1 – 2, 1 – 2…is this thing on? Look at the dust in here! It’s been a while since I last availed myself of my very own corner of the Internet, a range of health-related issues ganged up on me in the New Year & it all got a little dark for a while. With help & encouragement from our treasured National Health Service (Pay the Nurses!) there is now a light at the end of the tunnel that offers Hope rather than a call to my impending Doom. It’s time to saddle up, get back on the horse & resume my search for old, interesting, exciting music that merits another listen. I do enjoy a music chart archive & it’s the Fab 40 listings of Radio London, the British pirate radio station whose jingles featured on the classic Pop Art album “The Who Sell Out”, that have brought me back to this neglected place. The new non-stop Pop radio was surfing the wave of a fresh music scene that was moving just too fast for the state owned BBC monopoly & Big L’s Fab 40 was a welcome, cavalier alternative to the sales-based, more traditional UK chart. Records that the DJs liked, that the audience liked & some where possibly a little financial help from the label exchanged hands, received unlikely high placings only to be quickly replaced by new favourites & new releases. Starting with the listings from the 23rd of May 1965, let’s see what we can find.
The top song for this week 58 years ago was Sandie Shaw’s “Long Live Love”, one of a string of her UK Top 10 hits that, unlike other British artists of the time, failed to register in the US. It was one of six records by female artists to feature in the Top 10, I’m not about to double check but that’s probably as high a proportion as its ever been & would be for a while. Francoise Hardy’s “All Over the World” (#7 up from #23) sizzles now just like it did then. “The Clapping Song” (#3) by Shirley Ellis had enough of the novelty sing-along about it to register while being part of the Soul surge that was crossing the Atlantic. Almost all of the British Beat Boom groups, from the top-ranking Beatles & Rolling Stones down, had covered US R&B songs, now we were starting to discover that there ain’t nothing like the real thing. Still two of the Top 10, “Wonderful World” by Herman’s Hermits & Manfred Mann’s “Oh No Not My Baby” were the latest to follow that successful formula. Another one, our first selection (about time, I know) placed at #22, down from #7, on this week’s chart.
The Animals, five guys from Newcastle upon Tyne didn’t write many of their own songs. Their live sets at the Club A Go Go were uninhibited covers of Blues, R&B & Jazz classics. The group’s first two singles were traditional songs, consecutive Folk-Blues tracks from the debut Bob Dylan album. The second one was too long – over 4 minutes, too serious – a song about a brothel & was “The House of the Rising Sun”, a dramatic, passionate record which reflected the growing sophistication of musicians & their audience & sold 8 million copies worldwide. The Animals were quite a gang with a rougher edge than others in the first wave of the British Invasion like the Dave Clark Five, Gerry & the Pacemakers & Herman’s Hermits. Still’ like those groups, they were judged by the success of their latest single & when the follow-up, the basic self-penned “I’m Crying” was not as big as “House…” (what was?) producer Mickie Most pushed for material with a greater commerciality than the John Lee Hooker & Bo Diddley songs that were more to the group’s taste. It has to be said that Most did a pretty good job.
A disquisitive music enthusiast could discover a lot from these British cover versions (cultural appropriation was not a thing in 1965) & I owe one to whoever convinced the Animals that Nina Simone’s “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” was a good choice as a single. Sam Cooke was the biggest African-American music star at the time of his fatal shooting in December 1964. In tribute the Animals recorded his 1962 hit “Bring It On Home To Me” & what a respectful, emotional job they made of it. They were a talented group but Eric Burdon, one of those provincial boys like Van Morrison & Joe Cocker who hoped to sing like Ray Charles, had a voice that convinced you that these guys meant it. The label credits on “House…” read “Trad, Arr, A. Price” & when the royalty cheques arrived for organist Alan the others got the feeling that they had been cheated. After “Bring It On Home…” Price was gone. The group continued to make great influential records (ask Bruce Springsteen) but Eric had become psychedelicised & had his own albums to do while bassist Chas Chandler was making plans for Jimi Hendrix, a guitarist he thought may have a future.
Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller, two Jewish boys had parlayed their love of Blues & R&B into a career as the most successful songwriter/producers of the late 1950s.In 1964 they used some of the money from the over 20 of their songs recorded by Elvis Presley to found Red Bird Records. Encouraging & employing young husband & wife team Jeff Barry & Ellie Greenwich the new label enjoyed a #1 US hit with their first release, “Chapel of Love” by the Dixie Cups – Easy!
With “Chapel…” & their subsequent hits, particularly the rather fab (good 60s word) “You Should Have Seen the Way He Looked At Me”, the Dixie Cups, sisters Barbara & Rosa Hawkins, along with their cousin Joan Johnson made a fine contribution to the Girl Group sound. Originally from New Orleans they brought something of their hometown to a break at a New York recording studio, tapping on any available surface, riffing on a song their grandmother used to sing. The executives & the producers knew a hit when they heard one, with a little embellishment “Iko Iko” became the Cups’ next 45 & an international hit. The song about a parade meeting of Mardi Gras Indians bears more than a passing resemblance to “Jock-A-Mo”,written & recorded in 1953 by James Crawford. James met the girls in court & while he was awarded a proportion of the song’s airplay income the three young women kept their name on the credits of an irresistible enduring, much-covered tune that has a place in the pantheon of New Orleans music – Hey Now!
Leiber, Stoller, Barry & Greenwich were on fire, in their Brill Building writing suite & at the Mira Sound studios. George Goldner, the third partner, a man with “the musical taste of a 14 year old girl” (a good thing apparently), promoted the heck out of these new hits. An acquaintance of Barry’s reckoned he could make hits & George “Shadow” Morton returned with the unusual, haunting “Remember (Walking in the Sand)”, a Top 5 hit for the Shangri-Las, followed by the even bigger hit “Leader of the Pack”. Unfortunately Goldner was losing more at the track than the company was earning & one day in 1966 Leiber & Stoller showed up to work to find that the Mafia had come to claim their share of the company. The duo promptly sold their own share to Goldner for just $1 & got out of the place. There’s more to the music business than writing hit songs but they probably knew that already.
In 1960 not even a really little kid (that would be me) could be unaware of “Cathy’s Clown” by the Everly Brothers. A seven week stint at #1 in the UK singles chart meant that it occupied a sizeable proportion of the restricted “needle time” allowed for recorded music on the BBC. Don & Phil Everly were teen idols in that first flush of Rock & Roll, enjoying great success before first, in 1960, a split with their publisher-manager denied them access to the songs of Felice & Boudleaux Bryant, the creators of many Everly hits. Then a six months enlistment in the US Marine Reserve across 61-62 removed them from the public eye, then the Beatles came along & those that went before seemed a little old-fangled. Except that the British Beat boys like the Beatles & the Hollies checked for the Everly Brothers & when you did hear those past hits the exuberance of “Bye Bye Love” & “Wake Up Little Susie” & the beauty of “All You Have To Do Is Dream”, songs written by the Bryants, the clean as country water close harmonies courtesy of Don & Phil, you knew that this old stuff was good stuff.
By 1963 the Brothers’ singles no longer made the US Top 100 even though they remained popular enough in the UK to headline that rather splendid Everlys/Diddley/Stones package tour.The choice of material lacked ambition (too many cover versions) & creativity (very few self-penned songs), the albums “Rock & Soul” & “Beat & Soul” had titles that promised more than they delivered. It was “The Price of Love”, up from #24 to #13, a thunderous two minutes, you know it, Bryan Ferry does too, that captured the new Big Beat, that made the Everly Brothers current again. Written by the brothers themselves it became a massive UK hit, their first time in the Top 10 since 1961 while in the USA it didn’t make the Top 100 which must have caused concern. In 1966 “Two Yanks In England” was recorded with the Hollies, a group inspired to make music by Don & Phil, but there was no hit record on the album. For their final album of the 60s they had a hip, sympathetic producer in Lenny Waronker & just like a decade earlier with “Songs Our Daddy Taught Us” returned to their Country beginnings. “Roots” (1968) is a lovely, even ground-breaking bit of Country Rock, a coming thing back then. It was a critical rather than a commercial success but it added to the legend that was the Everly Brothers, a family who sang together as sweetly & perfectly as any before or after.