning the village down by accident. Musing that she might be Valerie, Raymond shows the man her picture, and he screams in terror.

Raymond and Eugene head towards the burned village in search of Valerie. Eugene nearly drives them off a cliff. After barely escaping, Raymond has had enough of Eugene's dreadful luck. In a rage, he reveals to Eugene that the only reason he was hired to find Valerie was because Monosoff thought Eugene's bad luck would somehow combine with Valerie's to create some good luck. Eugene tries to fight Raymond, but he only manages to knock himself out.

Raymond takes Eugene to a local hospital. Realizing that he has befriended Eugene, he asks the nurse to take extra care with him. When Eugene wakes up, he is in a bed next to Valerie, who has also suffered a head wound. They blithely walk off hand in hand. Raymond discovers their empty beds and spots them on the end of a pier. He shouts at Eugene to let him know that he has found Valerie. Eugene stares at her in a daze and asks, "Valerie?" Hearing her name, Valerie recovers her memory. The film ends with the pair floating down the river on a piece of the pier that has broken off and is headed towards a massive waterfall.

Cast
Martin Short as Eugene Proctor
Danny Glover as Raymond Campanella
Sheila Kelley as Valerie Highsmith
Sam Wanamaker as Highsmith
Scott Wilson as Frank Grimes
Harry Shearer as Monosoff
Jorge Russek as Inspector Segura
Rodrigo Puebla as Fernando
John H. Brennan as Tyler
 as Pilot
Abel Woolrich as Prisoner
Patricia Gage as Secretary
Ariane Pellicer as Girl at Club
Alexandra Vicencio as Nurse
Sharlene Martin as Nurse

Reception
In 1998, director Nadia Tass reported she was still receiving residuals from the film because of its success in America.
It was successful in a financial sense but not in a satisfying sense. It was congenial doing a Martin Short comedy, but American comedy is different from Australian comedy. It is broader. American audiences enjoyed Pure Luck, but audiences in other countries did not enjoy it so much with the exception of the Germans. I wanted to do something else with the comedy and so did Danny Glover. I would like to have put a lot more pathos and pain into it. But they wanted a comedy for America.

The cartoon series Hey Arnold! had a character, Eugene Horowitz, who is also a jinx and was likely based on Eugene Proctor from the film. The Simpsons introduced a character named Frank Grimes in "Homer's Enemy" who suffers a similar fate at the hands of the cosmically careless Homer Simpson.

Owen Gleiberman summed up Pure Luck in his D− review as, "a numbingly repetitive farce in which the cursed Short trips, walks into walls, trips, spills an entire saltshaker onto his breakfast, trips, sets people on fire, trips ..." Roger Ebert gave the film one and a half stars, and zeroed in on the emptiness of much of the film's comedy:Consider, for example, the scene where Proctor and Campanella are in a Jeep that is teetering on the edge of a cliff, its rear wheels hanging in mid-air. We've seen situations like this many times before, but I can't remember one less compelling. It unspools without comic timing, it stops dead in the middle, the payoff isn't funny, and later we can see it wasn't even much of a cliff.

Caryn James praised Martin Short's efforts in the film, which she found otherwise forgettable, "Against the odds, he makes Pure Luck always painless and sometimes genuinely amusing. Martin Short can do anything, it seems, except find the right movies to star in."

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 15%, based on 13 reviews.

References

External links

1990s adventure comedy films
1990s comedy mystery films
American adventure comedy films
American comedy mystery films
American remakes of French films
Films directed by Nadia Tass
Films set in Mexico
Universal Pictures films
1991 comedy films
Films with screenplays by Timothy Harris (writer)
Films with screenplays by Herschel Weingrod
1990s English-language films
1990s American films
Films based on works by Francis Veber
English-language adventure comedy films
English-language comedy mystery films

Pure Luck


This article includes an overview of the major events and trends in popular music in the 1970s.

In North America, Europe, and Oceania, the decade saw the rise of disco, which became one of the biggest genres of the decade, especially in the mid-to-late 1970s. In Europe, a variant known as Euro disco rose in popularity towards the end of the 1970s. Aside from disco, funk, soul, R&B, smooth jazz, and jazz fusion remained popular throughout the decade. Rock music played an important part in the Western musical scene, with punk rock thriving throughout the mid to late 1970s.

 Other subgenres of rock, particularly glam rock, hard rock, progressive rock, art rock, blues rock, and heavy metal achieved various amounts of success. Other genres such as reggae were innovative throughout the decade and grew a significant following. Hip hop emerged during this decade, but was slow to start and did not become significant until the late 1980s. Classical began losing a little momentum; however, through invention and theoretical development, this particular genre gave rise to experimental classical and minimalist music by classical composers. A subgenre of classical, film scores, remained popular with movie-goers. Alongside the popularity of experimental music, the decade was notable for its contributions to electronic music, which rose in popularity with the continued development of synthesizers and harmonizers; more composers embraced this particular genre, gaining the notice of listeners who were looking for something new and different. Its rising popularity, mixed with the popular music of the period, led to the creation of synthpop. Pop also had a popularity role in the 1970s.

In Africa, especially Nigeria, the genre known as Afrobeat gained a following throughout the 1970s.

In Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, the Nueva canción movement peaked in popularity and was adopted as the music of the hippie, Liberation Theology, and New Left movements. Cumbia music began its internationalization as regional scenes rose outside Colombia. Merengue experienced mainstream exposure across Latin America and the southern US border states.

In Asia, music continued to follow varying trends. In Japan, the decade saw several musical trends, including pop music, folk music, rock music, disco music, while the rock group "Spiders" disbanded in 1970.

Overview

In an essay published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau wrote:

According to Christgau, the decade also saw greater fragmentation along stylistic lines because of the rise of semipopular music: "It goes back to whenever arty types began to find 'the best' rock worthy of attention in the '60s, but in the '60s tolerance was the rule; it was easier to name rough substyles—say British invasion, folk-rock, psychedelic, and soul—than to analyze their separate audiences (even racial distinctions were fuzzy). Not until 1968 or 1969, when it became a hippie commonplace to dismiss soul as 'commercial' and when bubblegum and 'white blues' developed into clear categories, did the breakdown really begin. And only in the '70s did genres start asserting themselves: singer-songwriter and interpreter, art-rock and heavy metal and country-rock and boogie, fusion and funk and disco and black MOR, punk and new wave, and somehow straddling them all, the monolith of pop-rock."

North America

Hard rock, arena rock and heavy metal

The 1970s saw the emergence of hard rock as one of the most prominent subgenres of rock music. During the first half of the decade, British acts such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep and Black Sabbath were at the height of their international fame, particularly in the United States. By the second half of the decade, many other acts had also achieved stardom, namely, Mountain, Grand Funk Railroad, Alice Cooper, Cactus, James Gang, AC/DC, Blue Öyster Cult, Kiss, Aerosmith, Van Halen, and Ted Nugent.

Arena rock grew in popularity through rock acts such as Boston, Kansas, Styx, Journey, Toto, Foreigner, and Heart, and the Carpenters.

Psychedelic rock declined in popularity after the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison of the Doors, the self-imposed seclusion of Syd Barrett from Pink Floyd, and the break-up of the Beatles in 1970.

Progressive rock

The American brand of prog rock varied from the eclectic and innovative Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Blood, Sweat and Tears, and Rush, to more pop rock oriented bands like Boston, Foreigner, Journey, Kansas, and Styx.  These, beside British bands Supertramp and Electric Light Orchestra, all demonstrated a prog rock influence and while ranking among the most commercially successful acts of the 1970s, ushering in the era of pomp or arena rock, which would last until the costs of complex shows (often with theatrical staging and special effects), would be replaced by more economical rock festivals as major live venues in the 1990s.

New wave

Successful American new wave bands in the late seventies included Talking Heads, the Cars, the Knack, the B-52's, and Devo. Some of the Canadian new wave groups included Rough Trade, the Payolas, and Martha and the Muffins. After the success of British synthpop acts in the U.S. such as Gary Numan and the Buggles, a number of American bands also began experimenting with synthesizers. In the early 1980s, bands from the United Kingdom became immensely popular in the U.S., and this phenomenon became known as the Second British Invasion which mainly consisted of British new wave and synthpop acts, therefore broadening the definition of "new wave".

Punk rock

The mid-1970s saw the rise of punk music from its protopunk-garage band roots in the 1960s and early 1970s. The Ramones, Patti Smith, and Blondie were some of the earliest American punk rock acts to make it big in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Punk music has also been heavily associated with a certain punk fashion and absurdist humour which exemplified a genuine suspicion of mainstream culture and values. Blondie quickly lost their punk roots going on to become a pop/ska/reggae band.

Blues rock

Blues rock remains popular, with Eric Clapton, ZZ Top, and George Thorogood seeing the greatest success. Freddie King started moving from straight blues to blues rock since the genre was now mostly popular among white audiences. Stress from nonstop touring resulted in his death at the age of 42 in 1976.

Soft rock and pop

Some of the more notable pop/soft rock groups during the 1970s were the Carpenters, the Jackson 5, Seals & Crofts, the Bee Gees, the Doobie Brothers, Hall & Oates, Bread, Captain & Tennille, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Bay City Rollers, and the Osmonds.

Male soloists who characterized the pop music of the era included Barry Manilow, Andy Gibb, Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Marvin Gaye, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Eric Clapton, Barry White, and Rod Stewart.  Female soloists who epitomized the 1970s included Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, Roberta Flack, Donna Summer, Barbra Streisand, Rita Coolidge, Olivia Newton-John, and Helen Reddy.

Some of the most popular music acts of the day got their own network television variety shows, which were very popular in the '70s. Acts like Sonny & Cher, Glen Campbell, John Denver, Tony Orlando and Dawn, husband and wife team Captain & Tennille, brother and sister Donny & Marie Osmond.

Soft rock was prominently featured on many top 40 and contemporary hit radio stations throughout the 1970s. Soft rock often used acoustic instruments and placed emphasis on melody and harmonies. Major soft rock artists of the 1970s included Carole King, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Chicago, America, the Eagles, and Fleetwood Mac, whose Rumours (1977) was the best-selling album of the decade. (See the country music section of this article for more about country music that crossed over onto the pop charts.) Bob Dylan's 1975–1976 Rolling Thunder Revue reunited him with a number of folk-rock acts from his early days of performing, most notably Joan Baez, who returned to the charts in 1975 with "Diamonds & Rust".

Some of the most successful singers and songwriters were: Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Jim Croce, John Denver, Neil Diamond, Barry Gibb, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Carole King, Elton John, Don McLean, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Kris Kristofferson, Carly Simon, Donna Summer, Gordon Lightfoot, and Harry Chapin— some had previously been primarily songwriters but began releasing albums and songs of their own. King's album Tapestry became one of the top-selling albums of the decade, and the song "It's Too Late" became one of the 1970s biggest songs. McLean's 1971 song "American Pie", inspired by the death of Buddy Holly, became one of popular music's most-recognized songs of the 20th century, thanks to its abstract and vivid storytelling, which center around "The Day the Music Died" and popular music of the rock era.

The early 1970s marked the departure of Diana Ross from the Supremes and the break-up of Simon & Garfunkel and the Beatles. All continued hugely successful recording careers throughout the decade. Some of their songs that are among the hits of the early 1970s: Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water", Simon's solo hit "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover", Paul McCartney's "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey", George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord", and Ross' "Ain't No Mountain High Enough".

Popular British acts were the Rolling Stones, Peter Frampton, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Leo Sayer, the Bee Gees, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Supertramp, and the Who; whose lead singer Roger Daltrey made a splash in the 1975 film Tommy, playing the title role, based on the group's 1969 album of the same name. Elton John, Tina Turner, Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, Jack Nicholson, and the other band members made up the ensemble cast.

Disco, R&B and urban

The Bee Gees were one of, if not the 1970s biggest musical act dominating album sales, singles sales and music charts of many countries including the U.S. and UK. Most notably, they spearheaded and led the disco and pop music scenes of the 1970s at one point they had 5 songs in the top 10 and 3 songs in the top 5 of the U.S. Billboard charts according to Barry Gibb. They were the main artists and songwriters of the cultural and revolutionary music soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever which went on to become the second biggest-selling soundtrack of all time and up until Thriller it was the biggest-selling album of all time selling over 50 million copies worldwide. After achieving all of these huge records and milestones, some critics have labeled the Bee Gees as the decade-defining act of the 1970s.

Along with disco, funk was one of the most popular genres of music in the 1970s. Primarily an African-American genre, it was characterized by the heavy use of bass and "wah-wah" pedals. Rhythm was emphasized over melody. Artists such as James Brown, Wilson Pickett, the Meters, Parliament-Funkadelic and Sly and the Family Stone pioneered the genre. It then spawned artists such as Stevie Wonder, Rufus, the Brothers Johnson, Kool & the Gang, Chic, Earth, Wind & Fire, the Spinners, King Floyd, Tower of Power, Ohio Players, the Commodores, War, Confunkshun, Gap Band, Slave, Cameo, the Bar-Kays, Zapp, and many more. Other popular artists in the mainstream were Bill Withers, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Three Dog Night, the Stylistics, the Fifth Dimension, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the O'Jays, Barry White, and Issac Hayes.

The 1970s saw African-American audiences shift away from genres like rock and blues which had originally been invented and dominated by black musicians. While blues performers like B.B. King and Albert King remained successful, they changed to a mostly white audience. Soul, R&B, and funk became the predominant music styles among black artists and audiences.

Roberta Flack had two of the biggest hits of the decade with "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", from the Clint Eastwood film Play Misty for Me; and "Killing Me Softly". Both were #1 hits on the pop charts and she became the first and the only female artist to win back to back Grammy Awards for Record of the Year. Stevie Wonder who topped the charts five times during the decade with songs such as "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" and "Sir Duke" had a unique treble. He won Grammy Awards for both Best Male Pop and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance in 1974, 1975 and 1977.

The Jackson 5 became one of the biggest pop-music phenomena of the 1970s, playing from a repertoire of rhythm and blues, pop and later disco. The Jacksons — brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael — were the first act in recording history to have their first four major label singles, "I Want You Back", "ABC", "The Love You Save" and "I'll Be There" reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100. The band served as the launching pad for the solo careers of their lead singers Jermaine and Michael, who both had some solo success in the early part of the decade; Jermaine with the top 10 hit "Daddy's Home" and Michael who topped the charts with "Ben". Other family acts included Gladys Knight & the Pips who topped the charts with "Midnight Train to Georgia", and Sly & the Family Stone who brought "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" and "Family Affair" to the top spot. Other groups who had hits include the Staple Singers with "I'll Take You There" and "Let's Do It Again", the theme song to a 1975 Sidney Poitier/Bill Cosby film, the Sylvers with "Boogie Fever" and the Emotions with "Best of My Love".

Honey Cone had a chart-topping hit with "Want Ads", as did Labelle with "Lady Marmalade" and A Taste of Honey with "Boogie Oogie Oogie". Other successful girl groups were Love Unlimited and the Three Degrees who scored a U.S. No. 2 and UK No. 1 hit with "When Will I See You Again" as well as the U.S. No. 1 "TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)" with Mother Father Sister Brother (MFSB).

The Commodores were another group that played from a diverse repertoire, including R&B, funk, and pop. Lionel Richie, who went on to even greater success as a solo artist in the 1980s, fronted the group's biggest 1970s hits, including "Easy", "Three Times a Lady", and "Still".

Country

A number of styles defined country music during the 1970s decade. At the beginning of the decade, the countrypolitan — an offshoot of the earlier "Nashville Sound" of the late 1950s and early 1960s — and the honky-tonk fused Bakersfield Sound were some of the more popular styles.

The countrypolitan sound — a polished, streamlined sound featuring string sections, background vocals and crooning lead vocalists — was popularized by artists including Lynn Anderson, Glen Campbell, Anne Murray, Dottie West, Tammy Wynette, and others, achieving their successes through such songs as "(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden", "Snowbird", and others. The Bakersfield sound, first popularized in the early 1960s, continued its peak in popularity through artists such as Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.

But other styles began to emerge during the 1970s. One of the more successful styles was "outlaw country", a type of music blending the traditional and honky tonk sounds of country music with rock and blues music, and mixed with the anger of an alienated subculture of the nation during the period. The leaders of the movement were Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, although others associated with the movement were Jerry Jeff Walker, David Allan Coe, Jessi Colter, Tompall Glaser, Gary Stewart, and Billy Joe Shaver. The efforts of Jennings, Nelson, Colter, and Glaser were encapsulated in the 1976 album Wanted! The Outlaws.

The 1970s saw the rise of country music groups. The most successful act by far during the first half of the decade was The Statler Brothers, a Stanton, Virginia-based group that had gotten its start performing with Johnny Cash in the 1960s. The group – several years removed from their 1965 hit "Flowers On the Wall" – successfully used their vocal harmonies on songs including "Bed Of Rose's," "Do You Remember These," "The Class of '57," "I'll Go To My Grave Loving You," and "Do You Know You Are My Sunshine." Until 1977, the Statlers – who in the 1970s had brothers Harold and Don Reid, Phil Balsley, and Lew DeWitt – were the only group to achieve sustained success; that year, the Oak Ridge Boys, a country gospel group, switched to a country-pop direction, and their first single release, "Y'all Come Back Saloon," was a top-5 hit on the country chart; their lineup in the late 1970s was Duane Allen, Joe Bonsall, William Lee Golden, and Richard Sterban. Both groups remained firmly committed to gospel music, but it was with country-pop that they had their most success and the rise in country groups began to take shape. In 1979, a third group – the Fort Payne-based band Alabama, the core being cousins Randy Owen, Teddy Gentry, and Jeff Cook, along with drummer Mark Herndon – emerged, releasing the mellow love ballad "I Wanna Come Over"; although only reaching the mid-30s on the country chart, "... Over" was a foreshadowing of what was to come for one of the most successful country music groups/bands of all time, with their blend of soft rock and Southern rock (which would be featured on their next single, "My Home's In Alabama," recorded in 1979 and released in January 1980).

The country pop sound was a successor to the countrypolitan sound of the early 1970s. In addition to artists such as Murray and Campbell, several artists who were not initially marketed as country were enjoying crossover success with country audiences through radio airplay and sales. The most successful of these artists included The Bellamy Brothers, Charlie Rich, John Denver, Olivia Newton-John, Marie Osmond, B. J. Thomas, and Kenny Rogers. Newton-John, an Australian pop singer, was named Female Vocalist of the Year by the Country Music Association in 1974, sparking a debate that continues to this day — what is country music? A group of traditional-minded artists, troubled by this trend, formed the short-lived Association of Country Entertainers, in an attempt to bring back traditional honky-tonk sounds to the forefront, setting the stage for the neotraditional country revival that would become particularly prominent in the early 1980s. The debate continued into 1975, a year where six songs reached No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot Country Singles and Billboard Hot 100 charts. Things came to a head when, at that year's CMA Awards, Rich — the reigning Entertainer of the Year, and himself a crossover artist — presented the award to his successor, "my good friend, Mr. John Denver." His statement, taken as sarcasm, and his setting fire to the envelope (containing Denver's name) with a cigarette lighter were taken as a protest against the increasing pop style in country music (this despite Rich himself having made his name with songs that crossed over from country into the pop and adult contemporary charts).

By the later half of the 1970s, Dolly Parton, a highly successful traditional-minded country artist since the late 1960s, mounted a high-profile campaign to crossover to pop music, culminating in her 1977 hit "Here You Come Again", which peaked at No. 1 country and No. 3 pop. Of her 25 career No. 1 hits, 11 of them came during the 1970s. Parton, also became the female country music artist to host her own variety show, Dolly!, which aired during the 1976–77 season. Rogers, the former lead singer of The First Edition, followed up a successful career in pop, rock, and folk music by switching to country music. Like Parton, whom he would record with in the 1980s and thereafter, Rogers enjoyed a long series of successful songs that charted on both the Hot Country Singles and Billboard Hot 100 charts; the first of the lot was "Lucille," a No. 1 country and No. 5 pop hit. Crystal Gayle, Ronnie Milsap, Eddie Rabbitt, and Linda Ronstadt were some of the other artists who also found success on both the country and pop charts with their records as well.

The most successful of the female artist in the 1970s was Loretta Lynn, releasing her best selling album Coal Miner's Daughter in 1970. She gained a total of seven number one albums, and 20 number one hit singles including her biggest hit single, 1970s "Coal Miner's Daughter," which went on to sell more than 500,000 copies to date. Several of Lynn's siblings gained national recording contracts, and it was her youngest sister, Crystal Gayle (born Brenda Gail Webb), who would become by far the most successful. Although she has recorded and/or performed traditional country, Gayle's primary style was country pop, and by forging her own path rather than mimicking her famous sister's style, she had several tremendously successful songs, most notably "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue." Lynn also recorded with Conway Twitty multiple times during the 1970s, and had five No. 1 singles together, including "After the Fire Is Gone." Like Lynn, Twitty had family—in this case, his children—who also recorded and had songs make the top 40 of the Billboard country chart, but none of them had sustained, long-term success.

Besides Lynn-Twitty duet pairing, there were other notable duet pairings during the 1970s, including George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Married in 1968, the two had their first duet hit together in 1972 with "Take Me" (a remake of Jones' 1965 solo hit), and went on to have three No. 1 hits together. The two went through an acrimonious divorce in 1975, due in part to Jones' increasingly erratic behavior worsened by substance abuse problems, but the two did continue recording together afterward, releasing their most successful hit, the ironic "Golden Ring" (a song about how a wedding ring is meaningless without true love) in 1976. As a solo artist, Jones continued to maintain his hold as the premiere honky-tonk artist of the genre, recording songs of broken relationships ("The Grand Tour," "The Door", and "Her Name Is") and bitterness ("These Days I Barely Get By"), but the aforementioned substance abuse and behavioral issues restrained his own success and by the end of the decade, his life was wildly out of control. Wynette, meanwhile, remarried to producer and songwriter George Richey, and continued to perform songs in her signature style, alternating between heartbreak and marital difficulty to loyalty and fidelity. Although she would have health and legal issues of her own, Wynette remained highly successful, achieving 10 of her 16 solo number one hits during the 1970s, including "'Til I Get It Right," "Another Lonely Song", and "'Til I Can Make It on My Own."

The 1970s continued a trend toward a proliferation of No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. In 1970, there were 23 songs that reached the top spot on the chart, but by the mid-1970s, more than 40 titles rotated in and out of the top spot for the first time in history. The trend temporarily reversed itself by the late 1970s, when about 30 to 35 songs reached the pinnacle position of the chart annually.

Country rock and Southern rock

Country rock, a subgenre of country music formed from the fusion of rock music with country music, gained its greatest commercial success in the 1970s, beginning with non-country artists such as Bob Dylan, Gram Parsons, and The Byrds. By the mid-1970s, Linda Ronstadt, along with other newer artists such as Emmylou Harris and The Eagles, were enjoying mainstream success and popularity that continues to this day. The Eagles themselves emerged as one of the most successful rock acts of all time, producing albums that included Hotel California (1976). The year 1975 was big for Ronstadt, Harris and the Eagles as each had their first top 10 country hits during the year: Ronstadt with a cover of Hank Williams' "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still In Love With You)," featuring Harris on backing vocals; Harris, with "If I Could Only Win Your Love"; and the Eagles with "Lyin' Eyes."

During the 1970s, a similar style of country rock called southern rock (fusing rock, country, and blues music, and focusing on electric guitars and vocals) was enjoying popularity with country audiences, thanks to such non-country acts as The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers Band, and The Marshall Tucker Band.

It was with both country rock and southern rock that Hank Williams Jr., a longtime stalwart of country music, used to resurrect his career. The son of pioneering legend Hank Williams, the younger Williams (who adopted the nickname "Bocephus," an affectionate nickname given to him by his father) recorded in a primarily countrypolitan style in the 1960s and early 1970s, including many of his famous father's songs and often performed in his father's style. By the mid-1970s, several career- and life-changing events shaped his future. He began recording and performing with recording artists including Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Charlie Daniels, and recorded a Southern rock-heavy album showcasing his new style called Hank Williams Jr. and Friends. On August 8, 1975, Williams was nearly killed in a mountain climbing accident on the Ajax Peak in southwestern Montana; his recovery took two years, and it was thereafter that he adopted his signature look – a beard, sunglasses, and a cowboy hat. In 1979, after a string of modestly-performing singles in his new style, he broke through with "Family Tradition," an autobiographical song about his heritage and new musical identity. Williams went on to become one of country music's top superstars of the 1980s and beyond with his blend of country, rock, Southern rock and blues, and with songs having themes of soul-searching, rebellion, wild living, and political and societal activism.

Notable deaths in country music
The decade saw the deaths of several country music performers, many who would come to be regarded as classic stars of the genre. The year 1975 was a particularly difficult year for the genre, as three key performers – Bob Wills, George Morgan, and Lefty Frizzell—all died within a two-month timespan. In 1977, Elvis Presley and Bing Crosby, two performers not directly identified as country but were vastly influential in and/or had substantial successes and fanbases in the genre, died within six weeks of each other. Within a seven-month time span from October 1978 to May 1979, four other notable performers died: Mel Street, a relative newcomer whose honky tonk stylings made him one of the decade's most promising new artists; "Mother" Maybelle and Sara Carter, of the pioneering Carter Family; and Lester Flatt, an early bluegrass pioneer who formed a successful partnership with Earl Scruggs.

Other developments

The decade saw commercial success for blue-eyed soul artists, such as David Bowie who released the successful albums Young Americans (1975), which included the number one hit "Fame", and Station to Station (1976).

In the second half of the decade, a 1950s nostalgia movement prompted the Rockabilly Revival fad. The Stray Cats led the revival into the early 1980s. Queen participated through their hit "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". Also symbolizing this trend was the hit movie Grease in 1978, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.

Tying in with the nostalgia craze, several stars of the late 1950s and early 1960s successfully revived their careers during the early- to mid-1970s after several years of inactivity. The most successful of these were Ricky Nelson ("Garden Party", 1972), Paul Anka ("(You're) Having My Baby", 1974), Neil Sedaka ("Laughter in the Rain" and "Bad Blood", both 1975), and Frankie Valli as both a solo artist (1975's "My Eyes Adored You") and with The Four Seasons (1976's "December 1963 (Oh, What A Night)"). In addition, Perry Como—one of the most successful pre-rock era artists—enjoyed continued success, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale (as most of his fans were adults who grew up during the 1940s and early 1950s, and not the rock record-buying youth); his most successful hits of the decade were "It's Impossible" (1970) and the Don McLean song "And I Love You So" (1973).

Two of popular music's most successful artists died within eight weeks of each other in 1977. Elvis Presley, the best-selling singer of all time, died on August 16, 1977. Presley's funeral was held at Graceland, on Thursday, August 18, 1977.

Bing Crosby, who sold about half a billion records, died October 14, 1977. His single, "White Christmas", remains as the best selling single of all time, confirmed by the Guinness Records.

The early seventies also marked the deaths of rock legends Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, gospel great Mahalia Jackson, and Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas. The decade also saw the plane crash in 1977 in which three members of Lynyrd Skynyrd were killed.

Europe

Pop

Elton John became the decade's biggest solo pop star, releasing diverse styles of music that ranged from ballads to arena rock; some his most popular songs included "Crocodile Rock", "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", "Bennie and the Jets", "Philadelphia Freedom", and "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" (the latter a duet with Kiki Dee). Other European soft rock major artists of the decade included Cat Stevens, Fleetwood Mac, and Joan Armatrading. (See the country music section of this article for more about country music that crossed over onto the pop charts.)

One of the biggest bands of the 1970s were the UKs Bee Gees who dominated the 1970s music scene having a string of number one hits and albums in the U.K. the U.S. and Europe they have generally been considered one of the most important acts of the 1970s, selling over 250 million albums worldwide to date.

One of the most successful European groups of the decade, and one of the best-selling acts with 380 million records sold, was the quartet ABBA. The most successful Swedish group of all time, ABBA first found fame when they won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. They became one of the most widely known European groups ever, as well as one of the few groups from a non-English speaking country to gain international success with several back-to-back No. 1 albums and singles in most of the major music markets. "Waterloo", "Mamma Mia", "Take a Chance on Me", "Knowing Me, Knowing You", "Dancing Queen", and "The Winner Takes It All" are just some of ABBA's most popular and most successful songs.

New wave

In the late 1970s, many bands in the United Kingdom began experimenting with synthesizers, forming the new wave style known as synthpop. Major synthpop bands around this time included Gary Numan and Tubeway Army, the Buggles, the Human League, and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Other successful British new wave bands in the late 1970s included the Police, Echo & the Bunnymen, Adam and the Ants, Roxy Music, Squeeze, XTC, the Cure, the Stranglers, Joy Division, and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

Rock
One of the first events of the 1970s was the break-up of The Beatles in the spring of 1970. Paul McCartney formed a new group, Wings, and continued to enjoy great mainstream success. The three other former Beatles — John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr — all continued hugely successful recording careers throughout the decade and beyond. Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison all released extremely successful solo albums in 1970, Imagine, McCartney, and All Things Must Pass, and several of their songs are listed among the biggest hits of the 1970s: Wings' "Silly Love Songs" and "My Love," and Harrison's "My Sweet Lord"."

Hard rock

Heavy metal music gained a cult following in the 1970s, led by Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple, with their styles later influencing other bands like Judas Priest and Motörhead, which eventually started the new wave of British heavy metal in the 1980s.

Black Sabbath, formed in 1968 (as The Polka Tulk Blues Band, then Earth), is often credited with inventing the metal genre as well as stoner rock, doom metal, as well as sparking a revolution with much darker lyrics than were the norm in rock at that time.

Progressive rock

Progressive or prog rock developed out of late 1960s blues-rock and psychedelic rock. Dominated by British bands, it was part of an attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility. Progressive rock bands attempted to push the technical and compositional boundaries of rock by going beyond the standard verse-chorus-based song structures. The arrangements often incorporated elements drawn from classical, jazz, and world music. Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy. Progressive rock bands sometimes used "concept albums that made unified statements, usually telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme." King Crimson as well as The Moody Blues have been seen as the bands who established the concept of "progressive rock". The term was applied to the music of bands such as Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Supertramp and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. It reached its peak of popularity in the mid-1970s, but had mixed critical acclaim and the punk movement can be seen as a reaction against its musicality and perceived pomposity. Nevertheless, Pink Floyd's 1973 release, The Dark Side of the Moon, was an immediate success, remaining in the charts for 741 weeks from 1973 to 1988, with an estimated 50 million copies sold. It is Pink Floyd's most commercially successful album and one of the best-selling albums worldwide. It has twice been remastered and re-released, and has been covered in its entirety by several other acts. It spawned two singles, "Money" and "Time". In addition to its commercial success, The Dark Side of the Moon is one of Pink Floyd's most popular albums among fans and critics, and is frequently ranked as one of the greatest rock albums of all time.

Glam rock
Glam or glitter rock developed in the UK in the post-hippie early 1970s. It was characterized by outrageous clothes, makeup, hairstyles, and platform-soled boots. The flamboyant lyrics, costumes, and visual styles of glam performers were a campy, playing with categories of sexuality in a theatrical blend of nostalgic references to science fiction and old movies, all over a guitar-driven hard rock sound. Pioneers of the genre included David Bowie, Arrows, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople, Marc Bolan, and T.Rex. These, and many other acts straddled the divide between pop and rock music, managing to maintain a level of respectability with rock audiences, while enjoying success in the singles chart, including Queen and Elton John. Other performers aimed much more directly for the popular music market, where they were the dominant groups of their era, including Slade, Sweet, and Mud. Largely confined to the British, glam rock peaked during the mid-1970s, before it disappeared in the face of punk rock and new wave trends.

Soft rock

From the late 1960s it became common to divide mainstream rock music into soft rock and hard rock. Soft rock was often derived from folk rock, using acoustic instruments and putting more emphasis on melody and harmonies. It reached its commercial peak in the mid- to late-1970s with acts like the reformed Fleetwood Mac, whose Rumours (1977) was the best-selling album of the decade. Major British soft rock artists of the 1970s included 10cc, Mungo Jerry, the Hollies, Rod Stewart, the Alan Parsons Project, and Paul McCartney and Wings. Some of the most successful singers and songwriters were Cat Stevens, Steve Winwood, Albert Hammond, Rupert Holmes, and Elton John.

Punk rock
The mid-1970s saw the rise of punk music from its protopunk-garage band roots in the 1960s and early 1970s. The Sex Pistols and The Clash were some of the earliest British acts to make it big in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Groups like the Clash were noted for the experimentation of style, especially that of having strong ska influences in their music. Punk music has also been heavily associated with a certain punk fashion and absurdist humour which exemplified a genuine suspicion of mainstream culture and values. The Sex Pistols caused a major sensation in 1977 and were the first serious challenge to the established rock groups like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, although the punk era in Britain lasted only three years and effectively ended with the Pistols' breakup.

Oceania

The mid-to-late 1970s Australian band AC/DC became one of the most popular and successful acts in Australia, scoring a string of hits, albums and singles. They made their international debut in 1976 with High Voltage. The band quickly became successful outside their home country; the Highway to Hell album from 1979 peaked at number 13 on the Kent Music Report Albums Chart and they would continue as one of the most popular rock groups in the world through the following decade.

The Bee Gees were a British group who had moved to Australia which consisted of brothers Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb — a successful harmonic act as the 1970s dawned. Aside from the chart-topping "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" in 1971, the brothers did not make much impact in the US during the first half of the decade and most of their record sales were in Europe, especially on the continent. With the failure of their 1973 album Life in a Tin Can, the Bee Gees appeared washed up. But in 1975, they rebounded with Main Course which added more of a beat to their songs and they began embracing the new disco sound in their next album Children of the World (1976). The musical film Saturday Night Fever (1977) finally propelled the Bee Gees to global superstar status with "Stayin' Alive", "More Than a Woman", and "Night Fever" (from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack). The Gibbs' youngest brother, Andy, was a sensation with his own solo career. He made occasional appearances with his brothers and had hits with songs such as "I Just Want to Be Your Everything" and "Shadow Dancing".

The most successful female artist of the decade, English-Australian singer Olivia Newton-John, became a leading singer in the 1970s in both the pop and country genres and realized several number one hits, including the songs "Let Me Be There" and "I Honestly Love You" for which she received three Grammys.

Additional top music acts in Australia and New Zealand included Little River Band, Sherbet, Skyhooks, John Paul Young, Marcia Hines, Jon English, Stevie Wright, Richard Clapton, Dragon, Hush, and the Ted Mulry Gang.

Latin America, Caribbean and Africa

Jose Jose big break came on 15 March 1970, when he represented Mexico in the international song festival the II Festival de la Canción Latina (Latin Song Festival II, predecessor of the OTI Festival) with a performance of the song "El Triste". Although José José finished in third place, his performance helped launch his music career to a wider audience. In 1971, Juan Gabriel released his first studio album El Alma Joven..., which included the song "No Tengo Dinero", which became his debut single and his first hit. Vicente Fernández's greatest hit was "Volver, volver," released in 1972; his first million-selling album was 1983's 15 Grandes con el número uno. Rolando Villazón is born.

Nueva canción

During the 1970s in Latin America, the 1960s music influence remained strong and two styles developed from it one that followed the European and North American trends and Nueva Canción that focused on the renewal of folklore including Andean music and cueca. Some bands such as Los Jaivas from Chile mixed both streams and created a syncretism between folklore and progressive rock. The Nueva Canción movement got an even more marked protest association after all countries in the Southern Cone became (or were already) military dictatorships in the 1970s. In Chile, the Nueva canción styles developed through the 1970s would remain popular until the return to democracy in 1990.

Rock

In the 1970s, rock en Español began to emerge (especially in Argentina), and as imitation bands became fewer, rock music started to develop more independently from the outside, although many rock bands still preferred to sing in English. The Argentine defeat in the Falklands War in 1982 followed by the fall of the mhilitary junta that year diminished need of Nueva Canción as protest music there in favour of other styles.

Tropical
Sonora Santanera is an orchestra playing tropical music from Mexico with over 60 years of history.

Reggae and Afrobeat

The Wailers, a band started by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in 1963 which used to play ska and rocksteady music during the 1960s, became popular in the Caribbean, Europe and Africa since the early 1970s after they started playing reggae music. Later on, the band became very popular in the US. The Wailers broke up in 1974 with each of the three main members going on to pursue solo careers. Despite the break-up, Marley continued recording music under the name Bob Marley & The Wailers. In 1975, Marley had his international breakthrough with his first hit outside Jamaica, "No Woman, No Cry", from the Natty Dread album. The success of the album Exodus (1977), which included the major international hits "Jamming", "Turn Your Lights Down Low", and "One Love", propelled Marley to international stardom.

In addition to the Wailers, other significant pioneers include Prince Buster, Desmond Dekker, Jackie Mittoo, and several others.

Fela Anikulapo Kuti, or simply Fela, was a Nigerian human rights activist, political maverick, multi-instrumentalist, musician, and pioneer of the Afrobeat music genre. He has been called "superstar, singer, musician, Panafricanist, polygamist, mystic, legend." During the height of his popularity, he was often hailed as one of Africa's most "challenging and charismatic music performers."

Cumbia

It was during the 1970s the cumbia became widely popular outside Colombia. Several bands brought Cumbia to Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Chile places that later became major scenes for further developments of cumbia music. While Nueva Canción was the music of the New Left and the rock developments of Argentina reflected the European oriented youth, cumbia became widely popular among the large poor sectors of Latin American countries, to such degree that it came to be associated with shantytowns and low-prestige Native American populations.

Salsa and merengue
Salsa music developed in the 1960s and 1970s by Puerto Rican and Cuban immigrants to the New York City area but did not enter into mainstream popularity in Latin America until the late 1980s. The merengue music experienced during the late 1970s was a golden age of productivity characterized by the rise of a new generation of musicians.

Other trends
The commercial cinemas around the world tended to imitate nuances of disco beats in their movies to present their movies as western and upbeat. These included the increasingly popular kung-fu movies in far East Asia and Bollywood movies from India. These trends are essential in proving that commercial cinemas were a beneficial investment for the community.

See also

1980s in music
1990s in music

References

Further reading
  An essay on developments and trends in popular music and rock during the 1970s.

External links
 Every Artist to have a UK Number 1 Hit in the 70s with links to their websites and videos
 Top Albums of the 70s
 Hit Singles of the 70s
 Official fan page "I Love 70s Music"

Music-related lists
20th century in music
1970s-related lists

1970s in music


WGBX-TV (channel 44), branded on-air as GBH 44, is the secondary PBS member television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is owned by the WGBH Educational Foundation, alongside WGBH-TV (channel 2), WFXZ-CD (channel 24), and multiple public radio stations in Boston and on Cape Cod. WGBX-TV, WGBH-TV and the WGBH and WCRB radio stations share studios on Guest Street in northwest Boston's Brighton neighborhood; WGBX-TV's transmitter is located on Cedar Street (southwest of I-95/MA 128) in Needham, Massachusetts.

WGBX-TV began broadcasting in September 1967 as a source of experimental, alternative, and additional educational programming, in addition to repeats of shows aired by WGBH-TV. It also provided an outlet for specialty telecourses and instructional material. In the 1960s and 1970s, such programs as The Most Dangerous Game, Catch 44, and Club 44 attracted national attention or moved to the parent station. WGBX-TV provided the first gavel-to-gavel telecast of an American state legislature in 1984 when the Massachusetts House of Representatives agreed to have their sessions televised in full, and it was a test bed for experimentation with new digital audio standards in the late 1980s. In the 1990s, WGBX-TV programming was revamped to feature themed nights and increase awareness of its identity.

WGBX-TV itself broadcasts standard-definition versions of WGBX and WGBH (both in high definition from the WGBH-TV multiplex) and several multicast services. WBTS-CD, NBC Boston, shares the channel, allowing the station to broadcast at high power to the Boston area.

History

Early years
Channel 44 had originally been allotted to Boston as a commercial television channel. Two companies, Integrated Communications Systems and United Artists Broadcasting, applied for the channel in 1963. They were soon joined by the WGBH Educational Foundation, which proposed a non-commercial educational station. All three applications were designated for comparative hearing in February 1964, but in July, the FCC reserved channel 44 for educational use in Boston and transferred channel 25 from nearby Barnstable to serve as a new commercial channel. The two commercial applicants then switched their proposals to channel 25, leaving WGBH alone in its channel 44 application and allowing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to award the construction permit in October.

The Department of Health, Education and Welfare awarded a $725,000 grant for the construction of WGBX-TV in January 1966; the station was projected to provide specialized educational programming. WGBX-TV began broadcasting on September 25, 1967, two weeks after the station aired its first test pattern.

In addition to replays and additional PBS programs as well as college telecourses, WGBX has offered a wide range of innovative programs and services in its history. The very first program broadcast by the station was a teacher in-service program designed to help first-grade instructors teach drama. On The Most Dangerous Game, telecast in 1967, viewers could call a telephone number to control the movement of a fictional country, Transania, in a hypothetical foreign policy crisis. A monthly series on the intersection of law enforcement and critical justice was distributed to other educational stations. In 1968, WGBX-TV and WBZ-TV broadcast Read Your Way Up: A TV Read-In, an adult literacy program. In November 1970, the station debuted a public-access show, Catch 44. The program attracted widespread national and international interest; other public stations copied the format, as did the BBC, which launched Open Door in 1973. In 1973, as part of an initiative by the WGBH Educational Foundation, it and nine other public stations in northeastern cities began airing an open-captioned version of the ABC Evening News.

WGBX began airing live, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1984, making it the first state legislative chamber to have full, unedited proceedings televised. The Massachusetts State Senate joined the House on WGBX in 1994. Legislative coverage on channel 44 continued through 2006; the contracts with each chamber were not renewed for 2007.

Beginning in 1986 and continuing through at least 1988, with special FCC permission, it was the only station in the United States authorized to broadcast pulse-code modulation (PCM) digital audio on its video signal; the audio programs, primarily simulcasts of WGBH-FM aired overnight but also including specially recorded concerts, could then be decoded from the video tape by residents with the appropriate decoder equipment.

In 1987, weekend programming on WGBX was expanded to add 18 additional hours, primarily replays of programs aired by WGBH, as part of celebrations for the 20th anniversary of channel 44. However, the station's reputation as "the other Channel 2" continued. In January 1995, WGBH relaunched WGBX under the brand GBH44, to bring it closer to the main station. It increased emphasis on independent and offbeat programming, including the use of themed nights, to counterprogram WGBH-TV, though it would continue to air shows bumped off of the channel 2 schedule, and it would continue to broadcast the main WGBH lineup during the station's annual auction. By 1997, WGBX-TV was the 26th-most-watched public television station in prime time, demonstrating that the changes had given channel 44 an identity and increased recognition.

Digital television transition

In 1999, the tower used by WGBX-TV in Needham, owned by WBZ-TV, was overhauled to support digital broadcasting for its tenants, including WBZ, WGBH and WGBX, and WCVB-TV. However, WGBX-TV did not begin digital broadcasts on its own channel until January 1, 2003.

WGBX-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 44, on April 23, 2009. The WGBH Educational Foundation had previously warned that defective equipment might force the station to close prior to the June transition date. The station's digital signal continued to be broadcast on its pre-transition UHF channel 43, using virtual channel 44.

On January 16, 2017, WGBX switched its fourth subchannel from a locally programmed loop of children's programming (which looped twice a day) to the relaunched national PBS Kids channel.

Repack and channel share
On January 18, 2018, WGBX began a channel share with Nashua, New Hampshire–licensed WYCN-CD (channel 15, now WBTS-CD), which was acquired by the NBC Owned Television Stations subsidiary of NBCUniversal. Though WBTS-CD is a Class A low-power station, it is broadcast by a full-power station, providing the station a full-market signal. WYCN-CD had been a "zombie station"—a license without a transmitter—after selling its spectrum in the 2016 United States wireless spectrum auction. Moving WYCN-CD to the WGBX multiplex gave it full-market coverage.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed. There is no channel 44.1 on the WGBX-TV multiplex, as it is broadcast by WGBH-TV.

See also
 Channel 32 digital TV stations in the United States
 Channel 44 virtual TV stations in the United States
 List of television stations in Massachusetts
 List of United States stations available in Canada

References

External links

PBS member stations
Television channels and stations established in 1967
1967 establishments in Massachusetts
GBX-TV
WGBH Educational Foundation

WGBX-TV


Bell's palsy is a  paralysis of the face on one side. It is caused by inflammation of a facial nerve. The sufferer cannot move the muscles on the affected side of the face.

Several conditions can cause facial paralysis, such as brain tumors, strokes, and Lyme disease. Bell's palsy is named after Scottish anatomist Charles Bell. Bell first described the disease. It is the most common acute disease involving only one nerve, and it is the most common cause of sudden facial nerve paralysis.

Bell's palsy involves a rapid start of partial or complete paralysis that often occurs overnight. Scientists believe that inflammation leads to swelling of the facial nerve. The nerve travels through the skull in a narrow bone canal beneath the ear. Nerve swelling and compression in the narrow bone canal are thought to stop the nerve from working. At times of lowered immunity, a dormant (sleeping) virus, usually the chicken pox or cold sore virus, can wake up and attack the nerve causing it to swell. The main symptoms of Bell's palsy are one-sided facial paralysis, jaw pain, dizziness, strengthened hearing in one ear, and weakened taste sense.

Bell's palsy usually cures itself, sometimes in a few weeks. Corticosteroids (cortisone steroids) have been found to improve the condition while anti-viral drugs have not. Early treatment is necessary for steroids or drugs to be effective, but it is controversial wether or not they work.  Most people recover spontaneously and achieve near-normal to normal functions. Some people however will never regain full facial movement, or it may take a longer time. Many show signs of improvement as early as 10 days after the onset, even without treatment.

Often those suffering from Bell's palsy cannot open the eye in the affected side. The eye must be protected from drying up, or the cornea may be permanently damaged. The affected eye may need to be taped shut when sleeping.

References

Diseases and disorders of the nervous system

Bell's palsy


The Oregon Central Rail Road was the name of two railroad companies in the U.S. state of Oregon, each of which claimed federal land grants that had been assigned to the state in 1866 to assist in building a line from Portland south into California. The "East Side Company" of Salem (incorporated 1867), supported by businessman Ben Holladay, eventually received the grant for its line east of the Willamette River, and was reorganized in 1870 as the Oregon and California Railroad (O&C), which completed the line in 1887. Portland supported the competing "West Side Company" (incorporated 1866), which only built to McMinnville, and was sold to the O&C in 1880. The O&C was later acquired by the Southern Pacific Company, and mostly remains as part of the Union Pacific Railroad's I-5 Corridor; the West Side line is now operated by the Portland and Western Railroad between Beaverton and Forest Grove.

History
An early version of the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 included a branch north into Oregon, but this was left out of the law as passed. In its place, an 1866 law gave land grants to California and Oregon to convey to the California and Oregon Railroad of California and a company to be designated by the Oregon Legislature that would build the line. Led by Joseph P. Gaston, railroad promoters informally organized the Oregon Central Railroad (West Side Company) on October 6, and the legislature designated this company, which did not file incorporation papers until November 21, as the beneficiary of the federal grants four days later. The company adopted a line surveyed in 1864, which would begin at Portland (then entirely on the west side of the Willamette). In July 1865, Californians associated with the California and Oregon Railroad incorporated the first Oregon and California Railroad, but failed to acquire control of the West Side Company. Undaunted, they incorporated a second Oregon Central Rail Road (East Side Company) in April 1867, with Governor George L. Woods as president. The West Side Company broke ground in Portland on April 15, 1868, and the East Side Company followed suit the next day in East Portland.

A contest erupted between the two companies in the courts of public opinion and of law, each one claiming to be the recipient of the land grants. West Side construction was stopped when Portland's guarantee on bond interest was declared in violation of the city charter. Simon G. Elliott of California, promoter of the East Side Company, procured the assistance of businessman Ben Holladay, who in 1868 persuaded the state legislature to reassign the grant to that company, and Congress to extend the time for completion. The first , from Portland to New Era, were completed by December 1869, thus enabling the East Side Company to receive its first pieces of land. The terminus of the East Side line was connected to Downtown Portland by ferry; first, with a boat operated by Holladay, and from about 1879 to 1889, with a new boat (later relocated to San Francisco Bay) built and operated by Henry Villard. The West Side Company obtained its own grant through an 1870 law that would give it land for a line from Portland to Astoria with a branch to McMinnville, but its owners sold the company to Holladay in 1870, and it only built about  between Portland and Saint Joseph (near McMinnville), opening the line in November 1872.

In order to secure funds for the entire road to California, Holladay reorganized the East Side Company as the Oregon and California Railroad, which would go on to complete the line to Roseburg in December 1872, and to the state line in December 1887. By that time, the Oregon Short Line Railroad had been completed as a branch of the First transcontinental railroad to Oregon. The West Side Company operated its own road, under control of the O&C, until September 1879, when it was leased to the O&C-controlled Western Oregon Railroad, which had continued the line to Corvallis. Both companies were consolidated into the O&C in October 1880, and the Southern Pacific Company (SP) gained control in January 1887, and leased the O&C in July. Except south of Eugene, where the Natron Cutoff turned the old line into a secondary route that the SP sold to the Central Oregon and Pacific Railroad in December 1994, the Union Pacific Railroad (successor to the SP) still operates the East Side Company's line. The Portland and Western Railroad leased the remnants of the West Side Company's line in August 1995, and uses the stretch between Beaverton and Seghers (near Forest Grove) to reach the Stimson Lumber Company's sawmill.

See also
Oregon land fraud scandal, a later scandal relating to the Oregon Central's land grant

References

Predecessors of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company
Defunct Oregon railroads
Railway companies established in 1866
Railway companies established in 1867
Railway companies disestablished in 1870
Railway companies disestablished in 1880
1866 establishments in Oregon
American companies established in 1866
American companies disestablished in 1870
American companies established in 1867
American companies disestablished in 1880

Oregon Central Railroad


Bert Blyleven (born Rik Aalbert Blijleven, April 6, 1951) is a Dutch-American former professional baseball pitcher who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1970 to 1992, primarily with the Minnesota Twins. Blyleven recorded 3,701 career strikeouts, the fifth-most in MLB history. He won 287 games, 27th-most all-time, and pitched 4,970 innings, 14th-most all-time. A renowned curveball pitcher, Blyleven was also a two-time All-Star and World Series champion. Although under-appreciated during his playing career, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2011—his second-to-last year of eligibility.

Blyleven made his major league debut at age 19 for the Twins. In the middle of the 1976 season, he was traded to the Texas Rangers, where he threw a no-hitter in his final start for the team. He won his first World Series with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1979. Upon being traded to the Cleveland Indians, Blyleven initially struggled with injuries, but then enjoyed a late-career resurgence, finishing third in the Cy Young Award voting in back-to-back years, with Cleveland in 1984 and also the following 1985 season that he split between the Indians and Twins. It was during this second stint with Minnesota that Blyleven became the tenth member of the 3,000-strikeout club in 1986 and won a second World Series title in 1987. He played three seasons for the California Angels before retiring.

Blyleven became the first Dutch-born player to earn induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He serves as the pitching coach for the Netherlands national baseball team, having done so in the 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2023 World Baseball Classic. From 1996 to 2020, he was a color analyst for Minnesota Twins television broadcasts.

Early life
Rik Aalbert Blyleven was born in Zeist, a municipality in Utrecht, Netherlands, the son of Johannes Cornelius and Jannigje Blijleven. His family moved to Melville, Saskatchewan, when Blyleven was two years old before ultimately settling in Garden Grove, California, in 1957 when Blyleven was five years old. One of seven children, his parents anglicized their names to Joe and Jenny, with Rik Aalbert becoming simply "Bert".

He became interested in baseball as a young boy watching Sandy Koufax pitch for the Los Angeles Dodgers and listening to Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett announce the Dodgers' radio broadcasts. Blyleven was quoted as saying, "My dad built me a mound in the backyard with a canvas backdrop over our horseshoe pits, and I would go back there and just throw and throw and throw until I developed it, and it became my curveball. And I could throw it over at any time, any count."

Career
Blyleven starred on the Santiago High School baseball team, also running cross country to build up his stamina and leg strength. He was drafted out of high school by the Minnesota Twins in the third round in . After just 21 minor league starts, he found himself called up to the Majors at age 19 on June 2, 1970. In his first season, his sharp curveball helped him to ten victories, and he was named AL Rookie Pitcher of the Year by The Sporting News. In 1973, he pitched nine shutouts, the most of any AL pitcher that season.

However, Blyleven's early career with the Twins was not always pleasant as he was hounded by critics and fans. Unhappy with his salary there, Blyleven was traded (along with teammate Danny Thompson) to the Texas Rangers in a six-player deal on June 1, 1976. He pitched well with the Rangers, posting a 2.76 ERA. On September 22, 1977, just two weeks after being sidelined with a groin injury, Blyleven no-hit the California Angels 6–0 at Anaheim Stadium. The no-hitter was his final start as a Ranger; not until Cole Hamels during the 2015 season would a pitcher be traded after pitching a no-hitter in his most recent start for the team that traded him. His 2.74 career ERA with the Rangers remains the best in team history.

Following an incident in which Blyleven blatantly gave the finger to a television camera obviously focused on him during one of the Rangers' rare nationally broadcast games, he was dealt to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first four-team blockbuster deal in Major League Baseball history on December 8, 1977, that also involved the Atlanta Braves, New York Mets and a total of 11 players changing teams. The Pirates also acquired John Milner from the Mets. The Rangers received Al Oliver and Nelson Norman from the Pirates and Jon Matlack from the Mets. Adrian Devine, Tommy Boggs and Eddie Miller were traded from the Rangers to the Braves. The Mets got from the Braves Willie Montañez and from the Rangers Tom Grieve and Ken Henderson who was sent to New York to complete the transaction three months later on March 15, 1978. With the Pirates, he led the team in ERA, strikeouts, and complete games in , and he helped them to a World Series victory in . His 20 no decisions in 1979 are the most by an MLB starting pitcher in a season, dating back to at least 1908.

Blyleven became disgruntled with the Pirates and threatened to retire during the  season if he was not traded. The Pirates traded him to the Cleveland Indians on December 9, 1980. Blyleven sat out most of the  season with an elbow injury and struggled again in , but he came back in  with one of his best seasons: a 19–7 record with a 2.87 ERA. He missed a second 20-win season that year when he was forced to miss a couple of starts after breaking his foot when joking around in the bullpen. In  he again led the American League in shutouts with five. That year, he pitched 293.2 innings and completed 24 games, a feat that has not been repeated since. Blyleven was unhappy playing for the lackluster Indians and forced a trade back to the Twins, where he passed the 3,000-strikeout mark and helped the Twins to a 1987 World Series victory.

Blyleven's first two full seasons back with the Twins produced major league records for home runs allowed in a single season (50) and in back-to-back seasons (96). He never surrendered more than 24 home runs in any year before, and after the 1986–87 campaigns, he averaged 21 allowed homers per season over the course of his career.

Blyleven went to the California Angels in  and pitched a 2.73 ERA for a 17–5 record in his first season; he led the league for his third and final time in shutouts (5). Blyleven missed the entire  season following rotator cuff surgery. He came back in  but was mostly unproductive, going 8–12 with a 4.74 ERA. He retired following that season with a career 287–250 record with 3,701 strikeouts and a 3.31 ERA. Only 16 other pitchers have at least 3,000 career strikeouts. He tried out for the Twins again in the spring of , but did not make the squad, which made his retirement official. He pitched for the MLB All-Stars in the 1993 World Port Tournament in Rotterdam.

MLB Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson said of Blyleven: "[his curveball] was nasty, I'll tell you that. Enough to make your knees buckle. Bert was a terrific pitcher—a dominating pitcher."

Blyleven was a pitching coach for the Netherlands in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. He returned in his role for 2013, 2017 and 2023.

Honors

After his first year of Baseball Hall of Fame eligibility in 1998, Blyleven was widely considered to be the best eligible pitcher not yet enshrined. According to Matt Welch of Reason Magazine, "there had long been a strong case that the Dutch-born curveballista was the most deserving player on the outside of Cooperstown looking in." Still, it was not until his 14th year of eligibility, in , that he was elected; he received 79.7% of the vote. He currently ranks 5th all-time in strikeouts, 9th all-time in shutouts, and 27th all-time in wins. At the time of his election, he was the only eligible member of the 3,000 strikeout club and the only pitcher with 50 or more shutouts not in the Hall of Fame.

Blyleven received only 17.55% of the vote for Hall of Fame admission in 1998 (his first year of eligibility), and his vote total dropped to 14.1% in 1999. No player who had debuted on the ballot since 1970 had a vote total that low and later won election to the Hall. However, ESPN.com columnist Jayson Stark said, "No player has ever—and again, that word is 'ever'—had his Hall of Fame candidacy helped more by the sabermetrics boom than Blyleven." Specifically, according to Welch, "the president and chief investment officer of Lederer & Associates Investment Counsel in Long Beach, California, a guy by the name of Rich Lederer, began spending some of his off-hours writing analysis on the Interwebs about Blyleven's overlooked case."

By 2006, his total had increased to 53.33%. In 2007, Blyleven's total dipped to 47.7% (75% is the minimum required for admission to the Hall). In 2008, he received 336 votes, or 61.9% of the vote. In 2009, he gained only two votes, for a total of 338, 62.7%. In 2010, Blyleven had 74.2% of the votes, missing admission to the Hall of Fame by only 5 votes (0.8%).

Blyleven was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 2011 after receiving 79.7% of the vote on his 14th attempt. "It's been 14 years of praying and waiting," he said on a conference call from Fort Myers, Florida. "I thank the baseball writers of America for, I'm going to say, finally getting it right." Blyleven was the first Dutch-born player inducted, and his Hall of Fame plaque depicts him with a Minnesota Twins cap.

Blyleven was inducted into the Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame in 2002 and was chosen to the fan-elected "Wendy's- Minnesota Twins All-Metrodome Team" on July 28, 2009. On July 16, 2011, the Minnesota Twins formally retired Blyleven's number.

Broadcasting career
In , Blyleven became a television color analyst for the Twins, calling games for WCCO-TV and Midwest Sports Channel (later Fox Sports North). Blyleven's commentary was occasionally risqué for a baseball broadcast but provided interesting and friendly conversation between him and play-by-play announcer Dick Bremer. One of his trademarks was circling fans with the telestrator on screen. Fans—both at home and at road games—carried signs to the games saying "Circle me Bert". This led to a fundraising campaign with the Parkinson's Foundation and a sponsorship with the Minnesota Lottery.

When announcing partner Bremer attempted to circle fans with the telestrator, he drew geometric forms that were non-circular, and Blyleven and fans started to jostle Bremer with phrases like "Rhombus me, Dick" or "Triangle me, Dick".

On September 2, 2020, Blyleven broadcast his final game for the Twins.

Personal life
He currently resides in Fort Myers, Florida.

Blyleven appeared as himself in the 1990 James Belushi film Taking Care of Business. During a 2006 broadcast, Blyleven forgot the name of the movie and had to be reminded of it by a technician in the broadcast booth.

Blyleven was one of baseball's most notorious dugout pranksters during his playing days. He earned the moniker "Frying Dutchman" by frequently setting fire to his teammates' shoelaces, a practical joke known as a "hot foot". During his time with the Angels, the fire extinguisher in the team's clubhouse at Angel Stadium read: "In case of Blyleven: Pull".

Blyleven did not know his correct name until he was about to get married. He had thought all his life his given name was "Rikaalbert". He learned that his name actually was Rik Aalbert Blijleven after obtaining a copy of his birth certificate in order to get married.

Career statistics

See also
3,000 strikeout club
List of Major League Baseball career wins leaders
List of Major League Baseball no-hitters
List of Major League Baseball annual shutout leaders
List of Major League Baseball annual strikeout leaders
List of Texas Rangers Opening Day starting pitchers
List of Major League Baseball career hit batsmen leaders
List of Major League Baseball career shutout leaders
List of Major League Baseball career strikeout leaders

References

External links

BertBlyleven.com, Blyleven's Official Website
BertBelongs.com, a site advocating Blyleven's election into the Baseball Hall of Fame
Baseball Evolution Hall of Fame – Player Profile

June 2, 1976: Minneapolis Tribune column on Blyleven's trade to Texas Rangers
Arguments for inducting Bert Blyleven into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Wulf, Steve "Baseball's Dutch Treat" Sports Illustrated, January 28, 1985

1951 births
Living people
American expatriate baseball players in Canada
American League All-Stars
American League strikeout champions
Baseball coaches from California
Baseball players from Garden Grove, California
California Angels players
Cleveland Indians players
Dutch emigrants to the United States
Edmonton Trappers players
Evansville Triplets players
Gulf Coast Twins players
Major League Baseball broadcasters
Major League Baseball players from the Netherlands
Major League Baseball players with retired numbers
Major League Baseball pitchers
Midland Angels players
Minnesota Twins announcers
Minnesota Twins players
National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees
Orlando Twins players
People from Zeist
Pittsburgh Pirates players
Texas Rangers players
Sportspeople from Utrecht (province)

Bert Blyleven