Almanac Music: ‘100 x 100, 1954 – 1977’: 31- 40

 

The mid 1960s was the greatest era for pop music. The oldsters running the record companies didn’t have a clue what the kids would dig so they recruited teenagers to the A&R division, signed teenage singers and songwriters and producers who went wild in the studio, who had the benefit of some of the most skilled and experienced musicians and engineers in the world to turn the wild ideas into some of the most glorious music ever recorded.

 

31 – Hi Heel Sneakers – Tommy Tucker, January 1964
Party time! Put on your high heel sneakers, your red dress, we’re going out tonight and we’re gonna knock ‘em dead. Tough rhythm, slick guitar licks and a solid chunk of organ.

 

32 – War Of The Worlds – Atlantics, March 1964
One of the greatest surf guitar songs, played by a great looking band, sharp white suits, slick hair, guitars played over the shoulder, check the film, it was shot in a park in southern Sydney. Australia’s first great song was a goddamn killer.

 

33 – Walk On By – Dionne Warwick, June 1964
Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Dionne Warwick, a magical combination, classic songwriting meets an R&B singer and a beautiful arrangement, dig those trumpet accents and string break, classic girl group type lyrics rendered in an adult form.

 

34 – Remember (Walking In the Sand) – Shangri Las, August 1964
Mary Weiss sang with a heartrending crack in her voice. George ‘Shadow’ Morton had a lovely touch for teenage love, this was the first song he wrote, there’s a beautiful contrast between her present heartbreak and sweet reminisces, “softly we’d meet with our lips” and the seagulls echo her memories and pain.

 

35 – Oh Pretty Woman – Roy Orbison, August 1964
Oh, that voice! Loneliness, yearning, look my way, you know he’s imagining that she’s ‘walking back to me’ in the coda. Masterful instrumentation, that constant crack of the snare drum, that guitar riff ascending and descending and reflecting his hopes and his desolate reality.

 

36 – Come See About Me – Supremes, October, 1964
The fade-in of the drums is one of the great pop intros, leading into a tale of woe, or so it seems. While the lyric is downbeat, the music carries a feeling of optimism, she’s gonna keep crying, keep sighing, but her heart says he’s here to keep… How many teenage girls listened to this song in their bedrooms 60 years ago, shedding tears but holding out hope?

 

37 – Keep Searching – Del Shannon, November 1964
Del sings about trying to find a place to hide with his baby, but you know he’s singing about himself, just listen to that falsetto at the end, that’s the sound of a man with nowhere to run – and a great style of hard driving rhythm guitar, like a runaway train.

 

38 – Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood – Animals, November 1964
The world is weird and confusing, I don’t get it, tho I try to. Rough blokes from an industrial town, Animals predicted a lot of late 1960s youth culture in a song written for Nina Simone by three Broadway professionals. Goes to show, it’s the singer not the song.

 

39 – A Change Is Gonna Come – Sam Cooke, December 1964
Sam had the looks, the voice, the ambition. He and Solomon Burke had been abused by cops in Shreveport, Sam wrote this beautiful song that blended optimism with a shade of cynicism, wrapped in a glorious arrangement of strings and horns, almost uplifting… but for a few blue notes and that middle eight…

 

40 – Strychnine – Sonics, March 1965
Hot thick rock and roll sound, five young men crammed into a small room and playing a loud hymn to a poison, also an organic version of speed, this is the birth of what became known as punk rock, tho too few had a tenor saxophone driving the riff. Youth, speed, volume, a combo that would echo for decades.

 

Teenage wizards conducting a room full of professional musicians, teenage delinquents cranking guitar amplifiers and discovering distortion – a drummer and music shop owner in London began building amplifiers, he listened to the young guitarists, the amplifiers and speaker cabinets became larger and louder, you’ve all seen his fantastically appropriate surname across the backline of many a concert.

 

To read more by Earl O’Neill click HERE.

 

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