I was a senior in high school in '61 - '62, and have a very positive feel for the period which I would characterize as the tail end of the "American Pie" era of pop music. Teens in America were still going to malt shops and sock hops, teenage pregnancies and drugs were not rampant in the schools yet, and the counter culture music of the folkies and psychedelics hadn't kicked in yet either. It was a great time to be hanging out at the drive-in with your friends — and girlfriends, too. It would be next year for Peter, Paul and Mary and Joan Baez to show up in the charts, and a full four years before Bob Dylan gets the anti-establishment music up to full speed. From then on the American music culture would splinter off in a myriad of directions, never to recover.
And I would expect you to have an affinity for that music--it is so intertwined with your teen years. Flash forward to 1973-79 (high school and college years), and I feel the same way about the tunes of that era. The splintering you refer to is the genesis of what I enjoy so much. I remember this article from a few years ago. It has general not universal truths, so no one need list the music they now like they didn't at 24. There's a "Magic Age" When You Find Your Musical Taste, According to Science » EDIT: Actually, I think this is the one I read 5 years ago: Log In - The New York Times » JcS
The mono 45 is killer. One of the better "insomnia" songs and a good R&B rocker that's fun to play at parties if your band get's hired entertain the people (it works as a reggae arrangement too...if you slow it down just a little bit).
I have heard two versions of Tossin and Turnin. A mono version without the intro and a stereo version with the intro.
You are correct, Joey. After a stint in the army during the Viet Nam era, I returned and finished college in 1972, and the music was very different. That isn't to say that I didn't like it — some of it, anyway — but there's no denying that, as Jim Morrison sang, "Strange days have tracked us down." There's certainly a note loss of innocence in this that reflects the meaning of "American Pie." Taste has nothing to do with this, as I enjoy the Doors every bit as much as I did Ricky Nelson and Roy Orbison from years earlier. I think it's safe to say that many of us who visit the Hoffman site count Pink Floyd among our favorites, but they hardly compare to anything that might have been a top 40 artist a decade earlier.
@sgb What changed is that the music began to have a message as the decade wore on imo, generally one of protest of one thing or another.
Or a decade later--DARK SIDE in 1963 wouldn't have been possible, in 1983 it wouldn't have been so novel, for instance. I'm looking forward to this thread, and just wish I'd seen it sooner. I note the first chart started a couple of weeks after I was born. JcS
What also changed was the artists were not as much under control of the producers. Not saying the world was free of payola driven playlists and artists that were poorly paid fronts for the product, but as the artists became involved in the writing and production, then the messages they wanted to express started being incorporated. JcS
Certainly both of these sentiments are correct, but I would hasten to add that a quick perusal of, say, Whitburn's Pop Annual from any year would show that the kinds of songs that were prevalent to the protest/psychedelic era were still predominately non-message songs. The Zager and Evans hit from 1969, "In the Year 2525," is the only so-called message song to rank either first or second for any year in the 1960s. Even checking my copy of the 1982 Annual through the early 70s shows that most of the record buying public preferred just an old-fashioned love song (with apologies to Three Dog Night). Payola had been dealt with before the end of the 1950s IIRC.
Looking at the top of the charts might give a skewed view--Dylan, for instance, wasn't topping it, but was undeniably influential. But no question, there were the "silly love songs" a decade later. I listen to AT40 on XM 7 when in the car on the weekends, and for every Pink Floyd, there were two Poppy Families. As for the payola, it was the aftermath of it that gave rise to the labels trying to play it safe. Put out the generic love songs with clean cut artists, and the government will leave them alone--at least that's what I remember reading in HIT MAN or maybe it was Mark Lewisohn's TUNE IN, as he explained the state of American music in the era leading up to the Beatles' rise. JcS
I am enjoying the different perspectives of those following this thread, and the openness to exploring this musical era. I was an 11-12 year old girl in 1961, carting around my transistor radio or listening to familiar DJs on local stations at home or at friends' houses, practicing dances, watching Bandstand, and everyone worrying about how we were all hitting puberty. So many of these songs evoke memories, especially the current ones being listed. Every summer, our family took a car ride from Philly to Connecticut, and it was thrilling to me to drive into the range of unfamiliar radio stations. WABC and WINS in NYC were particular favorites. My view now is that the music was so diverse... but I can't say I even noticed at the time, it was just music and I liked it all. Even hearing it now, it is not remotely bland to me, just fun and very evocative of a time and place. But I can see why others have a different reaction whether they were there at the time and having different experiences, or too young, or not born yet. I can sing along to just about every song. I see music much the same as historical events. It is kind of the difference between sitting there shocked and fixated on the TV the weekend of November 22, 1963, vs. learning of the events of JFK's assassination as a history lesson. One can explore an event, but it not the same as being immersed in that moment. As an example from that time, the Freddie Cannon song, Palisades Park, from summer of 1962, was a special favorite as we passed the Palisades on our family's summer trip, and I recall hearing it in NYC as we drove through. I was programmed to like that song! Someone who just hears that song years later may think it is a summer type song and also be more "objective" but for me that is a very subjective thing to listen!
@MaggieMac I agree. Songs heard in real time in relation to what else going on, personal or collective, are experienced much differently by the hearer, than someone hearing and liking the song years later. It's like you were there. It's part of the soundtrack of your life, as the saying goes. Coming up into the early 60's in this thread brings on hazy memories of older teenage relatives playing the music, for me. The further along this goes, the clearer the direct interaction will be for me and the music.
I have the mono version of that song as a mp3 file with a running time of 2:39 which is more than in the video: https://www.amazon.com/Collectors-Gold-Bobby-Lewis/dp/B0000DD53M
Popular music evolution is a representation of how we as a culture have progressed. To explore the outer limits of what music can do was the most profound thing to come out of the 50's to 70's. IMO after that electronics and computers more or less take over in the pop rhelm and it becomes less interesting in the process partly due to too much metronomic precision. However, if done right by a group like say The Cars, it could be highly entertaining.
Off topic, but 'tis the nature of these conversations, no? I was 5 in November of '63. My mom stayed home with me and my 1 year old brother, and every day at 12:30, we were around the TV so she could watch AS THE WORLD TURNS, and so it was on November 22, 1963. For years, I remembered something odd about that day, but couldn't trust if my memory was correct. I thought the network broke in to tell us there had been a shooting in Dallas, and then went back to the soap. But that couldn't be right, I told myself later--why would they go back to regular programming with that news breaking? I later found out I WAS right. At the 10:00 of this video was the first announcement, and then at 11:00, it goes back to regular programming. And as a total aside, I was in Dallas a few weeks ago, driving around downtown and I missed an exit I needed to take. I pulled up to turn around and looked to my left. "Oh, my, that's the grassy knoll!" I told my wife. We started the other way, and then turned onto the street where Kennedy was shot. JcS
The Happy Days era. I'm so envious of all those who were a teen in the U.S during that time - late 50's / early 60's. The pop music had a wonderful innocence and charm.
Incredible but not really unexpected is how even a 5 year old as you were could recognize that this was an important event. And that is interesting, I had not seen that video of the soap opera interspersed with the news of the assassination. Of course, back then, there was no 24 hour news. Until that weekend, if memory serves. I was in school when the principal made the announcement, so we were not watching TV. And it was burned in my brain when we all watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald live on TV along with other events. The weird thing is that in listening to this, I am so in the moment that I hold out hope that it really didn't happen, when the reports were that Kennedy was still alive. Strange, but similar to your comment about the grassy knoll, one of the first thoughts I had with the shooting recently in Dallas, was that the victims were taken to Parkland Hospital. I suspect anyone old enough to recall these events knows that is where the President was taken.
I do feel lucky to have been old enough to have been there, on the cusp of my teen years! Music with innocence and charm, and certainly not a wasteland to me!
Culturally I prefer the mid late sixties for most everything but I do hold the early sixties in high regard because it seems they were the last age of innocence.It just seems like it is been on a downhill slide ever since. I was born in 1961.
I've never really wished I was raised in those times, but I sure do wish I was raising my daughter in those times.
If the OP wants this line of discussion to stop in this thread, please tell me. I read somewhere, and can't find it just this minute, so it may have been in a book rather than on the Internet, that the cut back to ATWT was to give the network a few moments to get ready for a live shot of Cronkite. The first interruption, and then the total break-away were done in radio style. I don't remember the next day, but my parents told me for years afterward that I was furious on Saturday when my cartoons weren't on. I wasn't watching the TV on Sunday morning, as we would have been in church. I don't know when I learned about Ruby shooting Oswald, as that didn't make an impact on me. I have no memory of knowing who the president was before November 22, 1963. The 5 year olds I know at church now might be able to tell me Obama is president, but then again, they may not. It might matter if they were in kindergarten--we didn't have that in my hometown in 1963. I may have to ask one sometime! JcS
Cronkite could only do a voice-over at first because the live tube cameras had to use a long warm-up period before they could do a live shot. That's why they went back to regular programming, awaiting the cameras to warm up.
Everyone wants to make it to the top of the charts. Dick Clark would query his teenage guests on a song he would introduce on his show, and the response was usually a numerical value followed by a short explanation like, "It is easy to dance to." I think you are missing the point of this thread, which is to discuss Number One Tunes, and the record buying public at large really didn't want to think much about the message of a song. There were some exceptions, though, like, "What did Billie Jo McAllister throw off the Tallahachie Bridge?" or what is the secret meaning of "Puff the Magic Dragon?" By and large, though, the goal usually is to have a hit record, the higher it charts, the better. The only time I listen to music on the radio is on weekend mornings when/if I have to go to the store for something. Invariably, those stations in my area play from a very limited list of older music. It would be hard to call it oldies music, though, since most of the stuff I hear comes from the late 70s or early 80s. I guess there just aren't enough of us left who remember the early days of rock music, and even fewer who still turn on a radio. As for Payola, I seriously doubt that any record that made it into the top 5 ever needed to offer a bribe for airplay. Given that, as the purpose of this thread seems to be to reminisce over #1 hits, I think it's safe to assume that none of these are guilty of such transgressions. I'll reiterate that point, so a skewed view is not what one arrives at with these tunes. I would point out that Before there was Dylan, there was PP&M, Belafonte and the Kingston Trio making it high in the charts, so Dylan's influence was pointed to certain groups... the Byrds come to mind. Those were influential tunes to make the top of the charts, no doubt, but there was a reason for that.
