Songoftheday 10/21/19: Like a game show contestant with a parting gift I could not believe my eyes...

"Run-Around" - Blues Traveler
from the album four (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #8 (four weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 36

Today's song of the comes from the the jam-rock band Blues Traveler, who came together in the area of Princeton, New Jersey in the 1980s under lead singer and harmonica player John Popper and drummer Brendan Hill and hiring on guitarist Chan Kinchla and bass player Bobby Sheehan. Moving to Brooklyn to attend college and playing gigs in the area (some with roommate Chris Barron's band Spin Doctors), eventually they were signed by A&M records and quit school to concentrate on touring. The band's eponymous debut album arrived in 1990, along with a second disc Travelers and Thieves the following year. But it wasn't until their third full-length effort Save His Soul that they were able to score a radio hit, when the track "Conquer Me" appeared on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart in 1993.

Between that success, their bigger touring presence, and championing from late show host David Letterman, Blues Traveler came to their biggest moment on the release of their fourth album four. The lead single was a harmonica-laced slice of jangle-pop called "Run-Around", written by Popper and produced by Michael Barbiero and Steve Thompson. Sporting a music video inspired by the Wizard of Oz with the real band portrayed players behind the curtain for a "hipper, more attractive" band with MTV's Ken Ober as the "Wizard" keeping things in order, the channel loved the clip and soon, so would rock fans...

"Run Around" became Blues Traveler's first and biggest pop hit, landing in the American top ten in August of 1995 and spending 49 weeks on the Hot 100. The song made the top-20 on both the Mainstream (#13) and Modern/Alternative (#14) Rock radio charts in Billboard magazine. It even crossed over to reach #4 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") chart, and got to #11 on the newly-made Adult Top-40 list. Internationally, the single went to #13 in Canada. At the Grammy Awards in 1996, the song won the prize for Best Duo/Group Rock Vocal Performance.

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Here's the band playing at the MTV Movie Awards in 1995...