Musical Monday......OHW's

I have a very good friend by the name of Rod Bowles. Rod was in the funeral business for years as it was his family's business also. We were sitting at a local Tavern last week enjoying the cold beer and fine conversation, when the subject of San Francisco came up. We had all been there before, and we were exchanging our experiances there, when Rod's story gave me my idea for Musical Monday, and the current "theme" that I have been milking as of late...
He said that the last time he was visiting San Fran, he met an old classmate of his for a drink at a local bar...As they were exchanging yarns of old, a local friend of Rod's buddy sat down at their table with a beer in hand and extended his hand and introduced himself.......
Hi, ...Norm Greenbaum. Yes folks THE Norman Greenbaum!! The performer of arguably The most famous One-Hit Wonder of all time..."Spirit In The Sky"...Rod said that he sat with them for about an hour before he moved on to some other friends that he knew there. Rod's buddy says he comes in everyday, drinks a few brewski's talks with the locals for awhile then goes home. He does nothing but live off of the royalties for his one hit song...40 years ago!!!
I guess he mentioned to them that he gets about 68-80 Grand a year for his one hit, enough to live on and enough to drink a beer every so often with....Heres Norman's story....

Norman Greenbaum was born in near Boston in 1942, and studied music at Boston University.
He was a singer/songwriter and had some local success before being asked to move to Petaluma California by his record producer. He felt that the Cali setting was more conducive to writing a solo album....And while he was trying to finish his album, he ran a goat and dairy farm to help pay the bills..Oddly enough he was not the 1st Jewish farmer in that area, in the early part of the century, a group of Jewish Soicialist Chicken farmers settled in that area, and flourished until the 50's..
Greenbaum's first solo album debuted in 1969 called "Spirit in the Sky", it's first two singles flopped before the title track was released. It reached as high as #3 on the charts, and sold over 2 million copies.....Unfortunately all of his subsequent works were not received well by the public, and he sort of dropped out of the music business. He knocked around with odd jobs for a while, before things started to turn around for him in the Mid-80's. The song was re-released in Britain and soared to the top of the charts for a long time, thats when the real $$$$ started coming in because his song was used in TV commercials and several movies including...
"Contact", "Apollo13", And "Waynes World"..
One final note on Greenbaum; he has the dubious achievment of having 2 One-Hit wonders!!
How is this possible...You may ask?? In 1968 under the name "DR. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band" He recorded the modest hit " The Eggplant That Ate Chicago"...now how many of you can remember that one?........I can!