Piping Hot

Rules for creating a hit record in the pop field: find a snappy melody for the Now Generation. Add socially aware lyrics. Dress the song up in a razzle-dazzle instrumental sound. To make the Top 40 charts nowadays, a producer must follow all of these prescriptions--or none. To wit: RCA's new release of Amazing Grace. It is a most un-snappy, 200-year-old American hymn tune, performed on that ancient instrument, the bagpipe. It is also No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart this week and has sold 1,200,000 copies throughout the world in the past eight weeks, more than 300,000 of them in the U.S.

All that happened because two British army regiments--the 3rd Carabiniers and The Royal Scots Greys--decided to merge early in 1971 and form The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. To honor the new armored infantry regiment, now stationed in West Germany, RCA's European division released an LP by the guards' 48-member bagpipe band. A few months ago, a late-night disk jockey in London took a fancy to one of the tracks on the album, Amazing Grace, and began promoting it. As performed first by the soloist, Pipe Major Tony Crease, then by the full band, the song is as unabashedly emotional as the sound of the pipers accompanying Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. on their march to the rescue in Gunga Din.

In the U.S., Amazing Grace seems part of a minitrend toward the archaic on the charts. Cat Stevens' Morning Has Broken (No. 8) is an old English school hymn. Todd Rundgren's I Saw the Light (No. 16) is a traditional and familiar gospel song. For the ultimate reach into the past, ex-Beatle Paul McCartney's next hit may be the recording he has just made of Mary Had a Little Lamb.

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