The Beatles premier at #38 this week on our Super Chart ... their first Top 100 appearance in America.
Of little notice at the time (it didn't even earn a bullet), Dusty Springfield's "I Only Want To Be With You" premiers at #97.
Hottest records at the time?
Bobby Vinton's "There, I've Said It Again" holds down the #1 spot for the third consecutive week, keeping the teen favorite "Louie Louie" by The Kingsmen at #2, where it has spent three of the past four weeks.
The Trashmen are at #4 with a bullet with their garage band classic "Surfin' Bird" ... and, speaking of surfin', that whole new "beach" surfin' / hot rod sound shows up in several places on this week's chart ...
The Rip Chords are up eleven places to #7 with "Hey Little Cobra, Jan and Dean hold down the #12 spot with "Drag City" ... while The Beach Boys themselves have TWO records on this week's chart: "Be True To Your School" sits at #36 and "In My Room" can be found at #91.
Rick Nelson, Lesley Gore and Dionne Warwick are all making big strides with their latest records, "For You" (#16), "You Don't Own Me" (#17) and "Anyone Who Had A Heart (#19) , all earning bullets this week ... while Bobby Rydell holds on to the #5 spot with his hit "Forget Him," now in its tenth week on the chart.
Two songs in the lower region of the chart will have very successful British remakes this year ... "Do Wah Diddy" by The Exciters (#86) will go all the way to #1 for Manfred Mann when they cut it as "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" later this year ... while "When You Walk In The Room" by Jackie DeShannon, this week's #88 song, will find much greater success in the hands of The Searchers later this year as well.
Selene Gomez has been cast to portray Linda Ronstadt in a
new biopic that is being produced by Linda’s manager John Boylan and James
Keach.
While no release date has been mentioned yet, this is a good
cast … and Linda’s story deserves to be told.(She is very proud of her rich heritage and experimented her entire
career with different genres of music, succeeding at all of them.)
Between 1967 and 1990, Ronstadt notched 21 Billboard Top 40
Hits including her #1 recording of “You’re No Good” in 1975 and the Top Ten
Hits “Heat Wave” (1975), “Blue Bayou” (1977), “It’s So Easy” (1977), “Ooh Baby
Baby” (1979) and “Hurt So Bad” (1980) … pretty remarkable in that ALL of these recordings
were remakes of previous hit records.(She also fared well with her band The Stone Poneys on the Mike Nesmith
track “Different Drum,” #13 in 1968, and scored back-to-back #2 Hits with “Somewhere
Out There” from the film “An American Tail” and “Don’t Know Much,” a duet she
recorded with Aaron Neville.)
Gomez, currently starring in the hit Hulu series “Murders
Only In The Building,” has earned twenty Top 20 Hits of her own since 2010,
including the 2019 #1 Hit “Lose You To Love Me.”
The 2019 Linda Ronstadt Documentary “The Sound Of My Voice”
paints an excellent portrait of Ronstadt’s career and is well worth seeking out
if you haven’t seen it.Linda’s voice
was unique and immediately recognizable … that may be the toughest part of the role
to fill if Gomez is going to do all of her own singing.She’s certainly talented enough to pull it
off … but will the performance give Linda the distinction she earned on her
own?(kk)
The article starts out …
“Taylor Swift is currently the biggest pop star in the world”
… and it’s no joke.
Her first Billboard Hot 100 Hit came in 2006 … and she’s
been back 187 times since.(She currently
occupies the equivalent of almost 3 ½ full pages of Joel Whitburn’s new “Top
Pop Singles, 1990 – 2022” book … an unheard of feat for an artist who just turned
34 years old.)
The point of THIS particular article is to tout how Taylor
rose to such huge prominence once she moved from the country field to the pop
field, which is where she has been dominating the music scene for the past ten
years.
No one could have possibly predicted that her career would
skyrocket the way it has … and that she would remain as grounded, gifted and
inspired as she has.(kk)
It sounds like Lisa Marie Presley had been working on her
memoirs at the time of her death and now, nearly one year later, her daughter
Riley Keough is announcing that she has helped to finish it off and that it
will be released in October.
More details to come as we get closer to publication
date.(kk)
A collectors’ set of stamps featuring The Spice Girls were issued
in the UK this month.
Featuring 15 different images, the stamps help to
commemorate the 30th Anniversary of The Spice Girls (can you believe
it?!?!) and their contribution to pop music … and are available now.
Chicagoland Memories …
Do you remember in your mid-teen
years a "Morey Major Sports Store" or something like that?
I was recently sent a radio commercial I voiced
for them back in the day! Big Ski Sale! You know for when a
Chicagoan wanted to get out to the surrounding flatlands and ski Mount Chicago!
(I don't know who produced it … background music
sounds like it's from an Alfred Hitchock Film!But it’s attached.)
CB
Actually, yes … Morrie Mages …
They were a pretty big deal ... there's even a Facebook
Memorial Page ...
I read that he died in 1988.
I recognized the store … and his photograph as soon as I saw
them.(I wanna say they were on a major
corner downtown … but I think that had other chain stores, too.)kk
Please mention The Barn in Naperville, IL,
next door to Naperville Community High School and their famous gym.It was ALSO showplace for some of the best
bands in ChicagoLand.
The Shames played there, Aorta, The Vynes, The
Disciples …
Garrett E Baldwin, bassist for the Vynes,
Class of 1967, NCHS
I certainly remember The Barn … although I was too young at
the time to go there in ’67.(Just
turned 14 in August of that year!)
But yes, it was indeed a suburban hot spot for teens!
On This Day
in History (1-11-64) as noted in Forgotten Hits ~~~
>>>US Surgeon General report warns that
smoking may be hazardous to your health.
“Across the land, more bottles started clinkin’,”
As some smokers, turned more to drinkin’!”
Roger Miller says it better when, coincidentally on
this same day, “he records
one of his first big hit records, “Chug-A-Lug!”
CB
This And That:
It is being
reported that Elton John is OFFICIALLY The Most Successful Live Act Of All Time,
earning performing revenue in excess of $3.18 billion.
Check out
these stats:
He has sold
over 43.5 million tickets and played 4181 shows since 1970, as well as 210 with
Billy Joel and 19 with Leon Russell.
Elton’s recently
wrapped up final tour, “Farewell Yellow Brick Road,” earned R939.1 million all
on its own.(And we’re told he’s already
bored silly sitting at home just a few months later, which is driving him back
to the recording studio and considering “one-off” shows for special events.)Over six million tickets were sold for Elton’s
“Farewell” tour which, (thanks to delays due to Covid), ran from September 8th,
2018 thru July 8th, 2023.
In another
interesting statistic (some of which I found to be quite surprising), Elton’s ten
most-performed songs are: “Your Song,” “Rocket Man,” “Bennie and the Jets,” “Don’t
Let The Sun Go Down On Me,” “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues,” “Philadelphia
Freedom,” “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting,” “Tiny Dancer,” “The Bitch Is
Back” and “I’m Still Standing.”
BEGO &
COCKER --Tuesday night may well
have been stormy, but scribe Mark Bego had a blowout event at Steve
Walter's Cutting Room for his 68th Joe Cocker biography
- With a Lot of Help from His Friends(Yorkshire
Publishing).
We actually
watched the outdoor elements for a time through the Cutting Room's window
and it was brutal ... kind of a Woodstock-night if you will.
Seen there were
Dan Zelinski; 60's-icon Lou Christie; Isiah James from Good Morning America;
Maria Milito from Q1043; Getty's Gary Gershoff; Bego's manager
Dave Marken and photog Jeff Smith.
photos: Q1043's Maria Milito & Mark Bego
/ Mark Bego & Lou Christie /
Mark Bego; Steve Walter; David Salidor
and Dan Zelinski
(all photos by Jeff Smith)
The other day we told you about the new Netflix documentary “The
Greatest Night In Pop,” airing on Netflix beginning on January 29th …
And we’ve now got the official trailer to share …
Definitely gotta watch this one.(kk)
>>>Is it just me, or does everyone
have to sign up for a Box account to be able to hear all your audio
posts? (Jon M)
>>>People seem to be having much more difficulty playing
the music of late – and I’m not exactly sure why. (I can only assure you
that if something changed, it changed on Box’s end, not mine … I’m still
posting the same way I have been for the past 25 years!) Whenever that
happens, try refreshing your screen (F5) – I think you’ll find that that
usually works. (kk)
>>>A few months ago, I started to
experience the same issue. Ever since you suggested to me pressing the F5
Key once, it solved the problem!(CB)
Kent,
The F5 key helped me open the audio files, but now some of the
words on the
files are written in Russian. Is there a way to change the
language?
Jon M
lol ... I don't know what to say about that!!!
(Although I do believe Forgotten Hits is the #1 Oldies Music
Publication in Russia)
I’m only half-joking …
Several years ago we got a website report that showed Russia
as the country with the second most visits to our site.
I did some digging and found that somebody was translating
all of our posts … and they were being widely circulated there.Like I’ve said many times before, sometimes
you just never really know who’s reading your stuff!(lol)kk
So Many Landmark Beatles Memories Coming Up …
>>>Even the album itself was repackaged in various
ways (kk)
Don't forget that the Introducing The
Beatles LP itself was released at the time with two different track
listings, one with "Ask Me Why" and "Please Please Me" and
the other with "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You."
– Randy Price
Yep, like I said, Vee Jay milked it for everything it was
worth.
And they COULD have released the album six months sooner if
they wanted to … but it likely would have gone by completely unnoticed at the
time as American just wasn’t ready yet for these Four Mop Tops From
Liverpool.(kk)
Mike Wolstein sent us this old column from our FH Buddy
Jerry Osborne, addressing Dick Biondi being the first disc jockey in America to
play a Beatles record.It also addresses
the possibility of George Harrison and his sister Louise getting the record
played on the local radio station in downstate Benton, IL, later that September
when George was visiting his sister …
Problem is, Jerry’s answer is provided by the guy who owned WQRL,
which was an FM station … which never would have been the case in 1963.
Our article says the record was played on WFRX … an AM
station … located in nearby Frankfort, IL … and that the record they played was
“From Me To You” (and that that happened in June of ’63.)
SO long ago … and SO many rumors and legends have been
spread since then … but based on this column, we stand by our original
assessment.IF it got played in
downstate, IL, it was likely on this Frankfort station … but even THAT would
have been at least four months after Biondi first played the record on WLS (as
confirmed by his secretary in the Osborne article.)kk
Micky Dolenz has added a special treat to his appearance at
this years Fest For Beatles Fans in New York City …
For $1500 (available on a first come basis), you can have
dinner with Micky (and eleven other guests who ALSO forked over the $1500.)
The proceeds are going to The Make A Wish Foundation
Well, I’m guessing so … but you also get the chance of a
lifetime to sit down one-on-one with a living legend …
AND do something good for a very worthwhile charity.
Good Luck to all hoping to attend.(kk)
Speaking of The Beatles …
Be sure to stop by on Sunday to read our EXCLUSIVE Interview
with noted Beatles Author and Historian, Bruce Spizer!!!(kk)
And, of course, The Beatles were ALSO big news ...
60 YEARS AGO TODAY:
The Beatles make their second appearance on the ATV show "Sunday Night At The London Palladium" where they performed "I Want To Hold Your Hand," "This Boy," "All My Loving," "Money" and "Twist And Shout." (They last appeared on this program October 13th, 1963.)
