I awoke with this song stuck in my head. It wasn’t the song I had in mind for today.

Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote ‘One Less Bell to Answer’ in the 1960s. The ‘Fifth Dimension’ had a hit with it around 1970.

The 1960s and 1970s was a great era of music. We had surfer music, blues, R&B, folk, psychedelic, country and western, and the British Invasion all being blasted from our AM radios. Many of the acts appeared on television and music shows, like ‘American Bandstand’ with Dick Clark, or ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’. 

Oddly, the song is connected to a time of transition for me. That gives me pause as I wonder why the song is stuck in my brain today. My family lived in the Pittsburgh, PA, area, having moved to that area in the late 1950s. We had lived in a brick duplex in Wilkinsburg. My aunt and her family lived next door to us in a like duplex. Her son, my cousin, was my age. We were best friends for a long time.

His family moved to a new housing development in Penn Hills in the 1960s. We also moved there a few weeks later. I ended up living about two blocks from him.

Meanwhile, though, my other friends remained in Wilkinsburg. I made it a habit to return to visit them. I usually rode my bike the miles between the two locations. Then my bike was stolen and I walked.

But my friends changed. I no longer felt a part of them and moved on. That’s why it’s interesting this song is stuck in my head this morning. Between my dream and my writing and this song, I wonder what conference is going on in my subconscious mind.

Here’s Marilyn McCoo and the Fifth Dimension, performing ‘One Less Bell to Answer’ on Soul Train.