Saturday, April 5, 2014

The Saturday Surveys: April 5th

This was the week that The Beatles did the impossible ... 

They occupied the Top Five Positions of The Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles Chart!

This week "Can't Buy Me Love" was the #1 Record in the Country, followed by "Twist And Shout" at #2, "She Loves You" at #3, "I Want To Hold Your Hand" at #4 and "Please Please Me" at #5.  In addition, The Beatles also had seven OTHER titles on the chart that week:  "I Saw Her Standing There" (#31), "From Me To You" (#41), "Do You Want To Know A Secret" (#46), "All My Loving" (#58), "You Can't Do That" (#65), "Roll Over Beethoven" (#68) and "Thank You Girl" (#79), giving The Beatles TWELVE of the Top 100 spots on the chart.  Incredibly, they would increase that total to 14 the following week when "There's A Place" and "Love Me Do" premiered on the charts!

This week we take a look at some of the other charts from around the country for this week in 1964, starting with this WMEX Chart from Boston, where we find The Beatles holding down a dozen positions.  What's odd here are some of those titles ... "P.S. I Love You", the flip-side of "Love Me Do", is already at #1 ... it wouldn't even debut on The Billboard Chart until the following week.  ("Love Me Do" is listed separately at #8, while The Beatles' OTHER Top Ten Records include the two-sided hits "Twist And Shout" / "There's A Place" and "Thank You Girl" / "Do You Want To Know A Secret".  In addition, you'll also find their latest release "Can't Buy Me Love" as well as "All My Lovin'" nested in The Top Ten.



Drop down the chart and you'll find two LP tracks, "Till There Was You" and "Please Mr. Postman" at numbers 11 and 14 ... and then, in the "Ten More" section, The Fab Four are back with "This Boy" and "Boys", songs not released as singles here in The States.  (Apparently WMEX was all over the place with their reporting back in 1964!!!)



Jumping over to WABC, The Beatles are at #1 with "She Loves You", #3 with "Twist And Shout", #4 with "I Want To Hold Your Hand", #6 with "Please Please Me" and #9 with "Can't Buy Me Love"!  (Five of The Top Ten Records belong to The Fab Four!)

They've also got four more tracks in the lower region of the chart ... that's where you'll find songs like "Do You Want To Know A Secret", "Roll Over Beethoven", "All My Lovin'" and "I Saw Her Standing There".

The British Invasion is also represented with hits by The Dave Clark Five, The Searchers, Dusty Springfield, The Swinging Blue Jeans and (in the "Pick Hit Of The Week" spot) The Hollies!  That means 15 of the 33 titles listed on this chart belong to British Artists we'd never even heard of four months earlier!


WHK, a Tunedex station out of Cleveland, shows that this British Flavor was not reserved for just the East Coast ... they've got The Dave Clark Five at #1 with "Glad All Over" (as well as at #8 with their follow-up hit "Bits And Pieces".

You'll find The Beatles all over this chart, too ... with "Do You Want To Know A Secret" at #3, "Can't Buy Me Love" at #4, "Twist and Shout" at #6, "She Loves You" at #10, "Please Please Me" / "From Me To You" at #23 and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" / "I Saw Her Standing There" at #33.  They also held down two of The Top Ten Album positions with "Meet The Beatles" (#2) and "Introducing The Beatles" (#6)


For those of you Beatle'd out by the ways of 1964, we jump ahead a year and find Herman's Hermits with two of the top three hits on the WICE Mighty 1290 Hits Of The Week Survey.  "Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter" is at #2, followed by "Silhouettes" (up 14 positions from the week before) at #3.  Peter Noone and Company also have the #13 record with "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat".

It's still a VERY British-looking chart however ... Freddie and the Dreamers are at #1 with "I'm Telling You Now", Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders are at #4 with "Game Of Love" and The Kinks ("Tired Of Waiting For You", #6), Petula Clark ("I Know A Place", #7), The Moody Blues ("Go Now",#8), The Ivy League ("Funny How Love Can Be", #10), The Rolling Stones ("The Last Time", #11), The Seekers, and Australian act who made their mark when the relocated to Great Britain (as The Bee Gees would a few years later) at #12 with "I'll Never Find Another You",  Sandie Shaw ("Girl Don't Come", #14), "Cast Your Fate To The Wind" (Sounds Orchestral, #17), The Beatles ("Eight Days A Week", #19), Shirley Bassey ("Goldfinger", #23), The Hollies ("Yes I Will", #25), Chad and Jeremy ("If I Loved You", #26), The Searchers ("Bumble Bee", #27), Gerry and the Pacemakers ("It's Gonna Be All-Right", #31) and The Zephyrs ("She's Lost You" at #36), giving British Artists a stranglehold on TWENTY of The Top 40 Hits!



Jumping ahead to 1968, we see our own Chicagoland WCFL Chart saluting our local talent ... The New Colony Six are at #1 with "I Will Always Think About You", ahead of three of the biggest acts of the day, The Beatles, The Monkees and The Union Gap ... while The Cryan' Shames are holding steady at #11 with their version of "Up On The Roof", a version Carole King liked so much she actually had it played at one of her weddings!  (Or so we're told!)

Not much else here in the way of surprises (although after seeing this chart I was inspired to play Georgie Fame's long-forgotten hit "The Ballad Of Bonnie And Clyde") ... so you'll find that one here today, along with the latest hits from our hometown heroes!








Finally, for anybody who thinks all good music stopped in the '70's, I dare you to take a look at this chart from April 3, 1970 and NOT feel inspired to dig out some of your old 45's.

MAN, what a list!!!  Apple Records dominating three out of the top four positions with "Let It Be" by The Beatles, "Instant Karma" by John Ono Lennon and "Come And Get It" by Badfinger.

And check out this Top Ten!  The Carpenters' version of "Ticket To Ride"!!!  The Frijid Pink version of "House Of The Rising Sun"!  You get hits like "Spirit In The Sky" by Norman Greenbaum and "American Woman" by The Guess Who, songs that are STILL played to death on a daily basis 44 years later alongside GREAT tracks like "Something's Burning" by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition and "Love Or Let Me Be Lonely" by The Friends Of Distraction ... INCREDIBLE music that is virtually ignored today.

Going down the chart I wanna just play this entire Top 40 for you!!!

"Long Lonesome Highway" by Michael Parks (the theme song from "Then Came Bronson"), "Little Green Bag" by The George Baker Selection (which you hear today in television commercials ... yet radio still won't play it!), "For The Love Of Him" by Bobbi Martin, "Reflections Of My Life" by Marmalade, "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel, Chicago's own Ides of March with "Vehicle", "Up The Ladder To The Roof", a GREAT hit by the post-Diana Ross Supremes, "Shilo" by Neil Diamond, "My Baby Loves Lovin'" by White Plains and "Hitchin' A Ride" by Vanity Fare ... "Which Way You Goin' Billy" by The Poppy Family and "Get Ready" by Rare Earth.  Damn ... now THIS is a countdown!!!

And check out #18 ... it's the Tension version of "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is", a song we featured several months back here in Forgotten Hits.  Meanwhile, Chicago is climbing the charts with "Make Me Smile", the success of which will prompt Columbia Records to re-release some of the great tracks from their first CTA album that were over-looked the first time around.

The Five Stairsteps doing The Beatles' hit "Dear Prudence" ... this one would ultimately end up on the B-Side of their first big hit a month or two later, "O-o-h Child" ... along with SO many long-forgotten hits that barely made a dent on the national charts.  Now THIS is a cool chart!

 

Wow!  What to feature when there's just SO much great music to choose from!  Hopefully you'll be inspired to seek out some of these tracks for your own listening enjoyment ... meanwhile, we couldn't narrow it down to less than ten tracks that we really wanted to hear again!













That last chart was too good ... so we're jacked to run one more.  (Wow!  SEVEN charts this week in our Saturday Surveys Feature!!!  Hope you guys are lovin' this as much as I am!!!)

This next chart surprised me ... coming from WHAR, a Clarksburg, West Virginia radio station, I was amazed to see a station billing itself as "The Rock Pile" featuring songs in its countdown by The Bellamy Brothers, Silver Connection, Barry Manilow, The Pure Prairie League, Joni Mitchell, The Captain and Tennille, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes, Neil Sedaka, Seals and Crofts, John Sebastian, Donna Summer, The Bay City Rollers, The Carpenters and Barry White ... somehow, it just didn't seem to fit.  If you were rock, you were rock!

And, to a degree anyway, they WERE rock ... 

You'll find big hits on this week's chart by Gary Wright, Peter Frampton, Bad Company, The Electric Light Orchestra, Fleetwood Mac, Nazareth, Kiss, The J. Geils Band, Jethro Tull, Ted Nugent, Aerosmith and Queen ... it just had to be kind of weird counting these down and hearing "Love To Love You Baby" played back-to-back with "Locomotive Breath" ... or numbers 24 thru 19 played "countdown style":  "Theme from S.W.A.T." by The Rhythm Heritage into "Queen Of Clubs" by K.C. and the Sunshine Band into the beautiful "Shannon" by Henry Gross, segued into "Shout It Out Loud" by Kiss into "Lonely Night" by The Captain and Tennille into "Love Hurts" by Nazareth.

Then again, it is EXACTLY THIS that made Top 40 Radio so interesting and exciting back in the day.  (Although I will be the first to admit that, for me anyway, it had gotten a whole lot LESS exciting by 1976!!!)

Still this chart shows the wide variety we might hear while spinning the dial circa 1976.