1978 No. 1, First Recorded By Original Dumbledore Actor, Hit The Top 48 Years Ago Today

On November 6, 1978, America's No. 1 song was "MacArthur Park," an ambitious and sprawling disco curiosity with high-art aims, delivered by superstar Donna Summer. A disco hit that took over 1978, it's a lengthy curiosity with high-art aspirations. However, this chart-topping version of "MacArthur Park" is a cover, as it was originated by a performer with an extensive musical history and enthusiasm — classically trained and Oscar-nominated actor Richard Harris, best known in the U.S. as wizard school headmaster Albus Dumbledore in the first two "Harry Potter" films in the early 2000s, a role that ended due to his 2002 death. 

But while Harris's take on "MacArthur Park" in 1968 was grand, stately, and more than a little pretentious, he took it to No. 2 on the American pop chart. Summer outdid that feat when she and producer Giorgio Moroder transformed the work into a glorious and cathartic club anthem, a '70s disco song that still inspires a dancing mood, and subsequently occupied the No. 1 spot for three weeks.

While co-producing the 5th Dimension's 1967 album "The Magic Garden," songwriter Jimmy Webb told engineer Bones Howe that he intended to write a cantata, a multi-part musical poem with a dramatic arc, to comprise half an LP. When Howe produced the album "Birthday" by the Association, a forgotten American band that chased the British Invasion, he allowed Webb to offer his cantata, including the seven-minute finale, "MacArthur Park." The group declined. Singer Johnny Rivers had also worked on that 5th Dimension album, and when his friend, actor Richard Harris, made moves into music, he connected him to Webb. Rivers cut the 7:20 "MacArthur Park" for his 1968 LP "A Tramp Shining." The majestic song with baffling lyrics about a rain-ruined cake serving as a metaphor for loss reached No. 2

Ten years later, Webb almost realized his wish of filling a whole LP side. In 1978, Donna Summer issued the double album "Live and More," devoting three quarters to live disco cuts and the fourth to "MacArthur Park Suite." It begins with more than eight minutes of "MacArthur Park" (with the disco beat arriving just after a minute), and then Summer segues into two other dance tracks before returning for another minute-plus of Webb's opus. The whole thing was condensed into a sub-four minute recording for the single, which became the first of four No. 1 hits for Summer, preceding "Hot Stuff," "Bad Girls," and "No More Tears (Enough is Enough)."