AM Gold - The Mid-'60s

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 1995

Labels: Warner Special Products, Time Life Music

Time-Life released this disc as Various - Superhits - The Mid-'60s (SUD-12) in the Super Hits series in 1991, and as Various - AM Gold - The Mid-'60s (AM1-05) in the AM Gold series in 1995.

℗ 1991 Warner Special Products
© 1991, 1995 Time Life Inc.

Track durations obtained from software.

Publishing:
Track 1, 9, 18- Jobete Music Co., Inc. ASCAP
Track 2, 17- Saturday Music Inc./Seasons Four Music BMI
Track 3- ATV Music/Duchess Music Corp. BMI/Welbeck Music Ltd. PRS
Track 4- Longitude Music Co. BMI
Track 5- Trio Music Co., Inc. BMI
Track 6- Music Sales Corp. ASCAP
Track 7- Quintet Music ASCAP
Track 8- Dean Street Music Ltd. PRS/Regent Music Corp. BMI
Track 10- MCA Music Publishing ASCAP
Track 11- Frank Music Co. ASCAP
Track 12- Man-Ken Music Ltd. BMI
Track 13- Screen Gems-EMI Music Inc. BMI
Track 14- Melody Trails Inc. BMI
Track 15- Irving Music, Inc. BMI
Track 16- Andrew Scott Inc./Bibo Music Pub., Inc./WB Music Corp. ASCAP
Track 19- Alley Music Corp./Trio Music Co., Inc. BMI
Track 20- Pattern Music Ltd. PRS/Paul Simon Music BMI
Track 21- Tree Publ. Co., Inc. BMI
Track 22- Dick James Music Inc. BMI

Complete liner notes:

Thanks to Bob Dylan, folk-rock battled the British Invasion for musical supremacy in the mid-'60s. Dylan had outgrown the Greenwich Village folk scene where he first gained recognition. Hiring a rock band and plugging in his own guitar, he began churning out surreal, stream-of-consciousness lyrics that had a defiant social point of view even if they weren't as conventionally topical as his earlier protest songs. Both his words and his music owed plenty to traditional American forms, but he redefined those forms radically, as the times demanded, and his success forced a turbulent new era in popular music.

Among his most empathetic followers were the Byrds, a Los Angeles harmony group made up mostly of veteran folkies. They had first glided onto the charts with an electric interpretation of Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man, which went to No. 1 and convinced the band to come back with their cover of his All I Really Want to Do.

However, Cher's version whipped theirs handily in sales, so they recorded Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season). Folk patriarch Pete Seeger had adapted the lyrics from the Book of Ecclesiastes. Byrds leader Jim McGuinn knew the song well, having played guitar behind Judy Collins when she cut it for her third album. McGuinn and David Crosby worked up a hipper arrangement one afternoon on the Byrds' touring bus, but the band required some 50 takes in the studio before they got it right.

The Mamas and the Papas and the Lovin' Spoonful were two other top folk-rock units. The former was made up of Village folkies who came together as a group while hanging out in the Virgin Islands and then made the career move to Los Angeles. The singers stayed with Barry McGuire (Eve of Destruction), who hooked them up with his producer and label boss, Lou Adler. The song's writer, Papa John Phillips, always said he had no idea what Monday, Monday meant, and the rest of the quartet hated the song, but they needed material for the debut album. Though California Dreamin' was the first single pulled from the album, the Monday, Monday follow-up surpassed it by going all the way to the top.

The Lovin' Spoonful represented the East Coast wing of the folk-rock movement by basing themselves right in Greenwich Village to create their good-time, electrified jug-band sound. Leader John Sebastian wrote Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind? in honor of a pair of sisters he had encountered at a summer camp where he worked as a drama and music counselor. The song's central question, he swore, was pure fantasy; neither girl was interested in him, though he did teach himself to play Autoharp in an attempt to impress one of them.

In the wake of the Beatles, the English Invasion was going strong. Liverpudlian balladeers Gerry and the Pacemakers shared the Beatles' manager (Brian Epstein) and producer (George Martin) and were the first British group to reach No. 1 on the British charts on their first three tries. But it wasn't until their fourth release (Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying) that they penetrated the American Top 40. Ferry Cross the Mersey was the title tune to a 1965 movie in which the Pacemakers, appearing as themselves, find fame and fortune after winning a "beat music" talent contest.
Peter and Gordon had more tenuous Beatles connections-Peter Asher's sister Jane was Paul McCartney's girlfriend, and Paul wrote nearly all of the duo's early hits. But Lady Godiva, which came toward the end of their career, attracted attention for a different reason: it was branded obscene by the mayor and banned in the real Lady Godiva's hometown of Coventry, England.

Petula Clark, a British child star of the '40s, didn't conquer America until the mid-'60s, with material like I Know a Place. The Hollies, smooth harmony popsters who'd had great success in Britain with their own songs, didn't crack the American top 10 until Graham Gouldman (later of 10cc) gave them Bus Stop, written for a girl he used to see around his neighborhood.

The Searchers came together as the backup for Liverpool balladeer Johnny Sandon before going on their own, taking their name from the John Ford Western starring John Wayne. Their remake of the Clovers' Love Potion Number Nine was released in England only as an album track, but it gave them their sole top-10 hit in the States. Millie Small, the Jamaican "Queen of Bluebeat," was brought to London by Island Records boss Chris Blackwell on the strength of her My Boy Lollipop smash. which then snuck onto American charts as a girl-group record.

Motown bustled through the mid-'60s. The Supremes were struggling for a breakthrough when the writing-producing team of Brian Holland-Lamont Dozier-Eddie Holland coerced them into cutting Where Did Our Love Go, which had already been rejected by the Marvelettes. Though Mary Wilson was almost chosen to sing lead, H-D-H decided to go with Diana Ross-and when the tune became the trio's first No. 1, the roles of both women were sealed for the rest of the decade.

The Miracles' Ooh Baby Baby was one of many irresistible declarations of devotion written by leader Smokey Robinson to his wife Claudette Rogers, who once sang with the group. Marvin Gaye may not have written How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You), another H-D-H job, but he considered it yet another of his musical vows to his wife Anna, 17 years his senior and the sis­ter of Motown founder Berry Gordy.

The 4 Seasons had been indomitable since 1962, and in 1964 Dawn (Go Away) was the latest smash written by organ man Bob Gaudio and produced by Bob Crewe, who was deep into his Phil Spector phase. Spector, meanwhile, had meant the Righteous Brothers' Unchained Melody for a B side, but it did so well that the blue­eyed soulsters followed with remakes of several more '50s standards.

Much of the rest of American music was in transition. Gary Lewis, the son of comedian Jerry, was the drummer of the Playboys until producer Snuff Garrett, his Beverly Hills neighbor, moved him out front for high-class bubblegum like Save Your Heart for Me. Whacked-out country songs like Dang Me proved consistent pop crossovers for Roger Miller. The Cyrkle was the sole American act managed by Brian Epstein, and Red Rubber Ball was cowritten by folk-rockers Paul Simon (of Simon and Garfunkel) and Bruce Woodley (of the Seekers). Along Comes Mary, the Association's first hit, benefited saleswise from allegations that it was a marijuana song.

Even a couple of old-fashioned, early-'60s balladeers were holding on. J. Frank Wilson's Last Kiss was written by Wayne Cochran, a flamboyant white James Brown imitator who lived in a $20-a-month shack on Route 1941 in rural Georgia (and was thus witness to his fair share of highway carnage). The wreck that prompted this classic teen weeper happened about 15 miles away, near Barnesville, when a 1954 Chevy Impala containing three teenage couples drove right under a stalled flatbed truck at a fog-shrouded fork in the road. Cochran's version of Last Kiss was a regional smash for the independent Gala label, and it won him a contract with King (his idol's label). He recut the song there, but owner Syd Nathan didn't think it was good enough to promote. So Wilson and his Texas band got the national hit after producer Major Bill Smith pitched their version to Josie Records in New York.

A dubious Bobby Vinton cut There! I've Said It Again at the urging of a Cincinnati DJ who was emceeing a package show Vinton opened. The singer was so stunned when it went to No. 1 that he didn't even notice the writing on the wall: the record that replaced it at the top of the charts was the Beatles' I Want to Hold Your Hand.

-John Morthland

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