Chicago took a little while to get started on their path to becoming mega-selling hitmakers. In fact, they took a while to even get to the point where they were called Chicago.
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Once they broke through to the pop charts, they did so without compromising their tendencies to create long instrumental passages and intricate song suites. They just learned how to divvy up their suites into bite-sized passages.
Changing Names, Continued Success
When Chicago formed in the late 60s, they did so at just the right time. Their inclusion of horn players with usual rock band instrumentation came at a time when brass was starting to work its way into many hits of the day. In producer/manager James William Guercio, the band had access to someone at the forefront of that movement.
As is often the case, the band went through a few permutations and different names before they had the chance to record their first album. They released their debut in 1969 as a self-titled album while still using the moniker Chicago Transit Authority.
The band showed off their ambition right off the bat by releasing a double LP. And many of the songs off that record would go on to become staples of the band’s catalog, including classics like “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”, “Beginnings”, and “Questions 67 And 68”. But those songs were all a bit too long to format well into a pop radio playlist. They rectified that problem the next time around.
West Virginia Weeper
By the time the band released their second album in 1970, their name had been shaved down to Chicago due to a threat of legal action from the actual CTA. Other than that, their approach remained the same. They once again recorded a double album, named it after themselves, and included a lot of long set pieces.
As a matter of fact, most of the running time of the album’s second side belonged to an elongated piece called “Ballet For A Girl From Buchannon”. Jim Pankow, who played trombone for the band, wrote the 13-minute piece as a way of reaching out to an ex-girlfriend. She had gone to college at West Virginia Wesleyan in Buckhannon, West Virginia. (The band misspelled the town’s name in the song title.)
Within that long piece are several instrumental sections interspersed by parts akin to pop songs. The “Ballet” begins with the punchy, uptempo, horn-fueled “Make Me Smile”. Later, there’s the strolling ballad “Colour My World”. Extracted from the longer suite, these two songs would both go on to be major pop hits.
“Smile” and Be Happy
Chicago did a little bit of editing to get “Make Me Smile” where it needed to be. That included adding on the final section of the “Ballet” entitled “Now More Than Ever”, while also cutting down some of the horn fanfare that begins the piece.
It worked like a charm. “Make Me Smile” shot to No. 9 on the pop charts in the US. That started the avalanche for Chicago, as huge hit singles started to appear with regularity. They even went back to the Chicago Transit Authority days and released “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” as a single. They watched as that soared into the Top 10.
Chicago eventually veered away from the practice of pulling individual songs out of longer suites to court radio. But “Make Me Smile” did quite well, helping introduce the pop music world to this virtuosic band.
Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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