Top 5: Sum-Sum-Summertime

For this week’s Top 5, we’re going into geek territory. The chart is from WHYN in Springfield, Massachusetts, dated June 9, 1962, but we’re not spending time with any of the week’s biggest hits: Ray Charles’ “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” “Roses Are Red” by Bobby Vinton, Freddy Cannon’s “Palisades Park,” or even “The Stripper” by David Rose. Nope, we’ll be sailing into the mistier regions of history this time.

14. “On Top of Spaghetti”/Sharon and the Lollipops (up from 17). “On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese/I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed.” I wondered whether kids still learn this song until I went over to YouTube and found several adorable-kid versions of it. What surprises me more is that the song did not generate spontaneously from Cub-Scout weekends or kids in the back of a school bus—somebody actually wrote it. That somebody was folk singer Tom Glazer, a pioneer of the postwar folk-music boom. Glazer sings on this record, although it’s credited to the kids who backed him up.

19. “Summertime Summertime”/The Jamies (up from 30). This was actually the second time around for “Summertime Summertime,” which first came out in the fall of 1958 and was rereleased for the summer of 1962. It would have been a local hit in Springfield, since the Jamies were from the Dorchester section of Boston. It’s got a charming, homemade quality, but the reason I take note of it here is that my hometown radio station used a snippet of it in a legal ID every summer for approximately 100 years. They’re probably still using it. Learn a bit more about the song here, from C. at the mighty Locust St.

23. “That Greasy Kid Stuff”/Janie Grant (down from 16). When we listen to early rock ‘n’ roll, we can’t always understand why so many adults hated it in such a visceral way. We hear Elvis and Buddy Holly and Bill Haley and the early R&B stars as pioneers who ultimately won out, and who proved that the haters were wrong. But some records can give us insight into the way adults must have felt when hearing music they thought was repetitive, dumb, and completely lacking in artistic merit. “That Greasy Kid Stuff” is what I’m talking about—although it earns bonus topicality points for mentioning Nikita Khrushchev right at the end. Its awfulness is not due to a lack of talent on Janie Grant’s part, however—her biggest hit, 1961’s “Triangle,” is quite lovely and well-sung.

44. “Wolverton Mountain”/Claude King (holding at 44). I don’t know what it is about “Wolverton Mountain.” Is it King’s indefatigable spirit, ready to risk being gutted like a fish to spirit away his beloved from her overly possessive father? Is it the way King sings the words “Clifton Clowers”? Is it the image of Clifton Clowers getting the latest intelligence on threats to his daughter’s virtue from the bears and the birds? Is it the little “oo-oo”s from the backup singers? Damned if I know. Whatever the reasons, this record has been in my head for as long as I can remember. It was Number One on the country charts for all of July and August 1962, and it went Number 6 on the pop chart as well.

52. “My Daddy Is President”/Little Jo-Ann (debut). Given President Kennedy’s photogenic family, how did it take 16 months after his inauguration for this record to happen? Jo Ann Morse was seven when she recorded it, and it managed to make Number 67 on the Hot 100. You can hear it here, and it’s pretty much what you’d expect. Be forewarned, though: You’ll probably want to listen to some death metal afterward.

Recommended Reading: Another good one from Jerry Del Colliano on what the end of Radio and Records means for radio and records. Over at WNEW.com, I gas about “the dark side of the rainbow.”