Pop Memories of the '60s | TimeLife.com | All the '60s pop hits that topped the charts!

Pop Memories of the ’60s

ABOUT THIS COLLECTION:

Time Life proudly presents Pop Memories of the '60s, an extensive collection of pop and easy listening hits well-known to the baby-boomer generation.

Pop Memories of the '60s brings together popular vocalists, folk-artists, and instrumentalists, all of whom were successful on Billboard's "Easy Listening" charts.

This comprehensive collection offers a wonderfully nostalgic experience for anyone who listened to Top 40 radio, and enjoyed the format's wide variety of styles. Pop Memories of the '60s includes classics from Bobby Vinton, Ray Charles, Herb Alpert, The Kingston Trio, and more!

You'll get 142 hits on 9 CDs, plus an 18-track bonus CD of '60s instrumentals for a total of 160 hits on 10 CDs, a great addition to the music library of any pop music fan!

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Get even more pop and easy-listening hits! The Pop Memories of the '60s 18 CD Super Set brings together the best popular vocalists, folk-artists, and instrumentalists of '60s Top 40 radio, plus the best romantic crooners and easy-listening artists of the era! Enjoy classics from Bobby Vinton, Ray Charles, Herb Alpert, and The Kingston Trio with 18 CDs of Pop Memories of the '60s, and unwind with classics from Elvis Presley, Brenda Lee, and Patsy Cline! That's a total of almost 300 classic hits on 18 CDs, see what you get below:

18 CDs total & collector's box

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Pop Memories of the '60s: Walk Right In
Roy Orbison: Running Scared * Bobby Vinton: There! I've Said It Again * Petula Clark: Don’t Sleep in the Subway * The Rooftop Singers: Walk Right In * Andy Williams: Dear Heart * Jimmy Dean: Big Bad John. 30 songs in all!

Pop Memories of the '60s: Honey
Mel Carter: Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me * Jay & the Americans: This Magic Moment * The Kingston Trio: Where Have All the Flowers Gone? * Bobby Goldsboro: Honey * The Lettermen: Goin’ out of My Head / Can’t Take My Eyes off You. 30 songs in all!

Pop Memories of the '60s: Hello Dolly
Stevie Wonder: My Cherie Amour * Tom Jones: It’s Not Unusual * Louis Armstrong: Hello, Dolly! * Patsy Cline: Crazy * Connie Francis: Where the Boys Are * Dusty Springfield: You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me. 32 songs in all!

Pop Memories of the '60s: Blue Velvet
Bobby Vinton: Blue Velvet * Elvis Presley : Can’t Help Falling in Love * Johnny Mathis : Gina * B. J. Thomas: Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head * Gene Pitney: Only Love Can Break a Heart. 32 songs in all!

Pop Memories of the '60s: My Special Angel
Bobby Darin: Beyond the Sea * Dionne Warwick: Walk On By * Frankie Valli: Can’t Take My Eyes off You * The Vogues: My Special Angel * The Association: Cherish. 18 songs in all!

Pop Memories of the '60s: Instrumental Gold
Lawrence Welk: Calcutta * Billy Vaughn and His Orchestra: A Swingin’ Safari * Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass: A Taste of Honey * Walter Wanderley: Summer Samba (So Nice) * Mr. Acker Bilk: Stranger on the Shore. 18 songs in all!

Pop Memories of the '60s Collector's Box
Store all the hits from your Pop Memories of the '60s collection in this special collector's box!

Pop Memories of the '60s: Gentle on My Mind
Classics IV: Stormy * Bobby Goldsboro: Autumn of My Life * Glen Campbell: Gentle on My Mind * Bobby Darin: 18 Yellow Roses * The Kingston Trio: Scotch and Soda * Dion & the Belmonts: Where or When

Pop Memories of the '60s: Happy Heart
Elvis Presley: Suspicious Minds * Roy Orbison: Crying * Andy Williams: Happy Heart * The Brothers Four: Try to Remember * George Hamilton IV: Abilene * Bobby Vinton: I Love How You Love Me

Pop Memories of the '60s: Sweet Dreams
Patsy Cline: Sweet Dreams (Of You) * Burl Ives: Funny Way of Laughing * Tom Jones: Green, Green Grass of Home * Etta James: At Last * The Righteous Brothers: Ebb Tide * Dusty Springfield: Wishin’ and Hopin’

Pop Memories of the '60s: The Look of Love
Rick Nelson: Fools Rush In * Dusty Springfield: The Look of Love * Patsy Cline: She’s Got You * Paul & Paula: Hey Paula * Robert Maxwell: Shangri-La * Jack Jones: Lady

Pop Memories of the '60s: Walk Right In

- Track
- Title
- Artist/Composer
- Time
- 1
- El Paso
- Marty Robbins
- 2
- Running Scared
- Roy Orbison
- 3
- It’s Now or Never
- Elvis Presley
- 4
- Theme from A Summer Place
- Percy Faith and His Orchestra
- 5
- Greenfields
- The Brothers Four
- 6
- There! I’ve Said It Again
- Bobby Vinton
- 7
- Java
- Al Hirt
- 8
- Big Bad John
- Jimmy Dean
- 9
- Ringo
- Lorne Greene
- 10
- We’ll Sing in the Sunshine
- Gale Garnett
- 11
- Washington Square
- The Village Stompers
- 12
- The End of the World
- Skeeter Davis
- 13
- Don’t Sleep in the Subway
- Petula Clark
- 14
- Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte
- Patti Page
- 15
- Maria Elena
- Los Indios Tabajaras

Pop Memories of the '60s: Walk Right In

- Track
- Title
- Artist/Composer
- Time
- 1
- Light My Fire
- José Feliciano
- 2
- Walk Right In
- The Rooftop Singers
- 3
- Crying in the Chapel
- Elvis Presley
- 4
- Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet
- Henry Mancini and His Orchestra
- 5
- Dear Heart
- Andy Williams
- 6
- Take Five
- The Dave Brubeck Quartet
- 7
- Little Green Apples
- O.C. Smith
- 8
- This Girl Is a Woman Now
- Gary Puckett & the Union Gap
- 9
- Somewhere, My Love
- Ray Conniff and the Singers
- 10
- Roses Are Red (My Love)
- Bobby Vinton
- 11
- My Cup Runneth Over
- Ed Ames
- 12
- I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love
- Petula Clark
- 13
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (from the film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
- Hugo Montenegro and His Orchestra
- 14
- To Sir with Love
- Lulu
- 15
- Midnight Mary
- Joey Powers

Even in the decade of the English Invasion and psychedelia, the movies had a close relationship with mainstream pop music, with most of the vocal themes being performed by singers known as “easy listening” or “MOR” (middle-of-the-road) acts. Andy Williams, who in the ’60s boasted the highest-paying contract in the history of the record business, cut Henry Mancini’s Dear Heart as the theme to the movie of the same name, and sang it at the Academy Awards in 1965. Patti Page’s Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte was the title song to an eccentric Robert Aldrich horror film. Ray Conniff, one of the top trombonists of the big-band era, was by now a front man who recorded sometimes with his orchestra and sometimes with the Ray Conniff Singers, a 25-member choir whose vocalisms mimicked instruments. Their Somewhere, My Love was Lara’s Theme from Dr. Zhivago with lyrics added. And Ed Ames’s My Cup Runneth Over may not have been from a movie, but it came close: The song, which lifts its title phrase from the Hebrew Bible version of Psalms 23:5, was from the Broadway musical I Do! I Do!
Instrumental themes, the lusher the better, had a flair for the dramatic in the ’60s. Mancini’s Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet is his rearrangement of the melody from the movie’s theme. Hugh Montenegro’s reading of maverick composer Ennio Morricone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, from the Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western vehicle of the same title, actually topped the British charts. Percy Faith’s Theme from A Summer Place, from the Sandra Dee–Troy Donahue movie, went one better: Not only did it stay at No. 1 on the American charts for nine weeks, it wound up becoming the biggest instrumental hit of the ’60s.
The folk revival added several memorable songs to the inventory of ’60s pop hits. The Brothers Four were University of Washington fraternity brothers who moved to San Francisco. They climbed all the way to No. 2 with their first single, a revival of Greenfields, originally by folk trio Terry Gilkyson and the Easy Riders. The Rooftop Singers were created by former Weavers banjoist Erik Darling specifically to cut Walk Right In, which Gus Cannon had written and recorded with his Memphis jug band, Cannon’s Jug Stompers, in the late 1920s. Washington Square, named for the Greenwich Village park where the folkies hung out, was a Dixieland-style instrumental by the Village Stompers. New Orleans Dixieland trumpeter Al Hirt covered Allen Toussaint’s piano instrumental Java, which was named after a racehorse. And in 1961, pianist Dave Brubeck racked up jazz’s first million-seller with Take Five, written by his sax player, Paul Desmond, and titled after its offbeat time signature.
As those stories suggest, pop and soft rock hits of the ’60s came from some unlikely sources. Consider Maria Elena by Los Indios Tabajaras, made up of Indian brothers Natalicio and Antenor Lima, from the jungles of the Brazilian state of Ceará. They moved to Mexico to become Latin American stars, then conquered America with their remake of this 1941 Jimmy Dorsey hit. Canadian Lorne Greene, who played patriarch Ben Cartwright on the super-popular NBC television Western Bonanza, began his unlikely singing career with a Christmas album featuring him and his TV “sons,” but was then invited to record solo. His Ringo, in which a sheriff saves the life of gunfighter Johnny Ringo, just might have benefited from the fact that an English band called the Beatles, whose drummer also happened to be named Ringo, was storming America at the time.

Others took more conventional routes to stardom. Marty Robbins, who will forever be known as the guy who did El Paso, was a country star who had already crossed over to pop several times. Jimmy Dean wrote Big Bad John, a country song that resonated with the folk scene, on a flight to Nashville. His inspiration was an actor he had worked with in summer stock theater in the Northeast. Roy Orbison and his guitarist, Joe Melson, dashed off Running Scared in about ten minutes after making several false starts. Skeeter Davis’s The End of the World was not written about her original singing partner, Betty Jack Davis (no relation), who was killed in an auto wreck in 1953 just as the female duo was taking off. But when Skeeter, who went on a six-year hiatus after her friend’s death, returned to singing and found this tune about the death of writer Sylvia Dee’s father, she certainly sang it with Betty Jack in mind. Elvis Presley, who had been veering from rock ’n’ roll to pop ever since getting out of the Army, revived Sonny Til and the Orioles’ 1953 vocal group hit Crying in the Chapel. And the King’s It’s Now or Never was a rewrite of O Sole Mio, a 1901 Italian song popularized stateside by Mario Lanza and then by Tony Martin.
Petula Clark was living in Paris, her British career floundering after years of stardom, when her producer, Tony Hatch, played her the opening chords of Don’t Sleep in the Subway. He had come up with them on a recent trip to New York, and was trying to finish the song so he could pitch it to the Drifters. Clark told him that if he could write lyrics as good as those chords, she’d want to cut it. The single exploded internationally and reignited Clark’s career. The married Hatch and his secret girlfriend, actress/singer Jackie Trent, wrote I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love about their affair; they went public as a couple soon after the single hit. Despite success in the U.K., Scotswoman Lulu was unknown in the States until she catapulted to No. 1 in 1967 with To Sir with Love, the theme for a Sidney Poitier movie in which she also appeared. New Zealander Gale Garnett came to New York from Canada to act on stage and television. She got sidetracked writing songs to perform in Greenwich Village clubs, and, wouldn’t you know it, was initially far more successful at that than she had been at acting. Her debut single, the upbeat folk-rocker We’ll Sing in the Sunshine, even won her a Grammy.

—John Morthland

John Morthland has written about music for over 30 years. He is a contributing editor to Texas Monthly and the author of The Best of Country Music (Doubleday, 1984).

Pop Memories of the '60s: Honey

- Track
- Title
- Artist/Composer
- Time
- 1
- Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me
- Mel Carter
- 2
- Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer
- Nat King Cole
- 3
- This Magic Moment
- Jay & the Americans
- 4
- (You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am
- Nancy Wilson
- 5
- The Night Has a Thousand Eyes
- Bobby Vee
- 6
- Danke Schoen
- Wayne Newton
- 7
- Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
- The Kingston Trio
- 8
- Jean
- Oliver
- 9
- Travelin’ Man
- Ricky Nelson
- 10
- I’ll Never Find Another You
- The Seekers
- 11
- Honey
- Bobby Goldsboro
- 12
- Ode to Billie Joe
- Bobbie Gentry
- 13
- Wichita Lineman
- Glen Campbell
- 14
- Exodus
- Ferrante & Teicher
- 15
- Goin’ out of My Head / Can’t Take My Eyes off You (Medley)
- The Lettermen

Pop Memories of the '60s: Honey

- Track
- Title
- Artist/Composer
- Time
- 1
- Michael (Row the Boat Ashore)
- The Highwaymen
- 2
- Red Roses for a Blue Lady
- Vic Dana
- 3
- Save Your Heart for Me
- Gary Lewis and the Playboys
- 4
- By the Time I Get to Phoenix
- Glen Campbell
- 5
- Abraham, Martin and John
- Dion
- 6
- What the World Needs Now Is Love
- Jackie DeShannon
- 7
- It Must Be Him
- Vikki Carr
- 8
- Goldfinger
- Shirley Bassey
- 9
- The Way You Look Tonight
- The Lettermen
- 10
- (Theme From) Valley of the Dolls
- Dionne Warwick
- 11
- Popsicles and Icicles
- The Murmaids
- 12
- I Love You Because
- Al Martino
- 13
- I’m Leaving It up to You
- Dale and Grace
- 14
- Harper Valley P.T.A.
- Jeannie C. Riley
- 15
- Old Rivers
- Walter Brennan with the Johnny Mann Singers

Country and pop music have always intertwined, but in the ’60s Glen Campbell brought the two genres even closer. Campbell’s records were tuneful, orchestrated and country-flavored, but with smooth vocals and minimal twang. The sound became known as “countrypolitan,” signifying an urban approach to rural music, and it made Campbell a household name. Songwriter Jimmy Webb was a crucial participant. By the Time I Get to Phoenix was Campbell’s first hit with a Webb tune. It was loosely based on a real-life experience of Webb’s, only with a different ending (Webb described what he should have done, rather than what he really did). Campbell found the track on a Johnny Rivers album, and his own subsequent version netted such good results that he asked Webb to write him a follow-up. Wichita Lineman became Campbell’s first top-10 pop hit.
Harper Valley P.T.A. and Ode to Billie Joe are two more country crossovers that will forever be associated with the ’60s. Nashville writer Tom T. Hall drew upon one of the decade’s top protest themes—hypocrisy—to write Harper Valley, based on a childhood incident back in his hometown of Olive Hill, Kentucky. Jeannie C. Riley, an obscure demo singer and a secretary on Music Row at the time, was tapped to cut it. Even though she knew the song was a likely hit, she was reluctant at first because it was too pop for her taste. She learned to appreciate the sassy song when it shot to No. 1 on the pop charts. Mississippi Delta native Bobbie Gentry was leading a troupe of singers and dancers in Las Vegas when she wrote the mysterious Ode to Billie Joe at 3 a.m. one night. The gothic, folkish ballad cut across all radio formats to dominate—ironically—the Summer of Love.
Commercial folk music gave way to folk rock as the ’60s progressed. The Highwaymen, fraternity brothers at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, had one of the definitive folk hits with Michael (Row the Boat Ashore), which in the 19th century had been sung by Georgia Sea Island slaves paddling to work on the mainland every morning. The Kingston Trio was ultimately the biggest commercial folk group of all, thanks to hits like their version of Pete Seeger’s antiwar Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Seeger based it on a few lines from a Ukrainian folk song that appears in Soviet novelist Mikhail Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don. Thinking his song too short, Seeger sang it a few times as part of a medley and then forgot about it. But it eventually became one of the anthems of the peace movement and is now probably his best-known song. After leaving family folk group the Springfields, which included his sister Dusty, Tom Springfield began writing and producing for Australian folk-rockers the Seekers. I’ll Never Find Another You was their first hit together. Dion came out of the Bronx to help define the New York vocal group sound of the late ’50s and early ’60s, but he made his comeback in the late ’60s with the folk-rockish Abraham, Martin and John. Dick Holler had written the song after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated in shockingly quick succession in 1968.
Ricky Nelson was another ’50s rocker able to carry on into the ’60s. Using the atlas he kept in his car, Jerry Fuller wrote Travelin’ Man while waiting for his wife in a Los Angeles park. He wanted Sam Cooke to sing it, but when Cooke’s producer J. W. Alexander turned him down, the song found its way to Nelson via bass player Joe Osborn. Dale and Grace’s I’m Leaving It up to You was a remake of Don and Dewey’s 1957 R&B regional hit from L.A. In the early ’60s rockers still competed with easy-listening solo singers for chart positions. German orchestra leader Bert Kaempfert wrote and recorded Danke Schoen in 1962; Americans Milt Gabler and Kurt Schwabach added lyrics the next year, and Wayne Newton, then just 21, made it an instant standard. Discovered by Sammy Davis, Jr., Vic Dana enjoyed his only top-10 pop hit when he revived Guy Lombardo’s 1949 hit Red Roses for a Blue Lady. Al Martino returned to the USA from England to launch his comeback with a revival of Leon Payne’s country standard I Love You Because. Mel Carter, discovered by Quincy Jones and nurtured by Sam Cooke, enjoyed his biggest hit with a stirring revival of Harry Noble’s Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, a 1953 hit for Karen Chandler.
Among female singers, versatile stylist Nancy Wilson scored her biggest hit with (You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am, while Welsh singer Shirley Bassey, already a British chart fixture, finally achieved her first (and biggest) American hit with Goldfinger, from the James Bond movie of the same name. For sheer edgy drama, though, it would be hard to top Vikki Carr’s It Must Be Him, an English-language interpretation of Frenchman Gilbert Bécaud’s Seul Sur Son Étoile.
The writing-producing team of Hal David and Burt Bacharach created a more modern, sophisticated form of pop music in the ’60s, most notably in their work with Dionne Warwick. When contractual snafus prevented the release of the (Theme From) Valley of the Dolls that had been used in the movie, they and Warwick did a new version of the Dory and André Previn song as the B side to I Say a Little Prayer. Jackie DeShannon’s What the World Needs Now Is Love first saw life as a lyric David struggled with for two years before he considered it cohesive enough to show Bacharach. But after Bacharach gave the words a melody, both men lost confidence in the song until a year later, when they were desperate for material for a DeShannon album they were producing in Nashville. Coming right in the middle of the decade, this plea for love for all humankind, rather than the usual boy-girl stuff, was one sign of how pop music was changing.

—John Morthland
John Morthland has written about music for over 30 years. He is a contributing editor to Texas Monthly and the author of The Best of Country Music (Doubleday, 1984).

Pop Memories of the '60s: Hello Dolly

- Track
- Title
- Artist/Composer
- Time
- 1
- My Cherie Amour
- Stevie Wonder
- 2
- Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town
- Kenny Rogers and the First Edition
- 3
- It’s Not Unusual
- Tom Jones
- 4
- Dream a Little Dream of Me
- Mama Cass
- 5
- I’m Sorry
- Brenda Lee
- 6
- You Were on My Mind
- We Five
- 7
- Winchester Cathedral
- The New Vaudeville Band
- 8
- Don’t Let the Rain Come Down (Crooked Little Man)
- The Serendipity Singers
- 9
- Harbor Lights
- The Platters
- 10
- Hello, Dolly!
- Louis Armstrong
- 11
- Moody River
- Pat Boone
- 12
- The Girl from Ipanema
- Stan Getz and João Gilberto
- 13
- King of the Road
- Roger Miller
- 14
- Crazy
- Patsy Cline
- 15
- You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’
- Righteous Brothers
- 16
- Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You
- Connie Francis

Pop Memories of the '60s: Hello Dolly

- Track
- Title
- Artist/Composer
- Time
- 1
- I Fall to Pieces
- Patsy Cline
- 2
- A Little Bitty Tear
- Burl Ives
- 3
- Where the Boys Are
- Connie Francis
- 4
- Unchained Melody
- The Righteous Brothers
- 5
- I’ll Never Fall in Love Again
- Tom Jones
- 6
- Release Me (And Let Me Love Again)
- Engelbert Humperdinck
- 7
- Love Me with All Your Heart
- Ray Charles Singers
- 8
- All Alone Am I
- Brenda Lee
- 9
- England Swings
- Roger Miller
- 10
- The Unicorn
- The Irish Rovers
- 11
- Guantanamera
- The Sandpipers
- 12
- The More I See You
- Chris Montez
- 13
- Dominique
- The Singing Nun (Soeur Sourire)
- 14
- Wooden Heart
- Joe Dowell
- 15
- You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me
- Dusty Springfield
- 16
- What a Wonderful World
- Louis Armstrong

Thanks to a combination of events leading up to their landmark performance on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, the Beatles suddenly found themselves at the center of the pop music universe. On April 4, their singles occupied the top five Billboard Hot 100 chart positions. The Beatles had a stranglehold on the No. 1 spot for 14 weeks until the 63-year-old gravelly-voiced jazz legend Louis Armstrong unclogged the pipeline with Hello, Dolly! Satchmo wasn’t familiar with the recent Broadway show of the same title—or even the song—when he recorded Dolly for an LP of show tunes.
The pop charts in the early ’60s remained wide open for two rock ’n’ roll smoothies from the ’50s, Pat Boone and Connie Francis. Boone, initially known for his sanitized covers of R&B material, became the second-biggest-charting artist of the ’50s behind Elvis Presley. Film and TV offers followed. His last No. 1 hit, Moody River, was written and first recorded by country singer-songwriter Chase Webster (aka Gary Bruce), Boone’s Dot labelmate. Movies also beckoned Connie Francis, whose Where the Boys Are served as the title song of a 1960 fun-in-the-sun flick that marked her screen debut. Ever since Connie’s dad urged her to cut Who’s Sorry Now (her first gold record), she took his advice. His recommendation of Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You ultimately led to her third No. 1 single. Smash Records producer Shelby Singleton had a hunch about Wooden Heart after he saw Elvis croon it in the movie G.I. Blues. Singleton gave Joe Dowell only three hours to learn the German-English song, which the singer worked out phonetically. The rush-released single topped the charts.
Los Angeles vocal group the Sandpipers covered Wooden Heart, but it was the Cuban song Guantanamera (“Girl from Guantánamo”) that placed them in the top 10. They followed it with a Gitmo-ized version of Louie, Louie, a strange minor success. Both records hit two years after The Girl from Ipanema received international acclaim during the bossa nova craze. The suspect pitch of vocalist Astrud Gilberto almost kept her off the recording; tenor saxophonist Stan Getz prevailed, and it won the 1964 Record of the Year Grammy. That same year Love Me with All Your Heart (based on a Spanish song) topped the Easy Listening charts for the Ray Charles Singers, longtime associates of Perry Como.
In the late ’50s, Owen Bradley helped develop the pop-friendly “Nashville sound” that expanded the horizons of many of the Decca artists he produced. For folk music veteran Burl Ives, the conversion of Hank Cochran’s A Little Bitty Tear into a pop and country hit was no sweat, given the musical climate of the early ’60s. The big voice of Brenda Lee invited more lavish studio touches from Bradley. The “weepy” string accents in Lee’s signature song, I’m Sorry, and the first Nashville appearance of an electric harpsichord in All Alone Am I added a more dramatic, adult ring to the voice of Lee, who was still under 18 when both singles took off. Bradley and Patsy Cline often butted heads over material, with Cline reluctantly agreeing to cut songs she disliked, such as I Fall to Pieces and Crazy. Cline believed that Pieces had been rejected by many singers, including Brenda Lee. As for Crazy, she couldn’t get Willie Nelson’s melody down in a four-hour session. Days later, she nailed it in one take.
Once Smash Records producer Jerry Kennedy turned Roger Miller loose, the singer-songwriter prospered. While traveling outside of Chicago, Miller spotted a sign that read, “Trailers for sale or rent.” He later purchased a hobo statuette to inspire the remaining lyrics for King of the Road, which won five Grammys. Miller’s England Swings, with all of its cornball charm, was a No. 1 Adult Contemporary hit here, and cracked the British top 20 in 1966. The following year, British singer Engelbert Humperdinck (born Arnold George Dorsey) made his Billboard debut with a slick remake of the ’50s country weeper Release Me (And Let Me Love Again). It topped the U.K. charts, blocking the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever from the No. 1 slot.
It was Gordon Mills, manager of Tom Jones, who suggested Dorsey’s stage name. Mills had already shortened his Welsh-born client’s professional name from Thomas Jones Woodward. Mills co-wrote It’s Not Unusual, an international smash that made Jones a star. It was also the theme song for the singer’s TV show, This Is Tom Jones, starting in 1969 (the year that his I’ll Never Fall in Love Again broke after a modest bid in 1967). The “blue-eyed soul” belters club also included Dusty Springfield and the Righteous Brothers. Springfield’s You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me came from an Italian pop song. Fitted with English lyrics, the ballad landed Dusty her only No. 1 hit in the U.K. The epic studio production was reminiscent of Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” magic on You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ and Unchained Melody. BMI certified Lovin’ Feelin’ as the most played song of the 20th century.
Amid all these brash hit records, quieter folk artists emerged. With Dominique, Sister Luc-Gabrielle from Belgium (billed as the Singing Nun) became the first act to hit No. 1 on the Billboard singles and album charts simultaneously. Appearances on the TV program Hootenanny provided exposure for the Serendipity Singers, who were part of the Greenwich Village folk scene. Don’t Let the Rain Come Down (Crooked Little Man) came out during Beatlemania. The folk-rock explosion brought We Five to Herb Alpert’s A&M label, where they hit with a reworked version of Ian and Sylvia’s You Were on My Mind. Canadians by way of Ireland, the Irish Rovers obtained The Unicorn from an unusual source. The Shel Silverstein song had been popular on a children’s TV show that member Will Millar had hosted in Calgary. As performed by the Rovers, The Unicorn did well in 1968 when folk music wasn’t a hot property.
Many ’60s pop hits belonged to a bygone era. The Platters had been looking backward since the ’50s with standards like My Prayer and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Front man Tony Williams gave the ’30s chestnut Harbor Lights a sense of urgency absent from earlier recordings of the song. Even a hippie Earth Mother figure like Mama Cass turned to the ’30s for a revival of the Wayne King favorite Dream a Little a Dream of Me. Former Ritchie Valens–styled rocker Chris Montez received an easy-listening makeover at A&M, starting with The More I See You, popularized by Dick Haymes in 1945. Two big ’60s records were new songs that sounded old. British composer Geoff Stephens created the New Vaudeville Band to cut Winchester Cathedral, which he wrote after seeing the church on a calendar. To get a realistic ’30s sound, Stephens sang through a megaphone. Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World had a vintage feel despite its 1967 copyright date. Repeated use in movies and on TV has done little to diminish the song’s optimistic tone and timeless quality. In 1969, two artists offered hints of bigger things to come. The pop-country sound of Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition was an important step in Kenny’s gradual transition to country superstar. Stevie Wonder, a certifiable hit machine with My Cherie Amour being the latest example, longed to exert complete creative control over his music. Two years later, at age 21, he got his wish. For both men, the hits—pop, country and R&B—kept right on coming.

—Charles McCardell
Charles McCardell is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, Musician and American Record Guide.

Pop Memories of the '60s: Blue Velvet

- Track
- Title
- Artist/Composer
- Time
- 1
- Everybody’s Talkin’
- Nilsson
- 2
- Spinning Wheel
- Blood, Sweat & Tears
- 3
- Can’t Help Falling in Love
- Elvis Presley
- 4
- Baby the Rain Must Fall
- Glenn Yarbrough
- 5
- Make the World Go Away
- Eddy Arnold
- 6
- Blue Velvet
- Bobby Vinton
- 7
- Can’t Get Used to Losing You
- Andy Williams
- 8
- The Ballad of the Green Berets
- SSgt. Barry Sadler, U.S. Army Special Forces
- 9
- He’ll Have to Go
- Jim Reeves
- 10
- Gina
- Johnny Mathis
- 11
- A Boy Named Sue
- Johnny Cash
- 12
- The Old Lamplighter
- The Browns
- 13
- Moon River
- Henry Mancini and His Orchestra and Chorus
- 14
- My Love
- Petula Clark
- 15
- Green, Green
- The New Christy Minstrels
- 16
- Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport
- Rolf Harris

Pop Memories of the '60s: Blue Velvet

- Track
- Title
- Artist/Composer
- Time
- 1
- Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head
- B. J. Thomas
- 2
- Georgy Girl
- The Seekers
- 3
- Ramblin’ Rose
- Nat King Cole
- 4
- Spanish Eyes
- Al Martino
- 5
- Only Love Can Break a Heart
- Gene Pitney
- 6
- Teenage Idol
- Ricky Nelson
- 7
- Since I Fell for You
- Lenny Welch
- 8
- Traces
- The Classics IV
- 9
- Galveston
- Glen Campbell
- 10
- Greenback Dollar
- The Kingston Trio
- 11
- When I Fall in Love
- The Lettermen
- 12
- Put a Little Love in Your Heart
- Jackie DeShannon
- 13
- Is That All There Is
- Peggy Lee
- 14
- Hurt
- Timi Yuro
- 15
- See the Funny Little Clown
- Bobby Goldsboro
- 16
- Tonight
- Ferrante & Teicher

Before the ’60s, the rambling man had always been an archetype in traditional American music, occasionally finding his way into popular songs as well. But in the ’60s, as the folk revival begat folk rock, the rambling man became a pop music staple. The Kingston Trio and the New Christy Minstrels, two giants of the commercial folk scene, helped see to that. The Kingston Trio cut Greenback Dollar after watching co-writer Hoyt Axton sing it in a San Francisco club. The trio’s version became the first hit for Axton, who would go on to write pop smashes like Joy to the World. New Christy Minstrels leader Randy Sparks and lead singer Barry McGuire (subsequently immortalized by the folk-rock Eve of Destruction) co-wrote Green, Green. McGuire’s rough-edged vocals (reportedly inspired by the raspy voice of actor Wallace Beery) are set off by the smooth Minstrels harmonies and by Nick Woods’s 12-string guitar. Former Limeliter Glenn Yarbrough alludes to the notion of the rambling man in Baby the Rain Must Fall, the title song of a Lee Remick–Steve McQueen movie from 1965. (Ernie Sheldon, Yarbrough’s replacement in the Limeliters, wrote lyrics to Elmer Bernstein’s music.) Brothers Noel and Jim Sherman switched the gender of the rambler when they penned Ramblin’ Rose. Jazz-pop stylist Nat King Cole initially thought the song was too country for him, but his twelve-year-old daughter Natalie—who would grow up to become a pop star in her own right—convinced him otherwise.
Peggy Lee’s Is That All There Is, one of the most world-weary pop hits ever, was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller after Leiber’s wife, actress Gaby Rodgers, got him to read a collection of Thomas Mann short stories including “Disillusionment,” from which some of the lyrics were lifted intact. The writers had Marlene Dietrich in mind for the song and also offered it to Barbra Streisand; Dan Daniels, followed by Leslie Uggams and Guy Lombardo, recorded the earliest versions. But Lee had Leiber and Stoller as producers, and they had an orchestral arrangement written and conducted by Randy Newman.
Blue-eyed soul singer Timi Yuro cracked the top 10 with her debut, a revival of Roy Hamilton’s 1955 R&B hit Hurt, while Jackie DeShannon co-wrote her biggest hit, Put a Little Love in Your Heart, with her brother Randy Myers and soul singer Jimmy Holiday. Petula Clark’s producer, Tony Hatch, wrote My Love while flying from London to Clark’s sessions in Los Angeles. The single made Clark the first British female artist to score two No. 1 hits in the U.S.
Many of Gene Pitney’s early successes came as a songwriter rather than as a recording artist. Indeed, when his reading of Hal David and Burt Bacharach’s Only Love Can Break a Heart peaked at No. 2, it was kept from the top spot by the Crystals’ He’s a Rebel—which Pitney had written. In 1945, Buddy Johnson penned Since I Fell for You for his sister Ella Johnson to sing, backed by his blues orchestra. But it took Lenny Welch’s massive hit in 1963 to make the song a standard. Teenage Idol, written by L.A. journeyman Jack Lewis, was Ricky Nelson’s life story. Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling in Love was based on the 1780 classical French song Plaisir d’Amour, which Irene Dunne sang in Love Affair, her 1939 movie with Charles Boyer. But for his movie Blue Hawaii, Elvis didn’t sing a translation; instead, three co-writers gave the melody completely new lyrics. The Lettermen’s When I Fall in Love revived a 1952 Doris Day hit, introduced in the romantic war film One Minute to Zero.
Harry Nilsson’s Everybody’s Talkin’ and B. J. Thomas’s Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head were the last great movie hits of the decade. Legendary folkie Fred Neil, a recluse who lived in Florida, wrote the former at the tail end of a New York session when he needed one more song before he could flee the big city. His original flopped as a single in 1968, and so did Nilsson’s cover. But Beatles publicist Derek Taylor recommended Nilsson to filmmaker John Schlesinger, who made Everybody’s Talkin’ the theme song to his movie Midnight Cowboy. As the film grew into a phenomenon on its way to winning three Academy Awards, RCA released Nilsson’s single again, and this time it stuck. Urged on by their top artist, Dionne Warwick, writers/producers Hal David and Burt Bacharach tapped B. J. Thomas to sing Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head for the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid after country star Ray Stevens declined. Thomas, suffering from laryngitis at the time, required seven takes for the movie version; once his voice cleared up he cut this notably smoother single.

Songwriter Joe Allison’s wife, Audrey, had such a soft voice that whenever they spoke on the phone he’d tell her to put the receiver closer to her mouth. That’s where the first line of Jim Reeves’s He’ll Have to Go, which helped define the Nashville sound, came from. Hank Cochran and his date were at the movies when he got the idea for Make the World Go Away. He insisted they leave immediately, and had the entire song written in his head before they reached his apartment 15 minutes later. Ray Price cut it first, and Timi Yuro sang it on her Nashville album, but Eddy Arnold’s interpretation dwarfed both. Jimmy Webb was thinking of Old West outlaws when he began writing Galveston for Glen Campbell, but by the time he finished he was talking about American soldiers in Vietnam. Writer Shel Silversten sang A Boy Named Sue at a “guitar pull” (a circle of songwriters passing around a guitar and singing their newest material) at Johnny Cash’s house a week before the star was to perform at San Quentin State Prison. Silverstein wrote the lyrics out for Cash, who later relied on that crib sheet when he sang the song, without rehearsal, to the inmates. It became his biggest crossover ever, enjoying such a long run that no other singles were pulled from his At San Quentin album. For a so-called country singer, Johnny Cash created quite a few pop memories in his time.

—John Morthland
John Morthland has written about music for over 30 years. He is a contributing editor to Texas Monthly and the author of The Best of Country Music (Doubleday, 1984).

Pop Memories of the '60s: My Special Angel

- Track
- Title
- Artist/Composer
- Time
- 1
- The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)
- Harpers Bizarre
- 2
- Beyond the Sea
- Bobby Darin
- 3
- Cherish
- The Association
- 4
- Classical Gas
- Mason Williams
- 5
- Walk On By
- Dionne Warwick
- 6
- I Can’t Stop Loving You
- Ray Charles
- 7
- Lemon Tree
- Trini Lopez
- 8
- This Guy’s in Love with You
- Herb Alpert
- 9
- Can’t Take My Eyes off You
- Frankie Valli
- 10
- Both Sides Now
- Judy Collins
- 11
- Do You Know the Way to San Jose
- Dionne Warwick
- 12
- Rhythm of the Rain
- The Cascades
- 13
- Love (Can Make You Happy)
- Mercy
- 14
- I Remember You
- Frank Ifield
- 15
- Deep Purple
- Nino Tempo & April Stevens
- 16
- My Special Angel
- The Vogues
- 17
- Al Di La
- Emilio Pericoli
- 18
- I’ve Gotta Be Me
- Sammy Davis, Jr.

In the 2004 biopic Beyond the Sea, Bobby Darin (played by Kevin Spacey) pursues the object of his affection, Sandra Dee (played by Kate Bosworth), as the title song billows into an elaborate production number showing how determined he is to grab her and everything else life has to offer. In real life, Bobby Darin rebelled against being typecast as the teen idol he played in his early hit records Splish Splash and Queen of the Hop. All of that changed in 1959 with Mack the Knife and its follow-up, Beyond the Sea, both produced by Atlantic Records head Ahmet Ertegun. Mack updated Die Moritat von Mackie Messer from Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera (1928), while Beyond the Sea began as the ’40s French song La Mer with English lyrics added later. This double dose of swinging jazz-pop catapulted the 23-year-old hipster into the upscale world of sold-out Copacabana shows and Vegas casinos.
Darin’s dynamic live appearances caused Sammy Davis, Jr., to admit that Darin was the only performer he never wanted to follow—high praise from one of the most versatile entertainers ever to grace a stage. A Broadway veteran, Davis knew how to deliver show tunes like I’ve Gotta Be Me, which Steve Lawrence released as a single and sang in the 1968 Broadway musical Golden Rainbow. Once Davis covered I’ve Gotta Be Me, it soon became one of his signature songs.
Revitalizing pop standards did wonders for many ’60s acts. Nino Tempo and April Stevens signed with Atco thanks to Ertegun, whom Tempo had met in Hollywood while playing sax on a Darin recording date. The brother-sister duo cut Deep Purple, a hit in 1939 for Larry Clinton, in 15 minutes to fill out a session. Although Ertegun balked at issuing their unpolished effort, the single reached No. 1. England-born Frank Ifield had even greater success at home with I Remember You, a song introduced by Dorothy Lamour in the 1942 movie The Fleet’s In. His version sold a million copies and topped the U.K. charts. Ifield later cut two albums in Nashville and sang on the Grand Ole Opry.
After Ray Charles heard the first two lines of I Can’t Stop Loving You by singer-songwriter Don Gibson, he knew the song belonged on his upcoming Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music LP. Producer Sid Feller and the ABC-Paramount brass were puzzled by Ray’s project, but he landed the company its first gold album. The Vogues looked to Bobby Helms’s 1957 country smash My Special Angel as another suitable candidate to keep them in the soft-rock game after moving to the Reprise label in 1968. This cover strategy sustained them through the end of the decade.
Fans of pop folk embraced the Vogues and Trini Lopez, who almost fronted the Crickets after Buddy Holly’s death. Lopez’s driving, Latin-flavored versions of folk material landed him on the charts with songs like Lemon Tree, popularized earlier in the decade by the Kingston Trio and by Peter, Paul and Mary. Lopez also designed two guitars for Gibson and co-starred in the 1967 movie The Dirty Dozen. In the case of Both Sides Now, Judy Collins brought mainstream exposure to the relatively unknown singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell and achieved commercial success. Collins’s Wildflowers LP, which also contained works by Leonard Cohen, went gold. Former surf band the Tikis emerged as Harpers Bizarre to hit with Paul Simon’s The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy), a sunny pop confection that Simon and Garfunkel never put out as a single. Vocalist Ted Templeman went on to become a respected Warner Brothers staff producer known for his work with the Doobie Brothers, Van Morrison and Van Halen.
Pop-rock groups faced an uphill battle establishing an identity. In the case of Cherish by the Association, only writer Terry Kirkman and guitarist Gary Jules Alexander played on the track; studio musicians replaced the other members, who contributed vocals. The producers sped up Kirkman’s original tempo to keep the single close to the three-minute mark. The Cascades and Mercy had a much lower profile. BMI cited Rhythm of the Rain, recorded in Hollywood with the famed “Wrecking Crew” studio musicians, as the ninth-most-performed song of the last century. On the strength of one monster hit, Love (Can Make You Happy), Mercy still tours 40 years after the fact.
Identity wasn’t a problem for the Four Seasons, whose charismatic lead vocalist, Frankie Valli, possessed one of the best falsetto voices going. Valli showed more restraint in his parallel solo career, aiming for the pop jugular in Can’t Take My Eyes off You, written by Four Seasons hit makers Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio. A Miami DJ got the ball rolling in the U.S. for Al Di La, by Emilio Pericoli. The Italian singer re-recorded the song in English for the soundtrack to Rome Adventure, co-starring Troy Donahue and Suzanne Pleshette, but never rose above one-hit-wonder status here. As the head writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Mason Williams was a behind-the-scenes guy with proven guitar and banjo skills. Williams won Emmys for his writing and multiple Grammy awards for Classical Gas, which he premiered on the Smothers Brothers show.
For a decade, Dionne Warwick and the songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David created enduring pop music that made everyone a star. It’s hard to imagine that Walk On By, perhaps the high-water mark of the trio’s collaborations, was a B side until DJ Murray the K swayed public opinion. Warwick was lukewarm about Do You Know the Way to San Jose, despite encouragement from the writers. She needn’t have worried; the song was an international million-seller and earned the singer her first Grammy in 1968. That same year Herb Alpert, minus the Tijuana Brass, scored a left-field hit with This Guy’s in Love with You. Alpert originally sang it to his wife on the beach in Malibu during a taped segment of his CBS television special. When the switchboard lit up the next day with queries about where to buy the song, A&M rushed out a single. This Guy’s in Love with You was the first No. 1 record for Alpert, A&M and Bacharach-David. Now, that’s a hat trick.

—Charles McCardell
Charles McCardell is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, Musician and American Record Guide.

Pop Memories of the '60s: Instrumental Gold

- Track
- Title
- Artist/Composer
- Time
- 1
- A Swingin’ Safari
- Billy Vaughn and His Orchestra
- 2
- Calcutta
- Lawrence Welk
- 3
- Born Free
- Roger Williams
- 4
- Love Is Blue
- Paul Mauriat and His Orchestra
- 5
- The Stripper
- David Rose
- 6
- Watermelon Man
- Mongo Santamaria
- 7
- Fly Me to the Moon—Bossa Nova
- Joe Harnell
- 8
- A Taste of Honey
- Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
- 9
- Desafinado
- Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd
- 10
- Cast Your Fate to the Wind
- Vince Guaraldi Trio
- 11
- Midnight in Moscow
- Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen
- 12
- Last Date
- Floyd Cramer
- 13
- Grazing in the Grass
- Hugh Masekela
- 14
- A Walk in the Black Forest
- Horst Jankowski & His Orchestra
- 15
- Wonderland by Night
- Bert Kaempfert and His Orchestra
- 16
- More
- Kai Winding
- 17
- Summer Samba (So Nice)
- Walter Wanderley
- 18
- Stranger on the Shore
- Mr. Acker Bilk

The German composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) wrote eight books of evocative, melodically rich piano miniatures that didn’t require virtuoso technique to perform. His Lieder ohne Worte (“Songs without Words”) have remained popular with audiences for many decades. A variation on Mendelssohn’s “easy listening” aesthetic resonated a century later in the pop instrumentals that flooded the airwaves. Some of these songs without words had a light classical sugar coating; others relied less on studio gloss and simply let the music paint a picture or create a mood. Based on chart results and sales figures, pop fans devoured the stuff.
Once a burgeoning classical pianist at the Berlin Music Conservatory, Horst Jankowski moved on to lead his own jazz combos, conduct orchestras to back touring singers in Germany, and compose pieces for Sonoton, the German equivalent of Muzak. A Walk in the Black Forest was an international million-seller that brought Jankowski to The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1965. Roger Williams was conservatory trained and studied jazz with Lennie Tristano and Teddy Wilson at Juilliard. Williams’s 1955 release of Autumn Leaves became the only piano instrumental to top the Billboard pop charts. On the strength of subsequent hits like Born Free and the more than 100 albums in his catalog, Billboard later named Williams the greatest-selling pianist in history. Floyd Cramer couldn’t match those stats, but as the house pianist for RCA Records in Nashville he played on hundreds of sessions under the direction of Chet Atkins. Cramer’s own hit Last Date showcased his distinctive slip-note style as well as the pop-oriented Nashville sound he helped develop with Atkins.
In 1962, tenor saxophonist Stan Getz and guitarist Charlie Byrd launched the bossa nova craze that swept the nation. Byrd, who had recently toured South America, turned Getz on to the music of Brazilian guitarist-singer João Gilberto. Getz and Byrd cut their Jazz Samba album in a single day; Desafinado (which means “off-key”) earned Getz a Grammy award. Pianist-arranger Joe Harnell was recuperating from a car accident when Kapp approached him about doing a bossa nova record. Fly Me to the Moon—Bossa Nova won Harnell a Grammy for his arrangement. While pianist-organist Walter Wanderley had been at the forefront of bossa nova in his native Brazil, it wasn’t until he moved to the U.S. and recorded for Verve that he found an American audience. Since Summer Samba (So Nice) arrived late at the bossa nova party, Wanderley and producer Creed Taylor quickly cranked out two follow-up LPs.
Public demand for Latin rhythms opened the door for jazz musicians on the pop charts. The Vince Guaraldi Trio released a 45 of Samba de Orpheus backed with Cast Your Fate to the Wind, a Guaraldi original. DJs in Sacramento began spinning the B side and the tune took off, eventually landing the composer a Grammy. Guaraldi is best remembered today for his catchy music in the Peanuts TV specials. He and Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaria crossed paths in the ’50s before the latter fronted his own band. Santamaria learned Herbie Hancock’s composition Watermelon Man while Hancock was filling in on piano at a gig of Santamaria’s in the Bronx. Hancock had already recorded it by then, but Santamaria cut his own version and cracked the top 10 in 1963. That same year trombonist Kai Winding, who worked with Miles Davis and Benny Goodman among others, hit the charts with More from the movie Mondo Cane. The space-age melody was performed by Jean-Jacques Perrey on the ondioline, a precursor to the synthesizer.
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass got serious in 1964 when Alpert assembled a full-time band to promote their “Ameriachi” sound. The Beatles cut A Taste of Honey two years before Alpert’s driving version appeared on his LP Whipped Cream & Other Delights, the eye-grabbing artwork of which (a woman covered in whipped cream) likely boosted sales for this gold album. Records by two other British acts invaded America well in advance of 45s by their longhaired fellow countrymen. In 1962, trumpeter Kenny Ball gave the Dixieland treatment to Midnight in Moscow, scoring a gold disc in the U.K. and just missing the No. 1 spot here. The same year, trad jazzer Mr. Acker Bilk was the first British artist to top the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in the U.S., with Stranger on the Shore. Known for his bowler hats and his vibrato-heavy clarinet playing, Bilk had minimal success here, but kept a busy schedule in Europe.
The multi-talented orchestra leader Bert Kaempfert had his finger on the pulse of pop music throughout the decade. Wonderland by Night, featuring trumpeter Charly Tabor, hit the top spot in 1961, and later that year Kaempfert produced the Beatles’ first commercial recordings for Polydor. His writing credits include Danke Schoen, Strangers in the Night and A Swingin’ Safari, the theme song for the NBC daytime game show The Match Game via a cover version by Billy Vaughn. Unlike many of his easy-listening brethren, Vaughn maintained a steady chart presence during the ’50s and ’60s. So did Lawrence Welk, purveyor of good-timey “champagne music” as host of his own Saturday night TV show on ABC from 1955–1971. Though recording the harpsichord in Calcutta posed some challenges, Welk’s musicians needed only one take. Calcutta reached No. 1 three weeks after Wonderland by Night was dethroned. David Rose had a weekly TV gig directing the orchestra on The Red Skelton Show when an innocent eight bars of burlesque music became a surprise No. 1 single in 1962. As a stunt, Los Angeles DJ Robert Q. Lewis played Rose’s The Stripper (the B side of Ebb Tide) every time someone phoned in a request. Overexposure turned the trick.
By 1968, the heyday of pop instrumentals on the Billboard Hot 100 chart had passed. Tell that to South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela or French orchestra leader Paul Mauriat, both of whom hit No. 1 that year. Grazing in the Grass was merely another step in Masekela’s evolution as a global musician. Sung in French, Love Is Blue placed fourth in the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest. Mauriat beat three competing vocal versions of Love Is Blue on the charts here in the U.S. Stripped of its lyrics, the tune made Mauriat the only French artist ever to top the Hot 100—proof that you can’t keep a good song without words down.

—Charles McCardell
Charles McCardell is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, Musician and American Record Guide.

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