A 50-year love affair

On a day in the summer of 1972, a disk jockey at St. Petersburg, Florida's WLCY-AM (138 on your radio dial!) checked his playlist, selected a 45, and then watched as the record dropped onto the turntable and a plastic arm moved to the proper spot in order to drop the needle onto the proper groove.  (Any millennials and Gen Zer's who are confused at that above paragraph can ask their parents for a translation.)

The music that played caught the attention of an eight-year-old girl listening to the radio at home. She heard the song, she liked it, and every other time it played on WLCY, she liked it more. 

I was that eight-year-old girl in 1972. The song was "Saturday In the Park",  and it began a 50-year love affair with the rock group Chicago.

Why Chicago? Why that song? I don't know. What reason can an eight-year-old give for liking a particular song or a particular group? All I know is that it was an upbeat, happy, peppy song, the perfect song to introduce me to a new group.

The band's official website tells the story of "Saturday In the Park" as Robert Lamm coming back from New York's Central Park after seeing the steel drum players, dancers, singers and jugglers, and insisting, we have to write a song about this!

Lamm's account, recorded in Billboard magazine, tells the story this way:  "It was written as I was looking at footage from a film I shot in Central Park, over a couple of year, back in the early '70's.  I shot this film and somewhere down the line I edited it into some kind of a narrative, and as I watched the film I jotted down some ideas based on what I was seeing and had experienced.  And it was really kind of that peace and love thing that happened in Central Park and in many parks all over the world, perhaps on a Saturday, where people just relax and enjoy each other's presence, and the activities we observe and the feelings we get from feeling a part of a day like that."

Gradually, through TV appearances and my own library research, I got to know the band: Terry Kath on guitar, Peter Cetera on bass, Walter Parazaider on saxophone (and occasionally flute), Lee Loughnane on trumpet, James Pankow on trombone, and Robert Lamm on keyboard. 

When I was 13, one of my Christmas presents was Chicago IX - Chicago's Greatest Hits. Like any teenager obsessed with a band, I played it over and over until I had it memorized. And then I still kept playing it. 

I kept my eyes and ears open for any mention of Chicago on the news, on the radio, anywhere I could find them. 

So on the morning of January 24, 1978, while lying in bed and listening to the radio, I heard the words, "One of the members of the group Chicago . . ." and I smiled to myself. 

Then the next four words, " . . . has accidentally killed himself," gut-punched me. 

And that was how I learned that guitarist Terry Kath had accidentally shot himself in the head. His last words?  "Don't worry, it's not loaded."

I was devastated, much like fans are when their favorite entertainer unexpectedly dies. Robin Williams, Kurt Cobain, and Whitney Houston come to mind. 

But Chicago bounced back, with the album "Hot Streets". The band, however, was never the same after Terry Kath died. 

After a dip in popularity in the late '70's/early '80's, Chicago enjoyed a resurgence in popularity. It was then, in 1984, that a dream of mine came true:  I got to see Chicago in concert, in Tallahassee, Florida, during our homecoming week. Our tickets were in the nosebleed zone, something like row XXX. I didn't care. It was Chicago. I screamed the whole time. Now, I barely remember any of the songs they played, except the first one, "We Can Stop The Hurting," from their then-newest album, Chicago XVII; and also "Hard To Say I'm Sorry/Get Away." 

They've gone through personnel changes, musical changes, adjusted to the new world of streaming. 

In 2016, the original six members were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an honor long overdue. 

As of this writing, they are still touring and still performing; in fact, they recently did a concert here in Atlanta with the Beach Boys. While on the one hand, I'm sorry I missed seeing them; on the other hand, there are only three original members left -- Lee Loughnane, James Pankow, and Robert Lamm. They are not the Chicago I knew as a child.

More recently, fans of the show "This Is Us" were exposed to "Saturday In the Park" when it was used in an episode called . . . "Saturday in the Park." The character of Kate Pearson used the tune of the song to help her blind child remember how to get to the park they went to on Saturdays.

They began as a group of six, 55 years ago, and today, they are still going. 

So, from a now 58-year-old woman, thank you.

Thank you, Robert Lamm, for your trip to Central Park which inspired the song you wrote.

Thank you, DJ at WLCY, 138 AM, for choosing to play "Saturday In the Park" in the summer of 1972.

And thank you, Chicago, for being a part of the soundtrack of my childhood, and for bringing an eight-year-old girl pleasure with a song about a simple but magical day in Central Park. 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.