Tag Archives: Bob Dylan

Beat ’66 Show #1 – The Blurb
8
Jan

A new show will go up every Thursday throughout 2016, with the sleeve notes following by the Saturday.

13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS “You’re Gonna Miss Me”

“The saga of the 13th Floor Elevators was an Old Testament tale and Roky Erickson was its Job,” – Julian Cope.

Roky Erickson was a misfit kid who loved rock and roll. In 1965, he dropped out of high school a month before graduating to become a musician. Later that year he and his first band, the Spades, made their first single, the crude and hypnotic “We Sell Soul.” Written by Erickson using the pseudonym Emil Schwartze, it has the bare-boned elements of what would become the sound of his next step.

Shortly after the Spades dissolved, Erickson formed the 13th Floor Elevators with other like-minded souls. The band signed to the Texas-based International Artists label and released their classic debut single, “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” in early 1966.

Their mind-blowing debut album, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, would follow that summer.

“You’re Gonna Miss Me,” was a minor hit, making it all the way up to No. 55 in the summer of that year, staying on the charts for nearly two months.

TEMPTATIONS “Get Ready”

The original Temptations version of “Get Ready”, produced by Smokey Robinson, was designed as an answer to the latest dance craze, “The Duck”. The Temptations’ falsetto Eddie Kendricks sings lead on the song, which Robinson produced as an up-tempo dance number with a prominent rhythm provided by Motown drummer Benny Benjamin. In the song, Kendricks informs his lover to “get ready” because “I’m bringin’ you a love that’s true”. Melvin Franklin sings lead on the pre-chorus: “fe, fi, fo, fum/look out/’cause here I come” along with several other similar lines. The song made it to number one on the U.S. R&B singles chart, while peaking at number twenty-nine on the pop charts.[1]

The group’s previous singles since “My Girl” had all landed in the U.S. Pop charts (and R&B charts) Top 20. However “Get Ready” only just scraped into the Top 30.

The song did eventually become a Top 10 pop hit, but not by the Temptations, but by the Motown rock band Rare Earth.

In 1970, Motown’s rock band Rare Earth released a massively successful cover version of the song as a single.

21-minute version of the track appears on Rare Earth’s first album but it’s not for the faint-hearted.

THE UGLY’S “The Quiet Explosion”

Far superior B-side of “A Good Idea” :

The choice of name for Birmingham’s “The Ugly’s” was deliberate and not a reference to the physical appearance of band members as their van became covered in messages lovingly scrawled in lipstick from their many female fans. When interviewed for the Midland Beat newspaper, the group said; “It brings us embarrassing moments but we are achieving our object by using the name. You see, interest is aroused as soon as we are advertised to appear anywhere. People come along to see if we really are ugly!”

The Ugly’s third single for PYE featured Steve Gibbons playing a ‘kazoo’ on the A-side titled ‘A Good Idea’ which in retrospect may not have been a good idea as the single’s B-side is really the stand-out track. ‘The Quiet Explosion’ is a lost psychedelic classic complete with freaky organ and echoey bass.

This was certainly ahead of its time when considering The Beatles had only just started experimenting with strange sounds on their ‘Revolver’ album.

Despite a promotional TV appearance on ‘Thank Your Lucky Stars’, this Uglys single sank without trace and three decades passed before its flip side gained rightful recognition on a CD release.

DAVID BOWIE & THE LOWER THIRD “Can’t Help Thinking About Me”

If “Can’t Help Thinking About Me” was David Bowie trying to sound more like the Kinks than the Kinks did, and succeeding , then the B-side “And I Say To Myself” found the young pop chameleon trying on the teenage hearthrob crooner’s sweater for size – “Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be Peter Noone”

THE BOBBY FULLER FOUR “I Fought The Law”

It is a misconception not universally acknowledged that when an artist is known for one hit and no others, that one hit was the absolute peak of their songwriting and musical creativity. They concentrated everything into those two and a half to three minutes and made no other records worth hearing.

Of course in some cases this is actually true – but not in the case of the Bobby Fuller Four.

Bobby Fuller is remembered as something of a Fifties throwback who recreated old-fashioned Buddy Holly-sounding records with precision and perfection, culminating in his most famous song “I Fought The Law”

He did so much more than the admittedly classic “I Fought The Law” though, including “My True Love”, “Only When I Dream”, “Never To Be Forgotten” and “Fool Of Love” (below).

THE GUYS FROM UNCLE “The Spy”

A cracking Northern Soul track about which very little is known. Check out the intro, a full six years before Isaac Hayes’ the Theme From Shaft

There was a vocal version credited to “The Girls From Uncle” called Agent Of Love, equally great, equally obscure.

THEM “Could You Would You” (from the album “Them Again”)

The band’s second and, for all intents and purposes, last full album was recorded while Them were in the process of breaking up.

Apart from Van Morrison’s vocals and Alan Henderson on Bass, it is not clear who actually played on the album although Jimmy Page probably played guitar on a few tracks at least.

The songs here are a little less focused than the first LP, they don’t really fit together as an album, encompassing too many different styles, but there’s still some excellent songs here

The material was cut under siege conditions, with a constantly shifting lineup and a grueling tour schedule; essentially, there was no “group” to provide focus to the sound, only Morrison’s voice, so the material bounces from a surprisingly restrained “I Put a Spell on You”

to the garage-punk of “I Can Only Give You Everything.”, both of which you’ll hear in forthcoming shows but this week we’ve picked the opening track Could You Would You.

You’ll hear a track every week on Retro Beat Sixty-Six throughout January from Them Again, one of our two albums of the month for January 1966.

THE MANHATTANS “Follow Your Heart”

Best known for their soft 70s soul hit Kiss And Say Goodbye …

… the five members of The Manhattans hailed from New Jersey which seems to be the origin of the name – “You could see the Manhattan skyline right across the water from Jersey City. It was an easy name to remember, and we just thought it sounded classy”. Either that or they were named after the Manhattan cocktail – the surviving band members are a little hazy in recollecting which version of the story is correct.

TAGES “Bloodhound”

Tages were a Swedish band formed in the early sixties near Gothenburg.

The band released a number of singles and LPs in their native Sweden to considerable success, making the Swedish Top Ten more than a dozen times.

Later in the year Tages released “Extra Extra”, regarded as one of the world’s first psychedelic albums.

Though remembered as one of the finest non-English speaking bands of the 1960s, they failed to ever really break into the US or UK markets.

Accepting that they would never break the Anglophone markets their later records mix in traditional Swedish folk music influences culminating in their fifth and last album, “Studio” (recorded, oddly at Abbey Road in London)

Here’s another track from 1966 with some dodgy miming (hey, you think it’s hard to mime, try it in a language other than your native tongue)

BOB DYLAN “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window”

Recorded during the sessions for Dylan’s 1965 album “Highway 61 Revisited”, “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window” was released as a non-album single in late 1965 and performed creditably onm both sides of the pond. Dylan is backed for this song by he Hawks – Robbie Robertson on guiter, Rick Danko on bass, Richard Manuel on piano, Garth Hudson on organ and Levon Helm on drums

PAUL REVERE & THE RAIDERS “Just Like Me”

One of the most popular and entertaining rock groups of the 1960s, Paul Revere & the Raiders enjoyed seven years of serious chart action, and during their three biggest years (1966-1969), sold records in numbers behind only the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

They were very much aware of and played up the theatrical side of rock and roll and were unfairly dismissed by critics of the time as being “a bit too showbiz” but their string of hits – “Steppin’ Out,” “Just Like Me,” “Hungry,” “Him or Me — What’s It Gonna Be,” and “Kicks” in particular — are actually decent unpretentious pieces of ’60s punky rock & roll.

“Just Like Me” was their biggest hit to date and led to the rush-release of the album “Just Like Us”, which you’ll hear tracks from later in January on Retro Beat Sixty-Six.

SLIM HARPO “Baby Scratch My Back”

“Baby Scratch My Back” was Slim Harpo’s only #1 on the soul singles chart where it stayed for two weeks. “Baby Scratch My Back” also crossed over to the Top
40 and was Harpo’s most commercially successful single.

Never a full-time musician, Harpo had his own trucking business during the 1960s.

He needed to tour constantly and play as much as possible; times were frequently lean financially and you have to put food on the table, when it comes right down to it.

But, by 1964, several of his tracks had been released on albums and singles in the UK,[8] and British rock bands like the Rolling Stones, the Pretty Things, the Yardbirds, the Kinks, Pink Floyd and Them began to feature versions of his songs in their early repertoires. The Moody Blues reportedly took their name from an instrumental track of Slim’s called “Moody Blues”

Slim Harpo was no purist – his material proved to be quite adaptable for white artists on both sides of the Atlantic (see the Rolling Stones and others’ versions of “I’m A King Bee”.

A crowd-pleasing club entertainer, he certainly wasn’t above working rock & roll rhythms and country and western vocals into his music.

He had his biggest commercial success in 1966, when the predominantly instrumental “Baby Scratch My Back” reached no.1 on the R&B chart and no.16 on the US pop chart. Harpo described it as “an attempt at rock & roll for me.”

Here’s the B-side “I’m Gonna Miss You Like The Devil”

THE SPENCER DAVIS GROUP “Let Me Down Easy” (from “The Second Album”)

One of the most exciting and influential groups to come out of Birmingham in the early 1960s, the Spencer Davis Group is recognized for their classic and ground-breaking recordings as well as for launching Steve Winwood’s music career.

The Spencer Davis Group comprised Spencer Davis on organ, Steve Winwood on guitar and vocals, his brother Muff Winwood on bass and Pete York on drums.

It was Muff Winwood who came up with the name ‘Spencer Davis Group’ on the pretext that the articulate Davis could do the interviews while the others stayed in bed – maybe not the best idea since the band became associated with Spencer’s name whereas their major unique selling point, sonologically speaking, was Stevie Winwood’s incredible strong, rangy voice.

Up to mid-1965 this time, the songs performed and recorded by the Spencer Davis Group were covers of existing blues and R&B standards but Chris Blackwell brought in Jamaican singer/songwriter Jackie Edwards to compose the next three singles for the group. The first was ‘Keep On Running’ which was transformed by the group into a rocking R&B number with the addition of a driving bass riff and a unique (for that time) electric fuzz guitar effect. The result it had on the record charts was spectacular with the song knocking The Beatles from the top spot and going to Number

One before the end of 1965. The Spencer Davis Group’s first LP was rushed to the shops and the band members now had to endure the side-effect of being pursued by screaming girls!

SHAWN ELLIOTT “Shame & Scandal In The Family”

Originally written in 1962 by Trinidadian calypsonian Lord Melody, “Shame And Scandal In The Family” was a hit in Europe for Puerto Rican singer Shawn Elliott Santiago. Oddly, the British satirist Lance Percival had the hit in the USA. Lord Melody never had a hit with it outside the Caribbean.

CHAD & JEREMY “Teenage Failure”

Banned from appearing on Thank Your Lucky Stars and Top Of The Pops because of the line “I’m Gonna Smash Your Face In”.

By mid-1966 Chad and Jeremy had cleaned up their act to the point where they could appear as themselves in an episode of the TV show “Batman”. The story involves Catwoman stealing their voices 8=)

Note Batman’s reference to “5000 screaming teenagers” – can’t be more than 50, surely Batman? Holy exaggeration!

THE McCOYS “Fever”

The McCoys, basically revamping their big hit “Hang On Sloopy” using the words and (vaguely) the tune of Peggy Lee’s smoking classic torch song “Fever”. Here’s the original:

BILLY STEWART “Mountain Of Love”

Co-written by Shena deMell and the legendary Sugar Pie deSanto that was Mountain Of Love by Billy Stewart, the B-side to the more commercial-sounding “Because I Love You”

THE MAMAS AND THE PAPAS “California Dreamin'”

Written by John Phillips on a frigid winter night in Manhattan when his young wife, Michelle, was homesick for Southern California, “California Dreamin’ ” is one of the all-time sunniest songs of longing.

It was first done by Phillips’ folk group the New Journeymen and later given to Barry McGuire as a thank-you after McGuire, riding high with “Eve of Destruction,” introduced the group to producer Lou Adler, who convinced the Mamas and the Papas to cut it themselves.

Due to its popularity, the song has appeared on numerous film soundtracks and as plot elements in other movies and television shows.

Notably, the song is used repeatedly in the 1994 Wong Kar-wai film Chungking Express, in which a character played by singer Faye Wong obsessively listens to it.

Girls Still Dancing. Franz Ferdinand still got it.
3
Sep

Franz Ferdinand – McCluskys, Kingston 29/08/2013

In 2004 Franz Ferdinand burst onto a fairly somnolent indie guitar scene sporting sharp, clipped guitars and decent tunes without any of the musical fat that the previous generations of indie bands had put on over the years.

Lyrically, too, they had something interesting about them., and an intelligent, engaging frontman in Alex Kapranos whose public utterances always stopped on the right side of being an irritation.

And then there was The Quote : “We just want to make music for girls to dance to” which effectively sealed their longevity. And of course their popularity with the girls as well as the boyz. Boys, sorry. But maybe boyz too…

Fast forward ten years, give or take, and their fourth album hit the shops this week. After a hiatus of four years since 2009’s well-received “Tonight” this is a band truly in it for the long haul, wary of over-egging the pudding, happy to lie low until they – and the world – are ready.

Tonight’s gig is an early-evening all ages affair at McClusky’s nightclub in downtown Kingston – that’s upon-Thames rather than Jamaica but the riverside location and the hot weather make it just as good.

It’s part of a win-win scenario where bands try and maximise their record sales in the all-important first week of sales.

So if you can offer free entry to a gig with the purchase of a new rekkid, then the band wins on the sales points and us punters who are quick enough off the mark after the Twitter announcement get to see the finest of all the Noughties indie guitar bands in a nice, small venue, playing a set that is to make it worth while leaving the house, but short enough (at 12 songs and 45-odd minutes) to be fat-free.

Always leave ’em wanting more.

Speaking of which, you can see the whole gig here:

Music For Girls To Dance To In Kingston

The album, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action is excellent too. It made #6 in the chart in its first week, just one place below Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Volume 10. Whcih puts Franz’s longevity into perspective, I guess.

FESTIVE FIFTY YEARS AGO 1962 – Part Three
29
Dec

FESTIVE FIFTY YEARS AGO 1962 – PART THREE

December 29th 2012

Numbers 30-21 of the countdown, with some perhaps more familiar names as the chart gets closer to the top.

30) MARVIN GAYE – That Stubborn Kind Of Fella

Marvin Gaye’s first album consisted of jazz standards sung in a “black Sinatra” style which didn’t really pay off.

This single signalled a style change to a more soulful delivery, which paid off immediately after the mawkish “Soldier’s Plea”. It was Marvin’s first big hit, reaching No 8 in the US R&B chart and grazing the bottom end of the pop top 50.

29) MARY WELLS – I’m Gonna Stay

Mary Wells was the major female star at Motown during 1962, with the cruelly dubbed “No-hit Supremes” unable to produce a hit despite the label’s best attempts.

It’s a shame she’s only really remembered for “My Guy”, as she made so many other great records

This was the B-side to “The One Who Really Loves You” and is an equal, if not superior song. Peel would definitely have flipped the disc and played this more, as was his inclination.

28) HOWIE CASEY AND THE SENIORS – Twist At The Top

The first Mersey Beat band to make an album.

This would have been seized on by Peel’s Merseybeat-hip listeners.

(NB – the reason why very few Beatles songs are included here despite the Fabs doing three sessions in 1962 is because the tapes no longer exist. I could swing for the BBC sometimes, I really could.)

27) EVERLY BROTHERS – I’m Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail

A surprising selection showing that the older listeners who had grown up the first wave of with rock’n’roll had (a) not abandoned the show and (b) developed more “mature” musical tastes.

The subject matter of the song would not really have reflected the lives of most of the Everly’s fans, but the delivery and passion are, as always, exemplary.

26) ELVIS PRESLEY – She’s Not You

Elvis achieves an operatic performance on this song, while maintaining genuine emotion.

I still maintain his baritone / basso profundo had the potential to wow ‘em at Bayreuth

Imagine him, dressed in robes, singing the role of Wotan in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Go on, imagine it.

Ah yes. No, you’re right. He couldn’t have sung opera. But this is better than bloody opera, anyway.

25) BOB DYLAN – You’re No Good

Side One, Track One of Bob Dylan’s first album.

This cheeky, raw take on Jesse Fuller’s song of rejection only lasts one minute and forty seconds but manages to define Dylan’s template for the next couple of years, complete with falling over the words, giggling, and an audacious harmonica solo.

24) DUANE EDDY – Dance With The Guitar Man

Duana Eddy’s “Peter Gunn” was, famously, John Peel’s second favourite record (I forget the first placed record) and he would have featured Duane Eddy’s work heavily.

This record, if you think about it, features backing vocals but no lead vocal, only Eddy’s trademark twangin’ gitar.

23) DEL SHANNON – Cry Myself To Sleep

“Runaway” reached Number One in the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.
This scraped into the Top Thirty in the UK and only reached No. 99 in the US, which was actually a slightly better performance then his previous two singles.

Seemingly, boys singing about their emotions didn’t strike much of a chord with record buyers.

Fools.

22) BEACH BOYS – 409

Although for shorthand purposes the Beach Boys are generally called a “surf band” they did songs about cars too.

This paean to the early 60s boy racers’ dream car, the Chevrolet 409, was the flip to the massive hit “Surfin’ Safari” and, in the days when B-sides were counted separately to A-sides, actually made the Hot 100 in its own right.

Not as well-known as their later hot rod song “Little Deuce Coupe” but still a great tune.

21) BOBBY “BORIS” PICKETT AND THE CRYPT-KICKERS – Monster Mash

Peel loved the occasional novelty record. Never forget that it was he who was responsible for getting Laurel and Hardy into the charts in the Seventies.

This one would have delighted as many of his listeners as it infuriated, I think.

That’s all for now. Back for the countdown of numbers 20-11 at 8pm on Saturday on Twitter (hashtag #festive50yearsago).

Stay cool, hep cats.

FESTIVE FIFTY YEARS AGO 1962 – PART TWO
27
Dec

December 27th, 2012

Welcome to the second part of the rundown of the Festive Fifty from 1962, or more accurately, my version of what might have appeared in the Festive Fifty in that year if John Peel had been (a) in the country (b) working for the BBC and (c) compiling a Festive Fifty. Enjoy!

40. LORD BLAKIE – Maria.

Lord Blakie was one of the lesser-known calypsonians to come out of Trinidad in the late fifties. Always in the shadow of the global superstar Mighty Sparrow, this was his finest hour, winning the first official “road march” with this song. He is so damn cool in this clip, too.

39. JET HARRIS – The Man With The Golden Arm.

Debut solo hit from the former Shadows bass player.

An off-the-cuff remark by Shadows guitarist Bruce Welch about Harris’ wife’s ongoing affair with Cliff Richard(!) led to Harris quitting the band in April 1962.

A mere four months later he was in the chart with this brilliant, searing arrangement of the theme from the 1955 Frank Sinatra film.

The subject matter of the film – heroin addiction – could be seen as a statement from Harris about his own addiction problems, although these involved the bottle rather than the needle.

38. GINO PARKS – Fire.

A massive blast of angry noise which was very much out of sync with the vast majority of Motown’s early 60s output.

Gino Parks can be said to have been ahead of his time – this record certainly was, by two or three years.

Unfortunately Berry Gordy’s ideas about what the “Motown sound” should be meant no place for this kind of record , and Parks had few further opportunities at the label.

37. THE EVERLY BROTHERS – I’m Not Angry.

A B-side which would undoubtedly have received more airplay on Peel’s show than its more famous A-side “Crying In The Rain”.

In 1977 Elvis Costello included a track with the same title on his debut album, and the similarities go beyond the title to include the meaning and intent of the protagonist.

By the end of both songs, the listener is left in no doubt that the guy in the song is fooling nobody, let alone himself.

36. THE VENTURES – My Bonnie Lies
Never massive in their home country in the same way their UK rivals The Shadows were in theirs, nevertheless The Ventures laid the instrumental groundwork for the surf sound that formed the second (ahem) wave of American rock’n’roll music.

This record, a hepped-up reworking of an old weepie, was only a minor hit, but its inclusion here can be traced to another, vocal version of the song that was popular in this year (in the UK at least).

35. RAY CHARLES – Half As Much

In which Ray Charles really pulls out all the showstopping stops and creates a huge, fat middle of the road record that is a million miles away from “What I’d Say”. The piano playing and voice are more restrained but still classic.

34. GENE CHANDLER – Duke Of Earl

In a later era, the likes of Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey would make careers out of doing voice exercises to music, but this was probably the first worldwide hit record to be created out of a doo-wop band’s warm-up routine.

Neither a fast doo-wop number or a slow ballad, its intermediate pacing made it stand out and it went to No. 1 in the early weeks of 1962.

33. ELVIS PRESLEY – Return To Sender

Elvis’s career was at least as much about making films by 1962 as it was about making music, and this song was one of the highlights from the bikini classic “Girls Girls Girls”.

32. BOB DYLAN – Talkin’ New York

If you can argue – and you can – that the truest work of an artist is in his early, penniless, hungry years, then how much truer is that of folk music, where honesty is the most prized, maybe the only, virtue?

This is one of the two self-compositions on Dylan’s first album, and it’s a cracker, honest and true, detailing Dylan’s experiences on arriving in the Big Apple as a 20-year-old singer and trying to get noticed.

“New York Times said it was the coldest winter in seventeen years
I didn’t feel so cold then”

31. LITTLE OTIS HAYES – I Out-Duked The Duke

Answer Records were a great tradition of the fifties and sixties, briefly being revived as a record industry stunt with “F.U.R.B”, a record which didn’t really live up to it’s illustrious predecessors of two or three generations ago.

This one is a belter. Little Otis takes the basis of the tune of “Duke Of Earl” and gleefully rips out a derogatory lyric about how he “popped the Dook’s girl” while he was out of town. Magnificent.

So, tomorrow evening it’s numbers 30-21. See you then.

FESTIVE FIFTY YEARS AGO 1962– PART ONE (50-41)
26
Dec

December 26th, 2012

I was idly musing about music the other day, while listening to Brian Matthew’s still excellent Sounds Of The Sixties on Radio Two.

If you’re not aware of the show, give it a go.

It’s not quite the parade of obvious, familiar hits you might find on a commercial station, and they cover every sixties genre from surf to psychedelia, Motown to early metal and all points inbetween.

I got to thinking about what sort of music John Peel, or his equivalent, would have played if he’d been on the radio in the early sixties and the phrase “Festive Fifty, Fifty Years Ago” popped into my head.

It seemed so obvious, I couldn’t believe nobody had ever done it before. A quick search on the Interweb confirmed that no, they hadn’t.

(not that I could see, anyway – if I am mistaken then please send me the links so I can check out how it differs from my take)

It seemed to happily coincide with me turning fifty this year.

So here is my take on what the Festive Fifty might have looked like in 1962 if John Peel – or somebody with similar eclectic tastes in music – had been on BBC Radio in 1962, and if he had invited his listeners to write in with their favourite tracks of the year.

The general consensus among music fans about 1962 seems to be that it was not a great year.

The initial surge of rock’n’roll had run out of steam a couple of years previously.

Elvis Presley had gone into the army in 1958 and although he came out in 1960 he wasn’t really making records with the same raw power.

The charts were full of crooners.

The great years of Stax and Motown lay ahead, and the British Beat Boom was only happening in one port town in the North-West of England.

Not a classic year, then?

I beg to differ. Here is part one of the evidence, m’lud.

50. SAM COOKE – Bring It On Home To Me

One of the pioneers of soul music, that is to say, singing with a lot more raw emotion than was traditional for black singers  of the forties and fifties, Sam Cooke became a huge star, with hits not only in the black record charts but also in the pop charts, thus paving the way for the likes of  Marvin Gaye, Bobby Womack and Al Green.

This song, about infidelity, was written by Cooke against the backdrop of a troubled marriage in which both himself and his wife Barbara had a number of extramarital affairs.  Several other artists, notably Eddie Floyd and The Animals, were later to have hits with the song, which would become a standard.

In 1962 it reached No.13 in the US chart but failed to chart in the UK, although it just sneaked into the Festive Fifty.

 

49. LITTLE STEVIE WONDER – Wondering

The twelve-year-old prodigy Stevland Hardaway Morris was signed to Berry Gordy’s Tamla label and recorded his first, instrumental album, “The Jazz Soul Of Little Stevie Wonder” in 1962.  Little Stevie didn’t sing on it and most of the tracks were written by his mentors Clarence Paul and Henry Cosby but this track is one of two to be co-written by the boy genius, and features a searing keyboard solo which was entirely Stevie’s creation.

 

48. GINO PARKS – For This I Thank You.

Berry Gordy’s theory for selling records was much the same as Lee “Scratch” Perry’s a few years later – churn them out in sufficient quantity and some of them will be hits. In a year when Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells, among others, were hitting the high numbers, records like this Northern Soul classic remained unjustly ignored. Gino Parks never had a hit, but he deserved one.

 

47. THE EVERLY BROTHERS – How Can I Meet Her

By 1962 Phil and Don Everly were expanding their style to include polished pop records like this one as well as their more traditional country-rock sound. The gorgeous vocal harmonies are still intact here, though. Lennon and McCartney were big fans, and I don’t think it’s too fanciful to see the influence of this record in some of the early Beatles songwriting efforts over the next couple of years.  Lyrically, this song is the natural grandfather of  “Fit But You Know It” by The Streets. (link).

 

46. DAPHNE ORAM – Four Aspects

Daphne Oram was a sound engineer at the BBC during and after World War II. She was largely responsible for setting up the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1957, becoming its first director.Realising her heart lay in creating her own compositions for their own sake and not merely as background or incidental music, she left the BBC, continuing to write music and inventing a system of drawing on strips of 35mm film which were read by photo-electric cells and converted into sound. She dubbed this system “Oramics” and this short piece is an early, eerie example of the possibilities of electronic music.

 

45. BYRON LEE AND THE DRAGONAIRES – Jump Up

The world first superstar of Jamaican music, Byron Lee and his band the Dragonaires had been around since 1956 but got their first big break when they appeared in a cameo in the first ever James Bond film “Dr No”, as the hotel band performing this song. Seen by movie-goers worldwide both at the time and to the present day, it gave the sort of exposure to Jamaican music that could not be bought for money.

44. BOB DYLAN – Fixin’ To Die

Bob Dylan’s first album contained very few originals, and this is a cover of an old Bukka White song, the lyrics of which examine the effect of the protagonist’s death on his family, which is most unsual for blues songs of the time. Dylan adjusted the melody and added a few of his own (uncredited) verses, which could either be seen as a young artist taking his first tentative steps to writing his own songs, or simply continuing the folk tradition of perpetually adding verses to existing songs.

43. THE TORNADOS – Jungle Fever

I like to think Peel would have approached playing records on his show like he did in the seventies, and play the B-side of a single as frequently as the A-side. Bet he’d have said he preferred this to the more illustrious A-side, too. Does “Telstar” get into the Festive Fifty of 1962? You’ll have to wait and soo

 

42.RAY CHARLES – It Makes No Difference Now

From the “Modern Sounds in Country And Western” album which saw Ray Charles make a deliberate and wildly successful attempt to cross his more usual blues and soul music with country and western. His rich tones perfectly suit country music, and the instrumentation brings a cool, jazzy feel which is being milked by artists on Radio Two to this day. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

 

41. THE BEATLES – Love Me Do

One of the lesser Liverpool groups of the very early 60s, the Beatles’ management were, however, close friends with the publisher of Mersey Beat, who featured the band heavily during 1961 and 1962.

There was some controversy when they unexpectedly won the paper’s readers’ poll in January 1962, when  favourites Rory Storm And The Hurricanes were found to have attempted to rig the vote. The Beatle’s young manager, Brian Epstein, has done exactly the same thing, but was not found out (Rory Storm’s manager had foolishly used a distinctive green pen for his multiple votes …)

The head of steam behind The Beatles grew throughout the year, and this record finally charted for them in October. There were rumours that Epstein had bought ten thousand copies of the record with his own money, but these were strenuously denied by the band.

Tomorrow, it’s the countdown from 40 to 31. Stay cool, hep cats.