First up, WKLO from Kentucky ... LOTS of local and regional hits on this one ...
Look at Billy Joe Royal at #2 (down from the top spot the week before) with "The Greatest Love". The best that one could muster in Billboard was #117 as a "Bubbling Under" B-Side!
You'll find Tiny Tim at #5 with his version of "Great Balls Of Fire", the follow-up to his fluke hit single "Tip-Toe Thru The Tulips". Also in The Top 20: Peggy Scott and Jo Jo Benson (who we featured a couple of weeks ago in our "Wild" Friday salute) with "Soul Shake", somebody called Africa at #11 with "Here I Stand" and another artist I'm not familiar with, The Waters, falling from #8 to #14 with "Day In And Out".
The Beatles' White Album is still ranking high on the charts ... and this week's Pick Hit is the Ramsey Lewis version of "Mother Nature's Son". Meanwhile, newly-signed-to-Apple Records The Iveys are at #20 with "Maybe Tomorrow". (It would be their only hit under that name ... you all know them better as Badfinger!)
Other great songs you just don't hear anymore:
"Indian Giver" by The 1910 Fruitgum Company; the Glen Campbell and Bobbie Gentry version of "Let It Be Me" and The Arbors' EXCELLENT take on the Box Tops classic, "The Letter".
Wow! What a GREAT Top Ten on this WHHY Survey from 1967!
The Left Banke are locked into the #1 Spot with "Pretty Ballerina" ... and I just LOVE seeing "Lovin' You" by Bobby Darin, "Hello Hello" by Sopwith Camel and "Friday On My Mind" by The Easybeats scoring so high (at numbers 3, 5 and 6 respectively.) How often do you hear any of THESE songs on the radio anymore? (I've always been partial to "Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye" by The Casinos, too.)
There's a rare, forgotten hit by Peter and Gordon at #13 with "Knight In Rusty Armour" ... and who can forget The Innocence and their soft-rock take of the old childrens' nursery rhyme "Mairzy Doats"? Nice to see Chicago's Buckinghams and New Colony Six represented here, too, with "Kind of a Drag" at #11 and "Love You So Much" at #36, not far behind '60's classics like "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" by The Beatles and "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield.
One of the things I love looking at on these old surveys is the way so many of them pick up the same format as those of other stations around the country. (This WKYC chart from 1966 looks very much like the WCFL survey from this same time period. Ironically, one of THEIR big tag-lines was "Big 10" Radio ... they were at AM 1000 ... WKYC singles out their "Top 11" on their "Sound 11" Survey.)
There's our FH Buddy Sonny Geraci (and The Outsiders) at #1 with "Time Won't Let Me" ... Sonny has been all over our pages lately due to the fund-raising concert fiasco held down in Streetsboro, Ohio. "California Dreamin'" is at #2 ... it would go on to be the Biggest Record of the Year here in Chicago for 1966 according to that same WCFL Survey. You'll find Peter and Gordon on THIS survey, too, holding down the #7 spot with "Woman", a song written by Paul McCartney under the pseudonym of Bernard Webb.
How about "Secret Agent Man" showing up by The Ventures at #15? The big national hit was by Johnny Rivers, of course. And you'll find some country cross-over hits here, too, by way of Billy Joe Royal, Roger Miller, Eddy Arnold, Johnny Cash, B.J. Thomas (with his GREAT cover of the Hank Williams tune "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry") and Slim Whitman!!!
