There wasn’t a “twitter” or “tweet” in sight and the 8-Track tape was considered cutting edge technology.
It was the year pop star Queen Latifah was born and the year guitarist Jimi Hendrix died. The year was 1970.
Americans were still recovering from the musical melee known as Woodstock, just one year before, which
featured hard rock and even harder drugs. It would appear even the most diehard music fans were hungry for
something completely different anThd that’s exactly what they got. It came in a very unlikely form of an over 40
single Mother of five, who commandeered a brightly colored school bus, to take her singing family on tour to pay
the bills. It’s no secret that America went along for the ride. Indeed, the music group The Partridge Family, in
very obvious and very subtle ways, left an indelible thumbprint on the culture of the day. In fact, the fictional
family with the very real success would topple formidable foes from the record charts, become the cash cows of
both studio brass and record executives in Hollywood, gently nudge forward a thinly-veiled social agenda, and
influence a legion of screaming and dedicated fans who wanted to be just like them.
The Partridge Family debuted on ABC Television on September 13, 1970 and quickly became Friday night
“appointment viewing.” In a revolutionary strike at “cross promotion,” ABC teamed up with Arista records for a
companion soundtrack to complement the hit show. There was one big problem, though, when it came to
musical talent most of the Partridge offspring could only lay the “proverbial egg.” In the end, only real-life mother
and son team Shirley Jones and David Cassidy would lend their true voices. The rest were dubbed in by studio
musicians and the rest of the clan would lip sync on TV and in concert. It was a strange arrangement, but it
worked and the impact on American culture was swift. The music of the...