One of the features of 60s Top 40 we’ve noted here before is that many radio stations weren’t afraid to play records by bands that were popular locally, regardless of whether those bands or those records had a national profile at all. There are plenty of examples on this chart, from WCFL in Chicago, dated March 30, 1967. The Buckinghams, the Cryan Shames, the New Colony Six, and the Shadows of Knight either had national profiles already by the spring of ‘67 or were working on them. More obscure were the Riddles and 2 of Clubs, the latter a duo from Cincinnati who started off in 1966 with “Heart,” a song that reached the Top 10 in Chicago, but very few other places.
And alongside them 40 years ago today were some other notable hits:
1. “Happy Together”/Turtles. (peak) Like the Association’s “Cherish” and “Never My Love,” which I mentioned last week, this is another record so essential that it’s as if it’s always existed. The Turtles reportedly played this song in concert for months before even recording it, and I recall hearing someplace that the reaction it got from fans made the band absolutely sure it would be a guaranteed smash whenever they got around to cutting it. It was. And is.
4. “Penny Lane”-”Strawberry Fields Forever”/The Beatles. (holding) It was sometime in 1967 that underground FM began to flourish, along with a corresponding backlash against the “vapidity” of AM radio. I wouldn’t call the ‘CFL chart from this week in 1967 vapid, but it doesn’t rock much, apart from “Strawberry Fields Forever.”
18. “Bernadette”/Four Tops. (debut) Nobody at Motown did anguish better than Levi Stubbs, and Levi Stubbs never did anguish better than on “Bernadette.”
21. “Hippy Dippy Weather Man”/George Carlin. A while back I saw a clip of Carlin on The Ed Sullivan Show from about 1965, and it was odd seeing him in a suit, looking relatively middle class, doing a tame sort of observational comedy, the kind of thing Jerry Seinfeld would make famous 20 years later. It would be the early 1970s before Carlin became a counterculture legend. “The Hippy Dippy Weather Man” falls somewhere in the middle. Carlin’s satirizing hippies, but you don’t get the feeling he is one yet.
30. “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You”/Aretha Franklin. Her legendary recording session at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, lasted one day—January 24, 1967. That night, Aretha’s then-husband and one of the musicians got into an alcohol-fueled fistfight. The couple flew back to New York the next morning. Before things went to hell, however, Aretha and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section recorded “I Never Loved a Man” and “Do Right Woman-Do Right Man.” (Not bad for a day’s work.) She would record with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section again, but only in New York.
No tracks this time (although I looked all over for “The Hippy Dippy Weather Man”). I’ll try to do better next time.
Filed under: Record Charts
Musicstack.com has “Al Sleet-Your Hippy Dippy Weatherman” for sale on 7″ disc. The B-side is “Wonderful Wino.” Both are classics.
I’ve recently ordered some 45’s through this website. It’s only a clearing house for multiple on-line retailers. I can’t wait to get my first order–”Who’ll Be The Fool Tonight” from The Larsen-Feiten Band, “No Time To Lose” by Tarney-Spencer, and Diesel’s “Sausalito Summer Night.” I think “SSN” is an edited version, but that’s OK. I have access to the album version, too.
[...] is one of several prominent rock bands to come out of Illinois in the 1970s. Last week, I mentioned a bunch of Chicago acts that were starting to make it big 40 years ago—the Buckinghams, New [...]