pop charts

195. ‘Where Are You Now (My Love)’, by Jackie Trent

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

We are now slap bang in the middle of the 1960s, and we’ve arrived at perhaps the most sixties-sounding song yet. It shimmers, it glistens, it drips… It’s absolutely drenched in the sixties.

jackie-trent-on-tv-1968-billboard-650

Where Are You Now (My Love), by Jackie Trent (her 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 20th – 27th May 1965

La…la-la-la-la-la… la-la-la-la-la… a cute little Latin-tinged rhythm, and a voice that is rich and honeyed. I like her voice. I want to listen to it some more. I want it to sing me to sleep. When shadows of evening gently fall, The mem’ry of you I soon, Recall… She sings properly, with a mildly posh way of stressing her words – a slight pre-rock throwback. I imagine this disc playing in a luxury New York apartment, overlooking Central Park at sunset, as a man dressed like an extra from ‘Mad Men’ pours a cocktail for a woman in a daringly short skirt and a beehive…

Then the chorus soars – as the chorus of every mid-sixties, female-led ballad simply must – with swirling violins and portentous drums. Where are you now, My love…? Where are you now, My love…? To be honest, I’m struggling to pay much attention to the lyrics. They are stock-lyrics, lyrics that exist because, well, a song needs them. This record is much more about the sound. About being a gorgeously identifiable moment in time. Listen closely… It’s the sixties…

It’s yet another grown-up pop song. That’s the theme of the first half of 1965: the more we move away from the simple Beat-pop ditties of Herman’s Hermits, Peter and Gordon and the like, the more mature everything is getting. The Righteous Brothers, The Moody Blues, Jackie Trent. I’m no songwriter, but ‘Where Are You Now (My Love)’ sounds like a complex song. Upon closer listen, it’s still a verse-verse-chorus-repeat then middle-eight kind of number. But it sounds complex, the way one section leads softly into the other, fading then rising.

Jackie-Trent-Where-Are-You-Now-7-Single

(Note that pretty much everywhere lists the song title as ‘Where Are You Now (My Love)’, except for on the disc itself…)

You could be forgiven for thinking that this is another Bacharach and David number – it’s just got that feel about it – but it’s not. It was written by Trent herself, with her song-writing partner Tony Hatch. Apparently it featured in a popular TV series of the time, ‘It’s Dark Outside’, the exposure from which saw the song reach #1. The pair wrote several other sixties hits, primarily for Petula Clark, but also for Sinatra, Shirley Bassey, Scott Walker, and more. You can’t get much more ‘cool sixties’ than that list of names… Come the seventies, though, and the hits were drying up for Trent, both as a performer and as a writer. She was reduced to writing songs for Stoke City, to celebrate their appearance in the League Cup Final. And that seemed to have been that…

Until the ‘80s when Trent and Hatch, by this point married, moved to Australia. Where they only bloody went and wrote the theme to ‘Neighbours’. Yes, the theme. Neighbours, Everybody needs good neighbours – played on British TV, twice a day for the past thirty-odd years. Given that no TV show – outside of X Factor, Pop Idol etc. – has contributed more to the pop charts over the years than ‘Neighbours’, it’s amazing to think that (with a slight stretch of the imagination) you can claim ‘Where Are You Now (My Love)’ as the first ‘Neighbours’ hit… twenty years before the pilot aired!

Jackie Trent then, ladies and gentlemen, who sadly passed away in 2015. Sit back, press play and enjoy her one and only UK #1 hit – her most famous song-that-isn’t-the-theme-to-an-Australian-soap-opera…

Follow along with every song below:

194. ‘King of the Road’, by Roger Miller

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

And now for something completely different… A hobo anthem. A paean to all the drifters, all the homeless floaters who sneak rides on dusty freight trains – no ties, no families, picking up a couple cents as they go… Sounds depressing? Well…

Roger-Miller-billboard-bw-1548

King of the Road, by Roger Miller (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 13th – 20th May 1965

It’s not. Perhaps it should be; but it’s not. A groovy bass rhythm slinks in, fingers click… Trailer for sale or rent, Rooms to let fifty cents, No phone, no pool, no pets, I ain’t got no cigarettes… Add a lightly strummed guitar, and a saloon bar piano, and you pretty much have it. A simple song. A ditty.

The singer is a wanderer – one that’s happy with his lot. He finds jobs as he goes – two hours of pushing broom – and travels in the third box-car on the midnight train, where he’s friends with all the engineers. The references are very American: Bangor, Maine – union dues – old stogies… I think I know what they all mean… Why on earth this song hit #1, across the Atlantic, in the middle of the swinging sixties, is a mystery. The closest reference point I can think of for ‘King of the Road’ is Tennessee Ernie Ford’s similarly finger-clickin’ ‘Sixteen Tons’, from way back in January 1956.

But then again, why not? It’s a song that’s hard not to love. A song you know you must have heard somewhere before, with a hook that most people can sing from scratch: I’m a man of means by no means… King of the Road. I’ve listened to it several times now, and read the lyrics, and I still can’t work out if he means he’s king of the road despite having nothing, or if having nothing makes him king of the road… And it’s been a long day, so I’m not up to thinking that much more about it. It is what it is. Whatever it is.

ROGER-MILLER-7-KING-OF-THE-ROAD-b-w

I can remember precisely how I heard ‘King of the Road’ – or a version of it – for the first time. There was a road safety ad they used to show during children’s TV in the nineties featuring two hedgehogs who crossed roads slowly and safely, looking both ways, thereby becoming – you guessed it – kings of the road. Happy memories. But… in doing a little more Roger Miller related research for this post I discovered that he impacted on my childhood in a much bigger way, without me ever realising. You see, Miller wrote and performed several of the songs for the 1973 Disney version of ‘Robin Hood’ (AKA Disney’s Most Underrated Animation) – a film I must have watched around a hundred and fifty six times between the ages of seven and ten, after taping it off the TV on a grainy old VHS. The second I read that, I could hear the same deep, gravelly voice from this record coming from a cartoon rooster, singing ‘Oo-De-Lally’, ‘Not in Nottingham’, and other early-Medieval classics.

Anyway, back in 1965, all that was still to come. For now, we’ll leave Mr. Miller at the fade-out –one of the longest fade-outs we’ve heard so far. The full final thirty seconds of this record is him repeating the first verse, mumbling as he wanders off, back on the road again. There he goes, a black silhouette against an orange setting sun, the dusty highway stretching out in front, a tumbleweed spinning slowly by… The King of the Road.

(The version of ‘King of the Road’ in this video may be a re-recording. It seems to be the only version available on YouTube. Spotify has both.)

192. ‘The Minute You’re Gone’, by Cliff Richard

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

A fraction over two years since we last heard from him, Cliff’s back. What’s changed in his absence? Well… There’s been Merseybeat, for a start. The Beatles, The Pacemakers, The Searchers reinvented pop music, then The Animals and the Stones brought the blues and The Kinks brought the rock, and recently we’ve started going all jazzy, folky and a touch Baroque…

cliff-richard-7744-mm

The Minute You’re Gone, by Cliff Richard (his 8th of fourteen #1s)

1 week, from 15th – 22nd April 1965

So, has Cliff emerged from the most fertile and fast-moving period in popular music history, and taken anything from it? Has he borrowed a funky new sound from all those new kids on the block? Has he bollocks.

If anything he’s regressed. He sounded old-fashioned before; now he sounds positively pre-historic. For this latest chart-topper, Cliff’s gone… brace yourselves… country. Lilting guitars, a tinkling saloon-bar piano, backing singers last heard on a Frankie Laine record. That weird, uber-C & W whale-noise guitar in the background, last heard in ‘Rose Marie’. In 1955. ‘The Minute You’re Gone’ was recorded in Nashville, and it’s clear that Cliff dived whole-heartedly into the scene over there. I can imagine him buying his own Stetson and spurs just for the occasion, and throwing the odd ‘Howdy’ into conversation.

The minute you’re gone I cry, The minute you’re gone I die… To be honest, it took me several listens before I actually paid attention to the words… Before you walk out of sight, I’m like a child all alone at night… And I’m not sure it was worth bothering… I stare into emptiness… So on and so forth.

It’s not a terrible song. The chords are in the right place, there are verses, a bridge, a chorus… In the hands of a different singer I might have enjoyed this much more. The original singer, Sonny James, put a bit more OTT emotion into it. The very first UK chart-topper – the one and only Al Martino – lent it some of his customary gravitas. The only thing that stops Cliff’s version from finishing bottom of the ‘The Minute You’re Gone’ league table, is a sub-karaoke version by Irish grannies’ favourite Daniel O’Donnell.

Cliff-Richard-The-Minute-Youre-Gone

Back in 1963, I described the Mersybeat invasion as a comet that slammed into the musical landscape. A comet that killed off all the musical dinosaurs that had clogged up the charts of the early sixties. Only the very strongest would survive its sudden impact – Elvis, Roy Orbison, and Sir Cliff. Britain’s very own musical cockroach…

Harsh? A bit, maybe. It was an exaggeration to claim in my intro that Cliff had been ‘absent’ in recent years. He may not have scored a #1 since ‘Summer Holiday’, but every one of his singles, both with The Shadows and, like this one, without them, had gone Top 10. Don’t look at this record as a comeback; Cliff hadn’t been anywhere.

Who was buying his records, though? Surely not the same kids that were going wild for The Beatles and The Stones? Their mums, maybe? Their grans? I always complained about how seldom Cliff, Britain’s first rock ‘n’ roll star, actually rocked. Even as far back as his first chart-topper: the cheesy and insipid ‘Living Doll’. But maybe that was a masterstroke of foresight by him and his management. You can’t lose something you never had. Sell out from the very start…

Since starting this countdown, I’ve changed my opinion on many things. I now know that pre-rock music was far from boring, that Elvis didn’t actually invent sex, that ‘Rock Around the Clock’ didn’t open the floodgates, that instrumentals can actually be great… And yet I can’t say I’ve heard anything to convince me that Sir Clifford of Richard isn’t one of the blandest, squarest, middle-of-the-roadest artists in history…

Next!

191. ‘Concrete and Clay’, by Unit 4 plus 2

/ UK #1s blog / 3 Comments

I look at the title of this next chart-topper – a little one-week wonder from the spring of 1965 – and think ‘Nope’. I do not know this song. Which is good! I like a nice step into the unknown.

Unit 4 Plus Two

Concrete and Clay, by Unit 4 plus 2 (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 8th – 15th April 1965

Then I press play, catching a whiff of snazzy Latin guitar and some cowbells? And, what’s that…? The ting of a cymbal? And I start to wonder if perhaps I haven’t, somewhere, at some point in time, heard this before…

It sounds like the music used between scenes in a cutesy rom-com – the sort with slightly older leads (Alec Baldwin, perhaps?), set in a Californian wine-valley… But with added lyrics: You to me, Are sweet as roses in the morning, You to me, Are soft as summer rain at dawn… The suspicion that I may have heard it before grows…

Then we arrive at the hook: The concrete and the clay, Beneath my feet, Begins to crumble, But love will never die… And, yes, I do know this… We’ll see the mountains tumble, Before we say goodbye… Somewhere, deep in my subconscious, this tune must have lain dormant for years, decades perhaps. Until today. The mysteries of the human mind…

It’s a pleasant enough song. Cute, up-tempo, doesn’t outstay its welcome. It’s got a kind of timeless sound, a world away from most mid-sixties rock, in keeping with the way that 1965 in general has seen pop music splintering away from the Beat movement. But if I had one complaint about the song it would be that it’s slightly basic. ‘The world may end, but my love will live on…’ is the message, and ‘Yeah, whatever’ is my response. For a record intriguingly titled ‘Concrete and Clay’, it is a little disappointing to discover that it’s just a standard love song.

unit_4_and_2-concrete_and_clay_s_2

And I’m struggling to write much else … Perhaps the fact that I thought I’d never heard of it is telling. Ask a stranger in the street to sing a line from ‘Concrete and Clay’, by Unit 4 + 2 and I’m betting they’d struggle. This is a fairly well forgotten #1 from a fairly well-forgotten band. Not that they were quite one-hit wonders, as their follow up to this managed to reach #14 later in the year.

I like the name, though. The use of numbers looks quite modern, especially when placed next to ‘The Beatles’, ‘Herman’s Hermits’ and the like. Unit 4 + 2 sounds to me like a German Eurodance duo from the mid-nineties. The origin of the name is pretty prosaic though: a band named Unit 4 added two new members, and changed their name accordingly…

And that’s all (he) wrote (about this song.) We’ve not had much Spanish guitar at the top of the charts before now, so for that reason alone I have no problem with this grabbing a week at the top. A cute little interlude on our journey through pop music history… Onwards…

189. ‘It’s Not Unusual’, by Tom Jones

/ UK #1s blog / 13 Comments

Some songs take a while to build to a climax; others wallop straight in from the get-go. ‘It’s Not Unusual’, the debut hit from voice-of-the-valleys and now Knight of the Realm, Sir Tom Jones, falls into the latter camp. There is no climax here. Or rather, the song is the climax.

Music - Tom Jones - 1965

It’s Not Unusual, by Tom Jones (his 1st of three #1s)

1 week, from 11th – 18th March 1965

Stabbing jazz-bar brass, and hand-claps. Pah-papa-Pah-papa… Your feet instantly start tapping. Then in blasts Tom… It’s not unusual, To be loved by anyone, It’s not unusual, To have fun with anyone… By God could Tom Jones sing. (And still can – let’s not kill him off before his time.) But when I see you hanging about with anyone, It’s not unusual, To see me cry… I wanna die…

Never has a song about a jealous and possessive ex-lover sounded so cheerful. Tom sees his girl around town – flirting, galivanting, generally having a good time – and it kills him. Why did they split up? Who knows? This isn’t a song for reflecting. Why can’t this crazy love be miiiiiiinnnnneeeeee…. he wails as we head into the break. I don’t know, Tom, maybe if you stopped snooping around on her like a creep…?

But it bears repeating: this cat can sing. Jones’s voice is not one you’d ever describe as subtle; but it’s super-soulful and packs a brilliant, throaty rasp. That miiiiiinnnnnneeee above is powerful, as is the way he lets loose at the end. It stands out for miles around compared to his contemporaries, and it is hard to imagine that he was only twenty-four when he recorded this record. Apparently the song was offered initially to Sandie Shaw, but once she heard Jones’s recording she felt it would be impossible to make a better one…

This disc races to an end in precisely two minutes, and it feels even shorter such is the galloping pace that it maintains. Over the past few months I had noticed that our #1s were getting longer. The Animals scored the longest by some distance – ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ reaching four and a half minutes – but ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling’ and ‘Yeh Yeh’ also pushed well beyond the magic three-minute mark. Tom Jones doesn’t hang about, though. He takes us back several years – to the days when a couple of minutes per song was the norm.

TOM_JONES_ITS+NOT+UNUSUAL-558172

Despite this being the very first hit for a fresh-faced young Welsh lad, it’s hard to imagine that Tom Jones was ever cool. Even when ‘It’s Not Unusual’ was sitting at number one in the charts, I’ll bet it was being bought more by mums than by their daughters. (Apparently, though, the BBC refused to play ‘It’s Not Unusual’ at the time, as Tom Jones’s image was too sexy…) Later hits like ‘Delilah’, ‘What’s New Pussycat?’ and ‘She’s a Lady’ did nothing to help his image. He’s remained steadfastly uncool throughout the decades, too. He was uncool when covering Prince in the eighties, and he was uncool when he scored a big comeback in the early 2000s with (shudder) ‘Sex Bomb’. There was a good reason he was Carlton’s favourite singer in ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.’

But who cares? Who cares if he’s recorded some absolute cheese over the years? Who cares if he looks like someone you wouldn’t leave your wife alone with for a minute? Who cares if, by this point, he’s gone beyond parody? It’s worked for him, and given him career-longevity that few can even dream of. Maybe that’s the key: start of uncool and you’ll never have to worry about losing it… Plus, whenever Tom Jones sings, he sounds like he’s having the time of his life. Love what you do, folks, love what you do. Tom’s got it sussed…

188. ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’, by The Seekers

/ UK #1s blog / 13 Comments

For the first time in a good nine months – since The Four Pennies’ bland ode to ‘Juliet’ – do we arrive at a #1 single that I have never heard before. This is how it used to be, of course, in the pre-rock days – before rock ‘n’ roll came along, with all those famous songs in tow. Almost every post was a step into the unknown…

152374

I’ll Never Find Another You, by The Seekers (their 1st of two #1s)

2 weeks, from 25th February – 11th March 1965

Speaking of rock ‘n’ roll, and the fifties and all that… The opening chords of this latest chart-topper sound a lot like ‘La Bamba’. A mellower, more folksy version of the Ritchie Valens hit to be sure, but they’re there. It’s a promising opening… that lasts until the singers open their mouths…

There’s a new world somewhere, They call the promised land, And I’ll be there someday, If you could hold my hand… Several earnest, fresh-faced voices chime together. I’m getting strong Christians-round-a-campfire vibes… I still need you there beside me, No matter what I do, For I know I’ll never find another you… Or maybe proto-hippies, the first feelers of a movement that will go full-on mainstream in a couple of years? The lyrics sure do sound like they could be about joining a commune (‘The promised land’?)

Not quite. This record is, though, our first slice of sixties folk-rock. The gentle guitars, the clear vocals, the tambourine that gets a good shaking in the background… It’s a genre that I don’t think was ever quite as popular in the UK as in America, where Peter, Paul and Mary, The Byrds, The Mamas and the Papas, Simon & Garfunkel and, of course, Bob Dylan were big, big stars. But we’d had fair warning of it – remember back in 1961, when the collegiate folk band The Highwaymen scored a surprise #1 with their version of ‘Michael’ (Row Your Boat etc. etc.)? They were from across the pond, too.

731107311054_1

I’m not convinced by this song, to be honest… There’s something a bit cloying about it, a bit happy-clappy. And the lead singer – Judith Durham – sounds kind of like a Sunday school teacher gone rogue. Plus the lyrics don’t really go anywhere – it’s just a long list of what she can do with her man by her side… When I walk through the storm you’ll be my guide… and I could lose it all tomorrow, And never mind at all… etcetera and so on. It’s not terrible; but it’s the worst number one for a while. Probably since ‘Juliet’, the last chart-topper that I’d never heard of… And in its defence, we’ve just enjoyed the highest-quality run of #1 singles in British chart-history, and it would be unfair to completely write a record off just because it doesn’t hit the heights of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ or ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.

I am, for example, a sucker for those yearning chords that pop up time and time again in folk-rock. See lines like You’ll be my someone, Forever and a day… Or If I should lose your love dear, I don’t know what I’ll do… The first song I ever loved – I’m reliably informed, as I was too young to remember – was ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’, which I would sing anywhere and everywhere as a toddler, driving everyone around me to the edge of insanity. And ‘Puff’’s got plenty of those yearning, minor-key chords in it. Who knows – maybe I’m a folky at heart?

Of course, all that stuff I just spouted about ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’ being an all-American slice of hippyish folk is undone by the fact that The Seekers were Australian, and that the song was composed by British songwriter Tom Springfield (brother of Dusty – who keeps cropping up via other people’s songs – when will she appear on her own merits?) But hey. It sounds American, and was definitely influenced by American folk-rock artists of the day, so we’re claiming it for the Yanks.

To finish, I’ll return to the pre-rock days that I mentioned at the start of the post. Back then, as Vera Lynn, Dickie Valentine, Winifred Atwell et al were jostling for attention at the top of the charts, the word I reached for more often than most was ‘twee’. And that’s what this is: the twee-est number one single we’ve had in a long time. Altogether then, grab the marshmallows and back round the campfire for another singalong!

Catch up with this handily compiled playlist!

187. ‘Tired of Waiting for You’, by The Kinks

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

The 4th chart-topping single of 1965 is a bit of a Ctrl-Alt-Del moment. The first three #1s have felt like a mini revolution in all their Latin-soul, jazzy, glossy-pop glory. You could have been forgiven for asking: Is the Beat movement dead already?

the-kinks-1965-portrait-u-billboard-1548

Tired of Waiting for You, by The Kinks (their 2nd of three #1s)

1 week, from 18th – 25th February 1965

Of course it isn’t. The Kinks are swooping in to save the day for all the boys with guitars out there. A wonky, woozy intro – it feels kind of like you’re floating on a swing on a hot summer’s day – then in comes Ray Davies… So tired, Tired of waiting, Tired of waiting for you… (On a side note, I’ve always thought that Davies sings with a strange accent – as if English wasn’t his first language. Kind of Indian sounding. It’s really noticeable here…)

Anyway, he’s being kept waiting by a girl. And not ‘waiting’ as in she’s late for a movie. Waiting as in waiting. I was a lonely soul, I had nobody till I met you, But you keep-a me waiting, All of the time, What can I do? He might be waiting for a declaration of love; or waiting for you-know-what, like a horny teenager. Who knows?

I mentioned in my post on ‘You Really Got Me’ that that song, while being one of The Kink’s biggest and best known hits, isn’t really indicative of their sound. ‘Tired of Waiting for You’ is much more Kinks-y to me, especially when the band harmonise on the bridge: It’s your life, And you can do what you want… There are hints of ‘Waterloo Sunset’ there – and I can mention/link to that song now as it – unbelievably – won’t be featuring in this countdown. One of the great chart-travesties, that. I’m also getting a Searchers-vibe in the song’s chiming melancholy, too.

PC120005_ml

The edge is still there, though. The crunchy guitars that blasted their way through ‘You Really Got Me’ are barking in the background, especially in the build-up to the final chorus, as Davies pleads Please don’t keep me waiting… It’s a song about frustration, albeit politely voiced frustration. It’s like the polite cousin of ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’… (Now there’s a song which we will be meeting on this countdown – hurrah!)

The Kinks will have one more number one, and several more famous songs that don’t make the chart summit. But I’ve enjoyed re-hearing this one. I had a Kinks’ Greatest Hits on CD as a kid, and while I knew this song I’ve never really listened to it in much detail. It’s a nicely forgotten chart-topper from an ever so slightly under-rated band. And coming as it does, in early 1965, as pop music races to evolve and improve at a staggering pace, it already sounds like a bit of a throwback.

184. ‘Yeh Yeh’, by Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

No sooner have I mentioned that 1965 might be a more eclectic year in terms of its chart-topping singles, when along comes one Georgie Fame with a swaying slice of Latin soul.

maxresdefault

Yeh Yeh, by Georgie Fame (his 1st of three #1s) & The Blue Flames (their 1st of two #1s)

2 weeks, from 14th – 28th January 1965

Wham and then Bam. In the space of three #1s we’ve gone Blues–Beat rock-Latin. I might even go so far as to describe this as a Bossanova, if I was at all certain what exactly a ‘Bossanova’ was… Whatever it is, it’s not a sound that we’ve heard very often at the top of the UK charts. After months of Merseybeat things are really starting to splinter in different directions.

The song is about a guy who, after finishing work every evening, calls up his baby and asks her what she wants to do… I mention movies, But she don’t seem to dig that, And then she asks me, Why don’t I come to her flat… ‘Yeh Yeh’ is his response. The words are spat out at a rapid pace, half-rapped (this might be the hardest number one yet in terms of making out the lyrics). But it still becomes clear just what his baby’s game is. She suggests supper and listening to some records, and soon the kissing starts: And when she kisses, I feel the fire get hot, She never misses, She gives it all that she’s got…

I love the break in the middle, when one long tongue twister line – We’ll play a melody and turn the lights down low so that none can see… – ascends to a natty drum fill and lots of We gotta do that’s! and Yeh Yehs! Then there’s a full-blown sax solo for all you hip cats out there.

Georgie-Fame-Blue-Flames-Yeh-Yeh

It’s a cool record, there’s no doubting that. I can imagine it as the soundtrack to a lot of groovy, hipster parties during the winter of ’64 – ’65. And Georgie Fame – before googling him I pictured him in a turtle neck and a pork pie hat, and after googling him I was slightly disappointed to find that he favoured suits and sharp ties. (He did like a cigarette, dangling all loose and louche, from the corner of his mouth, however.) Plus, finding out that he was born Clive Powell, in Lancashire, rather than Georgie Fame, New York City, took the shine off even further.

Still, despite being Clive from Lancashire, Fame has a real soulful voice. He goes fast then slow, loud then quiet, and – while the band are really tight – his voice is the most impressive instrument in the record. The way it blends together with the organ and the sax to draw out the final note is particularly cool. The Blue Flames had been the backing band for British rock ‘n’ roller Billy Fury, and Georgie Fame their piano player, but when they parted ways Clive AKA Georgie Fame became their leader and they went off down the path of R&B-slash-soul.

‘Yeh Yeh’ is nice, and funky; but it’s a hard record to classify. The best way I can describe is that it would sit perfectly next to ‘Green Onions’ by Booker T. & The MGs on a compilation called ‘Sexy Sixties’, or something. Plus, both Fame and The Flames will pop up sporadically as the sixties progress, so we’ll save any further bios for another day. In the meantime, sit back, grab a glass, and enjoy the sound of the swinging, sexy sixties floating through your earholes. Yeh Yeh!

Never miss a number one single with this playlist…

183. ‘I Feel Fine’, by The Beatles

/ UK #1s blog / 16 Comments

And so we hit the mid-point of the swinging sixties. Slap bang in the middle, and The Beatles are knocking The Stones off the #1 spot. How very 1960s. Peak sixties!

i-feel-fine-the-beatles

I Feel Fine, by The Beatles (their 6th of seventeen #1s)

5 weeks, from 3rd December 1964 – 14th January 1965

But this is a new version of the Beatles. I mentioned when covering their last chart-topper, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, that that was the sound of the MerseyBeatles being killed off – their last pure pop hit. And, as if to make sure of that, their sixth UK number one enters to the sound of feedback. A deliberately jarring intro, one that’s been done to death by now but at the time must have sounded strange indeed.

Their voices, too, have changed. They’re deeper, huskier… manlier? The mop-top boys have grown up. Baby says she’s mine you know, She tells me all the time you know, She said so… There’s an arrogance to it. The girl doesn’t have a name – she’s just ‘baby’. Tomorrow there’ll be a new one. That’s what happens when you’re in the world’s most popular band. She’s in love with me and I feel fine…

The guitar is rocking – apparently the riff came first when Lennon and McCartney were writing it – and drives the song along. The bridge, though, is still pure bubble-gum. Old habits die hard, I guess. I’m so glad, That’s she’s my little girl, She’s so glad, She’s tellin’ all the world… The relationship doesn’t seem to be built on the strongest of foundations, though – it’s more about buying diamond rings to keep his little girl happy.

download

This disc is a world away – both lyrically and sonically – from The Beatles earlier chart-toppers. Think the innocent ‘From Me to You’ and the earnest ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’. It’s a cool record, the first Beatles record that your older brother would have admitted to liking.

There’s been a lot of discussion, for years, over when and where the band first started taking drugs. As far as I know Bob Dylan thought they must have been smoking as early as 1963, as he misheard the ‘I can’t hide’ lyric in ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ as ‘I get high…’ And they definitely were by October 1965, as Paul McCartney admitted to smoking a joint in the toilets of Buckingham Palace when they collected their MBEs.

If I had to guess, I’d narrow it down to the few months between ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and this release. There’s a glazed, detached air to their voices here… They sound pretty stoned. Plus the name of the song just sounds like something you’d say when you’re high… ‘Dude, I feel fine…’ Then there are the mmmmhhs as the song fades out. The Beatles MK II are here.

It’s the perfect way to end 1964 – by far the best year yet in terms of the quality of its #1s. It has felt like walking through Madame Tussaud’s at times – look there’s Diana Ross, and Roy Orbison, and over there, The Kinks and Cilla Black! So to end it with The Stones and then The Fab Four –the decade’s two biggest bands – is perfect. 1965 looks like being a much more eclectic year, though the overall standard of chart-topper might drop off slightly… Onwards!

181. ‘Baby Love’, by The Supremes

/ UK #1s blog / 19 Comments

For the intro to this next post, I was going to go all overboard on how this was the first time in ages that two female acts had replaced one another at the top of the UK charts. Sandie Shaw making way for The Supremes’ girl-group stylings. The first time that this had happened since September 1956!!!! Except… For a week in between, ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’, by most-definitely-a-man Roy Orbison, sneaked back to the top of the charts. Ah.

So I need a new intro… How about: And so, with this next number one, Motown arrives at the top of the singles chart! And what a record with which to arrive. A piano intro that slides down the scales – in stereo it sounds as if it’s travelling right to left through your brain – and then the voice of one of the most renowned female singers in pop history:

maxresdefault

Baby Love, by The Supremes (their 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 19th November – 3rd December 1964

Oooh-hooo-oo… Baby love, My baby love, I need ya, Oh how I need ya…. A girl loves a boy, but he doesn’t seem to be returning the sentiment. All he does is treat her bad, breaks her heart and leaves her sad… Baby love, My baby love, Been missin’ ya, Miss kissin’ ya…

It’s a gorgeous song, the production all warm and glossy, the drums keep swinging time, a mournful sax comes in mid-way through… And Diana Ross’s honeyed voice. A voice that sounds effortlessly perfect. It’s a world away from some of the other female voices we’ve heard so far – she doesn’t belt like Shirley Bassey or sparkle like Helen Shapiro – but it has a special quality to it. In the closing lines – Need to hold you, Once again my love, Feel your warm embrace my love… you can really feel her pleading.

The lyrics, as a whole, though, are pretty meh. Standard ‘Oh baby come back to me I’ll do what you want and give you all my love’ kind of stuff. The default setting for sixties girl-groups. And I don’t want to go all ‘woke’ here but, I’d like a little more sass and swagger from my girl groups. Look back a few years, and Rosemary Clooney and Connie Francis were serving up plenty of attitude in ‘Mambo Italiano’, say, or ‘Who’s Sorry Now’. ‘Baby Love’ comes across as soppy next to those discs.

The other two Supremes – Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson – have equal billing here but aren’t much more than backing singers. 70% of the time they’re chanting Don’t throw our love away… Which they do beautifully, but you can see why the group soon became Diana Ross & The Supremes. Ms. Ross was definitely front and centre from the start. In the UK this would be their only #1 (though we will be hearing from Ms. Ross again), while in the US they enjoyed a staggering twelve (12!) chart-toppers between 1964 and 1969. Of course, classics like ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’, ‘Stop! In the Name of Love’ and ‘The Happening’ were big British hits; but another chart-topper always eluded them.

s-l1000 (1)

A few weeks ago, I did a series of posts on songs that should have topped the charts, in which I included Best Pop Song Ever ™ ‘Be My Baby’, by The Ronettes. ‘Baby Love’ isn’t in the same league as that, but in hitting the top spot I feel it kind of represents for all the sixties girl groups (all of them American) that missed out. For The Ronettes, The Crystals, The Shangri-Las, The Marvelettes, The Vandellas… Plus, this is also basically ground-zero for all the girl groups that are yet to come. When I was a teen they were ten-a-penny – The Spice Girls, Eternal, En Vogue, All Saints, B*Witched… They can all be traced back through these three girls and this sweetly sung chart-topper.

A final thought: ‘Baby Love’ really stands out when you hear it in context. On a ‘Motown’s Greatest Hits Compilation’ it might have passed you by; but hearing it now, after months, years even, of boys with guitars and their beat-pop ditties, this record hits you like a crisp, clean breath of Detroit air. Inhale it, and enjoy.