A Hit Record
"An Open Letter" became a surprise hit in Michigan and was released nationally by Liberty Records, jumping onto the Billboard Hot 100 at #84 on November 11, 1967. Within three weeks it went #58 - #18 - #10, making it one of the dozen or so fastest-climbing records in Hot 100 history up to that point, and Lundberg made an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. After another week at #10, the record slipped to #22 for the week ending December 16, 1967, then vanished from the Hot 100 completely, after a total run of just six weeks. Few other records have ever been ranked so high in such a short chart stay on the Hot 100 (Napoleon XIV's "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" peaked at #3 but was only on the Hot 100 for six weeks; Kenny G's "Auld Lang Syne" (The Millennium Mix) peaked at #7 but was only the Hot 100 for five weeks). However, it sold over one million copies within a month of release and was awarded a gold disc. "An Open Letter" also received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Spoken Word Recording.
There were also at least seven "response" records: Keith Gordon's "A Teenager's Answer", released on the Tower label, "A Teenager's Open Letter To His Father" by Robert Tamlin., "Letter From A Teenage Son" by Brandon Wade, "A Letter To Dad" by Every Father's Teenage Son", "Hi, Dad (An Open Letter To Dad)" by Dick Clair and "An Open Letter To My Dad" by Marceline .
Read more about this topic: Victor Lundberg
Famous quotes containing the words hit and/or record:
“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.... Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
—Harper Lee (b. 1926)
“Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary masterplan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people’s own failure as individuals.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)