1975: Boxing/Pop Music Update

The world-champion heavyweight boxer remains 33-year-old Muhammad Ali of Louisville, Kentucky (though he is about to move to Berrien Springs, Michigan, for a while (Wikipedia is fantastic)). His next fight looks like it might be a thriller: Oct. 1 vs. No. 1 challenger Joe Frazier, 31, originally of Beaufort, South Carolina (though he has been in Philadelphia since going out on his own and catching a bus to there when he was 15 (fantastic!)). Ali lost to Frazier by unanimous decision on March 8, 1971, in New York. Then he beat Frazier by unanimous decision on Jan. 28, 1974, in New York. The rubber match is set for Quezon City, in the metro area of the Philippines capital, Manila.

Back in the United States, Ali is climbing a chart of a different sort. 

That song by Johnny Wakelin and the Kinshasa Band has been on the CASH BOX Top 100 Singles for 16 weeks and is up to No. 35 in the chart for the week ending today in 1975. That's a slow rise, and, yet, you might still have a sense that the song has been lingering for a good bit longer than even that:

In late 1972, Wakelin wrote and recorded the original version of the song, under the title "Hungarian Superman (Joe Bugner)" as an homage to the Hungarian-born British-Australian boxer by that name. The single failed to chart, and in 1973 Bugner lost 12-round decisions to former heavyweight champions Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

Wakelin got the idea of reworking the original song as an homage to Bugner's rival, the boxing champion Muhammad Ali who fought on 30 October 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaire, against George Foreman in a matchup known as The Rumble in the Jungle. Ali gained victory in the eighth round. Wakelin modified the song's original Eastern-European polka rhythm to reggae at a time when West Indian music was growing in popularity. The new song was Wakelin's "Black Superman (Muhammad Ali)" released in late 1974.

In January 1975 the song reached number seven on the singles charts of both the UK and Australia. By October of the same year, it had reached number one in Canada on the RPM Singles Chart. It also spent six months in the US Billboard Hot 100 in more than one chart run in 1975, eventually peaking at No. 21 in September of that year.

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Here are previous and future 1975 reports.