"Americans": An Unlikely Hit Single

By the spring of 1973, the last U.S. troops had left Vietnam. Many Americans felt that the peace treaty ending the war, signed that February, allowed their country to walk away from a war that it had, in effect, lost.

As spring moved towards summer, the Watergate affair that had begun over a year earlier with a break-in at Democratic Party offices in a Washington, D.C., that had been confined to inside newspaper pages, moved to page one and stayed there. The U.S. Senate voted to create The Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. The committee's hearings were broadcast live on radio in the States, and became the lead story on every network TV newscast. President Nixon's aides, and later the President himself, became implicated in criminal, impeachable, offenses.

It was hard to feel good about being an American.

Gordon Sinclair was a journalist whose opinions appeared on the Toronto Globe And Mail's editorial pages, whose commentary was heard on Toronto radio station CFRB. He took in the situation, and remembered that the United States had poured billions of dollars in aid to every corner of the world, and smoothed out crises large and small, but took on its own problems alone. On Tuesday, June 5, 1973, he summarized the mess south of the border, added some backstory and, asked his listeners to give the Americans a break. The equivalent of a commentator today pumping his fist and exclaiming "U-S-A!"

Byron MacGregor -- born Gary Mack in Winnipeg -- was a newscaster at CKLW in Windsor, Ontario. "The Big 8," named for its position at 800 on the AM dial, was the number one top-40 music station across the border in Detroit, and in several other U.S. cities. Its newscasts featured a tabloid writing style ("the Motor City murder meter clicked four times overnight") that made the newsmen as recognizable to its listeners as the disc jockeys.

At the time, even top-40 stations were required to air a minimum amount of news and public service programming. These programs often aired early on Sunday morning, or late on Sunday evening.

CKLW's news director had transcribed Gordon Sinclair's CFRB commentary, and wanted one of his own high-profile newscasters to record it for broadcast on The Big 8's week-in-review program. Byron MacGregor, a Canadian, was his final choice. MacGregor's reading aired on the Sunday morning of June 10.

It still takes a stick or two of dynamite to get me out of bed before noon. But I do remember driving to Ann Arbor that evening, to see Proctor and Bergman -- half of the Firesign Theatre who were touring as a duo -- and hearing on a Big 8 newscast a Byron MacGregor snip; something about how rough things had been lately for the United States and, after all the U.S. done for the world, it still got no respect. The newscaster added that it had aired that morning and was being repeated due to overwhelming response. Another indication of the hold CKLW had on the market. Even the Sunday public service shows had listeners.

People wanted to know where they could get a tape of Byron MacGregor's commentary, or buy the record. It wasn't a record, and CKLW had the only tape. The station and Westbound Records -- the local label that had the Funkadelic, Denise LaSalle, and the Detroit Emeralds -- agreed to release it on a 45, with proceeds donated to the American Red Cross, one of the beleaguered charities named in Gordon Sinclair's original script.

Copies were pressed and shipped, bearing the title "Americans." They started selling like the proverbial hotcakes. CKLW found itself in the unique situation of having a spot on its Big 30 survey filled by someone from its air staff; not a jock who sang, but a newsman who talked.

"Americans" also helped CKLW fill its government-mandated Canadian content requirements. Canadians tend to view the United States, a powerful neighbor that could easily overshadow their country both politically and culturally, with varying degrees of suspicion. The CANCON rules for radio airplay were, in fact, created to insure that a uniquely Canadian music scene could grow and hold its own against what the U.S. was turning out. The nations sharing the world's longest undefended border have a history of being not-so-friendly adversaries, making a hit record by a Canadian sticking up for the States even more improbable.

Gordon Sinclair also recorded his commentary, for the Avco label, with the more formal title "The Americans (A Canadian's Opinion"). His made it to number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100, still good enough for the veteran journalist to become, at age 73, the oldest living person to crack the American top 40. (Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World" charting sixteen years after his death, in 1987.)

Byron MacGregor's "Americans" reached number four on the Hot 100. In Detroit, where The Big 8 ruled, his was the hit. It got airplay well into 1974, as Watergate heated up, sharing the Big 30 with another unlikely CANCON hit, Terry Jacks' "Seasons In The Sun." Well into the 1990s, "Americans" turned up in yard sales and thrift stores in Detroit and southeastern Michigan. That's not necessarily bad. It means it was a huge hit, and that a lot of people bought it.

Song specialists note that "Americans" is another example of a cover that charted higher than the original, and that the original was released after the cover.

"Americans" appears on many lists of the worst records of all time, among "Honey," "You're Having My Baby," and "My Ding-A-Ling." Its content makes it one of the most enduring top-40 chart entries. In the weeks following September 11, 2001, several Web sites offered free downloads of patriotic songs and incuded Byron MacGregor's version. Interest in "Americans" also peaked in the fall of 2005, after Hurricane Katrina splintered and drowned New Orleans, after the botched recovery efforts had Americans again feeling vulnerable. Ironically, the Katrina cleanup was the first natural disaster recovery effort in memory in which foreign countries offered aid to the United States.

Gordon Sinclair also updated his 1973 remarks for CFRB in 1979, as hostages continue to be held at the American embassy in Teheran, Iran.

The 1973 "Americans" is still available, on a CD re-issue of the album of MacGregor narrations that Westbound released as a follow-up to the single's success.