'66: Nancy Sinatra, the Beach Boys, the Young Rascals

Nancy Sinatra: These Boots Are Made For Walkin'

You might think that Nancy Sinatra would have had, so to speak, a leg up on showbiz, since her father, Frank, was the #1 male singer of the 20th Century (and he wasn't done by 1966 by any means). Yet, it took Nancy a total of 16 single releases on her father's label, Reprise, by the time she clicked with "Boots," written and produced by mustachioed Oklahoman Lee Hazlewood (1929-2007). By 1966 Nancy was better known for her on-screen escapades with Elvis in Speedway and also in features like For Those Who Think Young and Get Yourself a College Girl. 

Hazlewood, for his part, had been active since the 1950s, mostly as producer for guitar legend Duane Eddy, he had written Sanford Clark's 1956 rockabilly hit "The Fool," and "Houston" for Frank's Rat Pack partner, Dean Martin. (The title of the song is a line in the Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin 1963 Western 4 For Texas.) Hazlewood encouraged Nancy to get in touch with her tougher side when recording "Boots": "I know there's garbage in there somewhere." After "Boots" clicked, Nancy and Lee teamed up for over a dozen more hits.

Jessica Simpson had a Top 20 hit in 2005 with a remake on the soundtrack for The Dukes of Hazzard; she rewrote the lyrics to befit the personality of her character Daisy Duke. The song has been covered dozens of times by disparate artists such as the Supremes, Loretta Lynn, Billy Ray Cyrus and Boy George.

The Beach Boys -- Good Vibrations

Was Brian Wilson the first prog-rocker? The familiar 3-minutes and change "Good Vibrations" is actually distilled down from lengthy musical sections that added up to a full half hour -- more than the 23 minutes generally allotted to album sides in 1966. The original "Good Vibrations" sessions can be heard, in large part, on the Beach Boys' 1993 box set (of the same title) and others can be heard on their 2001 compilation, Hawthorne, CA. Brian Wilson's reputation as a studio perfectionist is fully heard on these, and also the Pet Sounds sessions. 

Working with the Beach Boys' 1960s studio group, the legendary Wrecking Crew, Brian Wilson produced what some call the world's first "pop symphony" with layers of overdubs and instrumentation, including some never before heard on a pop record, such as a theremin. Tony Asher's original lyrics were more explicitly "trippy," but Brian and Mike Love rewrote them for pop airplay. The song was originally going to be the centerpiece of the Beach Boy's Smile album, an experimental suite Wilson wrote with Van Dyke Parks, but Brian could never complete it and it was shelved until 2004, when he recorded it with a different group of musicians. The other 'Boys were never crazy about Smile; Mike Love admonished Wilson "don't f!@# with the formula." Indeed the Beach Boys didn't return to the top ten after "Good Vibrations" until 1975, and that was a remake of Chuck Berry's "Rock and Roll Music."

Brian was ahead of his time in one regard, though: in the next few years, album-side long conceptual pieces would become the rage in rock, with Jethro Tull's A Passion Play, Pink Floyd's "Echoes" and Dark Side of the Moon, most of what Yes recorded, and hundreds of others. Todd Rundgren had a hit version in 1976 that carefully tried to recreate the original note for note (as were all the songs on his Faithful LP that year).

Here's a live version from 1976.

Young Rascals -- Good Lovin'

Think AC/DC's Angus Young was the first rocker to go on stage in a schoolboy uniform? When the Young Rascals first began performing on stage in 1965, all four of them did. Fortunately that phase didn't last long. That year keyboardist/singer Felix Cavaliere, percussionist Eddie Brigati and guitar player Gene Cornish were coming off a stint with Joey Dee and the Starlighters (the trio arrived after "Peppermint Twist" hit in 1961, though Eddie's brother David had been with Dee at that time). Joining with drummer Dino Danelli, who had played in Lionel Hampton's band in New Orleans and in session work, the four worked on a repetiore of about 25 songs, many written by Cavaliere and Brigati, and made their debut in '65 New Jersey roadhouse called the Choo Choo Club and, gaining a following,  began a heavy tour schedule in the NY-NJ area and came to the attention of promoter Sid Bernstein, who had brought the Beatles to America, and signed with the Atlantic label, known for its R&B and soul acts.

Their first single, "I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore," charted but not highly. For their second 45 they turned to a song that had been a minor hit in early 1965 for the R&B group The Olympics ("Western Movies") and it was an immediate smash. Here's a live version from 1966.

"Good Lovin'" has been covered by The Who (their 1965 BBC Sessions version was probably picked up via The Olympics') and the Grateful Dead stretched it out to a lengthy jam in concert.

'66 - ? and the Mysterians, Johnny Rivers

? and the Mysterians -- 96 Tears

Here's Rudy Martinez, the "?" in ? and the Mysterians, and the band playing "96 Tears" in 1999, sounding like they did 33 years before when they came out of nowhere exploiting the Tex Mex sound that Doug Sahm had pioneered with the Sir Douglas Quintet a few years before, organizing rock and roll in the process. Rudy, like Mott the Hoople's Ian Hunter, has still never removed his sunglasses in all these years.

The original "96 Tears" was recorded in the Mysterians' manager Lilly Gonzalez's living room in Adrian, Michigan. Martinez and the rest of the group were born in Mexico but had all emigrated with their parents to the Saginaw Valley in the Wolverine State. "96 Tears," originally released on the Pa-Go-Go label, gained significant airplay and popularity in Flint, Bay City, and finally Detroit, where Cameo Records president Neil Bogart (later an executive at Buddah Records and the founder of the Casablanca and Boardwalk labels) heard it, purchased the master and released it nationwide; it hit #1 for a week on October 29th. According to legend, the original title was "69 Tears," but Martinez has never officially confirmed that. 

"96 Tears" has been covered most notably by Aretha Franklin, Big Maybelle (whose version hit #96), British bands The Stranglers and Inspiral Carpets (as you might expect from those two keyboard-heavy groups),  Joe "King" Carrasco, and Garland Jeffreys.

Johnny Rivers --Poor Side of Town

This was Brooklyn-born John Ramistella's biggest hit and his lone #1. John and his parents moved to Baton Rouge, LA when he was three and he became proficient on guitar and mandolin beginning at age eight. As a teenager he visited New York and Nashville to find work in recording studios and sat in with local bands. On one such visit he met legendary deejay Alan Freed, who liked what he heard and got him a contract with Gone Records, changing his name to Rivers in the process.  The single he put out on Gone didn't click and he went to Nashville, where he forged a friendship with Roger Miller and wrote "I'll Make Believe" for Ricky Nelson. 

After meeting Nelson in Los Angeles in 1958 Rivers found that he enjoyed the southern California lifestyle; by 1963 he was building up a following at Gazzara's on Sunset Strip and soon was headlining at a new club that would spawn the careers of many southern California superstars, the Whiskey a -Go-Go. Things fell into place quickly as producer Lou Adler signed him to a contract with Imperial Records, where he would join Nelson. His first few major hits ("Memphis," "Maybelline," Seventh Son" ) were recorded at the Whisky.

"Poor Side of Town," in which Rivers welcomes back a girlfriend who had strayed with a wealthy suitor, was Rivers' only major hit that he wrote himself. It hit #1 on November 12, 42 years to the day I am writing this.

'66: Beatles, Petula, Monkees

The Beatles -- Paperback Writer

Prior to this hit, Paul McCartney's bass was hardly audible on most Beatles recordings, or certainly wasn't prominent. That all changed on "Paperback Writer," their second biggest hit in 1966 ("We Can Work It Out" was the biggest) and a return to #1 after "Nowhere Man" was a relative stiff, only hitting #3 Billboard. Paul usually used a Hofner but switched to a Rickenbacker for this session at Abbey Road Studios, and a loudspeaker was placed in front of the bass speaker. In that era, recording studios were loath to use a fat bass on waxings because needles often jumped when encountering it. EMI, the Beatles' British label, alleviated this with new technology called the ATOC -- Automatic Transient Overload Control. Paul's bass was almost played as a lead instrument on later Beatles recordings (re "Something").

McCartney's theme here is written in the form of a submission letter to a publishing house "Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?" It's possible he wrote it as a subtle jibe at John Lennon, who had already published two books of light humor (In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works. American fans, by the way, may have missed the pun in the latter title, a takeoff on the British spanner, meaning wrench). Paul has said, though, he was inspired by reading an article in the Daily Mail (the newspaper is mentioned in the song) about an aspiring author.

John and George sneak in the words "Frere Jacques" ("Brother John") in the backing vocal on the second verse, but notice they come in a little late the second time around.

In England, "Paperback Writer" b/w "Rain" was promoted in trade publications with their infamous "butcher photo" in which the smirking Fab Four posed with broken baby dolls and cuts of freshly butchered meat. The photo made its way onto the cover of the Capitol compilation LP, The Beatles -- Yesterday and Today but Capitol quickly realized what a mistake this would have been -- The Beatles still had pretty much a squeaky-clean image in 1966 and this wouldn't have been the way to broaden people's perceptions -- and recalled the album, replacing it with a more innocuous group picture.

Petula Clark -- My Love

The rollicking "My Love" is probably my favorite Petula Clark hit, but when her chief writer, her husband Tony Hatch, first presented it to her after writing it on a transatlantic flight over the North Pole from London to Los Angeles, Petula despised the song and, even after duly recording it in LA, begged Warner Brothers to not release it. The label's instincts were right and it became Clark's second USA #1, and in so doing she became the first British woman to enjoy two chart toppers in the USA.

The Monkees - Last Train to Clarksville

The "Pre-Fab Four" 's first single hit the #1 mark in November, 1966, composed by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who play guitar on the recording. In fact the only Monkee on the record was Mickey Dolenz; as a rule, the Monkees did not play a big role in the instrumentation on their early smashes. That wasn't an exception for mid-Sixties pop acts, however; the Beach Boys and even the Byrds often brought in studio professionals to augment their sound, and in many cases, even replace the band in the studio. After a time, though, the Monkees thought themselves proficient enough to play everything on their recordings and did so, to a great degree, on their Headquarters album in 1967. The distinctive opening lick is played by ace studio guitarist Louie Shelton.

There's a poignancy in the Boyce and Hart lyric that is often glossed over after you've heard it a hundred times: a man is in a railroad station going off to war, telephoning his girlfriend hoping for one last meeting; he says, "And I don't know if I'm ever coming home." This was in 1966, before the country had largely turned against the war in Vietnam. Boyce and Hart did not specifically mean Clarksville, TN, Clarksville, AZ, Clarksville, MO, or Clarksville, IA, Clarksville, IN, or any other Clarksville; they were being deliberately vague.

'66: Percy Sledge, Supremes, Tommy James

Percy Sledge -- When A Man Loves A Woman

Here's a live take of Percy Sledge's classic that he wrote during the time he was working as an orderly at Colbert County Hospital in Leighton, Alabama. Sledge was also a singer in a local group, the Esquires, and at his church, Galilee Baptist Church; he has said in interviews that he worked up the song on stage one night, miserable from a breakup, with bass player Cameron Lewis and organist Arthur Wright (who are credited on the 45 label due to Sledge's generosity). He auditioned the song for local producer Quin Ivy and recorded it with the renowned Rick Hall's FAME studio band in Muscle Shoals. Released on the Atlantic label, the song quickly ascended to #1 in May '66. 

"When a Man Loves a Woman" has also charted with versions by Esther Phillips and Bette Midler, and went to #1 again in 1991 in a version by Michael Bolton, who performs it here with Sledge. The song's title was used for a 1994 film starring Andy Garcia and Meg Ryan.

Supremes -- You Keep Me Hangin' On

Probably my favorite Supremes classic next to "Stop! In the Name of Love," this Holland, Dozier, Holland classic concerns an ex-boyfriend who won't leave, wishing to be "just friends", while Diana Ross is having none of it. Lamont Dozier inserted a "Morse code" guitar figure into the song after hearing a similar sound effect on a radio news report, and it became one of the Supremes' most rock-oriented hits. The Supremes recorded eight versions with Motown's The Funk Brothers before they had just the version H-D-H was satisfied with. 

It's one of the most-covered songs in the Motown songbook; Vanilla Fudge did it first, with their trademark lugubriously lengthy sound, followed by artists as diverse as Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Tim Buckley, Rod Stewart (with Vanilla Fudge drummer Carmine Appice) , Kim Wilde (a #1 cover) and 2007 American Idol runnerup Blake Lewis.

Tommy James and the Shondells -- Hanky Panky

In late 1963 the Raindrops needed a B-side for their latest single "That Boy John," and Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich wrote and performed "Hanky Panky," then promptly forgot about it. The record went nowhere when JFK was assassinated on November 22, scotching any chance a record about a boy named John would be a hit, apparently. 

"Hanky Panky" did make an impression, though, on 15-year-old Tommy Jackson, who heard a local group, the Spinners (not the Spinners of "I'll Be Around" fame) doing the song at a club in South Bend, Indiana. Seeing the crowd response, he hastened to cut it (with improvised lyrics, as Jackson, by now Tommy James, had forgotten the original Barry/Greenwich words) with his own band, the Shondells (named for a guitarist Jackson admired named Troy Shondell). The song did well in the midwest, slipped off the charts there, and James finished high school.

In 1965 the song began to gain popularity again when local DJs in Pittsburgh, PA began to play it and it was bootlegged to play at dance parties around town (an estimated 80,000 nonlegal versions were sold this way). DJ Mad Mike Metro convinced James to come to town to promote "Hanky Panky." He had to hastily assemble another Shondells backing band -- a local group called the Raconteurs agreed to it, and so originated the Tommy James and the Shondells that hit the charts continuously till the end of the 1960s. James, meanwhile, sold the master recorded back in his hometown, Niles, MI, to Roulette Records, it got to radio nationwide, and became a Number One smash -- the sort of um, grass roots sort of star-making probably impossible today.

'66: Troggs, Four Tops, Stones

The Troggs, Wild Thing

The Troggs were 4 lads from Andover, England, who originally called themselves the Troglodytes, (as in cavemen) in 1965, with singer Reg Ball, who changed his name to Presley as a tribute to you-know-who when they signed with Fontana Records, which released "Wild Thing" at the same time an American label, Atco, put out the identical song on 45. With an unmistakable descending note at the start of the song, and an unusual ocarina solo on the middle 8 by Reg Presley, Wild Thing has a raw, intense vibe that still reverberates after over forty years. Chip Taylor wrote the song (he would also compose the gentle "Angel in the Morning" for Merrilee Rush a couple of years later. Taylor, whose real name is James Wesley Voight, is the brother of actor Jon Voight and uncle of actress Angelica Jolie. 

"Wild Thing" was originally recorded by Jordan Christopher and the Wild Ones. It would also be a comedy hit in 1967 by Bill "Senator Bobby" Minkin and in 1974 for British group Fancy. Kim Fowley produced a version by Cathy Rich, the daughter of drummer Buddy Rich  ("Wild thing, my name is Cathy and I'm wild!") And, it was memorably used for the "Major League" films with Charlie Sheen in the 1980s.

Trog was the name of Joan Crawford's final feature film, playing an anthropologist who discovers an apeman. I saw this in 1970 at the old Dyker Theatre on 86th Street in Bay Ridge on a double feature with a Christopher Lee Dracula Hammer film.

Four Tops -- Reach Out, I'll Be There 

This was the Four Tops' biggest hit, peaking at Number One for two weeks and spending 15 weeks on the chart in late 1966; Levi Stubbs, Renaldo Benson, Lawrence Payton, and Abdul Fakir had spent 10 years together by then, racking up hits after signing with Motown in 1963 and acquiring the Holland, Dozier, Holland team as writers and producers. The song also went to #1 in England.

The first line of the song is "Well if you feel that you can't go on" and some mixes cut out the word "feel," making the line hard to understand. The line "just look over your shoulder!" was repeated by Michael Jackson in the Jackson 5's 1970 smash, the similarly named "I'll Be There." The song has been covered in numerous charting versions, including discs by Merrilee Rush and Michael Bolton, but no one is really able to get a Four Tops song across the way the late Levi Stubbs did.

The Rolling Stones -- Paint It, Black

This was the Stones' 7th Top Ten and third Number One. Throughout 1965 and into 1966, they would record and release in a fevered pace, putting out ten singles and b-sides during that time, hardly slowing down at all until 1969, when "Honky Tonk Women" would be their lone missive.  

Though George Harrison introduced the sitar to rock music on the Beatles' Rubber Soul LP in late 1965 on "Norwegian Wood," leave it to the Stones to be the first to use it on a major single release, played by Brian Jones. Jones was the multi-instrumentalist in the Stones; he was proficent with guitar, sitar, tamboura, dulcimer, organ, mellotron, recorder, harmonica, marimba and xylophone (think of "Under My Thumb.")

The comma in the title was added by London Records and doesn't make any sense grammatically.  Eric Burdon and War hit with a cover version in Holland in 1970,and it has been recut by many other acts, as seen on this wikipedia entry.

'66: Association, Supremes

The Association: Cherish

So, does your oldies station play the "long" version of "Cherish", the one with the extra "and I do ... cherish you" at the end? In the mid-sixties, radio stations were quite wary of songs that ran longer than three minutes due to allotted commercial times ("if you're gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit" sang Billy Joel in The Entertainer.) Thus, out went the extra "and I do" from "Cherish", which made a 3:25 recording come in at 3:13, and it listed as 3:00 on the 45 sleeve. 

When I was a kid, hearing it on AM radio, I always thought the lyrics went "I'm beginning to think that manners never found the words that could make you want me," when they actually go: "man has never found", but I think my way makes sense as well. Composer Terry Kirkman originally envisioned a slow number for the Righteous Brothers to sing. "Cherish", recorded in mid-tempo, replaced "Enter The Young" as the band's followup to "Along Comes Mary" and became their first #1 hit. The line "just the right sound" was used as the title of their 2002 retrospective on Rhino Records, for which my friend Dawn Eden conducted interviews and wrote liner notes.

The Supremes: You Can't Hurry Love

After a slight slump for Motown's biggest act (their previous two hits, "My World Is Empty Without You" and "Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart" had actually failed to hit Number One) Diana, Mary and Flo were back on top with a theme of motherly advice. Brian Holland's infectious, insistent rhythm has been heard on many pop records since, such as Katrina and the Waves' "Walking On Sunshine." 

1966: Righteous Brothers, Mamas & The Papas, Beatles, Spoonful

Righteous Brothers -- (You're My) Soul and Inspiration

This was baritone Bill Medley and tenor Bobby Hatfield's final Top Ten  and the last one they would enjoy until 1974's "Rock and Roll Heaven." It was composed by Brill Building stalwarts Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil a couple of years before, when Medley and Hatfield were still under the tutelage of maestro Phil Spector. After Spector sold their contracts to MGM and its subsidiary Verve for $1 million in 1966, the Righteous Brothers wanted to make a solid impression right away and revisited the song, which was the right choice as it became all-time biggest hit. But the two never clicked again at MGM the way they had with Spector.

Mamas and the Papas, Monday, Monday

At three weeks at Number One "Monday, Monday" was likewise this California quintet's biggest smash. John Phillips, Michelle Phillips, Denny Dougherty and Ellen "Mama Cass" Cohen had all previously performed in folk groups in Southern California and wound up together in the Virgin Islands; all this is given the Readers' Digest condensation treatment in a later smash, "Creeque Alley."  Oddly the Mamas and the Papas were the first equally sexually integrated pop group in the rock and roll era, with two men and two women.

Composed by John Phillips and with a lead by Denny, "Monday, Monday" is a general lament of the least-preferred day of the week; the topic would later be revisited by the Boomtown Rats in "I Don't Like Mondays." Phillips said in interviews that he had no idea what the song actually meant, though. It has one of the great false endings in pop, too.

The Beatles: We Can Work It Out

This was the Beatles' Christmas single in 1965, backed with "Day Tripper" which was a Top Ten charter itself; rare was the Beatles 45 that wasn't a hit on both sides of the disc. Rubber Soul came out the same day, so Christmas 1965 was a very good year for the lads, who were nearing the top of their game by then. 

Starting with this song, however, a pattern started that would persist, with some exceptions, till the Beatles broke up in 1970: a song sung by Paul would be the A, and a Lennon on the B. Eventually this would come to rankle John to no end, though the cracks in the lads' armor were nowhere near showing at this point. "We Can Work It Out" was composed equally by Paul, who did the optimistic verses "try to see it my way" and John, who did the middle eight "there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend." There is no lead guitar on this track, so George has not much to do except play the  tambourine, while John's harmonium is prominent throughout.

Lovin' Spoonful, Summer in the City

Pretty much no song evokes the hot, humid, blistering summer of New York City better than "Summer in the City," co-composed by Mark Sebastian, John Sebastian's brother. Released in July '66 "Summer" was the Spoonful's 5th single on the Kama Sutra label and their sole Number One. It boasts a more muscular production that their previous hits, as well as traffic and jackhammer sound effects. Singer John Sebastian and guitarist Zal Yanovsky ran in the same circles in the California clubs that members of the Mamas and the Papas did; Cass Elliott brought the two together. The band was formed in Greenwich Village, taking its name for a line in a song by bluesman Mississippi John Hurt.