In chronological order.
A lot of work went into this:
Some #1 hits from successive weeks achieved very different levels of future fame.
October 10, 1960 – Larry Verne singing “Mr. Custer.” I don’t remember him or the song.
one week later – The Drifters singing “Save the Last Dance for Me,” a song familiar to everyone and covered many times over the years.
The same group has also done the 1950s, the 1940s and several themed compilations.
It’s fascinating to see the sorts of songs that were hits before rock dominated the charts. In October of 1955, the #1 song was The Yellow Rose of Texas, sung by Mitch Miller and the gang! On January 1, 1950, it was Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer, sung by Gene Autry.
In the 1940s, my favorite discovery was the 5 weeks starting July 3, 1948, when the #1 hit was the Woody Woodpecker theme, from Kay Kyser. (And I thought the music of the 1970s was bad! Terry Jacks would have seemed like a musical genius in the 1940s. OK, maybe not.)
For me, one of the absolute worst chart-toppers of any era has to be 1947’s “Huggin’ and Chalkin’,” whose lyrics have to be heard to be believed. I don’t care that the otherwise-genius Hoagy Carmichael did it–it just stinks on ice.
I just read the lyrics…
Wow…
Just… wow…
Not one of Hoagy’s better efforts!
“Huggin’ and Chalkin'” wasn’t his only novelty song. He also wrote “I’m a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank on the Streets of Yokohama with My Honolulu Mama Doin’ Those Beat-o, Beat-o Flat-On-My-Seat-o, Hirohito Blues”
Those were different times.
A key point to make here is that in all of Hoagy’s great songs, he wrote only the melody, while the lyrics were written by somebody else. On the other hand, Hoagy himself wrote the lyrics to these two clunkers mentioned above.
He not only needed somebody else to write lyrics for his songs, he also needed somebody to sing them. His singing was terrible. He tried to cover up his lack of talent with some stylized vocalization, but he just flat-out stunk.
But when his melodies got a good lyricist and were filtered through the voices of Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald and Sinatra … well, the man could make some magic.
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Per Wikipedia:
“Stardust” lyrics by Mitchell Parish
“Georgia on My Mind” lyrics by Stuart Gorrell
“The Nearness of You” by Ned Washington
“Heart and Soul” lyrics by Frank Loesser.
“Ole Buttermilk Sky” lyrics by Jack Brooks.
“Lazybones,” “Skylark” and “In the Cool Cool Cool of the Evening” lyrics by Johnny Mercer
There’s a reason why so few Tin Pan Alley songwriters doubled as singers. Have you heard Irving Berlin’s singing voice? Lordy! (Johnny Mercer was a creditable singer, but that’s about it.) As to your other point, I could listen to Nat King Cole’s rendition of “Stardust” every single day of my life.
Nat was smooth as silk!
I don’t remember the singer but I remember it as “Please, Mr Custer” and can still sing some of it. Good luck hearing it on an oldies station now. A while back, a local oldies station would have a request hour and I would ask for this song or “Ahab the Arab” or “Speedy Gonzales”. I’m still waiting. Always meant to ask for Bill Dana’s “The Astronaut”. Is that a crash helmet?
K-Tel put all those songs on one album. “Please Mr Custer” is sung by Larry Verne. It’s actually a pretty bad song.
It’s a 50s song, but I think Along Came Jones is a much better song than Please Mr. Custer, and so is Transfusion by Nervous Norvus.
Bobby Vinton (yecch) to the Fabs. Thank you for invading, Brits! Not to mention the Stones, who got me into joining a band that spring. And thanks WBZ in Boston for always seeming to get the good stuff from England faster.
I’ve been posting a 1960s song of the day on a political message board since November, 2024 (starting with Like a Rolling Stone) and along with one other regular poster we’ve now posted about 400 songs give or take a few comments with no song posted.
Like a Rolling Stone went to #2 on Billboard, but there was a competing U.S chart at the time called Cashbox where it went to #1. Positively Fourth Street went to #1 in Canada, but Dylan never had a #1 hit in the U.K.
The main thing about 60s music is the incredible diversity of styles that made the pop charts, only possibly the late 1980s had more diversity. The other thing is the incredible changes in technology.
I think I’ve mentioned this here before. The technology for overdubbing actually existed going back to the early 1950s but the session musician union and maybe the cost of the technology and the need to rebuild all the recording music studios prevented the use of overdubbing until the early 1960s. Whatever the person, the incredible Wall of Sound music of the late 1950s/early 1960s of Phil Spector would likely never have occurred if dubbing was in use at the time.
Les Paul did some of the first experimenting with dubbing which is what got the session musicians to walk out.
Although some of this technology existed before hand, the big jump that ultimately led to overdubbing was the Nazi scientists who used magnetic tape for recording. After the war, their patents were invalidated and Bing Crosby financed this ‘magnetophon technology’ into the United States.
His reasoning was pretty simple. At the time he did some (once a week!) radio show and he was unhappy that having to do the show twice (once for the west coast and once for the east coast) cut into his golf time. He recognized that he could simply do the east coast broadcast and have it recorded to be played on the west coast.
From what I’ve read, most music historians would say the two things that drive the popular musical styles are the state of the economy and changes in music technology. The state of the economy is generally accepted I think, but changes in music technology as a driver of music styles seems to be much less appreciated. Many of the big musicians actually have quite a lot of knowledge of electronics.
This is especially evident in the 1980s with the rapid advancement in synthesizer technology from when it was quite complicated and required programming but many musicians of the day were up to the task, to today where basically a synthesizer can be played in the same way on stage as a guitar.
Rap music, at least rap music as it’s played today, would not exist if it were not for the TR-808 drum machine that was popularized by Arthur Baker.
That probably gives short shrift to cultural changes. In the 1950s, there was a gradual acceptance of the music of Black America, first as covered by white dudes, and then of that music as performed by the great Black performers themselves.
When you look at the top hits of the 1940s, it is completely absent that influence. It’s filled with crooners like Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and the like, with very little to make your shoulders start moving. Nat Cole snuck in there, but he was singing even whiter than the white people. From the generation born as the 19th century turned to the 20th, those who performed in the 30s and 40s, there were successful Black ensembles on tour (Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Count Basie), but they weren’t selling enough records to reach #1 in an America where white people bought almost all the records and controlled all of the most powerful radio stations.
Most of my dad’s friends were Black, and he loved blues, jazz and swing, but even he had no records from any of those genres. He went to clubs to hear his kind of music. If he had listened to his music at home, my mom would have gone ballistic. All of my family’s 78s and 45s were cornball stuff, and the 33s were classical or show tunes.
Yes, that’s true.
Is “Dominique” the most unlikely No 1 ever?
It’s a contender, but 1963 was full of surprises. It was that lull between Elvis and the Beatles, and a lot of unexpected music rose to the top. Sukiyaki was also number one for a while, folk music got its own network show, and Sugar Shack was the record of the year, as measured by the most weeks at #1.
Dominique was huge at the end of the year, but just one month later the Beatles made their first appearance at #1, and a new era began. The Singing Nun just snuck in at exactly the right time.
Sugar Sugar also went to #1. To be sure, it was over the full decade, but from Elvis to the Beatles, Sukiyaki, Dominque and Sugar Shack (a truly awful song), all very different styles of music that were all #1 hits in the 1960s. “MacArthur Park” sung by Richard Harris went to #2 (MacArthur Park is a real park in Los Angeles, there is no MacArthurs’s Park!)
The greatest diversity of styles was from 1965-1967, as folk rock (Mr Tambourine Man) morphed into psychadelic rock (Eight Miles High) and country rock (You Ain’t Going Nowhere) and soul music (My Girl) morphed into rhythm and blues (Dance to the Music) (sort of anyway.)
Garage rock, pop rock, folk music (in the earlier 60s) and bubblegum music as well, and I’m sure a number of additional styles, including early electronic music like the Doctor Who theme. There were also a number of non rock songs that made #1 on the Billboard charts in the 1960s, for instance Frank Sinatra’s Strangers in the Night.
Sorry, and hard rock and heavy metal at the end of the decade.
And though it took a while to get here, the ska to reggae progression in Jamaica. The Wailer’s first hit, Simmer Down, was in 1964. Damn shame there is only one short video of the Marley/Tosh/Bunny/Barrett brothers band.
I posted Jimmy Cliff on the website. Many Rivers to Cross and Wonderful World, Beautiful People, he was really good.
There was also skiffle music, the wonderful Lonny Donegan. I think both Jimmy Cliff and Lonny Donegan, who were both British, were bigger in the U.K.
Of course, there is also the irony that in the 1960s, in the U.K, the biggest musicians on the pop charts weren’t the Beatles or even the Rolling Stones but was Cliff Richard.
Cliff Richard had one hit song in the United States in the early 1980s as a result of MTV with his label spending a great deal of money on the music video for the song.
MacArthur Park was the first rock opera. WIthout MacArthur Park I doubt there would have been a Meat Loaf.
MacArthur Park, the song, is a real hoot. It reminds me of the theme song for “Blazing Saddles”, where Mel Brooks had an absurd song written, but the singer took it with deep, deep, seriousness.
While I don’t like that song in general, I do very much like the interlude, which is really a completely separate song, with a different melody, somehow stuck in the middle of the nonsense:
There will be another song for me
And I will sing it
There will be another dream for me
Someone will bring it
I will drink the wine while it is warm
And never let you catch me looking at the sun
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life, you’ll still be the one
I will take my life into my hands and I will use it
I will win the worship in your eyes and I will lose it
I will have the things that I desire
And my passion flow like rivers from the sky
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves in my life, you’ll still be the one
And I’ll ask myself why
If you’re not aware, MacArthur Park was written by Jimmy Webb, who wrote many and varied hits for others such as Glen Campbell and 5th Dimension. His compositions show a wide range but he didn’t have much success as a solo artist. He wrote “The Highwayman”, the hit by the, well, Highwaymen
It is always fun to hear Jimmy Webb tell Richard Harris stories. I love the fact that Harris never called him Jim or Jimmy or Webb or Mr. Webb – always “Jimmywebb” in that beautiful, refined Irish brogue, as if it were a single, magical word that could unlock the pearly gates.
Those two were soul mates. Harris could barely carry a tune, but he could deliver a Jimmy Webb song better than anyone, because he was a brilliant actor who know how to hit the emotional notes even when he slid through the musical ones. Harris’s rendition of “Didn’t We” never fails to get me. The first Webb-Harris album “A Tramp Shining” was one of my favorites back in the day.
I know that Webb wrote many songs for The Fifth Dimension and Glen Campbell and even for himself, and I like those songs, but as I see it, Richard Harris was the quintessential interpreter of Webb’s sentimental, bittersweet songs.
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That said, MacArthur Park was such a bad song (except for the interlude, as previously mentioned) that nobody could rescue it. It really was designed to go straight-to-ridicule.
1.The song is definitely over the top (I’m pretty sure Jimmy Webb meant it to be melodramatic, like an opera) but as Webb explained, the lyrics are actually a lot more down to earth than they seem at first look. Had Richard Harris not referred to it as MacArthur’s Park but as correctly MacArthur Park, people would have been more likely to have realized the song was referring to the park in Los Angeles.
In this section of Los Angeles there were frequent sudden outbursts of rain even in the summer, and Webb observed that during picnics when the rain started up, people would simply leave and leave many things behind, even the cake they were eating. So, the song is about loss, but also how people simply discard things without thinking.
2.For those who haven’t seen it, SCTV did a rather bizarre sketch about the song.
I always kind of liked the song myself. It is a bit odd and theatrical admittedly, maybe even to the point of being campy. But Richard Harris sells it in his own way – really sells it – I can’t imagine anyone else performing the song (I have never heard a cover). My dad had the LP when I was a kid and it was in regular rotation on our stereo for a number of years. The lyrics were intriguing to me back in the day and continue to be. I appreciate Adam’s commentary on the lyrical background. I well remember the SCTV skit.
Thanks for sharing that. On watching it, I found that was well familiar with about 90% of those 1960s #1 songs. The remaining songs were split between those of which I have dim recollection and those which I am pretty sure I had never heard even once before seeing this video. A lot of stellar music, some mediocre and the occasional inexplicable stinker. Some surprises – I had no idea that Connie Francis was quite that big for a time in the very early 1960s. Also, though I am well familiar with the music, I did not realize just how many #1 hits the girl groups – and particularly the black girl groups – had during the 1960s…and not just the Supremes, although the Supremes came to dominate. Those young ladies were easy on the ears, and on the eyes.
From Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound to Motown.
Mentioned this before but the yr of Woodstock, 1969, Sugar, Sugar from a Sat morn cartoon was the #1 song. It was a more casual era. 😉
Speaking of Sat morn Puffed Rice commercial used the Overture of 1812. 🙂
My unfavorite #1 since, you guessed it, Sugar Shack. Once when I was driving I had to punch three buttons before I found a station not playing it.
They got better, obviously, but Tommy James & the Shondells’ “Hanky Panky” was pretty lousy. But my least favorite #1 hit of the Sixties was “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)” by really who cares.
I might go with 96 Tears
My friends and I all loved 60s garage rock so ? and the Mysterians were no problem for us.
If you’ve never seen the video for “Hang On Sloopy”, it’s worth a look. You can thank me later. No clue who the girl is.
Looks like I failed at embed. Try this:
Thanks, Mr. Haney. The young lady was very nice to see, and I was surprised that the band looked so “Mod”. I was expecting more of a country look, for some reason.
Well, the band was the McCoys so you were probably expecting Walter Brennan. That would have been something if Kate and Hassie had done the dancing. Speaking of Walter, I have a cassette of his greatest hits, including “Old Rivers” and “Dutchman’s Gold”.
This video apparently made in 1975 by Rick Derringer, a member of the original band. Not many bands made videos that early, I think, but he knew how to grab our attention
I’m a lazy man, thank you. She’s hot, gives you something to look at besides the bad lip-syncing.
Who came first, these guys or Keith Partridge?
Rick Derringer is a big time guitarist. Maybe not so obvious from this video.
You are correct, sir. Played with both Winter brothers and Ringo’s All-Star Band
These days: In 1997, Derringer became an Evangelical Christian. Since then, he has consistently aligned himself with conservative causes in the United States. Derringer describes himself as a “Jesus freak”.
Looks like it’s Lisa Leonard Dalton.
Interweb sez that’s Lisa Leonard Dalton.
Sloopy is a great dancer, and shapely as well.
And now Rick Derringer passes…