Superhits - The Early '60s

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 1992

Labels: Warner Special Products, Time Life Music

Time-Life released this disc as Various - Superhits - The Early '60s (SUD-15) in the Super Hits series in 1992, and as Various - AM Gold - The Early '60s (AM1-19) in the AM Gold series in 1996.

℗ 1992 Warner Special Products
© 1992 Time Life Inc.

Track durations obtained from software.

Publishing:
Track 1- Claridge Music Inc. ASCAP
Track 2- Chappell & Co./World Songs Publishing , Inc. ASCAP
Track 3, 13, 15- Screen Gems-EMI Music Inc. BMI
Track 4- Iza Music Corp. (c/o Leiber and Stoller)/Songs Of PolyGram International Inc. BMI
Track 5- Catherine Hines/Volta Music ASCAP
Track 6- Careers BMG Music Publishing, Inc. BMI
Track 7- Edwin H. Morris and Co. ASCAP
Track 8-Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. BMI
Track 9- Leiber-Stoller Songs, Inc. ASCAP
Track 10- EMI Unart Catalog Inc. BMI
Track 11- Champion Music Corp. BMI
Track 12- Colgems-EMI Music Inc. ASCAP
Track 14- Unichappell Music Inc. BMI
Track 16- Chappell & Co. ASCAP
Track 17- PolyGram International Publishing, Inc. ASCAP
Track 18- Elvis Presley Music/Maraville Music Inc./Unichappell Music, Inc. BMI
Track 19- United Artists Music Co., Inc. ASCAP
Track 20- EMI Miller Catalog Inc. ASCAP
Track 21-Stone Agate Music BMI
Track 22- Mariposa Music Inc. BMI

Complete liner notes:

The Singing Nun's Dominique-a tribute to the founder of the Dominican order-was one of the least likely pop hits of all time. But that's the way it was in the early 1960s: It was a wide­open era in which songs like Kyu Sakamoto's Sukiyaki, another foreign import that didn't make a whit of sense to most Americans, could become a smash.

Dominique was the product of one Sister Luc-Gabrielle-born Jeanine Deckers-from a convent in Fichermont, Belgium. The nun had written several tunes that won prizes at religious youth retreats, so one of the order's elders asked her to record enough material for an album; the convent would then press up a couple hundred discs to use as gifts. Sister Luc-Gabrielle and a chorus of four went to the Philips studios in Brussels, where they were greeted with skepticism, but they completed their assigned task. When the label heard the results, it decided to release the album commercially under the name Soeur Sourire (Sister Smile). When that album did well in Europe, Philips' American branch took interest; Dominique was pulled as a stateside single under the name of the Singing Nun. It went all the way to the top of the charts, holding sway over such winners as the Kingsmen's Louie Louie and Lesley Gore's She's a Fool.

In 1966, Debbie Reynolds starred in a movie about the nun's life, and Deckers decided to leave the convent in an attempt to capitalize on her sudden stardom. All her subsequent singles flopped, including Glory Be to God for the Golden Pill, a hymn to birth control that pretty much assured she could never return. In 1985, she and her companion of 10 years, Annie Pecher, both committed suicide with a combination of alcohol and barbiturates; their center for autistic children had gone out of business, and they owed substantial back taxes.

The Drifters had been rhythm and blues pioneers since 1953, but the group didn't conquer the Top 40 until 1959's There Goes My Baby. This came right after manager Gene Treadwell (who owned rights to the name) fired the original members in a financial dispute and hired in their place a group formerly known as the Five Crowns, changing the leader's name from Benjamin Nelson to Ben E. King.

The Drifters were produced by the hot team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and Save the Last Dance for Me was written by the hot team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. One of Shuman's periodic vacations in Mexico inspired the song, and Pomus' lyrics were structured ("and in whose arms you're gonna be") to put a Latin rhythm in the vocals. Atlantic meant the song to be the B side of Nobody but Me but flipped the single at Dick Clark's suggestion.

One hit later, King left the Drifters after more money battles with Treadwell. As a gesture to his mates, he reworked an old gospel favorite into Stand by Me for the Drifters, but Treadwell vetoed the song. Leiber and Stoller revised it and then pro­duced it for King to help launch his solo career.

The 4 Seasons, on the other hand, represented a new wave, and they went straight to the top with their 1962 debut. The group evolved out of the Four Lovers, a New Jersey group featuring Frankie Valli. After renaming themselves for a Jersey bowling alley lounge where they failed an audition, they began working as backup singers, mainly for Philly producer Bob Crewe.

Bob Gaudio pounded out what became Sherry in 15 minutes at the piano before a rehearsal; because he had no tape recorder handy, he dashed off some words around the tentative title Terry to help him remember it long enough to teach the rest of the group. Crewe disliked the song, saying he would cut it only if the title were changed to Perry-that was the name of one of the labels he worked for, and he thought the gender bending would make the record stand out. Jackie (after then-President Kennedy's wife) was also considered before Crewe opted to name the tune after the three-year­old daughter of WMCA DJ Jack Spector, who then did his part by breaking the single.

Georgia country-rocker Brenda Lee and producer Owen Bradley laid I'm Sorry down in five minutes at the end of a session; it was one of the first Nashville productions to use a pop string section (as opposed to fiddles), the idea being for the instruments to repeat the title phrase each time she sang it. Decca was leery about releasing such a mature song by a 15-year-old, but Brenda and her manager, Dub Allbritten (who co-wrote it with Ronnie Self), insisted.

Like Lee, Sue Thompson straddled a line between country and rock. The Missouri farm girl moved to the Bay Area in her teens and began performing in cabarets and country TV shows. After kicking around several labels, she signed with Hickory. The Nashville label (and arm of the powerful Acuff-Rose publishing house) supplied her debut hit, crossover writer John D. Loudermilk's Sad Movies (Make Me Cry).

Timi Yuro moved from Chicago to Los Angeles as a teenager, then hooked up with writer-producer Clyde Otis for a handful of dramatic pop­rock hits that began with Hurt. Linda Scott, born in Queens and raised in Teaneck, New Jersey, launched her brief career with I've Told Every Little Star, written by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern for their 1932 production Music in the Air.

Perhaps the biggest female star in the nation was Connie Francis. She was approaching the zenith of her career in 196l when she sang and acted in the movie Where the Boys Are. The song was written by Howie Greenfield and Neil Sedaka, a Brooklyn team since junior high days. By 1960, Greenfield and Sedaka were also writing hits like Calendar Girl for Sedaka himself to sing.

Gene Pitney was in a similar situation. The Connecticut electronics whiz wrote (with his manager-publisher Aaron Schroeder) Rubber Ball for Bobby Vee, though Pitney gave his half of the credits to his mother to avoid a publishing conflict. Meanwhile, as an artist Pitney was cutting Ned Washington and Dimitri Tiomkin's Town without Pity, the incongruous title tune to a Kirk Douglas movie: The song is standard misunderstood-teens fare, but the flick is about a rape trial in postwar, American-occupied Germany.

Other hits were not without their price. Dion and the Belmonts' remake of the Rodgers and Hart standard Where or When peaked while the lead singer was in the hospital detoxifying from heroin addiction. And Marty Robbins, who grew up in Arizona, wrote El Paso in honor of the city where he felt the West begins. But at five minutes, it was so long that his label would release it only as an album cut. When it did finally come out as a single, however, El Paso became the first No. l hit of the '60s and the first country song to win a pop Grammy.

Larry Hall had no success beyond Sandy, a rather fevered reading of country vet Terry Fell's love song; Hall's single began on a local label in his native Cincinnati before being picked up nationally by Strand. When a subdued Elvis Presley returned to the scene after his Army stint, Chicago's Ral Donner set about to emulate the old Elvis with material like the pointed You Don't Know What You've Got.

Brook Benton and Dinah Washington were two of the most versatile, and unclassifiable, vocal stylists of the era. Though they had individual reputations as ballad singers, as a duo they proved just as masterful with rollicking duets like Baby (You've Got What It Takes)-the success of which stands as further testimony to just how wide-open the early '60s were.

-John Morthland