The FRIDAY FLASH

Coming up this weekend (February 5th and 6th) on THE HISTORY OF ROCK 'N' ROLL: "Motown In The '70s."

The magic of Motown music continued into its second decade with these 24 unforgettable hits released between 1970 and 1979. Included: insightful interviews with Smokey Robinson, Mary Wilson (of The Supremes), Jermaine Jackson (of The Jackson Five), Otis Williams (of The Temptations), Lionel Richie (of The Commodores), Syreeta Wright (singing partner of Billy Preston), Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder. Also: a very special HRR Spotlight Profile of Isaac Hayes (“Shaft”).

Does your favorite radio station carry THE HISTORY OF ROCK 'N' ROLL? If not -- or you have a station which should carry this award-winning two-hour weekly series, simply contact G Networks for all the details!

Gary Theroux

(Pictured: The Jackson Five)

We listen on Me-TV-FM ... and you can, too.

They stream the program Saturday Mornings from 7-9 am (central) and then on Sunday Nights (from 10 pm - midnight) they run a replay of the previous week's show. (kk)

MeTV FM - Memorable Entertainment - LISTEN LIVE | Audacy

Here’s a link to a piece Harvey Kubernik did on the 60^th Anniversary of The Day The Music Died a few years back …

Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big ... - Ugly Things

February 3, 2019 is the 60th anniversary of tragic airplane crash that subsequently became known as “The Day the Music Died,” sadly referenced in Don McLean’s song, “American Pie.”

Harvey Kubernik

 

Also from Harvey …

https://americansongwriter.com/jimi-hendrix-to-be-featured-in-two-prominent-films-this-month/?fbclid=IwAR0sGEnbELkoH4GS6leC3f3ukTXzOa_H_8Awt0Jfd2_-RJiYDNV98DTZlOQ

It’s Groundhog’s Day … again!

30 years of a great movie!!  The snow storms wanna celebrate this year!!!  (Well, except in Lincoln, Nebraska, for some odd reason).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GncQtURdcE4

 

The movie was actually shot 30 years ago in Woodstock, Illinois just west of Chicago!  Big celebration will ensue: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRB8e06ECyk

 

A year ago, here is what they actually READ at this event and as predicted last year, winter (and the pandemic) NEVER seems to end!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDAHhUHkzG4

 

And here’s a Comparison Chart of our own …

 

The official Billboard Top Ten from 6-6-66 …

 

Followed by the Top Ten from my OWN chart that year …

 

6-6-66:  (Billboard’s Ranking)

# 1 - WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN - Percy Sledge

# 2 - A GROOVY KIND OF LOVE - The Mindbenders

# 3 - PAINT IT, BLACK - The Rolling Stones

# 4 - DID YOU EVER HAVE TO MAKE UP YUR MIND? - The Lovin' Spoonful

# 5 - I AM A ROCK - Simon and Garfunkel

# 6 - MONDAY, MONDAY - The Mamas and The Papas

# 7 - RAINY DAY WOMEN #12 and #35 - Bob Dylan

# 8 - IT'S A MAN'S, MAN'S, MAN'S WORLD - James Brown

# 9 - GREEN GRASS - Gary Lewis and the Playboys

#10 - STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT - Frank Sinatra

 

MY personal station "III" (Hey, I gave my stations calls I wanted) on 6/6/66:

 

LW   TW    Title

 6       1      Green Grass – Gary Lewis and the Playboys

 4       2      Oh Yeah! – The Shadows of Knight

13      3      Paperback Writer – The Beatles

 5       4      Shape of Things – The Yardbirds

 7       5      Batman & His Grandmother - Dickie Goodman

 9       6      Monday, Monday – The Mamas and the Papas

                  HEY, I AGREE WITH YOUR CHART ON THIS ONE!!!

 8       7      Gloria – The Shadows of Knight

22      8      Rain – The Beatles

10      9      It's Too Late - Bobby Goldsboro

15    10     Dedicated To The One I Love – The Mamas and the Papas

And check this out …

  1    22     Evol - Not Love – The 5 Americans  (WOW, that’s quite a drop!)

Clark Besch

Damn, Clark, you were charting “Dedicated To The One I Love” NINE MONTHS before it was released as a single!!!  How’d you manage that?!?!?

I used to LOVE “EVOL, Not Love” … and “Shape Of Things” by The Yardbirds was one of my favorites, too … but I could never find that record to buy it … (probably because I was looking for a song called “Come Tomorrow” … and ultimately ended up with a completely different song by THAT name from Manfred Mann!!!)

The Shadows Of Knight overtaking themselves on the chart is kinda cool, as is “Paperback Writer” and “Rain” both leaping into The Top Ten.  (Always loved Bobby Goldsboro’s “It’s Too Late,” too … and who could resist … at the tender age of 12 … Dickie Goodman’s “Batman and His Grandmother!!!”  (kk)

The only reason you didn't get excited about 'Davy Crockett' being a hit was that you weren't in the 5th grade and you didn't have a coon skin cap.  That was HUGE that year.  I sometimes wonder what happened to those little boys who idolized all things Davy Crockett.  I personally smile when I think of those days because I was a 5th grade girl. 

Sandy

Although I was too young in '55 to watch it, I certainly do remember all the ruckus about Davy Crockett and those coonskin hats!  (I think I was probably more of a Mouseketeer kid once I started watching television a few years later!)

No question that it was all the rage ... and I have long recognized what a HUGE hit it was ... but when you're hearing THREE versions of the same song in a Top Ten Countdown, it does make things a little bit boring!  (You'll find a similar comment below regarding "Unchained Melody" ... but back then popularity was measured more by the song itself rather than the artist singing it.  That's why so many artists recorded the same tunes ... they were popular and they wanted their piece of the pie!!!)  kk

 

Regarding your chart from 5-5-55 …

Hi there, Kent,

I know it's been a while since I've posted anything to this blog, but at the moment, like Clarence Frogman Henry, I Ain't Got No Home.  (I am staying in a hotel for the moment, and am going to be moving around until the apartment complex that I am supposed to be moving into is finished around the end of this year.)

Anyway, these music surveys in which all the numbers are the same like 5-5-55 and 6-6-66 have always been really fascinating to me, but not 8-8-88 nearly as much. 

You wrote in your February 2^nd blog post:

>>>Sound boring?  Well, this was pop radio as it existed BEFORE Bill Haley

rocked us around the clock and Elvis Presley took us for a stroll down

that lonely street to Heartbreak Hotel.  (kk)

That's because you are looking at the wrong charts!

I realize that your focus on this blog is Top 40 music and not the RNB charts ... and there is no question that the pop charts of 5-5-55 were indeed pretty

dull and boring … and that ended up being the case well into 1956.

But just for comparison’s sake, it would be fascinating to look at the RNB chart from the same week. 

I tried to find this exact chart on the net and although I could find the top 30 and the top 100 most popular RNB songs for the year 1955, I could not find the chart for  that particular week in that year. 

But based on a May 8, 1955, aircheck I have of George (the Hound) Lorenz on WJJL in Niagara Falls New York, I would imagine that songs like Bo Diddley by Bo Diddley, I Got A Woman by Ray Charles, Close Your Eyes by the Five Keys, Ain't That A Shame by Fats Domino, My Heart Beats For You by Johnny Fuller (which sounds so close to Pledging My Love by Johnny Ace that it's almost eerie), and My Babe by Little Walter would be some of the songs you'd find on that RNB chart for that week in '55.

The music that was on the pop charts at the time were stagnating.  Rhythm and Blues charts were where things were happening, and music was really changing.  White pop music hadn't changed much since the end of World War II.  After all, it was older men like Mitch Miller that were set in their ways, controlling major labels like Columbia.  Crooners were still singing those sweet, unoffensive love songs that they had been singing for decades. 

But black recording artists were much more hip, and they realized what kind of music both black and white teenagers wanted to hear. 

Since this is Black History Month, there is really no better time than right now to point this out. 

Black recording artists didn't just speak of love, they spoke of sex.  Mind you, in order to get their songs played on the radio they still had to disguise the subject matter and make the songs double entendre, so that they could be

interpreted as dealing with something else, like Laundromat Blues by the

Five Royales, for example. 

But as early as 1951, records like Sixty Minute Man by Billy Ward and the Dominos were much more cool and hip than Tony Martin's song from the same year, I Get Ideas.  While Tony Martin was singing "When we are dancing and you're dangerously near me, I get ideas," Bill Brown, bass singer of the Dominos was singing, "There'll be fifteen minutes of kissing, then you'll holler please don't stop.  There'll be fifteen minutes of teasing, and fifteen minutes of squeezing, and fifteen minutes of blowing my top."  (OK, so it's not I Want Your Sex by George Michael, but for the time, that was pretty descriptive, and that song went all the way to number 1 on the RNB charts in 1951.  There were certainly no white cover versions of that song, that's for sure!)

The songs got bolder and bolder through the early part of the decade, until the trilogy of Annie songs came along by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters.  I mean, Work With Me Annie was bad enough as far as parents of white teenagers were concerned, but to make it completely clear what they were talking about by releasing a sequel called Annie Had A Baby and then another record called Sexy Ways, well, that was just too much for these parents to handle, and there were senators that were being sent letters by concerned citizens, asking for them to look into having the FCC ban such filth from the air.  I know it's hard to believe now, but that's the way White America was. After all, all those couples like the Nelsons, the Cleavers, the Ricardos, the Stone family in the Donna Reed show and the Andersons in Father Knows

Best all slept in twin beds.

But getting back to black recordings artists and rock and roll, while it's true that white artists like Bill Haley, Elvis and Carl Perkins helped the music along and put their own country spin into this emerging rock 'N' roll, blacks were first to have the idea of emphasizing the beat, of having wonderful sax solos in the middle of songs, of having mass appeal to teenagers of both colors, and I personally think that Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, the Moonglows, the Penguins, Little Richard and Fats Domino had just as much to do with the development of rock 'n' roll as Bill Haley and Elvis did. 

Anyway, if anyone actually has a Billboard RNB chart from this week in question, 5-5-55 I hope they will post it here, because it will be really interesting to see the difference between that chart, and this bland pop chart that Kent offered us.

As I stated before, even the first third of 1956 was pretty bland with number 1 songs like Memories Are Made Of This by Dean Martin, Lisbon Antigua by Nelson Riddle and his Orchestra, The Poor People Of Paris by Les Baxter and his Orchestra and Rock And Roll Waltz by Kay Starr, which she didn't even want to record, by the way.

Anyway, just food for thought here.

Sam Ward

All good points … and an accurate depiction of the music scene, circa 1955.

To show how much music changed during the decades of the ‘50’s, the ‘60’s, the ‘70’s and the ’80’s, we had to go with the Pop Charts … but you’re right, more and more teenagers were starting to discover R&B records and artists at this time … and the “racier” disc jockeys (no pun intended) were playing this music and getting these kids up and dancing (even if it was often only behind closed doors!)

 

For the record, here are The Top Ten Records from Billboard’s R&B Chart covering 5-5-55 …

 

#  1 - MY BABE - Little Walter

#  2 - WALLFLOWER - Etta James

#  3 - I'VE GOT A WOMAN - Ray Charles

#  4 - DON'T BE ANGRY - Nappy Brown

#  5-  WHAT'CHA GONNA DO? – The Drifters

#  6 - UNCHAINED MELODY - Al Hibbler

#  7 - FLIP, FLOP AND FLY - Joe Turner

#  8 - UNCHAINED MELODY - Roy Hamilton

#  9 - PLEDGING MY LOVE - Johnny Ace

#10 – THE DOOR IS STILL OPEN – The Cardinals

>>>Four other tracks were instrumentals (including two versions of "Unchained Melody")  kk

Al Hibbler was a singer and I would consider his version of "Unchained Melody" as the definitive one until the Righteous Brothers came along.  Bandleader Les Baxter's version also had vocals.

Ed #1

Wow, I really blew it on this one ... and I certainly know better ... we have run the history of "Unchained Melody"  a couple of times now here in FH.  (Can I plead Covid Loss Of Memory on this one???)

We'll recap the history once again for the benefit of anyone who may have missed it ... but I certainly feel pretty stupid right now!!! (kk)

The song first saw life in the movie "Unchained," released in 1955.  

Original Forgotten Hits list member Hil (TheOneBuff ... and QUITE the movie buff he is!!!) sent us this review AGES ago (probably at least 15-20 years back) ... and reveals that the famous "lonely rivers flow" middle-8 didn't yet exist at the time ...

'60'S FLASHBACK:

>>>Unchained, a 1955 low budget movie, is about a man imprisoned. I have seen the movie and I have it on DVD and VHS but neither is a copy to make a fuss over. It is blurred and shaky. I bought it from one of those online "hard to find" movie places, mainly to get the song. The movie stars Chester Morris, a tough guy type from early 30s films and into the 70s. He plays a warden trying to create a model prison where the inmates are treated decently with the hopes of rehabilitation. The focus is on an inmate played by Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch, a football player with Hollywood ambitions that never materialized. The theme is by Alex North, on of Hollywood's finest composers, whose work can be heard in such movies as Viva Zapata and The Long Hot Summer. While the theme is played throughout, the song is in the hands of one of the most cliched characters in movie history, the black prisoner with a guitar. Here he is played by one time Porgy actor Todd Duncan. In the movie itself it is sung without the famous bridge beginning with "Lonely river flows ... ". It was nominated for Best Song Oscar and lost to the highly popular but not long-standing "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing". Time and countless artists recordings have demonstrated over time which is the better song. Here's an mp3 I made. You now have the original version of Unchained Melody. Take my word for it. It is a classic song. It is NOT a classic movie. I feel its low budget, lack of star power and absence of any studio push kept the song from winning an Oscar.

Link to the movie for more information is below.  (Hil)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048762/

Hil's review was less than flattering ... but it IS interesting to see where this song got its origins.  (kk)

When "Unchained Melody" composer Hy Zaret died a few years ago, we ran thru the complete scenario again ... (I actually found comments dating back to 2011 regarding the chart history of this song!)

‘Unchained Melody’ lyricist Hy Zaret dead at 99

Song was one of the most frequently recorded of the 20th century

Hy Zaret died at his home Monday, about a month shy of his 100th birthday, his son, Robert Zaret, said Tuesday.

He penned words to many songs and advertising jingles but his biggest hit was “Unchained Melody,” written in 1955 for a film called “Unchained.” It brought Zaret and Alex North, the composer, an Academy Award nomination for best song.

Zaret refused the producer’s request to work the word “unchained” into the lyrics, instead writing to express the feelings of a lover who has “hungered for your touch a long, lonely time.”

The song was recorded by artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Lena Horne, U2, Guy Lombardo, Vito & the Salutations and Joni Mitchell, who incorporated fragments into her song “Chinese Cafe / Unchained Melody.”

An instrumental version was a No. 1 hit in 1955 for Les Baxter, while a vocal version by Al Hibbler reached No. 3 the same year.

But most baby boomers remember the song from the Righteous Brothers’ version. The record, produced by Phil Spector, reached No. 4 on the Billboard chart in 1965, and was a hit again 25 years later when it was used on the soundtrack of the film “Ghost.”

In all, it was recorded more than 300 times, according to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, which listed it in 1999 as one of the 25 most-performed musical works of the 20th century.

Among other songs Zaret co-wrote were “My Sister and I,” a hit in 1941 for Jimmy Dorsey; “So Long, for a While,” the theme song for the radio and TV show “Your Hit Parade”; “Dedicated to You”; and the Andrews Sisters’ novelty song “One Meat Ball.”

“He had some big, big hits,” said Jim Steinblatt, an assistant vice president at ASCAP.

In later years, Zaret had to fend off the claims by another man, electrical engineer William Stirrat, who said he wrote the “Unchained Melody” lyrics as a teenager in the 1930s and even legally changed his name to Hy Zaret. Robert Zaret and Steinblatt both said the dispute was resolved completely in favor of the real Zaret, who continued to receive all royalties. Steinblatt said Stirrat died in 2004.

-- submitted by Shelley J. Sweet-Tufano

A few years ago, Bill Medley told Forgotten Hits that HE produced the original Righteous Brothers' version of "Unchained Melody" and not Phil Spector because Spector couldn't be bothered to oversee the B-Sides!  "Unchained Melody" was the original flip side of The Righteous Brothers' single "Hung On You," but it quickly surpassed the intended A-Side on the charts, ultimately peaking at #4 in Billboard in 1965, eclipsing "Hung On You"'s #47 chart showing.  Much like the proper songwriting credit, the dispute as to who really PRODUCED this song has also raged for years ... as once it became such a mammoth ... and timeless ... hit, Phil Spector ALSO claims ownership of this production!)  kk

With multiple mentions of "Unchained Melody" in FH recently, I'm reminded that it was on this day in 1955 that two versions of "Unchained Melody" first appeared on the Billboard charts. These were performed by Les Baxter's Orchestra and Chorus and Al Hibbler. The movie had premiered on January 19, with its first showing in Chino where it was filmed. Opera singer Todd Duncan performed the song in the flick.

On April 23, Roy Hamilton's cover made the chart - and a few weeks later, on May 14, we see June Valli's brief appearance.

This was one of those rare situations where four versions of the same song were on the charts at the same time. And, as you have often mentioned, this is a perfect example of the time when the song was more important than the artist(s).

I found a source that had a nice clean copy of the flick "Unchained".

It's not bad, but it's not great. The melody plays on and off throughout, and there are interesting appearances by Jerry Paris (of Dick Van Dyke fame), Barbara Hale (youngest I've ever seen her), and a young Tim Considine.
Musical highlights are Todd Duncan's vocal and a nice instrumental at the close.

David Lewis

There are reportedly over 300 known recordings of "Unchained Melody", making it one of the most recorded songs in pop history.  Joel Whitburn's latest "Top Pop Singles" book also says it's the song with the most charted versions:  13 at last count!  (kk)

Here's the original:

The two big hit versions from 1955 ...

The definitive hit version that set the benchmark for all that followed ...

(Although they weren't ALL particularly great!!!) ...

And then, Redemption!

Look for lots more ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME comments on Sunday in our Sunday Comments Page ... 

And be sure to check out FH tomorrow when Phil Nee remembers Buddy Holly!  (kk)