“It’s like I’m 16 again. I grew up listening to this music on the radio.
— Shared by the person sitting next to me at a KC and the Sunshine Band concert a couple of weeks ago.
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That recent concert was the second time I witnessed the Florida based band perform. The first time was the early 1970s. At the fairgrounds in Longview, Texas. New on the evolving music scene, KC and the Sunshine Band was opening for Willie Nelson.
I was there just for the music, but my Momma didn’t raise an idiot. The venue packed with pocket pint carrying attendees and the aroma of burning wacky weed led us to surrender front row seats for the relative safety of enjoying the music standing near an exit.
Some fifty years and many hit songs later, the most recent venue was very different. Gray-haired grandparents wearing Velcro fastener tennis shoes abounded, shuffling to their seats while adjusting hearing aids.
I wondered if someone would awaken them when the music started.
But just two lines into “My, My, My Boogie Shoes,” at 3.0 on the Richter Scale, the room was glittering with revolving light beams bouncing from the disco ball above the stage. And these same fans I was concerned about mere moments ago were suddenly in the aisles busting moves not seen since John Travolta immortalized “Saturday Night Fever.”
It’s no secret that I love music. Or that my tastes span a wide variety of artists and styles.
Music was instrumental in my formative years. I watched Mom smile while enduring house cleaning chores listening to her high school record collection. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw.
I laughed at her little brother, my Uncle Bill, who talked about music connecting emotions, and memories. Little Richard, Etta James, Hank Williams, Bob Wills. Before psychological studies ever considered the concept, Uncle Bill related personal stories about early 50s service in the Navy. Guys on ships a long way from home listening to music and sharing memories. Cars they drove, girls they dated, places where memories were made. All entwined in the music.
Realizing that same appreciation for music over the years, I concur that a song can do more than simply entertain. Just a few notes can jog memories and stir emotions rooted deep in the soul.
Therefore, it was no fluke that recent revisit to the music and the subculture of 70s disco unleashed a rush of recollections. Like the time a bunch of friends ventured from Mount Pleasant in East Texas down to Panama City Beach, Florida. On motorcycles. Spending a week at the not-so-glamorous, but affordably cheap, Barney Gray Motel at twelve bucks a night. Before Panama City Beach enjoyed a significant remake into the resort area it us today. A time when it was affectionately and otherwise referred to the “Redneck Riviera.”
But that mattered little to us in 1974. We were there for the sun and the fun, orchestrated and enjoyed to a background of ’70s music.
Just short years out of college and experiencing my first time in Florida, the trip was not only fun for me, but also educational. It’s where I learned about severe sunburn, defied death on “The Starliner,” the infamous wooden roller coaster at Miracle Strip Amusement Park, and cruised the beach road every night lined with hot cycles and cool cars.
That trip was also where I was exposed to another ’70s phenomenon, one immortalized in a well-known musical masterpiece. A Ray Stevens song entitled “The Streak.”
The bare facts are that a half dozen guys were huddled around an arcade pinball machine, challenging each other to pile up points. In the whimsical song, the singer warns his wife, “Don’t look Ethel.” But when two young women ran right past us, au naturel, boogity, boogity through the arcade, I just happened to be the only one not intently focused on the pinball competition.
Steven’s song suggests the streakers he saw were “wearing nothing but a smile.” The genuine, in the flesh arcade streakers I witnessed that night were wearing nothing but a paper bag on their head, qualifying me to testify about everything but facial expressions.
Dumbfounded, I called out to my unaware friends. “G-G-Guys,” I stuttered, “Over here; look at this!”
But they were too late. The girls flashed right by us and out a nearby door before one of the pinball players finally turned and asked, “What are you hollering about?”
“Never mind,” I said, “I could tell you, but the effect just wouldn’t be the same.”
The effect would be perfect at this point if I could say that KC and the Sunshine Band was playing on the jukebox at the arcade that revealing night I got a peek near the pinball machines.
However, the honest truth is even better. Another ’70s disco era hit was providing musical entertainment that long ago summer night down in Florida. A Johnny Nash song that charted as a Top 100 number one in 1972.
A song entitled, “I Can See Clearly Now.”
—Leon Aldridge
Photo info: Front page picture from the Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune dated July 7, 1974. Yours truly is the second face wearing a smile on the left side of the photo.
Photo cutline: “TRAVELING CHEAPLY – 19 Mount Pleasant residents decided to travel cheaply on their vacation this year. They’re traveling for the sand and sunshine on motorcycles to Panama City, Fla. The cyclists plan to have a safe trip. Tribune photo by Buddy Williams.”
An accompanying story headlined: “Family Fun: Local BIkers Leave for Florida” offers comments from some, just before the group departed moments after the photo was taken, Motorcycle travelers named in the story included “Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Spencer, Mr. and Mrs. Leon Aldridge Jr. , Mr. and Mrs. Mike Helbert, Ricky Holland, Kendall Johnson, Jimmy Clark, Kent Bryson, Mr. and Mrs. Terry Shurtleff, and the Spruill family, which includes Mr. and Mrs. Spruill and their children, Kim, Tim, and Scott, and Mrs. Spruill’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Dan Bynum.
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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.
© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.
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