Libsyn Directory

155: The Partridge Family: "I Think I Love You"

Release Date: 10/15/2017

StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Chad Everett’s TV show, Medical Center. If only I could start with the theme song to Medical Center! If I were telling you this story in person, I’d risk humming a few bars, complete with an ambulance-like scream of notes. But alas, I’m left with mere words to conjure up for you the magic that was Medical Center, an hour-long weekly hospital drama starring Chad Everett as the hip, young Dr. Joe Gannon. Chad Everett and Medical Center were literally my claims to fame when I was in college in the early 1980s at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, commonly known as...

173: Cynthia Morris: "Chasing Sylvia Beach"

StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Cynthia Morris’s novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach. What do you get when you combine time travel, intriguing literary history, Paris, and romance? Why, Cynthia Morris’s novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach, of course! I know Cynthia from participating regularly in what she previously called Free Write Flings, month-long excursions that have “flingers” writing freely for fifteen minutes each day in response to various “prompts.” I’ve dipped into Cynthia’s Free Write Flings twice a year for the last several years – every October and February – to generate ideas for...

172: James H. Cone: "Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare"

StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: James H. Cone’s book Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. It has been more than 25 years since I read Rev. James H. Cone’s book Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. I was teaching an English 101 course focused on the writing of the Civil Rights Movement, and I wanted to learn more about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X and to understand better the relationship between them, the intersection points, if any, between them. Of course, I’d already read Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and his landmark...

171: Malcolm X and Alex Haley: "The Autobiography of Malcolm X"

StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Malcolm X and Alex Haley’s book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Malcolm X wrote his famed autobiography in collaboration with African American journalist Alex Haley (most famous for his epic book Roots: The Saga of an American Family). If you are one of the many Americans who believe Malcolm X espoused violence, even hate, I urge you to read this compelling book. It reveals Malcolm X as a much more nuanced thinker and leader than depicted in mainstream media. The Autobiography of Malcolm X resonates with so much other American literature before and after its...

170: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In April 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was in Birmingham, Alabama, protesting racism and racial segregation in the city. He was arrested on Good Friday for demonstrating, which a circuit court judge had prohibited. While he was in solitary confinement, Dr. King wrote what is arguably the most important letter in American history. It was addressed to the white clergy of Birmingham, who had publicly criticized Dr. King for getting involved in a matter far from his home in Atlanta. Dr. King began...

169: Susan Glaspell: "Trifles"

StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups

This week on StoryWeb, Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles. Born in 1876, Susan Glaspell was a prominent novelist, short story writer, journalist, biographer, actress, and, most notably, playwright, winning the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Alison’s House. She and her husband, George Cram Cook, founded the ground-breaking Provincetown Players, widely known as the first modern American theater company. In fact, it was Glaspell who discovered dramatist Eugene O’Neill as she was searching for a new playwright to feature at the theater. Though she was a widely acclaimed author during...

168: Elizabeth Strout: "Olive Kitteridge"

StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Elizabeth Strout’s book Olive Kitteridge. Has there ever been a grimmer, more taciturn main character in a book than Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge? We’ve all known someone like Olive, someone who looks like she’s just bitten into a lemon, someone for whom a kind of self-righteous grumpiness rules the day. What’s so unlikely is to have such a Gloomy Gus serve as the focal point of a book. And it must be said: Olive Kitteridge is not a sympathetic character. As readers, we don’t like her. Those around her – most notably her son – don’t like her...

167: Emily Dickinson: Poem 372, "After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes"

StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Emily Dickinson’s Poem 372, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes –” For Patricia and our students Emily Dickinson’s Poem 372 is not – technically speaking – a story. And Dickinson is not a storyteller per se. But her nearly 1,800 poems speak deeply and powerfully to the human condition. They give a still unparalleled account of what it is to be human. Poem 372 does have some elements of storytelling. Instead of “once upon a time,” we get “after this, then this.” And then Dickinson describes the numbing, the freezing, the letting go – perhaps...

166: James Joyce: "The Dead"

StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: James Joyce’s short story “The Dead.” James Joyce’s “The Dead” is widely considered to be his best short story, called by the New York Times “just about the finest short story in the English language" and by T.S. Eliot as one of the greatest short stories ever written. The storyline is simple enough: a long-married Irish couple -- Gretta and Gabriel Conroy – attend a lavish dinner party thrown by his aunts in celebration of the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6). At the party, they each have a variety of conversations with assorted party guests, and...

165: Richard Thompson: "1952 Vincent Black Lightning"

StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Richard Thompson’s song “1952 Vincent Black Lightning.” For Jim, in honor of his birthday My husband, Jim, and I love this song by Richard Thompson and its signature line, “red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme.” In fact, the first concert we saw together was Thompson playing at the Boulder Theater, and of course, I sported a black leather motorcycle jacket. When Thompson sang the song, one of his most popular, and got to this particular line, Jim called out, “Me, too!” Thank goodness, Jim is not a heckler – and he didn’t disturb the...

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This week on StoryWeb: The Partridge Family’s song “I Think I Love You.”

Fifth grade – and the song I can’t get out of my head is “I Think I Love You.” Every girl at Griffith Elementary School – make it every girl at schools around the United States – feels the same way. How we swooned over David Cassidy, the teen idol who played a made-for-TV band’s lead singer.

The fictional band was The Partridge Family, based loosely on the real-life Cowsills, a family pop band popular in the late ’60s. The TV show debuted in fall 1970, just a month after “I Think I Love You” had been released as a single. The show featured Shirley Jones as a widowed mother of five children, who scheme to put together a band as a way of helping the family financially. Amazingly enough, this unknown family band has its debut at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas! Jones’s real-life stepson, David Cassidy, played Keith, the oldest of Shirley Partridge’s children. Susan Dey, Danny Bonaduce, and two younger children rounded out the family cast.

Like many girls my age, I tuned in every Friday night to The Partridge Family. In fact, it was the first show my family watched when we got our first color TV. We were watching Shirley Partridge and her kids, when the camera zoomed in for a very tight close-up of Shirley Jones’s face, complete with bright orange – nearly neon orange – lipstick. What a thing to see on a color set! My younger brother exclaimed, “Look at them lips!” And with that the TV sparked and went dead. No more Partridge Family. We have laughed ever since about those technicolor lips of Shirley Jones.

Although the actors “performed” songs as part of the show, most of them were actually lip-syncing. The only actors who performed in the band were David Cassidy, as lead singer, and Shirley Jones, who sang backup. So the 45s and albums that my friends and I purchased with our allowance money didn’t actually feature Susan Dey and Danny Bonaduce, but instead were the product of an anonymous studio band. This made no difference to us – for it was David Cassidy we wanted, and he was there front and center.

Though fifth-grade girls could not have known – yet – that pressing, anxious, heart-stopping feeling you get when you are falling in love but haven’t yet “confessed” that love, we nevertheless gladly sang along. Of course, like every school girl, I dreamed that Keith/David was singing that song to me. That was the magic of the song: this cute, cute heartthrob seemed to be confessing his love to me – and I loved him right back.

Unbelievably, “I Think I Love You” – a song by a fictitious band – hit #1 on the Billboard charts. Since 1970, there have been many cover versions, including those by Andy Williams, Perry Como, Paul Westerberg, and David’s daughter Katie Cassidy. David Cassidy himself recorded an updated solo version in 2003.

To go behind the scenes with the Partridge Family, check out Shirley Jones’s 2014 memoir or one of David Cassidy’s two books: C’mon, Get Happy: Fear and Loathing on the Partridge Family Bus and Could It Be Forever? My Story. You might want to visit David Cassidy’s official website. To get the original version of “I Think I Love You,” you can buy the group’s first album, simply titled The Partridge Family Album. The complete TV series is available on DVD.

Visit thestoryweb.com/partridge for links to all these resources and to see The Partridge Family perform “I Think I Love You” as part of the episode titled “My Son, the Feminist.”

I’m under no illusion that The Partridge Family was great television or that the music released under their moniker was any good. But I can say that I still know every single word to “I Think I Love You” and that I am willing to belt it out if ever I am asked. My fifth-grade self would be proud.

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