Finally a decent week of summer weather in Auckland of January, 2022 as we listen to the sounds of May, 1960…
Songs of the month
“Angela Jones” – Johnny Ferguson
[new] “Barbara” – Temptations
[new] “Burning Bridges” – Jack Scott
[new] “Cathy’s Clown” – Everly Brothers
[new] “Cherry Pie” – Skip & Flip
“Clementine” – Bobby Darin
“Cradle Of Love” – Johnny Preston
[new] “Ding-A-Ling” – Bobby Rydell
“Doggin’ Around” – Jackie Wilson
“Don’t Throw Away All Those Teardrops” – Frankie Avalon
[new] “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” – Connie Francis
“Fame And Fortune” – Elvis Presley
[new] “Footesteps” – Steve Lawrence
“Footsteps” – Steve Lawrence
[new] “Good Timin'” – Jimmy Jones
[new] “Got A Girl” – Four Preps
“Greenfields” – Brothers Four
[new] “Happy-Go-Lucky-Me” – Paul Evans
“He’ll Have To Go” – Jim Reeves
[new] “He’ll Have To Stay” – Jeanne Black
“I Love The Way You Love” – Marv Johnson
“Let The Little Girl Dance” – Billy Bland
[new] “Lonely Weekends” – Charlie Rich
[new] “Love You So” – Ron Holden
“Mama” – Connie Francis
“Money That’s What I Want” – Barrett Strong
[new] “Mountain Of Love” – Harold Dorman
[new] “Mr. Lucky” – Henry Mancini Orchestra
“Night” – Jackie Wilson
[new] “Nobody Loves Me Like You” – Flamingos
[new] “Ooh Poo Pah Doo” – Jessie Hill
[new] “Paper Roses” – Anita Bryant
“Puppy Love” – Paul Anka
“Sink The Bismark” – Johnny Horton
“Sixteen Reasons” – Connie Stevens
“Stairway To Heaven” – Neil Sedaka
“Step By Step” – Crests
“Stuck On You” – Elvis Presley
“Sweet Nothin’s” – Brenda Lee
[new] “Swingin’ School” – Bobby Rydell
[new] “The Madison” – Al Brown’s Tunetoppers
“The Old Lamplighter” – Browns
“Theme From A Summer Place” – Percy Faith
[new] “What Am I Living For” – Conway Twitty
[new] “What Am I Loving For” – Conway Twitty
[new] “When You Wish Upon A Star” – Dion & The Belmonts
“White Silver Sands” – Bill Black’s Combo
“Wild One” – Bobby Rydell
[new] “Wonderful World” – Sam Cooke
[new] “Young Emotions” – Ricky Nelson
[new] = New to the chart this week.
You can listen to the full playlist on Youtube via this link.
This month in history
On May 6th President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1960 into law. The bill had passed the House 288–95, after being amended and passed by the Senate 71–18. Yes, 18 people were against people having the vote whatever their race. Here’s a classic Nixon campaign ad from later in the year on that topic.
Also on the 6th Princess Margaret of the United Kingdom, the sister of Queen Elizabeth II, married Antony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowden) in a royal wedding at Westminster Abbey.
By months end Jane Goodall had begun her study of chimpanzees in the wild, arriving at Lolui Island in Kenya after her original plans, to go to the Gombe Reserve, were thwarted by a political dispute.
What’d Sadie think?
It’s three weeks at number one for “Stuck On You” by Elvis before new track to the charts, “Cathy’s Clown” by the Everly Brothers takes the top for the last two.
Loved ’em
“Good Timin'” by Jimmy Jones is just a really fun song. I didn’t listen to the lyrics properly the first few times, but its about historical figures who had “good timings” as an analogy for relationships.
Who in the World would have ever known
What Columbus could do
If Queen Isabella hadn’t hocked her jewels
In 1492? But she had timin’
A-ticka, ticka, ticka, good timin
“He’ll Have To Stay” by Jeanne Black is an excellent answer song to Jim Reeves’ 1959 hit “He’ll Have to Go” (last seen on our charts in January 1960). Which appears on our “new” list this month because it appears to have started selling again after Black’s song came out. (My code for “new” isn’t sophisticated enough to tell if a song has ever appeared on the charts, it just compares one month to the previous.)
“Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” by Connie Francis needs no introduction, such a great tune. But…I did not know that polka-style version in German, “Die Liebe ist ein seltsames Spiel”, was the first German single recorded and released by Connie Francis, and it reached No. 1 on the single chart in 1960 in West Germany.
Fascinating story behind this one,
In her autobiography Francis mentioned that in the early years of her career the language barrier in certain European countries made it difficult for her songs to get airplay, especially in Germany. Francis continued that Germany’s most popular singer, Freddy Quinn, often sold two to three million records per song, equivalent to about twelve million in the United States. Using this as the basis for her April 1960 recording, “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool”, which had initially been written as a ballad, Francis convinced the songwriters to speed up the song’s tempo and revive the innovative drum rhythm from Guy Mitchell’s 1959 hit recording “Heartaches by the Number”, which had been a No. 1 in Germany in its German cover version “Ich zähle täglich meine Sorgen” for Peter Alexander.
Now that’s reading the market! Here’s that version:
“Wonderful World” by Sam Cooke is another real classic. If you’d asked me I couldn’t have told you the song name though and would have said, “Don’t know much”. Apparently the original writers (Lou Adler and Herb Alpert) version was less about school subjects and more about the theme that “neither knowledge nor education can dictate feelings, but that love “could make the world a wonderful place.”. Cooke ramped up the ‘don’t know much…’ aspect.
Liked ’em
- “Barbara” – Temptations
- “Burning Bridges” – Jack Scott
- “Cathy’s Clown” – Everly Brothers
- “Cherry Pie” – Skip & Flip
- “Get A Girl” – Four Preps
- “Lonely Weekends” – Charlie Rich
- “Love You So” – Ron Holden
- “Mountain Of Love” – Harold Dorman
- “Mr. Lucky” – Henry Mancini Orchestra
- “Nobody Loves Me Like You” – Flamingos
- “Ooh Poo Pah Doo” – Jessie Hill
- “Paper Roses” – Anita Bryant
- “Swingin’ School” – Bobby Rydell
- “The Madison” – Al Brown’s Tunetoppers
- “What Am I Living For” – Conway Twitty
- “When You Wish Upon A Star” – Dion & The Belmonts
- “Young Emotions” – Ricky Nelson
Leave ’em
- “Ding-A-Ling” – Bobby Rydell
- “Footsteps” – Steve Lawrence
- “Happy-Go-Lucky-Me” – Paul Evans
Now go listen to the full playlist on Youtube via this link.