1966 - 1964: March Daily Songs

I actually went back for two months, but that's a lot of songs for one post, so I am splitting them up. There have been some different thoughts anyway.

There are some songs I really love here. I remember exactly where I was the first time I heard "My Guy". "Have I the Right" had a similar effect on me, but I only remember the impression, not the details of how and when it happened.

(For the record, with "My Guy" my mother and I were parked outside of the Barker's house in Sellwood.)

Watching an episode of The A-Team with Vietnam flashbacks, I realized Julie was getting confused between "Eve of Destruction" and "We Gotta Get Out of this Place". That makes sense; together they are both used to indicate Vietnam.

(I must say, the sense of fear and apocalypse fits in well with this administration.)

One thing I had been thinking about more is that in my mind the music that I think of as 50s music is usually more 60s music. I think the reason for that is that it is from the period before the 60s became THE '60s; I mean, decades as we remember them take a few years of transition. I think the '80s mostly started between 1983 and 1984, but it can be hard to pinpoint.  

Then I started thinking about "American Pie". We watched a VH1 Behind the Music on it, and that treated it as if there was a real shift in music, but I am not sure that is true. That doesn't change the emotional impact of the song, but the people talking about its import may have overstated their case.

Also -- with all of this writing about appropriation -- it's hard not to think about how much richer white musicians got from music they did not write or introduce.

It is also interesting how many songs I did not know were covers the first time I heard them. I don't know that anything will top finding out that "Hard to Handle" came from Otis Redding, and was then covered by Black Crowes, but that was back in 1968.

I have decided that regardless of what I am doing for the daily songs, I am going to keep going back through the years, and then go forward again. Maybe then I will be able to move past 2000 into current years. 

That will be the work of years, and there will be books and articles that come up, but I want to have that sense of context.

I like understanding how things fit together.

1966

3/2 “Cherish” by The Association
3/3 “You Can’t Hurry Love” by The Supremes
3/4 “Red Rubber Ball” by The Cyrkle
3/5 “Wild Thing” by The Troggs
3/6 “634-5789 (Soulsville U.S.A.)” by Wilson Pickett
3/7 “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak For You)” by The Isley Brothers
3/8 “Wipeout” by The Surfaris
3/9 “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by The Beach Boys
3/10 “The More I See You” by Chris Montez
3/11 “19^th Nervous Breakdown” by The Rolling Stones

1965

3/12 “King of the Road” by Roger Miller
3/13 “It’s the Same Old Song” by The Four Tops
3/14 “Unchained Melody” by The Righteous Brothers
3/15 “Downtown” by Petula Clark
3/16 “Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire
3/17 “Down in the Boondocks” by Billy Joe Royal
3/18 “All Day and All of the Night” by The Kinks
3/19 “We Gotta Get Out of this Place” by The Animals
3/20 “The Tracks of My Tears” by The Miracles
3/21 “I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction)” by The Rolling Stones

1964

3/22 “My Guy” by Mary Wells
3/23 “The House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals
3/24 “Where Did Our Love Go” by The Supremes
3/25 “Dancing in the Street” by Martha and the Vandellas
3/26 “Under the Boardwalk” by The Drifters
3/27 “Have I the Right” by The Honeycombs
3/28 “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” by Betty Everett
3/29 “Glad All Over” by The Dave Clark Five
3/30 “Suspicion” by Terry Stafford
3/31 “Wishin’ and Hopin’” by Dusty Springfield