Got this from long-time Forgotten Hits Reader (and former American Top 40 writer and researcher) Scott Paton ... and just had to share ...
Hi Kent,
Glad to see that you appear to staying safe and sane. Stay-at-home entertainment like FH is now more important than ever, so thanks, as always, for all the great dispatches.
Taking a nod from you and my own AT40 background, I've been posting a daily "Sequester Song" on Facebook, featuring a story behind the song or artist, linked to the best YouTube video I can source. Some of the selected tunes are pretty loosely tied into the theme, but all have at least some small element of loneliness or other pandemic-related connection in the lyrics. As you were indicating in Sunday's post, I've also avoided any songs or titles that might be deemed in bad taste during a time that's so dire for so many.
As of today, I've done 22 posts of a projected 60, although you and fellow readers have given me some suggestions that I hadn't considered, so I might bump it up to 75 if I don't run out of gas. Doing one of these per day is instilling a small measure of discipline in me that may be providing a slight link to sanity. All 12 of my Facebook followers seem to be enjoying these, so that's keeping me going. Guess I'm currently your mini-me, Kent!
Here's the playlist if anybody's interested:
Sequester Songs
1. All Alone Am I – Brenda Lee
2. I Think We’re Alone Now – Tommy James & the Shondells
3. Don’t Stand So Close To Me – Police
4. Loneliness Made Me Realize (It’s You That I Need) – Temptations
5. Lonely Boy – Andrew Gold
6. Mr. Lonely – Bobby Vinton
7. Tired of Being Alone – Al Green
8. Alone Again (Naturally) – Gilbert O’Sullivan
9. Only The Lonely – Roy Orbison
10. I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry – Hank Williams / B.J. Thomas
11. Lonely Days – Bee Gees
12. All By Myself – Eric Carmen
13. When Will I See You Again – Three Degrees
14. One (Is The Loneliest Number) – Three Dog Night
15. In My Room – Beach Boys
16. You’re Only Lonely – J.D. Souther
17. Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do) – Aretha Franklin
18. Lonesome Town – Ricky Nelson
19. Flowers On The Wall – Statler Brothers
20. The Boxer – Simon & Garfunkel
21. Ask The Lonely – Four Tops
22. Lonely Boy – Paul Anka
23. Wichita Lineman – Glen Campbell
24. I Will Survive – Gloria Gaynor
25. Lonely People – America
26. Solitary Man – Neil Diamond
27. So Far Away – Carole King
28. Heartbreak Hotel – Elvis Presley
29. A House Is Not A Home – Dionne Warwick
30. It’s The End Of The World As We Know It – R.E.M.
31. The End Of The World – Skeeter Davis
32. Mercy, Mercy Me – Marvin Gaye
33. Eleanor Rigby – Beatles
34. The Grand Tour – George Jones
35. Alone – Heart
36. A World Without Love – Peter & Gordon
37. Are You Lonesome Tonight? – Elvis Presley
38. In My Lonely Room – Martha & the Vandellas
39. Ain’t No Sunshine – Bill Withers
40. Oh Lonesome Me – Don Gibson
41. Owner Of A Lonely Heart – Yes
42. Another Saturday Night – Sam Cooke
43. Where’ve You Been – Kathy Mattea
44. Hey There Lonely Girl – Eddie Holman
45. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight – James Taylor
46. I Wish It Would Rain – Temptations / Double Play / In The Rain – Dramatics
47. Blue Bayou – Linda Ronstadt
48. I’ve Been Lonely Too Long – Rascals
49. Lonely Weekends – Charlie Rich
50. Solitaire – Carpenters
51. Miss You – Rolling Stones
52. Never Knew Lonely – Vince Gill
53. Just Don’t Want To Be Lonely – Main Ingredient
54. Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues – Danny O’Keefe
55. I Am A Rock – Simon & Garfunkel
56. We’re All Alone – Rita Coolidge / Boz Scaggs
57. I’ve Been Lonely For So Long – Frederick Knight
58. School’s Out – Alice Cooper
59. Nowhere Man – Beatles
60. Without You – Nilsson
People are more than welcome to check out the posts on my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ScottEricPaton). The content is targeted more to a general audience (the aforementioned 12!) than us musicheads, but every now and then, FH readers might find something of interest therein.
Thanks, Kent!
Regards,
Scott Paton
P.S. - Just as an example, here are a couple of recent posts:
60 DAYS OF SEQUESTER SONGS Day #19 –
Statler Brothers – “Flowers On The Wall”
Reached #4 Pop & #2 Country on the Billboard charts in Winter 1966.
Like so many other acts, the Statler Brothers became “overnight sensations” after more than a decade of slogging it out through low-paying one-night stands, in small clubs, church basements and school gymnasiums. Formed in their hometown of Staunton, Virginia in 1955, they started out as the Four Star Quartet, morphed into the Kingsmen (but the name was already taken), and finally took their name one night from a box of Statler Tissues. As they often joked, they might have ended up the “Kleenex Brothers” had the popular brand been provisioned in their motel room.
So yes, while there were no brothers named “Statler” in the group, there were two Reid brothers, Harold and Don, along with Phil Balsley and Lew Dewitt.
In 1963, a local concert promoter got the quartet an audition with Johnny Cash, and a long nine months later they got a callback from the “Man in Black” and became part of his touring show and the background singers on his recordings. One day, while Cash was taking a lunch break during a studio session, the producer told the group, “Okay, Statlers, you wanted to cut a record? The clock’s running. What have you got?”
Utilizing a couple of Cash’s unused hours of recording time, they laid two songs down on tape, including a tune that Lew DeWitt had just written. The Statlers had never sung it even once prior to the session. This song about a lonely, isolated man, deep in denial and teetering on the brink of madness was relegated to the B-side of their first single. But upon release, deejays began flipping the 45 over and the song became an unqualified smash.
Peaking at #4 on the Pop Chart and #2 Country, “Flowers On The Wall” made the Statler Brothers an instant sensation, compounded by a double Grammy win for Best New Country Act and Best Contemporary Vocal Performance (Rock & Roll). Okay, the Grammys are famous for some goofy selections. The Statlers were hardly a rock act, but “Flowers” was indeed one of the biggest pop and country records in ‘65/’66.
Despite their newfound fame, due to the chance he’d given them, the Statler Brothers stayed loyal to Johnny Cash and remained part of his touring show through 1972. They never had another pop smash, but over the next 30 years, they racked up more than 60 hits on the country chart and were named the top vocal group by the Country Music Association, nine out of ten consecutive years.
Due to ill health, founding member Lew DeWitt was replaced in 1982 by Jimmy Fortune, and died in 1990. The Statlers retired in 2002; the group’s baritone singer and comedic foil, Harold Reid, died at age 80 in April 2020.
60 DAYS OF SEQUESTER SONGS Day #20 –
Simon & Garfunkel – “The Boxer”
Reached #9 on the Billboard Chart in Spring 1969
“The Boxer” was the single that preceded Simon & Garfunkel’s fifth and final studio album, “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Certainly the most extended, labor-intensive recording of the duo’s career, the simple majesty of the song belied the effort behind its creation.
Multiple locations and a multitude of New York, L.A. and Nashville’s finest session musicians were engaged in the creation of this masterpiece—the first-person lament of a punch-worn fighter, broke and terribly alone in a strange city, far from home.
Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel and producer Roy Halee traveled to Nashville, where Music City’s A-Team of session men laid down the basic track. Pedal steel, dobro and bass harmonica figured in the arrangement, so country music’s famed Nashville Cats merited the trek from New York City. Guitarist Fred Carter Jr. remembers taking days just moving microphones around the room in Halee’s attempt to get the sound and ambience they were looking for.
Once satisfied with the results in Nashville, Simon, Garfunkel and producer returned to Manhattan to sweeten the track with orchestration. Despite the fact that only one drumbeat was required in the chorus of the song, Hal Blaine, the top session drummer in Los Angeles was flown in to execute it. “Roy Halee had me set up my snare drum next to an open elevator shaft in the hallway of Columbia Studios,” Blaine recalled. “When the chorus came around –the ‘lie-la-lie’ bit—Roy had me hit my snare as hard as I could, and all that natural echo made it sound like a cannon shot!
A month later, Paul & Art returned to the studio to lay down their vocals which, comparatively speaking, was the easiest component of the lengthy, complex process. Notably, though, it was decided to eliminate an additional verse that Simon had written in an effort to keep the length of the song airplay-friendly.
All the effort and travel paid off as “The Boxer” quickly scaled the charts, paving the way for 1970’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Simon & Garfunkel’s most successful and lauded album. Nashville session man, Fred Carter, Jr., who had worked on the initial basic tracks recalled, “I never heard the finished record until it came on the radio one day. I thought, ‘That’s the greatest record I’ve ever heard in my life.’”
Featuring that lost verse left out of the studio recording, here’s Simon & Garfunkel, performing for half-a-million people in New York City’s Central Park in 1981.
And one more from yesterday …
60 DAYS OF SEQUESTER SONGS Day #23 –
Glen Campbell – “Wichita Lineman”
Reached #3 Pop & #2 Country on the Billboard charts in Winter 1969
Reached #3 Pop & #2 Country on the Billboard charts in Winter 1969
The musical partnership of Glen Campbell and songwriter Jimmy Webb was responsible for some of the most unique and memorable pop and country classics of the late-1960s. That bond was formed over their first collaboration, “By The Time I Get To Phoenix,” which prompted a request from Glen for Jimmy to write another geographical-oriented song for a follow-up.
Webb drew from memory a drive he had taken through rural farmland in southwestern Oklahoma. Telephone poles stretched as far as he could see and disappeared into the setting sun. There was not another car or a human being in sight. But finally, after miles and miles of desolate landscape, he spotted a silhouette atop a distant pole. As he drew closer, he realized that it was a telephone lineman, maintaining the wires that stretched between those endless poles.
Jimmy Webb recalled thinking that this solitary figure, in the middle of nowhere, had to be the loneliest individual he’d ever seen. From the road below, he saw that the man was holding a receiver to his head and he tried to imagine the conversation the man might be having. Webb quickly worked this scenario into a song that would become “Wichita Lineman.” It was incomplete, missing a verse and a bridge, but he needed to get it to Campbell immediately for his approval.
As a few days went by, he was a little disappointed to have received no response at all from Glen, so Jimmy gave him a call. When he asked Campbell if he liked it, he exclaimed, “I loved it! It made me homesick for my family back in Arkansas. We already recorded it!”
Pleased yet concerned, Webb responded by saying, “But the song wasn’t finished!” “It’s finished now!” countered Glen. And indeed it was. Campbell had filled the missing bridge with an instrumental interlude on bass guitar. His picking, his plaintive vocal and the brilliant arrangement by producer Al DeLory had perfectly captured the poignant sense of loneliness that Jimmy Webb had imagined when he witnessed that lineman at work, high above the empty plains below.
Amidst a remarkable catalog of hits, “Wichita Lineman,” was unquestionably the one that resonated the most profoundly with his audience. I had the good fortune to attend several of the dates and spend some time with Glen on his farewell tour as he was slipping into the advancing grip of Alzheimer’s Disease which would ultimately claim his life. After every performance of “Lineman,” nearly everyone I witnessed wiped tears from their eyes, as did I.
As much as I wish I could sit here and say, "Do we really need 75 days worth of Sequester Songs?," I think we ALL know that the reality of the matter will prove that this will likely only scratch the surface of our time confined. Soon, the novelty of this type of programming will run thin and cease to be funny. (For some of us, it already has.) Then again, ANYTHING to divert our attention from the sad and scary reality that is all around us ... and faces us each and every time we leave our homes ... is a welcome diversion.
For this reason, readership in Forgotten Hits is up significantly these past two months ... hopefully, the majority of folks who have discovered us will continue to stick around after things return to anything resembling semi-normal. (Even our long-time readers are discovering ALL kinds of cool stuff in the archives, both here and on the other Forgotten Hits Archive Site.) After twenty years of doing this, even I will find a few surprises from time to time!!! (Let's face it ... you can't remember EVERYTHING!!!) I am truly proud and grateful to be able to offer some small type of relief from what everyone now seems to refer to as "the new normal."
So thank you, Scott, for some GREAT ideas ... with so many disc jockeys on the list, I think you've provided some food for fodder for the weeks to come.
And to absolutely EVERYBODY else ...
Be Smart ... Stay Safe ... and allow the music to provide some comfort and relief from the real world outside. (kk)
