Does anybody remember "Mill Valley"?

[Ed Nielson]

Miss Abrams And The Strawberry Point School Third Grade Class hat a minor hit with this in 1970. It only peaked at No. 90 on the Hot 100, but it did much better on the Easy Listening chart, where it went to No. 5

 

[johnbasalla]

I own a copy. It's a promo copy I picked up at a "Record Convention" many years ago. Its pleasant enough.

 

[cc333]

Interesting coincidence. An older friend played this very song for me a few weeks ago.

c

 

[michael hagerty]

Miss Abrams And The Strawberry Point School Third Grade Class hat a minor hit with this in 1970. It only peaked at No. 90 on the Hot 100, but it did much better on the Easy Listening chart, where it went to No. 5

"Mill Valley" actually had a couple of lives---at least in Northern California.

Miss Abrams wrote the song for her kindergarten class to sing. Somehow, she enlisted Bay Area record producer Erik Jacobsen to produce and record it with a group of third graders from the school.

Jacobsen had record company contacts---in fact, he had just delivered a Top 3 hit to Reprise Records with Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky", so he took the record to Reprise, where the execs loved it.





Reprise Records released it as a single in 1970, and as you say, it did well on the Easy Listening chart.

It also got major Northern California Top 40 play, with KFRC and KYA San Francisco, KLIV, San Jose, KPLS Santa Rosa, KMBY Monterey and KDON, Salinas all on it.

It peaked at #11 on KYA, but went to #5 at KFRC.

Other Top 40s on it included KGW and KISN Portland, KOL and KJR Seattle.

In 1972, Reprise released an album---the kids were now the Strawberry Point Fourth Grade Class:



There were two singles from that album that did not chart, but a lot of California MOR and AC stations took the album's release as an excuse to start playing "Mill Valley" again.