No. 214 – Strawberry Letter 23

Performer: The Brothers Johnson

Songwriter: Shuggie Otis

Original Release: Right on Time

Year: 1977

Definitive Version: None.

This song is as close as this list gets to Disco, well, unless you count Miss You, by The Rolling Stones.

As a kid, I had a pretty typical experience when it came to music. I started with kid songs and whatever my parents listened to. The fact that there was so much good stuff back then even Dad couldn’t ignore it, so the music I was exposed to when I was a kid included CSN (&Y), America, The Allman Brothers, ELP and, of course, The Beatles.

By the time I hit double digits, I was listening to pop radio. And, yes, that music was no less cheesy and overproduced than that of today. You think today’s pop music sucks? Well, I see your Miley and Biebs and raise you a Village People.

Yes, as Nixon gave way to Ford and then Carter, pop radio went from Elton John to Donna Summer, not quite overnight, but it sure felt like it. Well, if this is all I have to listen to, this is what I’ll listen to. That probably had a lot to do with why I turned to George Benson and Chuck Mangione during that time until the afternoon when I discovered The Who.

You didn’t have to be a hard-core rocker to hate Disco. It collapsed under its own weight of excess and synthesized beats that, like every pop music form, grew so derivative that all of the songs sounded the same.

It’s interesting now that revisionist history has painted the anti-Disco backlash—most famously realized by Steve Dahl and Disco Demolition in Chicago—as being somehow racist and homophobic. I can see how it can be viewed as such to someone who didn’t live through it, but back then it was all about music that was overly simplistic, electronic and soulless being jammed down our throats.

For some reason, this song was different to me—probably because it’s not really a Disco song even though it came out around the peak of Discomania. I kind of liked it when it came on the radio at home, even though I was programmed to not like it, because it was—ugh—Disco. Then, years later, it was featured gloriously in Jackie Brown, and that cemented my love. Hey, after Pulp Fiction, if Quentin Tarentino thinks this is a cool song, it is, period.

(By the way, have you ever noticed that the lyrics refer to a Strawberry Letter 22, not 23 as in the title? If the “present from you” is “strawberry letter 22,” what in the heck is Strawberry Letter 23, this song in return? I don’t know why that dichotomy exists, but I like it.)

Anyway, when I hear this song, I think of being in the loft that overlooked the living room at the condo and playing a football board game. My new friend in seventh grade, Jim, had the Sports Illustrated game Paydirt and was playing a full NFL season complete with stats. I thought that was so cool I had to do the same thing. I didn’t have Paydirt, so I dug out my old NFL Strategy game.

Did you know that game? It featured plastic cards of offensive plays and defensive plays that you overlayed. Then you bounced a plastic football on a spring, and based on where it stopped, you’d read the yards gained (or lost) and moved another plastic football over the playing board.

Unlike so many other projects back then, I actually finished the season. To no one’s surprise, my favorite team at the time—the Los Angeles Rams—won the Super Bowl.

Playing NFL Strategy filled up my free time. I’d play several games on the loft while waiting for Mom to fix dinner and listening to the radio in hopes that Strawberry Letter 23 would come on at some point between Andy Gibb and KC and the Suckshine Band. Most of the time, it didn’t, but every once in a while, my patience paid off.