By: HISTORY.com Editors

1976

The theme song from “Welcome Back, Kotter” is the #1 song in America

HISTORY.com Editors

Published: November 13, 2009

Last Updated: January 24, 2025

On May 8, 1976, John Sebastian's playfully nostalgic theme song for the TV show "Welcome Back, Kotter" becomes the number one pop single in the U.S.

The previous year, Sebastian, former member of the beloved '60s pop group the Lovin’ Spoonful, was asked to write and record the theme song for a brand-new ABC television show with the working title “Kotter.” As any songwriter would, Sebastian first tried working that title into his song, but somehow the rhymes he came up with for “Kotter”—otter, water, daughter, slaughter—didn’t really lend themselves to a show about a middle-aged schoolteacher returning to his scrappy Brooklyn neighborhood to teach remedial students at his own former high school. So Sebastian took a more thoughtful approach to the task at hand and came up with a song about finding your true calling in a life you thought you’d left behind. That song, “Welcome Back,” not only went on to top the charts, but it also led the show’s producers to change its title to "Welcome Back, Kotter."

The 1970s

The 1970s are famous for bell-bottoms and the rise of disco, but it was also an era of economic struggle, cultural change and technological innovation.

What Sebastian’s sweet, wistful tune did not do, however, was influence the tone and content of the show. To listen to “Welcome Back,” you’d think that "Welcome Back, Kotter" was a seriocomic slice-of-life program in the mold of, say, "The Courtship of Eddie’s Father"—another '70s TV show with a theme song by a great '60s songwriter (Harry Nilsson). Instead, "Welcome Back, Kotter" was little more than a flimsy platform for catchphrase-spouting caricatures, albeit an insanely successful one. Arnold Horshack’s “Oooh, oooh, oooh,” Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington’s “Hi therrre,” Vinnie Barbarino’s “What? What?” and Gabe Kotter’s “Up your nose with a rubber hose” were the pop-cultural coin-of-the-realm in 1975-76. And though they bore little relation in tone or spirit to the song that topped the charts on May 8, 1976, the disconnect did nothing to hinder the popularity of all things Kotter-related. Indeed, if you weren’t wearing an Uncle Sam or King Kong T-shirt in the summer of America’s bicentennial year, you were probably wearing one with a picture of “the Sweathogs” and a colorful phrase like “Off my case, toilet face” on it.

“Welcome Back” was the first and only television theme song that John Sebastian ever wrote, but it was far from the only television theme song of the mid-1970s to become a legitimate pop hit. Only weeks earlier in 1976, the instrumental “Theme From S.W.A.T.” had topped the Billboard Hot 100, and the Mike Post-written theme "The Rockford Files" had made the top 10 the previous summer.

Timeline

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Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on May 8th

1541

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1792

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1846

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Before the United States formally declared war on Mexico, General Zachary Taylor defeats a superior Mexican force in the Battle of Palo Alto north of the Rio Grande River. The drift toward war with Mexico had begun a year earlier when the U.S. annexed the Republic of Texas as a new state. Ten years before, […]

1852

Louisa May Alcott publishes her first story

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1864

General Lee’s army beats Grant’s Union troops to Spotsylvania

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1884

Harry S. Truman is born

On May 8, 1884, Harry S. Truman is born in Lamar, Missouri. The son of a farmer, Truman could not afford to go to college. He joined the army at the relatively advanced age of 33 in 1916 to fight in World War I. After the war, he opened a haberdashery in Kansas City. When […]

1902

Mount Pelée begins to erupt, burying Caribbean city

On May 8, 1902, Martinique’s Mount Pelée begins the deadliest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. By the following day, the city of Saint Pierre, which some called the Paris of the Caribbean, was virtually wiped off the map. Mount Pelée, the name meaning bald in French, was a 4,500-foot mountain on the north side of […]

1919

New celebration of Armistice Day proposed

On May 8, 1919, Edward George Honey, a journalist from Melbourne, Australia, living in London at the time, writes a letter to the London Evening News proposing that the first anniversary of the armistice ending World War I—concluded on November 11, 1918—be commemorated by several moments of silence. Honey, who briefly served in the British […]

1945

Allied nations worldwide celebrate V-E Day

Great Britain, the United States and several other countries celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazis during World War II.

1945

High-ranking Nazi Hermann Göring is captured by the U.S. Seventh Army

On May 8, 1945, Herman Goering, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, president of the Reichstag, head of the Gestapo, prime minister of Prussia and Hitler’s designated successor is taken prisoner by the U.S. Seventh Army in Bavaria. Goering was an early member of the Nazi Party and was wounded in the failed Munich Beer […]

1963

American moviegoers get their first view of James Bond in “Dr. No”

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1970

Nixon defends invasion of Cambodia

President Nixon, at a news conference, defends the U.S. troop movement into Cambodia, saying the operation would provide six to eight months of time for training South Vietnamese forces and thus would shorten the war for Americans. Nixon reaffirmed his promise to withdraw 150,000 American soldiers by the following spring. The announcement that U.S. and […]

1973

American Indian Movement (AIM) ends occupation of Wounded Knee

On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, armed members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) surrender to federal authorities, ending their 71-day siege of Wounded Knee, site of the infamous massacre of 300 Lakota Indians by the U.S. 7th Cavalry in 1890. AIM was founded in 1968 by Native American leaders Mary Jane Wilson, […]

1984

Soviets announce boycott of 1984 Olympics

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2010

Betty White becomes oldest “Saturday Night Live” host

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Citation Information

Article title: The theme song from “Welcome Back, Kotter” is the #1 song in America
Author: HISTORY.com Editors
Website Name: History
URL: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/may-8/the-theme-song-from-welcome-back-kotter-is-the-1-song-in-america

Date Accessed: May 14, 2025
Publisher: A&E Television Networks
Last Updated: January 24, 2025
Original Published Date: November 13, 2009

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