EVERY Billboard #1 hit discussion thread 1958-Present

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by alphanguy, Jan 29, 2016.

  1. tommy-thewho

    tommy-thewho Senior Member

    Location:
    detroit, mi
    Lot of great songs on here.
     
  2. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    Again, my apologies to Grant for not posting this on the R&B thread but since the song was brought up here:

     
    Grant likes this.
  3. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I do prefer "Love Is Alright", the flipside of "The Horse".
     
  4. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    Let's move on to the next #1, shall we?
    [​IMG]
    The original, mouthful title before it was shortened to the more digestible . . .
    The Doors - Hello, I Love You

    Which would be the last Number One hit for the quartet of Jim, Ray, Robbie and John . . .

    (And before you ask, yes, this is the variant I have in my collection. CTH pressing, CP fonts.)
     
    SomeCallMeTim likes this.
  5. Tim S

    Tim S Senior Member

    Location:
    East Tennessee
    I like "Hello, I love you" a lot. I like the shorter, more focused Doors a LOT more than the long-winded "poetic" Doors. This is about as to the point as they ever got. Morrison isn't a great singer, but this kind of song suits him and he sounds really good here. These are some of his better lyrics, too.

    She holds her head so high
    Like a statue in the sky
    Her arms are wicked and her legs are long

    That's good stuff and so are the rest of them - I'll just kinda not think too much about "pluck this dusky jewel."

    I have absolutely no problem with the similarities to "All day and all of the night" - the musical riff here is different and stands on its own. Actually it's the vocal melody that apes the Kink's guitar riff - and I think that's a crucial difference.
     
    Hey Vinyl Man likes this.
  6. alphanguy

    alphanguy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Missouri
    Next up is "Grazing In The Grass" by Hugh Masakela, #1 from July 20 - August 2, 1968.

     
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  7. alphanguy

    alphanguy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Missouri
    The Friends of Distinction took the song to #3 on the hot 100 the next year:

     
    Tim S, SomeCallMeTim, Manapua and 2 others like this.
  8. SITKOL'76

    SITKOL'76 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Colombia, SC
    So many #1 hits, how many #1 hits have we actually had on the Hot 100, if anybody knows the exact number, it's a lot of music.
     
  9. alphanguy

    alphanguy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Missouri
    I am wondering if 1968 has some record amount of instruemntals in the top 40... it certainly seems like they are everywhere you turn.
     
    Grant and sunspot42 like this.
  10. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    I've been on vacation in Europe the past two weeks...lots to catch up on, so apologies in advance for the flashbacks you're about to get.

    The #1 instrumental version of "Grazing" is great, but I think the Friends of Distinction's cover is flat out incredible and actually points strongly toward disco at least a couple of years before any other proto-disco song rolled along. Its bongo fills and fuzz guitar break aren't far from The Isley's proto-disco '73 hit "That Lady".
     
    SomeCallMeTim, Manapua and Damiano54 like this.
  11. Joey Self

    Joey Self Red Forman's Sensitivity Guru

    THIS guy is not in love with "This Guy's In Love With You."

    But it wouldn't cause me to get up and go across the room to turn a radio to another station as "Honey" would do.

    I prefer the vocal version of "Grazing" to the instrumental.

    JcS
     
  12. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Catchy as hell and great production, but dumb as a fence post and repetitive. This is definitely where Paul went off the rails with his whole music hall revival schtick, perhaps inspired by other retro hits cropping up on the charts. "Hello, Goodbye" is an insignificant trifle compared to the darkly bizarre "I Am The Walrus", one of the band's most iconic tracks. It was "Walrus" that Paul Simon would check in his #1 "Mrs. Robinson" - the smart guys already knew which side of that single really mattered.

    I think "Walrus" would have gone at least Top 5, and might well have made it to #1. Weird didn't really seem to be a limiting factor for chart hits in '68...in fact, the weirder the better.

    While the band had been drifting out from under his influence for quite awhile - partly due to his own incapacitation on drugs - the death of Brian Epstein eliminated the one force capable of preventing them from making really stupid decisions. With him gone they quickly made a whole slew of them. Fortunately they had enough talent - especially with Harrison honing his songwriting skills and playing into a third hitmaking force - to soldier on for awhile longer, but the path got much rockier and far more unpleasant.
     
    AppleBonker likes this.
  13. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Actually, plenty of pop stuff recorded prior to the '60s sounds better than much if not most of the stuff recorded during the '60s. The 60's were kind of a sonic dark ages, partly due to preferred styles - Phil Spector and his lo-fi Wall of Sound for example - partly due to the scruffy nature of new labels like Motown, and partly due to the increasing reliance on multitracked and overdubbed production trickery.

    This Bing Crosby / Rosemary Clooney version of "Brazil" for example sounds better than virtually any big hit from, say, '63 to near the end of the decade:

     
    John B Good and Manapua like this.
  14. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I don't know the stats, but it seems like some good years for instrumentals were 1960, 1966, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1975, 1976, 1981, and maybe 1985. After 1985, they seemed to go away.

    Those are not disco! :realmad: Not even close!
     
    pickwick33 likes this.
  15. pablo fanques

    pablo fanques Somebody's Bad Handwroter In Memoriam

    Location:
    Poughkeepsie, NY
    Plastics Benjamin. PLASTICS!
     
  16. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    I like Grazing In The Grass, the instrumental, mostly because I remember it as part of the Soul summer of '68 that also includes Stoned Soul Picnic, Sweet Inspiration, You're All I Need To Get By, Think and probably several others I'm forgetting at the moment. Grazing by The Friends Of Distinction on the other hand, is fantastic and should have been numero uno, too. And if that tune wasn't enough, just flip the record over and you'll find this piece of heaven:

     
  17. Victor/Victrola

    Victor/Victrola Makng shure its write

    Grazing in the Grass is a pretty good single, and unlike Love Is Blue, I don't mind the version where they added lyrics.
     
  18. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    This number has two B sides to its name. When first issued, the flip was "Alone In The World (Seuls Au Monde)," which Mauriat himself had written under his "Del Roma" nom de plume. My own copy (pressed by CBS Pitman) is of that coupling. By the time this number topped the charts, the other side of the record was a cover of labelmate Bobby Hebb's "Sunny."
     
  19. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    It could be argued that if compared to the likes of June Christy or Lena Horne or Ella Fitzgerald or Jo Stafford or Helen Forrest or Kitty Kallen or Doris Day or Dinah Shore or Anita O'Day or Sarah Vaughan - heck, even Anita Baker, going way forward to the '80's - Adele (especially in concert) sounds more like Mrs. Miller by comparison.
     
  20. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    Ahem . . . with all due respect, though Williams wrote and performed "Classical Gas," he didn't produce it; that part was handled by a chap (and protege of Jimmy Bowen) named Mike Post - who, uncredited, wrote the trombone-heavy bridge that was inserted in the middle.
     
  21. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    "Hello, I Love You" topped the charts from Aug. 3 to Aug. 10, 1968 - a two-week stay.

    Now, on to a song that sat on the chart mountain for five weeks (Aug. 17 - Sept. 14) - the last Number One for this quartet:
    The Rascals - People Got To Be Free
    [​IMG]

    . . . in all its mono glory.

    This number was also the last whereby the music publishing was licensed by BMI. Shortly thereafter, writers/members Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati shifted their membership to ASCAP - and whether coincidentally or not, their chart fortunes reversed southward after this number.

    The arrangement on this song to my ears seems reminiscent of an early hit of theirs, "I've Been Lonely Too Long." (Just as their immediate prior hit "A Beautiful Morning" had shades of "Groovin' " and "A Girl Like You" mixed in.) This was apparently rush-recorded and -released in the wake of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in June. But just to be sure . . . I like it!
     
    danasgoodstuff likes this.
  22. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    John Florez produced both the Friends' "Grazin' " and a song that truly pointed the way towards disco, "Rock The Boat" by The Hues Corporation (recorded 1973, topped the charts in 1974). Other than that, apples and oranges.
     
  23. Skywheel

    Skywheel Forum Resident

    Location:
    southern USA
    I definitely enjoy your label and pressing details, W.B., Thanks!
    but out of consideration for this thread starter, Alphanguy, I humbly request you allow him to introduce each succeeding #1 at his own speed (it is his thread after all).
    He has managed it nicely these last 18 to 19 months.

    You may be ready to move on, but there are still others who haven't yet had the opportunity to offer their, also, very interesting input.

    Applebonker, for example, always has very in depth, informative and engrossing posts regarding each and every #1.
    And he has yet to address, "Hello, I Love You".
    Or "Grazing in the Grass" for that matter.
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2017
    trebori, Tim S, Frank and 1 other person like this.
  24. Spazaru

    Spazaru Angry Samoan

    I used to work at the Country Music Hall of Fame. I had the pleasure of meeting Gordon Stoker (his son Alan works there). Gordon told me that while he loved Elvis, Ricky was their favorite artist they ever backed. He teared up talking about him.
     
  25. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    Well, I'll be deferring for the time being to the other experts on these toppers . . . but yeah, for me the pressings have been as much of importance as the music, if you know what I'm sayin'. And there's clearly enough for these people to absorb, so . . .
     

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