FORGOTTEN HITS: Tuesday This And That

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Tuesday This And That

Hi Kent,

Your 60 YEARS AGO TODAY series is amazing! Love, love, loved all the goodies, especially the John Lennon and Yoko Ono video “Give Peace a Chance” and laughed my butt off at the Tommy Smothers bit on Johnny Carson. Keep up the great work.

Happy New Year!

Pam

Hey Kent!

Happy New Year to you!

Do you plan on running the Super Charts for the entire year of 1964?

I hope so -

They would be a very valuable historical asset to save, as the information is priceless.

Best wishes to you and family for the new year.

So glad we have both been able to do what we love with the music!

Clay

The plan is to run EVERY 1964 Super Chart EVERY Saturday this year ... so yes, you will finally get the chance to see them all.

(We're also talking about doing this for 1965 and 1966 ... since we already covered 1967 a few years ago ... but that decision isn't etched in stone just yet ... but it's definitely what we're shooting for!)

Happy New Year to you and yours, too! Make it a GREAT 2024.

Hi Kent,

I wanted to chime in on the early play of The Beatles in America.

When Bill Shannon and I were working on "The Larry Lujack Tribute" that aired on Rewound Radio in November, we came across an aircheck from July 18, 1963. We were pleased to have an audio example of Larry Lujack playing The Beatles’ "From Me To You" in the KNEW Spokane regular rotation.

I don't know the actual first date the station played The Beatles, but I imagine this is one of the earliest tapes of "The Fab Four" being played in the U.S.

Ted Gorden Smucker

"From Me To You" charted quite well in LA ... enough to "bubble under" in Billboard ... but Dick Biondi still beat everybody to the punch by a good five months when he played "Please Please Me" in February of 1963 on WLS ... he was the first.

I'll have to listen to that KNEW clip again ... either I missed it or didn't realize at the time that its origins were July of '63.

Thanks, Ted ... Happy New Year to you! (kk)

Wow, he plays some really obscure stuff on this clip! (I really liked the Dee Dee Sharp tune and downloaded it immediately!) NONE of these songs were big national hits … which makes me curious to see some of KNEW’s Top 40 Charts … anybody got these in their collection? Would love to share some with our readers. (I looked online and only found a couple … be cool to get one for the week that covered July 18^th, 1963, just to see where some of these songs ranked on their station at the time. (kk)

Did you happen to notice that in your "Top of the Pops" posting the first three songs listed are very assertive: "I Want," "I Wanna," "I Only Want" ...

Ask and ye shall receive?

Shelley

All three of those artists DID do rather well, didn't they, when it came to making their mark on the pop music scene: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Dusty Springfield proved to be some of Great Britain best ... and most enduring artists! (kk)

Harvey Kubernik looks back at The T.A.M.I. show …

https://bestclassicbands.com/tami-show-film-1964-rolling-stones-10-26-22/

Great stuff! (kk)

Best Classic Bands ran this great clip of Frankie Valli performing his #1 Hit “Grease” with Lionel Richie and The Commodores on “The Midnight Special.” Everybody comes off looking great in this clip … Frankie holds his own (and looks like he’s having a blast!) … and Lionel matches him note for note … in fact, they both sound so much alike, it’d be hard to tell who was singing what if you didn’t have this visual reference to fall back on! (kk)

We happened to catch a GREAT interview with Barry Gibb the other night while surfing around YouTube looking for something else ...

Piers Morgan does an EXCEPTIONAL job in his Life Stories series ... and Barry is relaxed, forthcoming and very candid in this enlightening and sometimes very emotional conversation.

HIGHLY recommended. (kk)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTyiYB8cMMY

And Timmy just happened to send us this photograph on New Year's Eve!!

Overnight sensation? Well, I'm not so sure about that one ...

But this TV Week article from just over sixty years ago couldn't ever have predicted the way we'd still be enjoying this music for decades and decades to come ...

And likely always will. (kk)

Here are a couple of those Smothers Brothers chart singles we were talking about the other day …

JENNY BROWN (#82, 1963) – short single version

JENNY BROWN – longer LP version

(You can see why the single wasn't a hit ...

All of the essence of a Smothers Brothers comedy performance has been edited out, leaving just a short little boring folk song that didn't catch ANYBODY's attention!!!) kk

THE TOY SONG (#146, 1965) - This coulda been an annual holiday tradition ...

LITTLE SACKA SUGAR – B-Side of “The Toy Song,” which I used to play all the time off my 45

And a classic bit … MOM ALWAYS LIKED YOU BEST

More photos from Timmy …

WEIRD MONKEES

Kicking off 2024 with photographs of two topless Monkees. (You don't see THAT everyday!!!)

I actually saw this show at Star Plaza in Indiana … took the kids, in fact … and I can attest that Weird Al, live in concert, was most definitely weird!!! (kk)

Here’s a much cleaner shot of The Monkees on “Hollywood Squares” than the one I ran a short while back …

And Mike Wolstein sent in these photos …

A “Group Grope” featuring Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol and John Lennon …

(maybe THIS is what they meant when they said “share the love”!!!)

And this photo (which we’ve run several times before in FH … but since it’s once again relevant to a recent piece we did, I figured, “What the heck … run it again!!!)

Since you mentioned "Bonanza" the other day, here's a fun item I learned about over 20 years ago.

The pics are from the 4-12-1964 episode of "Bonanza" entitled "A Pink Cloud Comes From Old Cathay," whereas Hoss receives a "wife" from a "wife service" when he'd actually requested something else. Obviously, some type of a mail mix-up.

He meets the very attractive Chinese girl, played by 27-year old Marlo Thomas (who, in spite of being made up to look Asian, still looks Caucasian.) She becomes enamored with Hoss and her father, played by actor Benson Fong, is NOT happy about it.

This 1st photo in the View-Master © set came out the way it did (reportedly) due to a pay dispute between the actors and CBS. I haven't a clue as to whether or not the View-Master © folks knew about it; it took decades for the public to notice it, maybe because 90% of the owners of the discs were children, who wouldn't have understood it anyway. I myself didn't learn of this until around 2000, almost 40 years after the episode was aired.

99% of those who see this picture for the first time don't notice the "joke." Look VERY closely at the photo. And it is NOT a Photoshop job.

Ultimate Classic Rock ran a list they titled “The 40 Greatest One Hit Wonders of All Time” … a topic covered by many in the past … and (seemingly) never with the same results. (You’ll find our OWN list, compiled by DJ Rich Appel, here): http://forgottenhits.com/top_100_one-hit_wonders

(This is the list that Me-TV uses for their One Hit Wonders weekends … and Rich has accounted for all of the big names.)

The big difference is, ALL of Ultimate Classic Rock’s lists (and they seem to run at least one a day!) are based on OPINION rather than fact …

They don’t use any type of scientific method to calculate the actual best of ANYTHING … and they have covered a HUGE range of very interesting topics over the years …

But it’s all OPINION … and over this time of reading most of them, I find that MY opinion doesn’t necessarily match THEIR opinion very often.

That’s why I always prefer to deal with calculated facts when making a chart. You may not agree with the results, but the numbers don’t lie … and at least you know that the list you’re looking at was calculated using the same “apples to apples” data for all of its entries.

Regardless, here is UCR’s Top 40:

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/one-hit-wonders/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ugh&utm_term=UCR

(By the way, their #1 pick peaked at #40 on the charts. Biggest #1 One Hit Wonder ever??? Not by a long shot … in fact, likely not even on the list if it peaked at low.) A significant song? Yes. A big, one hit wonder hit? Sorry, but that would be a no. (kk)

Every year, Barack Obama posts his lists of favorite songs, usually a “song I’m listening to on my iPod” sort of thing) …

But this year he has posted his list of his favorite songs from the past year, 2023 (which means I likely won’t know a single one of them! Lol)

Anyway, here are his choices …

How many did you add to YOUR iPod??? (kk)