Once Upon a Time in the Top Spot: The Doobie Brothers, “Black Water”

41 years ago today, the brothers Doobie hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for the first of two times in their career.

“Black Water” might never have made it beyond the riff stage if Patrick Simmons, guitarist for the Doobies, hadn’t been overheard noodling around in the studio with the lick by the band’s producer. “Ted Templeman says, ‘What is that?’” recalled Simmons, in an interview with Guitar Player. “I said, ‘It’s just a little riff that I came up with that I’ve been tweaking with.’ He goes, ‘I love that. You should really write a song using that riff.’”

As history reveals, Simmons did just that, coming up with the lyrics to the track whilst in New Orleans with the band, and when the time came to record the song, Templeman worked a bit of magic by borrowing a trick from his days as the lead singer of Harpers Bizarre and throwing in the a cappella section that became a hallmark of the song.

Remarkably, though, no one conceived of “Black Water” as being a possible hit, although it did earn B-side status when “Another Park, Another Sunday” got the nod as the first single from the band’s 1974 album What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits. That song, however, had only just made it into the top 40 when it apparently fell victim programmers getting in a huff about one of its lyrics (“And the radio just seems to bring me down”), so it topped out at #32, and the album’s second single, “Eyes of Silver,” didn’t even make it into the upper half of the Hot 100.

Funnily enough, “Black Water” found its first surge of success in Roanoke, Virginia, where listeners of the AM station WROV loved it because of its regional ties (one of the tributaries of the Roanoke River is the Blackwater), and the Norfolk, Virginia station WQRK followed suit. That’s how the buzz began, and by early 1975 it had become a smash hit all over the country.

Not bad for a B-side, eh?