How Does One Pick The Best Country Album?

"Best Of" lists are so subjective. I read them with a heavy shake of salt. Honestly, I read them to find out how wrong they are -- in my opinion. That's the thing; it's simply opinion. My list of the all-time best TV shows will be different from yours. Wildly different. And I don't even know if I could pick the all-time best TV shows. That stream is fluid. My husband and I just finished watching a series on DVD that I would now rank in my top five. And we're watching one now on Netflix that's pretty damn good.

Music is a bit different. One can discount current music. And I'm guessing any new music won't crack the Top 100. So, we take a backward glance. But here's the thing; music is emotional. My life experience is my own. Albums that mean something to me, others would say, "huh?" You had to be there. And you weren't. I wasn't living your life, either. See?

Nevertheless, with hindsight I can weed out emotion and be objective; brutally objective. I'm frankly hard to please, music-wise.

Country albums weren't even a "thing" until sometime in the seventies. Oh, there were country albums, but they were vehicles to support a hit single. The modus operandi of the records producers was to slap the big single on track one and fill up the rest of the disc space with cover versions of other artists' songs. Thus, we had Tammy singing D-I-V-O-R-C-E followed by her versions of Rose Garden and Don't Come Home a-Drinkin'.

Even in the seventies country albums were mostly duds. I will say right now that the following are not the best country albums of all time, despite what Rolling Stone Magazine (a real authority on country) says: "Wanted! The Outlaws", "Red Headed Stranger", "Will The Circle Be Unbroken". The Outlaws was a disjointed accumulation of outtakes by various artists slapped together with a sepia-toned wanted poster on the cover. There was no cohesion. It would be like putting a Dean Martin lounge song next to a Reba McEntire ballad side-by-side with a discarded Led Zeppelin track and calling it, "Wanted! A Bunch of People Who Have Nothing In Common". Red Headed Stranger had one decent song, but it was "edgy" in an East Texas version of edgy, which meant "acoustic".  Will The Circle Be Unbroken was a collection of old-time songs featuring instruments like dulcimers and banjos -- a purer version of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, only without a heart-stirring track like "Man of Constant Sorrow".

This site recently published a list of the Top 100 Country Albums of All Time. I give them kudos for making an honest effort. The list is a bit top-heavy with current albums, but the thing is, one can't rank a current album as one of the best of all time. You gotta give it a couple of decades to breathe. Ten or twenty years to settle into its slot on the shelf next to Merle and George and see if it continues to claim its spot or if it goes into the garage sale pile for 25 cents. (I've got tons of 25-cent CD's; trust me.)

This list also gave "Coat of Many Colors" the number one spot. I never bought that album. I looked at the track listing in the store, and decided to save my six dollars and ninety-nine cents. I probably bought an Eddie Rabbitt album instead and never looked back.

Some on the list I will grant were exquisite albums, but only a few; pitiably few.

So my primer, if you want to sample the greats:

No live performance, naturally. It was an album cut, after all, but here's a sampling:

I didn't know who the heck Rodney Crowell was in 1988. But it was kind of like when I discovered Foster and Lloyd. I didn't know them, but I knew good music. I liked country music, just a bit updated from the lackadaisical Hank Williams sound of the fifties. I liked the bones of country; I just needed a bit more drum, a bit more bass. "Diamonds and Dirt" was country.

To wit:

Dwight Yoakam is...really something. It's almost a badge of honor that the Nashville establishment has never recognized him with an award. Dwight is too cool for those dudes. After spending most of the nineties listening to Hall and Oates (who I still love) and Huey Lewis and the News (who I still love), and various MTV stars, when I decided to give country one more try, it was George and Dwight who informed me what I had been missing. "Guitars, Cadillacs" was a revelation. This is most likely my favorite Dwight album:

Here you go:

In hindsight, some of the best years for country music were the mid-eighties (right after I'd abandoned it, naturally). "If you love something, set it free", apparently. That was a time when "Vocal Group" at the CMA's actually meant something. We had Restless Heart, Diamond Rio, Nitty Gritty, Highway 101, to name a few. We had the Judds. Rosanne Cash, Patty Loveless, Kathy Mattea. Clint Black, Vince Gill, Ricky Van Shelton, Earl Thomas Conley, Mark Chesnutt. I'm lonesome just thinking about those artists and those times.

1986 was pretty damn good for classic albums. "Classic" is one thing; "Best of" is a category all its own. I sometimes repeat anecdotes here, but these two tales are so ironic, they bear repeating:  

My mom and dad, in their naivete, their lack of country music sophistication, slipped one of those VHS tapes into their VCR one Friday night when I'd brought my kids over. Some country wannabe in a Stetson was crooning into the mic. I tossed my hand and sauntered into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. This guy was certainly no Merle Haggard. My ear caught the whine of the steel guitar and the crunch of twin fiddles, however, and I granted (silently) that this music sounded pretty good. I walked back to the living room and plopped on the sofa. "Who's this guy?" I asked, feigning boredom. "George Strait", my mom said. "Straight", I murmured, committing the name to memory. I told myself I should check out this Straight guy next time I stopped at the mall. 

Flash forward a couple of years and Mom called and asked me if I wanted to see this guy Randy Travis in concert. "I'll get enough tickets for all of us," she said. "Noooo, not really," I replied. Who was Randy Travis? Apparently another one of those "new country" artists. I couldn't stand sitting through a concert of yet another dude who pretended to be "authentic". Mom was either in a mood to educate me or wanted to promote some family togetherness, so she didn't give up. "He's really good", she said. I'd dedicated too many years waiting for country music to get good again. Country music was Charly McClain and Crystal Gayle and Alabama, who I'd seen in concert 2,100 times because they toured relentlessly. Country music was Charley Pride re-recording bad pop songs, Louise Mandrell recording a country version of "Reunited" with her husband. Country music was snatching icky pop songs from the charts and adding a touch of steel guitar in the hope that they wouldn't sound as bad as they really were. There obviously weren't any country songwriters anymore. Merle was drowning in cocaine, having a fling with Dolly; trying to stave off time.

I sighed heavily into the receiver."Okay," I surrendered. Another wasted evening, when I could be home watching MTV videos dance across my screen.

The lights went down and this Randy dude walked out wearing a white suit. I stared down at my bag of popcorn and clapped apathetically. I told myself to grow up and pretend like I was having fun. Mom and Dad sure were. Even my sister seemed excited. The dude in white launched into some song about bones; a trite uptempo number. Sure, he had a good voice. I wasn't enamored with his contrived pacing across the stage, mic in hand; but his act was far better than Hank Williams, Jr's, whose concert I had walked out on a couple of years before. I'd seen my share of bad concerts -- my hometown was small enough that one had to take her entertainment where she could find it. My enormous music ego slipped a bit and I began enjoying this new guy.

Then he launched into this:

Okay, that did it. I dropped my popcorn bag into my lap and applauded furiously. I might have even hooted.

The moral of these stories is, always listen to your mom and dad. 

Which, after a long, meandering road, leads me to another of the best country albums of all time, "Storms of Life":

I'm gonna throw in an album that doesn't get the renown it deserves. What CD's would you take on a road trip? Let's say you could only pick five. Hmmm, it's not easy, is it? This would be one of mine:

There were so many great songs on this album, but unfortunately a dearth of live videos. I did see the NGDB in concert. They were on one of those free stages at a festival and they were awesome. One of the guys even played the accordion! This album captures NGDB at their best, "Fishin' In The Dark" not withstanding. 

See:

The best country albums of all time didn't spring to life only in the eighties. Just most of them.

We'll discuss the sixties in another post. 

Rock Music Changed in1967 and So Did I

Rock music changed in 1967 and so did I.

When my parents dropped the hammer on me in the fall of 1966 -- informed me that we were moving to a new state, a new town -- I was initially pumped. Thanks to my dad, I've always possessed that optimism gene, certain that tomorrow is going to be great, much greater than today. When I heard the news, I was giddy. I hopped on my bike and zoomed down our country road, felt the wind whip my hair; threw my arms out like a baby bird alighting for the first time.

It's funny how reality pummels dreams.

Reality was bleak. The motel my mom and dad purchased with their hard-fought savings and the good will of their local banker was nice enough for the nineteen sixties sample case salesman pulling off the blacktop looking for a medium-soft bed for the night, but our family of five was tucked into an attached two-bedroom apartment behind the motel office. On the farm my world was vast, endless. The blue sky punctured by white fluffy clouds tucked me snugly under God's arm. This new place was dank and dark and claustrophobic. My companions in misery were a four and five-year-old, and we three shared a skinny room with bunk beds and a gnat-smeared high window. Heaven. That first night, I climbed the three-rung ladder to the top bunk, flipped up the volume knob on my transistor radio, shoved it under my pillow and cried.

Did the whole world change? Well, yea, it did. My world was no longer Lesley Gore and the Beach Boys and the Beatles. The Beatles were different, the same way my whole existence had become an alternate universe. I ached for my home that wasn't my home anymore.

We moved in December of 1966, and I had a couple of weeks before I was forced to meet my new school and a bunch of strangers. I was eleven, going on twelve. A tip to parents -- if you feel you need a life change, don't move when your kid is eleven going on twelve. You can tell yourselves that everything will work out -- everybody will adapt -- but it's not true. Your kid will never, ever get over it. It will scar them. I don't know what the right age would be. My big brother was twenty, so he was on his own. He had a Ford Fairlane that would take him wherever he wanted to go. If he didn't like his current circumstance, he could just -- go. My little brother and sister weren't yet fully formed, so their sole memories would be of that sodden apartment that to them smelled like home. But I knew better. And that's what doomed me. I knew there was a better life. A life I would never live again.

My transistor radio was absolutely no help. And TV had changed, too. When whoever it was who discovered color TV latched onto the possibilities, that man apparently determined that the colors flashing on the screen should be wildly garish -- blinding yellows and eye-scorching reds and a coverlet of lime green. If you've ever seen reruns of Laugh-In, you'll understand. The tawdry hues burned the average kid's eyeballs.

As confused as I was, this sort of thing confused me even more:

And then we had the song that is played in every single documentary about the Viet Nam war:

The Supremes were on the downslide in 1967. Herewith, the garish colors:

My only friends early in '67 were my radio and our big console TV in the living room. My sixth grade classroom was a blur of unfamiliar girls clad in green jumpers and puffy-sleeved blouses and boys with blonde bowl-cuts and stringy bangs. We studied things like Constantinople and I scribbled math calculations on wide-lined paper and pretended I knew what I was doing. We lined up along opposite sides of the wall and had spelldowns. Recess consisted of me hugging the brick wall until the bell rang.

The school bus was a vehicle of torture. I generally grabbed a window seat halfway back and tried to remain incognito. Boys tussled and pushed one another into the aisle. There was always one dweeb who sat up front and made small talk with the driver. High school girls tucked their mini-skirts beneath them and giggled to each other, and there was always one "couple" who never actually talked to each other, but cuddled close. Even the little kids, when they alighted the bus at the elementary school, managed to find something to cackle and snort about. Then there was me, with my friend the radio. 

I probably hate this song because my friend, the radio, liked to play it in my torture chamber, the bus, every day. To be honest, I also hate it because it's a bad song. Its awfulness sums up 1967 for me.

At home I was alert to any hint of criticism, of which there were many. I will concede that I was kinda lazy. I was eleven! Today an eleven-year-old is a child. In '67 eleven equaled mini-adult. Or was supposed to. Me being the "eldest" (at home at the time), Yelling Mom had her expectations. I was never capable of meeting them. Eventually I began avoiding Yelling Mom. 

Existence was cruelly claustrophobic. The bedroom three of us shared approximated the size of an average walk-in closet. There was a desk or a dresser against one side of the narrow wall that I plopped my battery-powered phonograph atop, and I spun my Paul Revere and the Raiders singles and the one new album I possessed, "The Monkees", while my little brother and sister were outside riding their tricycles or creating five-year-old mayhem. 

This next song holds no particular memories for me, but it was a hit in 1967. Nobody knew it at the time, but it would become the most overplayed song of all time. That's why I include it. And that's why we hate it. F the misty morning fog:

Sometime in '67 I somehow wrangled my own room. I remember a lot of cajoling and a bunch of rationalizing. I don't recall exactly why Yelling Mom acquiesced, but owning a motel with 52 rooms made the decision less knotty. Out our kitchen door was the garage and the motel's laundry room and adjacent to that was Room Number One. Room Number One became my room. My big brother carved a doorway in the garage wall, so I could traverse the kitchen (where, frankly, I needed to obtain sustenance), scamper through the cold garage, and glide my way right into Room Number One. It was THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME. I'd barely turned twelve and I'd become a permanent motel guest. Granted, I had to be my own motel maid, but that was a small price to pay. And I was diligent about cleaning. After all, it was mine.

Toward the end of the school year, I'd made a friend, sort of. We were still scoping each other out, and her taste in music would upend my musical world, but I was feeling a tinge of happiness. I would arise to the beep of my alarm in my own room, stumble to the bathroom (yes, it had its own bathroom!), click on my radio and apply makeup to my zit-dotted face to music like:

 And:

And especially:

And:

Graham Nash wasn't always iconic (as in CSNY). He also was a Hollie. People forget minor details like that. I don't, because I was around (applying makeup in the mirror).

Speaking of the Turtles (I was, earlier), I actually like this song better than Happy Together. Call me crazy.

As the hot July sun beat down on the asphalt I skipped across, barefooted; past the timber stand my big brother had hammered together to sell fireworks from, down the cement stairway to the pool (yea, we had a pool -- it was for commerce reasons. Travelers liked a pool. Luckily for me, the traveling salesmen didn't show up until 'round dinnertime, so I had the pool to myself), cheap sunglasses with white frames shading my eyes, a two-piece bathing suit hugging my non-existent curves, I plopped upon a webbed chaise lounge, rubbed Coppertone on my legs and slid up the volume on my transistor.

In July, the sizzling sun met the sizzling zzzzzt of sultry summer radio.

Thus:

And thus:

The Summer of Love is a construct. I'm not saying it wasn't real -- I'm just saying that unless you lived in or "took a trip" to San Francisco, it didn't matter at all to those of us in flyover country. Like anything that gets pumped up by the media, it's now attained a stature it didn't actually have at the time. Yes, the Jefferson Airplane had some hits. Yes, they weren't good songs. Yes, Big Brother and the Holding Company had a groovy girl singer. At Fillmore West, the crowds loved her. She didn't have any hit songs in '67, though. Let's face it; the biggest act of 1967 was an artificial, carefully constructed, network approved "group" called the Monkees.

The most enduring remnant, for me, of the Summer of Love, is a pretty song that could have been about St. Louis or Nagocdoches. It was just a nice song, sung by a nice singer:

The good news for me is, sometime in 1967 I submitted. I still didn't like where I lived, but what were my choices? I had my family. I didn't claim them, but I knew I had them. Everything else was  sparkle in the wind and I could never catch it. So I submitted. As the calendar tumbled, this place would become my new home. I never anticipated what lay in front of me, music-wise. 

What lay ahead would change me.

2017 Country Music Hall of Fame Inductees

The 2017 inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame were announced on Wednesday.

The Hall of Fame is right to induct members from three classes:  Modern Era, Veterans Era, and Songwriter. The Veterans Era gives artists a second chance -- artists who are largely forgotten. It's like the Baseball Hall of Fame. If you don't get enough votes in the first few rounds, you're out of luck. You've gotta wait several years for the Veterans Committee to give you a pass or forget it. Your career meant nothing. You know, guys like Johnny Paycheck. Or of a more recent vintage, Dwight Yoakam (who will probably never get in, because, you know, California). The Hall could at least hold a mass induction -- all the artists they "forgot". Give them a plaque and an smattering of applause. Omitting them is like Jack Morris or Roger Maris (what?) being labeled inconsequential.

Nevertheless, the Hall tries its best, and sooner or later (mostly later) it gets around to the guys and gals without whom country music wouldn't exist.

Thus:

Songwriter:  Don Schlitz

If you wanna talk about country music in the seventies and eighties, the name Don Schlitz had better roll off your tongue. There is magic in writing a hit song: one part formula, one part wisdom, one part luck, and one thousand parts heart. You have to mix all the parts together in just the right amounts to have a songwriting career like Don Schlitz has had.

Let's start:

You get the picture.

Of course, we're always, as luck would have it, remembered for  things that seemed inconsequential at the time. I said something witty once -- I don't remember saying it, but I must have, because someone remembers it and they repeat it, ad nauseam, to every person they encounter. That's sort of like Don Schlitz's most-remembered song. It was probably a fun way to spend an afternoon with his songwriting buddies. And thirty some-odd years later, it's become a TV movie and a line everybody throws out every time they hear the words, "you gotta".

I saw Kenny Rogers in concert around 1980. When I say "saw", I mean I was in the nosebleed section of an arena in Duluth, Minnesota. I had a four-year-old and a two-year-old that I somehow convinced the ticket-taker I could balance on my lap, thus avoiding the expense of buying two additional tickets. I was on vacation with my mom and dad and the concert was an impulse decision.

Kenny was a little too "pop" for my country sensibilities, but shoot, I was on vacation! Thus, I threw caution to the wind.

Don was no doubt sitting around with his guitar one afternoon and hollered out, hey! How about this? It has a catchy chorus; who knows? Maybe in 2017 they'll make a funny commercial about it. It could happen! And The Gambler was born (luck, wisdom, formula, and heart).

It's an earworm if there ever was an earworm.

Veterans Era Artist:  Jerry Reed 

I'm not sure I'm on board with the selection of Jerry Reed, because to me, he will forever be known as Burt Reynolds' sidekick. I suppose that's not entirely fair. 

As songwriters go, well, eh. Trust me; I was around in the seventies. FM radio was new. FM radio in a car was a novelty; unless, I guess, you owned a Lincoln like my dad did (my dad wasn't rich, but he loved his cars). My dad owned a creme brulee Lincoln Continental -- a huge boat of a car -- that sometimes my mom slipped behind the wheel of and deigned to drive me somewhere. FM radio loved Jerry Reed. I was afraid to laugh, nay chuckle, in the presence of my mom, but this song made me laugh out loud:

Ironic, because smoking isn't too hilarious, in hindsight. Maybe I should blame Jerry Reed for setting me on that dark path. But I'll be magnanimous and give him a pass. I was quite impressionable at the time, though.

Jerry also wrote this song, which was recorded by a guy who, in his time, was a country music titan. Jimmy Dean, before he determined to make tasty sausage, had an actual network TV show -- on ABC -- and he introduced the early Muppets to a national audience. "Rowlf" got his start on Jimmy Dean's show, but that's neither here nor there. By the time Jimmy recorded this Jerry Reed song, Jimmy's career was on the downslide. Jimmy was known for doing recitations like "Big Bad John", but he did record this one:

Speaking of Burt Reynolds, one who surfs the channels for old kitschy movies might remember this:

Hot. When you're hot, you're hot. When you're not, you're not. Words to live by.

Remember Elvis Presley? Who above the age of eighty doesn't? Well, Jerry Reed wrote this song, too:

Okay, I'm not a rabid Jerry Reed fan, but he did what he did, and Burt and his toupee can thank Jerry for his bulging bank account.

And there you go. I never said I worshiped everybody who ever caught the eye of the HOF.

Modern Era Artist:  Alan Jackson

You know that kid in your sixth grade class? The one you suspected might be a bit "slow"? That kid had fortitude, though, boy. He plowed on. That kid never once gave up. Sure, he had to repeat the sixth grade, and he was way taller and beefier than the other boys in the classroom, but he kept on keeping on. He also had a wisp of a mustache, though no one commented on it or pointed it out. 

Well, that boy is Alan Jackson.

I like Alan; don't get me wrong. He knows how to write a hit song and he reveres the classics. And he has persistence. In the wonder that was country music in the eighties, Alan Jackson was the guy who was dependable. One could always lean on him to whip out a classic country tune, but I never once uttered the words, "Alan Jackson is my favorite singer."

I saw Alan Jackson once in concert. The word "charisma" doesn't rhyme with "Jackson". Among the top male artists from that era, in descending order of dynamic performances, it would go Garth, Dwight, Randy, George (Strait), Vince, with Alan Jackson bringing up the rear. (I never saw Clint or Ricky Van Shelton, so I cannot judge.) In fairness, Alan Jackson was a songwriter at heart who suddenly found himself with a few hit songs on his hands, and thus had to put together a stage show. Maybe he's better now. I don't exactly think so, but it's possible.

Being present at the dawn of Alan Jackson's career, I can say with authority that he recorded one good album, "A Lot About Livin' (And a Little 'bout Love)". One can't exactly count "Under The Influence", although I loved the hell out of it, but alas, it was an album of cover songs. The first album by Alan I purchased, though, was "Here In The Real World.". The first time I saw Alan Jackson on CMT, he'd made a video of a song called "Blue Blooded Woman". It wasn't a great song, but he certainly was tall! And he had a tall mustache to match. That was my first impression of Alan Jackson. His next song was miles better:

I'm just going to throw here some of my favorite Alan Jackson recordings, willy-nilly. My blog, my videos, I say.

So, let's look back, shall we?

Yes, this is a Jim Ed Brown song, but kudos to Alan for this version:

My all-time, most favorite, Alan Jackson recording is right here. For this song alone, I say give him whatever award you want to bestow. The video is awesome, too. Aside from "Here In The Real World", whose vibe is rudimentary, yet has that old-time country music twang, this song landed Alan smack-dab in the zenith of the eighth decade of the twentieth century.

Yee haw.

Bob McDill wrote this song. He was probably having a bad day, like all of us have from time to time. I think Bob was pissed off, and I don't blame him. At the time, everybody was jumping on the country bandwagon, because country was outselling every other genre of music, but pretenders? Ick. It's not as if we didn't know what they were up to. Alan no doubt found this song among the tapes he was given and who else but Alan would take it to heart?

In keeping with that theme, Alan got to record with his (and everybody's) idol, George Strait, and this is an excellent, excellent song:

As life goes, Alan is remembered most for two songs that, while not bad, per se, are annoying in their over-exposure. Plus, they're three-chord songs, essentially, and nobody has done great three-chord songs since Roger Miller was writing for Ray Price, and even those songs at least threw in a B chord for good measure.

Nevertheless, here we go:

All in all, Alan deserves this award, and you know he won't take it for granted. He reveres Hank and George (Jones) and George (Strait) and others who've essentially been forgotten, so having his portrait hanging in the Country Music Hall of Fame will be more than a throw-off for him. As it should be. Alan is a caretaker of country music, much like Marty Stuart, and much like (if I should be so bold to say) me. Music's past may be passe to some, but we don't get to here without scrubbing the "there". 

And thus time marches on.

The Country Music Hall of Fame induction announcement (brought to you by Vince Gill):

Revisiting 1965 In Rock Music

I've long held that the music of an era reflects the mood of the people. Why was seventies music so awful? Because the times were awful. Jimmy Carter may think he was the greatest president ever, but all her ever did for me was make me poor. Even the colors in vogue at the time reeked of desperation -- orange shag carpet to match the lime green papered walls. Who but someone severely depressed would consciously choose that decorating scheme? Consequently, we were subjected to Helen Reddy singing, "I Am Woman" and to bad recordings by Ringo Starr. Sure, there were sporadic great artists -- Elton John and Jim Croce and the Eagles -- but that's not who we heard on our radios. (We only remember the good; not the godawful). Essentially, if it wasn't for ABBA, everyone would have undertaken psychotherapy (if the could actually afford it). Even the late seventies, and disco, weren't happy, really. Disco was a means for people to pretend to be happy. The reason disco lyrics were indecipherable was its the artists didn't want anyone to know they were singing, "My life sucks; really sucks".

Conversely, the eighties were supremely optimistic. We were walking on sunshine all over the place (1983). Scoff if you will about eighties music, but I loved it, and I loved it mostly because it was happy. Yea, the musicians might have been pounding out their melodies on Casios, but the tunes had a certain something that made one happy. Why was that? Because we were happy. We were optimistic. The most we can hope for in the leader of our country is to not F things up. We're okay if they essentially do nothing. It's when they try to "fix" things that we get in trouble. It takes an extraordinary president to actually make things better. In the eighties, we were better.

Which leads me to the sixties. I slice the sixties right down the middle. In the first half of the sixties, music was lilting; bright; buoyant. That lasted until about 1967. Then the country and everything along with it went to hell. It was our first taste of hell, really. Before 1967, we'd trotted along with the same sameness every day. Nothing much ever happened. It may have been boring, but everybody was okay with boring. We didn't know anything else -- except for the Beatles, who definitely were not boring. Maybe that's why their appearance on the scene was so jarring. What? There's actual breathing life out there? Who knew?

In 1967, we realized that our boys, good boys; innocent kids, were dying for no earthly reason, and we were pissed about that. My brother escaped the draft by joining the National Guard. All the boys were desperate to find a way to save their own lives and not end up dead in a rice paddy. For no reason. And so the music became angry, just like we were.

Which is why I like the first half of the sixties.

I was ten years old in 1965. Girls, being more precocious, absorb life sooner than boys. Granted, I was a music geek from about age one, but every woman can remember the music of her ten-year-old life. And 1965 was ripe with music.

Let's start here:

"Help!" was from the album titled, "Help!". Let me tell you about that album: It rocked! If someone was to ask me what my favorite Beatles album is, I would say, "Rubber Soul". That's because that would be the politically correct answer. Sure, some would say, "Sergeant Pepper" or "The White Album" or maybe "Revolver". In reality, my favorite Beatles album is "Help!". "Help!" was when I first heard an album as a cohesive whole. I think I even wrote (most likely only in my mind) a whole musical based on the songs on that album. They flowed -- they created a story. I doubt even Paul would cite "Help!" as the group's best album. But Paul would be wrong. No offense. Maybe he's just too close to the whole experience to see it for what it was. Or maybe I was ten. It matters not. It doesn't hurt that "Help!" featured John heavily. John is the best Beatle. I think my favorite Beatles song of all time is from that album -- "You're Gonna Lose That Girl" -- another John song. I would include it here, but it was hard enough to find a semi-decent video of "Help!" I guess it's one of those Prince things -- being stingy with videos. I see no reason for it, but I can only do what I can do.

The Beatles also did a weird thing -- they didn't put their best songs on an album. I'm sure there was a reason for that, but I don't know what. "Penny Lane" was never on an album. Neither was this one. I guess you had to plunk down your dollar for the single, which I did -- luckily, it turns out.

The Beatles, of course, weren't the only artists to have sublime hit songs in 1965. '65 was ripe with eternal songs. They didn't just resonate in that particular year; they echo still. I fell in love with this song and I don't know why. I saw a lot of Holland-Dozier-Holland beneath the titles of my Motown singles, and I don't know who these guys were; but they knew how to write. And the Four Tops knew how to sing:

Bill Medley isn't just the guy who coaxed Baby up to dance with Patrick Swayze. He had a whole career long before that. And Phil Spector, before he was a murderer, became famous for his Wall of Sound, which was cool and all that, but it was the output, stupid. We didn't need to know the nuts and bolts of the process. Neat that he had three drum kits going at one time and he had someone plinking the timpanis. And lucky that he had Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann write such a good song. Cool that he had a bass singer and a tenor who got together and formed a duo. Immeasurable that they created this recording:

At ten, I didn't know what the word, "sham" meant. I liked that it rhymed with "Sam". I've since learned that Sam was a sham; a fake. The Arabic robes totally sucked me in. I was high on believin', as BJ Thomas would say. This track was the number one song of 1965, and I remember the lyrics as:

Hattie told Hattie
About a thing she saw
Had two big arms
And a woolly paw

It didn't matter. One could sing their own lyrics along with the song, because the song had no meaning, and that was okay. It summed up 1965 just fine:

The Temptations will, possibly to their regret, always be remembered for their choreography. Regrettably, that takes away from what is an awesome song. Another song from 1965 that is eternal:

I had a friend in third grade named Debbie Lealos, who had an older sister named Rhonda. I'm guessing Rhonda Lealos either loves or hates this song, depending upon the number of times strangers have assaulted her with its chorus. "Rhonda" was not an everyday name in 1965, but Rhonda will be eternally enshrined by this song by the Beach Boys (the only song Al Jardine sang lead on?):

I will say that the other Boys were kind of mean to not let Al sing lead on more songs. He's a good singer! (Actually, I think Al also sang lead on Sloop John B, but that about wraps up his BB career.)

The most striking feature to me of this next duo was the fur vest and the straight bangs (and I'm not talking about the female half). The Flintstones was big in 1965 -- I think the show actually aired in prime time -- so I figured the guy half of the duo was emulating Fred Flintstone. Bear in mind I was ten. In hindsight, Sonny most likely didn't drive a car that was foot-powered.

The original Bono:

This guy was different. He was like a lounge singer, except one with Elvis-swiveling hips and long sideburns. He was the antithesis of Sonny Bono. How did he make the rock charts? I guess you had to be there. Top 40 radio in 1965 had the attitude, "Eh". "If people like it, we play it. That's our motto."

Now I'm regretting my previous choice of "Help Me Rhonda" as representative of the Beach Boys, because this next song is one of my favorites of all time. I try to only feature one song by a group in my retrospectives, generally, but this one can't be denied. Here's the genius of Brian Wilson -- that intro.  If you're not sucked in by that intro, then, well, there is really no hope for you:

Gary Lewis and his Playboys -- it must have been difficult growing up as the son of an a**hole. In 1965. when this song hit the charts, I'd heard that Gary was the son of Jerry, the buffoon. I gave Gary props for branching out. I suppose I was waiting for him to use funny voices and do pratfalls, but I was glad he didn't. He played it straight. This was a huge hit in 1965:

The McCoys (otherwise known as Rick Derringer and some other guys) had a big hit about a girl with an unfortunately unappetizing name. But if she knew what was good for her, she'd hang on:

"Minuet in G Major" doesn't exactly scream rock and roll. But slap on the name "A Lover's Concerto" and you've got a hit. The Toys was another unfortunate name for a singing group. Not to mention sexist, but we didn't know of sexism in 1965. Still, I wouldn't have gone with "The Toys", because that made me think of a rocking horse and one of those wind-up jack-in-the boxes. (We were severely deficient in toys back then.)  Not surprisingly, The Toys now live on the same block as Little Millie Small and Terry ("Creepy") Stafford. In June they all get together for the neighborhood block party and the other suburb-dwellers swoon over their Pabst Blue Ribbon amidst the microphone feedback:

I believe Rolling Stone Magazine named this next song the best rock and roll song of all time. But you know Rolling Stone -- they're rather self-obsessed. Let me tell you about how I viewed Bob Dylan in 1965: He had a weird voice. Not a bad voice, per se, but odd. I honestly thought he was faking it. I wasn't on the Bob Dylan bandwagon in '65, but I'll grant him this:  He's a hell of a poet. He should write a novel. Bob Dylan has a bunch of stuff crackling in his brain, and there's not enough years in one's life to explore all the tumbling thoughts that bleed from the cerebellum of a genius. One tiny quibble, though: this song was absurdly long:

I liked two-and-a-half minute songs. Those matched my attention span then (and now?)  Being a Mindbender carried with it heavy responsibilities. Apparently Wayne Fontana couldn't handle the pressure, because this was their one and only number one song. I personally think he should have applied himself more, but that's the age-old dilemma, isn't it?

If there ever was an earworm, this next song is a prime example. Burt Bacharach and Hal David were really on a roll in the sixties. I used to sing this song to myself -- in the woods -- alone. I bet I was a really great singer. The thing about this song is, everyone can be a great singer singing it. That's the Bacharach-David genius. Jackie de Shannon had a really cool name. And this is a really cool song:

Frankie Valli didn't really play a part in the Sopranos. Granted, someone made a reference in the show about pressuring his agent to get him to sing at a casino (or something). But that's fiction. The Four Seasons were still hot in '65. Who could resist that falsetto?

We were enthralled with any group from England. We even liked Freddie and the Dreamers. Herman's Hermits had a good run. And since Peter Noone was only sixteen when the group first hit the charts, we can still, today, enjoy his presence on PBS rock and roll retrospectives. 

"Boondocks" is an unusual word. I didn't know, at ten, what it meant. I got the gist, from this next song, that it wasn't necessarily a good thing. Turns out, I was essentially living in the boondocks and didn't even know it. This song, however, makes it clear that boondocks is not a place one wants to claim:

I will close out 1965 with a song that has a special resonance for me, by the underrated group The Dave Clark Five.  Kids do stuff that seems mundane in retrospect, but at the time means the world. My best friend, Cathy, and I would attend Saturday afternoon dances at the local YWCA. Sock hops, I guess you would call them. A record player and a group of giddy pre-teens doing their best Watusi's and Jerks. Cathy asked me, while this record spun, is he saying:

I went to a dance just the other night

Everybody there was there

So, to this day, those are the lyrics, even though I now know better:

1965 was the end of innocence. It all went downhill from there. Everything got complicated. So, ask me what my favorite years in rock music were, and I'll tell you 1964 and 1965.

That's me in a nutshell.

1964 Was Fifty-Three Years Ago!

Yes, over half a century. If we're counting, I was nine years old.

I don't know about other nine-year-olds, but I, for one, was enveloped in music. Maybe all nine-year-old girls are -- I've never taken a survey. Or maybe we didn't have a lot going on in 1964 -- I remember The Ed Sullivan Show and black and white episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show that seemed like reruns, but they weren't.

I remember lying on my stomach in front of our giant console TV -- honestly, our TV was the epicenter of my life. But what else did I have, really? Sauntering into the kitchen to stir a packet of French's onion soup mix into a container of sour cream? At nine, that was the extent of my "cooking" knowledge.

Somebody -- my dad? My brother? bought me a tan rectangular transistor radio, which was THE BEST THING I EVER HAD IN MY LIFE. Everything I know or would ever know emanated from the cathode ray tubes of our Motorola or the scratchy sounds sprouting from the diamond-shaped holes of my transistor's speaker.

Those are the two things that set me on my life's path.

Of course, I didn't know that at the time. I had other stuff going on. For one, I went to school. I didn't want to go, but I made the best of it. I had my accordion lessons (yes). I trolled the streets of Grand Forks, North Dakota with my best friend and tried to find trouble (disclaimer:  I found it.) I did other dorky things, like tramp the dirt paths that surrounded our farm and make up melodies while chewing on a stalk of tall-leaf grass I'd plucked from its bed on the roadside. I played imaginary games inside the shelter belt behind our house; played pretend. I was big on "pretend", because there frankly wasn't much going on. I can say I at least learned how to use my right cortex. Many people born later never mastered that skill. I pondered the weird sounds that emanated from my dad's car radio -- goofy stuff like Dean Martin and the instrumentals of Billy Vaughn. I was in my dad's car a lot, considering any time I needed to get to town, my dad had to drive me the seven or eight miles along the gravel road, past our distant neighbors' pig farm and sundry sloppy/neat (depending upon their income) homesteads 'til we reached the blacktop, so he could drop me off at Cathy's house; wherein she and I would devise devious schemes to cause as much mayhem as nine-year-old minds could conjure.

The only thing that salved my endless restlessness, between the horror of sadistic Mrs. Granger's fourth grade classroom and interminable school bus rides was MY TRANSISTOR RADIO.

Looking back, I think was always old; I just didn't know it. I don't remember being cynical, but I believe I was. One should not be cynical at age nine. That's not to say I didn't marvel at the wonders of discovery (did I mention MY TRANSISTOR RADIO?). Music essentially saved my life and kept me living. Life in those days didn't consist of therapist appointments or "concerned teachers". Those things didn't happen or exist. Life was something you plowed through. It didn't even register that I had a crappy home life. Everybody's life was crappy -- that's how life was. One lived for the fleeting happy moments, like floating tied inside a life vest in a seaweed-strewn lake on a Sunday afternoon, far away from Mom, far enough away to not hear the bitching and unremitting criticism. Life consisted of diverting. That was how we dealt with it. A half hour in front of the TV, enveloped in Rob and Laura's latest escapade; a playful smile from Dad every so often; a big brother who taught her silly stuff and brought home new music and allowed her to listen to it. Two and a half minutes that seemed like thirty; shimmering from a round disc.

I hated my life at nine. Things were upside-down. Our family was oddly-formed -- a sister married with a baby of her own; two odd little child creatures inhabiting our household that Mom viewed as two little burdens, atop the huge burden that was me. She'd only wanted three kids; yet through no choice of her own, she ended up with three more; one freakish one and two who were kind of cute. Two little ones who held promise and one she had no earthly idea what to do with. The one who was a miniature version of her husband, for whom she held very little patience. That one was okay, as long as she performed -- got good grades in school, so Mom would at least have something to brag about. That one knew she was put on earth to perform and heaven help her if she didn't. That one kept stuff bottled up inside; dumb stuff like yearning to sing and wanting to fly away to somewhere where people would recognize her huge talent and would tell her she was pretty and pretty awesome. She kept wishing for that, but that never actually happened. So she soldiered on.

But her TRANSISTOR RADIO!

The stuff coming out of that radio speaker was wondrous and diverse. Strange -- each melody or turn of phrase got tucked inside a special pocket -- none of it gelled into a cohesive core, because it was all so divergent, and it flummoxed yet excited her. Some voices were not conventionally pleasing, yet they were. Some guitar riffs sounded discordant, but worked in a non-linear new world. Some singers were heavenly; some brass orchestrations punched her in the gut. 1964 was a pummel of sound.

She listened for the disc jockey to spout the name of the artists; rolled the names around on her tongue; memorized them; pondered their odd spelling; appreciated the weirdness in a nine-year-old way of appreciating. Learned, but never mastered, the art of four-part harmony. Recognized that Motown was significantly different from California pop, but accepted it all as simply "music". Assimilated the power of image from staring at her rare decorated 45-RPM sleeve. Wasn't sure why the Righteous Brothers were so righteous, but knew that that deep baritone reverberated somewhere deep inside her gut.

She would never be the same.

She obviously was in love with music, but didn't fall in love-love until a certain sound pierced her ears:



In hindsight, this recording wasn't all that. Listening to it today with mature ears, the sound is tinny, the vocal mix isn't George Martin's best effort. John doesn't really sound like John. He sounds harsh. There's no nuance. The harmonies are slap-dash. I'm thinking it was a first take. I will say, though, if I heard it for the first time now, in 2017, I'd be enraptured. It has something. I'd get online and research this new band that spells its name so strangely. In 1964 "online" meant what? My mom's clothesline? All I had was an orange and yellow disc and if I was lucky, a poster tacked up on the wall at Popplers Music Store. Somehow, maybe from Tiger Beat Magazine, I knew that these were four guys with "long hair" -- bearing in mind the accepted style of the day was crew cuts. They were English. I assumed John was Paul, because Paul was the cute one and therefore the best singer must be Paul. They hadn't yet made their American television debut, but by the time they did, I already had a treasure trove of favorite Beatle songs bunched in my heart -- She Loves You and Please Please Me and I Saw Her Standing There.

I was primed and ready to see, finally, in person, on my TV screen, the GREATEST THING THAT HAD EVER HAPPENED IN MY LIFE. I never ever asserted myself with my mom, because that would've only led to repercussions, but I asserted myself that Sunday night. I plopped myself dead in front of the black and white television screen, while Lassie once again saved Timmy, and refused to move, lest Mom change the channel on me before seven o'clock. I was so afraid that once Ed announced that night's guests Mom would say, the heck with this and flip the knob to Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color and I WOULD MISS IT AND MY LIFE WOULD BE OVER. Mercifully, neither Mom nor Dad cared enough to get up out of their upholstered easy chairs, so they left me to my own devices. Perhaps they both realized how crucial this TV appearance was to me. If so, that would have been the very first time they noticed me as a person. Maybe they saw me chewing my fingernails and realized I would have a breakdown if they deprived me. And no doubt I would have. In the fourth grade, it was very important to be up on pop culture. It was the difference between someone who would hide in the bushes at recess time and a kid who attracted a gaggle of admirers around her. But frankly, even if I didn't even know any other nine-year-old kids, seeing the Beatles...if I died tomorrow...would be etched in my mind as one of the greatest events of my life.

So, I guess I kind of liked the Beatles.

I was so in love with music in 1964 I thought I might explode.

There was this guy I saw on TV who wore sunglasses, on some show called The Lloyd Thaxton Show, apparently a syndicated program, which makes it even stranger that the little tiny town I was living in then carried it. Lloyd Thaxton was Shindig before there ever was a Shindig. My musical muscle memory was formed thanks to Lloyd Thaxton.

Anyway, this sunglasses guy growled. His voice reached up and touched heaven. I knew nothing about anybody named Roy Orbison -- I think I might have heard Blue Bayou once. This guy's voice I would never let go:

Then there were five California boys who did something I could never master -- sing in beautiful harmony -- and still keep that beat. I figured anyone who was anyone could do that. As far as I knew, good music appeared fully formed. I don't think I even consciously considered that someone had to write the song. The song just was, and people got up and performed it. I've since learned differently:

A band with a weird sounding name, again from England, whose lead singer sang words that meant nothing and yet something, yet nothing; but it didn't matter.

This little guy did a live album, live from the Whisky (sp) A-Go-Go. He had a bunch of hits from that album and I thought they were all his. I didn't know from Adam anyone named Chuck Berry. I guess my brother had played Chuck's song, No Particular Place To Go, for me a couple of times, but to my mind, the guy who sang this song was the guy responsible for it:

Being nine years old, I liked peppy songs. Those were my bread and butter. So it was unusual for me to fixate on any sound that was maudlin. I appreciated the dramatic songs for what they were, though, and somewhere inside the carbuncles of my heart stirred feelings. Most likely, if it wasn't for my big brother, I wouldn't have even tried to understand them. To wit:

Nineteen sixty-four was an odd time in my life. I experienced the exhilaration of, I guess, living the commercial life, with my mom moving me to my uncle's business in another town, another state; where I lived with my two cousins, and then moving me back home to my old school to face the most evil teacher I would ever be unfortunate enough to meet.

Let me tell you, the commercial life was far superior. I was as free as any nine-year-old in 1964 could be. Nineteen sixty-four was when I became a whole person -- when I congealed art and music and when I soared. My cousin Karen and I wrote (hand-drew) a comic book in 1964 that we sold to my uncle's patrons at the bar; a comic that combined penned illustrations with pop music. It was genius! Seriously, it was the most imaginative creation I ever conjured. I gave Karen half-credit, but it was ME. Three-quarters ME. I'd give all the money I have (which is a very puny amount) to get my hands on a copy of that comic. Damn, how we devalue stuff at the time and rue their loss fifty-three years later. I knew about country music, because it played ceaselessly on my uncle's juke box, but my veins coursed with unadulterated pop. Like this:

I wonder whatever happened to Little Millie Small. I would Google her, but I'm afraid the story wouldn't have ended well. I don't know why.

Nineteen sixty-four was more or less a watershed year in rock and roll. It had one toe still dipped in the previous decade, and a hand fluttering through the churning waters of awesome possibilities. The fifties were obsessed with girlfriends dying of horrible diseases -- and thus becoming angels -- and guys pining for them and swearing to God above they would never, ever forget their one true love. Maybe it was the atomic bomb scare. I don't actually know. I vaguely remember tales of people building underground bomb shelters, which I thought would be extremely cool. I always wanted a below-ground fort. I kind of remember seeing Khrushchev on TV. He was rather portly and bald and I didn't find bald-headed men attractive -- not even Mister Clean. President Kennedy had a nice head of thick hair and he was young like my dad, so I had no concerns about who would beat who in a war (whatever a war was). I frankly gave no thought to war -- I had a record player and playground cliques to contend with, which was war enough for me, thank you.

However, being nine, songs seemed like real life. We lived in the country, seven miles from town down a gravel washboard road, and my oldest sister (the rebel) had her driver's license; thus she got to ferry my other sister and my big brother home from town on Saturday nights. One night my mom and dad told me, shockingly, that Carole had rolled the car with the three teenagers in it. Astoundingly, when I inspected them, they all looked just fine. No scratches or bruises. It must have been one of those astronaut rolls. Nevertheless, this song haunted me every time it burst through the speakers of Mom's kitchen radio. It combined the earth angel vibe with unimaginable danger (sorry; apparently J Frank and his Cavaliers have no live performance videos):

Let me be clear about one thing -- Elvis didn't exist in my world. Elvis belonged to the fifties. My memories of Elvis are going to matinees with my best friend, Cathy, on Sunday afternoons and seeing him on the big screen, generally getting into fistfights and driving sleek sports cars and snorkeling and/or cliff diving, generally in Acapulco. I did marvel how he was able to get up on a deserted beach and do a song in the middle of the clambake, and his backing band was nowhere in sight, yet there was clearly a four-piece ensemble accompanying him as he snapped his fingers and swiveled his hips and snarled his left eyebrow. Even at the innocent age of nine, I was embarrassed for him. We laughed at him. We were prepubescent snobs.

Elvis had no top 100 recordings in 1964, so if you were waiting for an Elvis video, dang. He was busy doing songs like "Viva Las Vegas", which is rather a parody of itself. I would love to post the video just for fun, but since it didn't crack the top 100, out it stays. Although my dad did like the single, "Wooden Heart". Elvis's last big hit was apparently in 1962 -- "Return To Sender", which I thought was called, "Return to Cinda", Cinda being the name of some gal he loved and lost. Elvis needed to enunciate better.

However, I was enthralled with a single by a group that I don't think ever had another hit song. I wrote a whole post about this group, the Honeycombs, somewhere back in time. I'm fascinated, strangely, by their female drummer, which was frankly odd in 1964. I'm still of a mind that she was somebody's sister, and as all bands are, they were hard up for a drummer, so they gave Stella (no idea if that's her name) the gig. The thing one has to listen for, in this song, is the weird dissonance of sound. Most likely, they were just out of tune and I'm making far too much of it. But it worked! And "Stella" really added a kick of resonance to the track -- little did she know. She's a great-grandma now and one hell of a knitter. This song still holds up:

The Dave Clark Five were apparently the poor man's Beatles. That's not entirely fair. One has to appreciate a band for what it was and stop the comparisons. A friend a few years ago schooled me in the brilliance that was Mike Smith (and Mike Smith was cute). The Dave Clark Five was nothing like the Beatles -- they just happened to appear on the scene at the same time. Granted, one doesn't normally name a band after its drummer (or there would be a super group called Stella), and granted, they did record some cover songs. But I will say that I danced energetically at the YWCA Saturday afternoon dance with my best friend to "Over And Over", so the DC5 served an important purpose. And really, how could they ever be compared to the Beatles? After all, they were five and the Beatles were four. So there you go. 1964 was essentially owned by the Dave Clark Five (if one discounts the Beatles). They had five (apropos) singles in the Billboard Top 100. (And I don't know why, but I still remember that one of the guys was named Lenny):

Motown was a thing in 1964, a thing I didn't fully get. I liked the Four Tops because of one single, and I knew they recorded on Motown because Motown always slipped its records into colorful sleeves (that's my takeaway memory of Motown, sadly). I do know that I liked pretty things, and the Supremes wore pretty things. Unfortunately, this video is in black and white (and Mary Wilson was pretty - fyi):

Truth be known, 1964 was a cornucopia of competing sounds. A Jersey group had five singles in the Top 100 that year -- five! We're so snobbish now that we choose to forget, but the Four Seasons were hot in 1964. I chose this one from the five because my niece's name is Dawn (and yes, all the videos are spooky and grainy, so they are what they are):

It makes me laugh to remember that we were in that limbo in 1964, where somebody like Roy Orbison could soar and Manfred Mann could sing about a girl "walking down the street", and yet we had singles like this that busted to number twenty-two. I don't know what happened to Terry Stafford -- as far as I know, he could be living with Little Millie Small somewhere in Ohio. My older sister might shed some light on Terry -- he was of her time -- but the fact remains that he had a hit with this song:

I'm not sure how I missed this track when I was nine. Maybe I wasn't sure enough to dance in the street. I did dance in my living room, but every stupid little kid did that. Nevertheless, this is one of those songs that holds up, even fifty-three years later. Martha and the Vandellas recorded on Motown, but Berry Gordy siphoned all the good songs to Diana Ross (well, because...), except for this one. Oopsie, Diana didn't get her manicured claws on this song. One just never knows what will stand the test of time, does one?

I'm not going to lie, or subscribe to revisionist history. 1964 had some flaky, fluky hits. Here's a couple of the fluky, flaky ones that nevertheless scorched a hand print on our brains that is seared forever:

I don't know who Al Hirt is (was?). I know he played the trumpet, which me at nine referred to as "an instrument one blows into). Think Don Draper and you'll feel right at home:

The Trashmen is a rather deprecating name for a band -- it kind of signals defeat right from the get-go. However, this band (I've since learned) hailed from Minnesota, which is sort of my home state, and we're known for being self-deprecating here. I guess it's a Lutheran thing about not showing off. Nevertheless, I wouldn't name my band after garbage. Then again, if I'd recorded a song like this next one, "trash" would be fitting. Surprisingly, this was a big hit. It was in fact number seventy-five for the year 1964. I'll just say, you had to be there. Bear in mind that music was still essentially "new" -- transistor radios were the iPhones of the early sixties -- a marvel we hadn't yet learned to take for granted. We'd gobble up anything that came out of that tiny speaker. And novelty songs weren't really novelty -- they were just songs that blasted our ears with a tinny fervor. Thus:

And for something completely different:  My dad liked this song. My dad was pretty important in my life when I was nine. Generally, if he liked something, I liked it or at least learned to like it. Don't knock it; this was the number six song of the year:

The Serendipity Singers was an optimistic (and lucky!) name. Sadly, the serendipity didn't last past this song, which reached number 32 on the charts (which is still good, and judging by the number of times the DJ spun it, it really should have been much higher). And, as serendipity would have it, they lived out the rest of their working lives toiling away in grey-walled cubicles (just like me!), staring out the window, praying that it didn't rain. Sad, really. I see there are no live performance videos by the group, and judging by their pictures, their numbers seemed to multiply bizarrely. By the end of their reign, there were approximately one hundred and forty-nine Serendipity's. All the better to maintain anonymity. 

Bear in mind that I'm just reporting the news; not filtering it. One could call this next song "cheesy", but I bet once you hear it, it'll become an earworm. Think cigarette holders and martini glasses while you listen to:

Here's someone I always hated -- when I first heard Bobby Vinton on the radio, he was unnaturally obsessed with blue velvet material. Even at age nine, I found that creepy. Apparently I was not alone. Even David Lynch found macabre inspiration in that song and fashioned a whole movie around it.  And, apparently bereft over the loss of his fabric fabric, Bobby Vinton crooned this song:

The Dixie Cups was a lazy name for a girl group. Their manager, Lenny, was in the men's room one day and spied one of those dispensers from which one could grab a funnel-shaped little cup, and he yelped, "Voila!". I actually have no idea if the Dixie Cups even had a manager, not to mention whether his name was Lenny or not, but this moniker sounds like something a Lenny would come up with. Now, I don't think the Dixie Cups ever had another hit, but one could not escape this song in 1964. It was innocuous, I guess. Moms didn't get uptight and yell to "Turn that down!", so naturally, it became a big hit. (The Dixie Cups are now living dormitory-style next door to Terry Stafford and Little Millie Small.)

  

Somebody who's been largely forgotten, and I don't know why, is Gene Pitney. Gene combined Broadway bravado with teen-idol angst. We (and by "we", I mean "I") liked him. He tended to do BIG songs, mostly written by Burt Bacharach. Gene was sort of the male Dusty Springfield -- big productions, pounding bass drum. And he was a star.

Bear in mind that Shindig wasn't yet on anyone's radar, nor was Hullabaloo (a pale imitation of Shindig -- all the cool kids watched Shindig). Therefore, we didn't know anything about some of these guys. One group I've wondered about from time to time is Jay and The Americans. Now, again, since Jay has separated himself from The Americans, does that mean that Jay was a foreigner? And if so, he has an awfully American-sounding name. I could understand Pedro and The Americans -- kind of a cross-cultural group. Jay and The Americans, whatever their heritage, had many hit songs in the early sixties. But much like J. Frank Wilson and his Cavaliers (lazily named after a Chevy), no one knows much about them. So let's learn together, shall we?

(Okay, I'm thinking they should have been called Jay and The Other Americans.)

I've taken up a whole lot of time, and used a whole lot of characters, to relive the year 1964. As you can tell, it was a momentous time in my life.

I will finish out the year with this song, again brought to me by my brother. There is a whole other post yet to be written about this guy, but that's for another Friday night. Suffice it to say that he influenced everybody who was ever anybody in rock music. How many can say that?

And here we go:

 

Does Today's Country Make Memories? Of Course.

Musical memories are tied up in many things. Mostly they're tied up in crisp ribbons of newness -- when one's synapses are popping and fizzing. There's a reason we remember music most from certain stages of our lives. For me it's when I was still formulating a whole person -- I'll go with age nine through eighteen -- and from when I was a giddy mom in my thirties. Not to be a buzz killer, but it's all downhill from there. You see, after a while nothing seems new. Do you get frustrated that Mom can't see the genius in the new track you just played for her? The one you are completely in love with? Wonder why Mom and Dad seem stuck in the fifties and can't appreciate the intricacies of beat and harmonies of the new girl/guy band whose single just hit number one on the charts? It's because they've heard it all before, and better. Mom and Dad aren't about making new memories; they are quite content with the ones they already have. They're not setting new markers. At some point, what music does is remind a person of a better time in their life. Maybe not better, but more alive. That's how life goes.

A seventy-year-old guy who is hip to the latest riff is a pathetic pretender. He's just trying to impress you with his hipness, and he is a liar. In the seclusion of his bathroom mirror, he's jamming to the Marcels crooning "Blue Moon". And there's nothing wrong with that. That old man needs to own it. After all, it brings him back to the time when he sported a duck tail and weighed one hundred and forty pounds and when he revved the engine of his Corvair outside a sweet little brunette's rambler and waited for her to tumble out her front door and squeeze in next to him in the front seat and he'd zoom to the drive-in movie theater and they'd neck and go a little far, but not quite far enough and his muscles would throb with unspent testosterone.

And what's wrong with that? The truth of life is, it's those moments that matter.

Or maybe it's the time when the kids are old enough to stay home alone and he takes that little brunette who's added a few extra pounds to her five-foot-two frame out to a honky tonk and wraps his arms around her and nuzzles her perfumed neck and pushes her across the dance floor, and the sawdust and spilled beer bouquet stirs longings that he thought he'd long ago forgot. And Joe Diffie is playing on the jukebox. He's never, as long as he's on this earth, going to forget Joe Diffie.

I am prone to foisting my musical memories on you on this blog. I've never quite conquered the urge to convince you that my music is sublime. I'm the duck-tailed seventy/nineteen-year-old relic. Just think of me as thirty-five years old:

Eddie Rabbitt

If you like reminiscing, I heartily recommend Sirius Radio. I'm a reminiscing kind of girl, so this marvel is a punch in the gut -- in a good way. It's said that humans only remember twenty per cent of what they hear. My theory is, we think we only remember twenty per cent. My other theory is, if we hear familiar things from long ago, we suddenly remember all sorts of memories that were deemed lost.

Example:  Here's a memory I retrieved from listening to an Eddie Rabbitt song tonight:

I love a rainy night
It's such a beautiful sock
I love to feel the rain on my face
Taste the rain on my lips

See, my four-year-old thought Eddie was singing, "It's such a beautiful sock". Four-year-olds don't stop to think, "That doesn't make sense", so that's what they sing. Why was he singing along to an Eddie Rabbitt song? Well, that's a whole other story. What kind of music does a mom expose her child to? Led Zeppelin? There's really nothing on the radio that's wholly appropriate.

Which leads me to Eddie Rabbitt. Eddie had an unusual background for a country singer. He was raised in New Jersey, not exactly a hotbed of country music. He began his career as a songwriter, penning hits such as:

(Note:  Elvis kind of creeps me out. I'm thinking one had to have been a teenager in the late fifties to fully appreciate Elvis. Alas, I, like my son, was only four years old in the late fifties, so my rock 'n roll bar was set by "Summertime Blues", a song that Elvis's manager would never have allowed him to sing.)

Eddie also wrote:

which is much better.

Then Eddie decided, what the heck, I can be a singer! And what a singer he was.

One might think that "I Love A Rainy Night" was the only earworm that Eddie created. That's not true. Herewith:

Clint Eastwood made some strange movies in the late seventies. This was not the "Gran Torino" Clint. This was the "what the heck" Clint; movies in which his costar was an orangutan.  Nevertheless, Eddie wrote this song for the movie:

 Eddie died young -- only 56. It was 1998. But just because someone's been gone for 20 or so years doesn't mean they didn't leave a memory. 

It's such a beautiful sock: