Month: October 2021

1971 Freddie Hart – Easy Loving 

Frederick Segrest grew up with 11 brothers and sisters in Alabama. He began playing guitar at age five and quit school by age twelve. After lying about his age, he enrolled in the U.S. Marine Corps and survived active duty in the Pacific theater during World War II.

He began writing Country songs and used the name Freddie Hart professionally.  He began releasing singles in 1953, but did not reach the charts until 1959. In the mid-fifties, Carl Smith, Patsy Cline, and George Jones recorded some of the songs he wrote.

Eight of his singles for Columbia Records and later Kapp Records reached the top thirty on the US Country charts between 1959 and 1967. He then signed with Capitol Records. None of his singles charted at all in 1969. A #27 single in 1970 preceded three more singles that failed to reach the top forty. Capitol Records then ended his contract.

In 1969, Freddie recorded a song he had written, Easy Loving. A disk jockey in Atlanta began playing the song regularly in the Summer of 1970, and other radio stations picked up the record as well.

The single eventually reached #1 on the Country charts. Capitol, of course, then resigned Freddie to a new contract. 

The record crossed over to the pop charts in the US and peaked at #17 on the Hot 100 in 1971. He never reached the Hot 100 chart again.

Easy Loving also reached #28 on the Adult Contemporary chart, the only time he reached that chart as well.

Freddie’s next five singles for Capitol all hit the top of the Country chart, and another half-dozen top five singles followed. He continued recording top forty Country hits through 1981, after which he switched over to a successful career in Gospel music.

Freddie died after a bout of pneumonia in 2018.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Hart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easy_Loving

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1969 Dusty Springfield – The Windmills Of Your Mind 

Dusty Springfield had a series of hit records in the UK and the US from 1963 through 1968, but she had grown tired of recording in the London studios that belonged to her Phillips record label.

She signed with Atlantic Records in 1968 after being assured that she would record in the US and work with the label’s president and head producer, Jerry Wexler. Dusty worked with Jerry, Tom Dowd, and Arif Mardin in the American Sound Studio in Memphis. Unhappy with her performances in Memphis and always a perfectionist, Dusty later re-recorded her vocals in studios in New York City.

United Artists released the film The Thomas Crown Affair in June 1968. Noel Harrison sang the theme song for the film, The Windmills Of You Mind. Jerry insisted that Dusty in include a cover of the song on her album. She didn’t care for the lyrics of the song, but liked it somewhat better after getting Jerry to slow down the song for the first few verses. 

That work led to an album entitled Dusty In Memphis. The label released Son Of A Preacher Man as the lead single from the album, and the single reached the top ten in both the US and the UK in late 1968. It failed to chart on the Adult Contemporary (AC) chart in the US.

In April 1969, The Windmills Of You Mind won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Noel recorded a longer version of the song that got released in the UK, where the single peaked at #8. 

Atlantic had placed Dusty’s version of the song on the B-side of I Don’t Want to Hear It Anymore, her third single from Dusty In Memphis. Jerry had the company produce 2,000 promotional singles with The Windmills Of Your Mind on both sides. The day after the song won the Academy Award, they rushed those copies to radio stations nationwide to promote her recording.

Dusty’s single peaked at a disappointing #31 on the US Hot 100 in 1969 but reached #3 on the AC chart, the highest ranking she ever achieved on that chart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dusty_Springfield
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dusty_Springfield_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windmills_of_Your_Mind

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

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1970 Robin McNamara – Lay A Little Lovin On Me 

Robin McNamara grew up in New England. He formed a band called Robin and the Hoods while in high school. He got suspended from school multiple times for growing his hair longer than the principal tolerated, which turned out to be a hint about Robin’s future.

After graduation, Robin worked at a New Jersey carwash while he auditioned for work in nearby New York City. He went to an audition for a new play and got hired as a member of the chorus. Before long, they promoted him to one of the lead roles. He played Claude in the Broadway production of Hair from 1969 to 1971. It was scandalous at the time since the play was the first one on Broadway to feature full-frontal nudity.

Songwriter/producer Jeff Barry signed Robin to his Steed Record label. The two of them teamed up with Jim Cretecos and wrote the song Lay A Little Lovin’ On Me. Some of Robin’s co-workers on Hair sang background vocals on the recording. Steed released the single in 1970 and it reached #11 on the Hot 100. Jeff also produced the rest of Robin’s first album.

The cast of the play also sang backup vocals on Robin’s second single, but Got To Believe In Love only reached #80 on the Hot 100 before fading off the chart.

Robin recorded more records, but never reached the charts again. After leaving Hair, he eventually moved to Florida, where he opened his own music publishing business and became a partner in a music studio.

He maintains a website at http://lpintop.tripod.com/robinmcnamara/ and appears in the show Stuck In The 60s as a member of The Headliner Band.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_McNamara
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lay_a_Little_Lovin%27_on_Me

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

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1968 The Chambers Brothers – Time Has Come Today

George, Joe, Lester, and Willie Chambers grew up in Carthage, Mississippi and sang together in their church choir. They drafted George into the army in 1952 and the four reunited in Los Angeles when he left the service in 1954.

The group performed gospel and folk music. They moved to New York City and Pete Seeger got them invited to perform at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. After hearing Bob Dylan’s new electric styling, the band switched to playing electric instruments.

In 1966, they released the first single version of Time Has Come Today. Sadly, the record went unnoticed.

In late 1967, the band released their first album. It contained an eleven minute psychedelic soul recording, an updated version of Time Has Come Today.

Their record label released an edited version of the song as a single the last week of the year.

It took time for radio stations to give the single airplay, but it finally peaked at #11 on the Hot 100 in September 1968.

Seven more albums followed by 1974, but the best the band managed was on single that reached #37 and another that stalled after a week at #40.

The brothers continued appearing live and released a series of live albums, the most recent of which came out in 2005.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chambers_Brothers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Has_Come_Today

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

Please visit my author page on Amazon where I sell my paperbacks, eBooks, and audiobooks. The Lost or Forgotten Oldies series starts with a volume entitled Introduction, which is only 99 cents.

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1967  Engelbert Humperdinck – There Goes My Everything 

Arnold George Dorsey was born in 1936 in India, the son of a British Army soldier stationed there. He moved back to England when he was ten and began playing the saxophone. Because of his impersonation of Jerry Lewis, his friends began calling him Gerry Dorsey, a name that stuck while he started singing professionally. 

He had roomed with Gordon Mills, who began managing Tom Jones. Gordon convinced him to start using the name of 19th-century German composer Engelbert Humperdinck. He recorded his first single in 1966 and reached the top of the UK chart in 1967 with Release Me. The single also peaked at #4 on the Hot 100 in the US.

Englebert’s next release covered a song that had topped the Country charts in the US in 1966.

Dallas Frazier wrote the chart-topping novelty hit Alley Oop. Country singer Jack Green covered another song he wrote, There Goes My Everything, in 1966. His single topped the Country chart in the US and won Song of the Year and Single of the Year at the first ACM awards show.

Englebert’s version had a mild Country flavor and reached #25 on the Hot 100 in 1967. It unfortunately failed to reach the Adult Contemporary (AC) chart at all.

 The single also reached #2 on the UK chart. Englebert was always far more successful in the UK than in the US.

His next single may not appear to have been much more successful in the US since The Last Waltz stalled at #20 on the Hot 100 later that year.

In fact, the record put Englebert on a fresh path: despite its poor showing on the Hot 100, the single reached #6 on the AC Chart. It was the first of eleven consecutive top ten hits on that chart over the next four years. The single was also his second #1 in the UK.

Several of his hits reached the teens on the Hot 100 in 1968 and 1969. His last visit to the Hot 100 top forty came in 1976 when After The Lovin’ peaked at #8. That single also gave Engelbert his last #1 hit on the AC chart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelbert_Humperdinck_(singer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelbert_Humperdinck_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Goes_My_Everything_(song)

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

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1966 Simon and Garfunkel – The Dangling Conversation 

Ah, the sad sound of failure. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel reached #49 on the Hot 100 in 1957, performing the single Hey Schoolgirl as Tom and Jerry.

The two stopped working together when they graduated from high school and each released some unnoticed solo singles. Paul also began writing for other artists and even worked in the Brill Building for a time.

They reunited In 1963 and began working as folksingers in clubs around New York. In 1964, Tom Wilson produced an album that included their acoustic version of a song Paul had written, Sounds Of Silence. The single failed to chart and the album that featured the song failed to sell well. The duo broke up, with Paul heading to London and Art remaining in the US.

A few radio stations began playing the failed single in early 1965, and Tom decided to remix Sounds Of Silence for a different audience: he added an electric guitar overdub to the recording. The new version turned out to be more acceptable to AM radio and the first week of 1966, the single hit #1 on the Hot 100.

The pair reunited and reentered the studio to record a new album. Two singles from the sessions, Homeward Bound and I Am A Rock, each reached the top five on the Hot 100.

Three more months of studio work created their third album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. While several of the songs had already been written, a few new songs appeared as well. Their fourth single in 1966 became The Dangling Conversation.

While Paul claimed that the song was his favorite from the new album, Art later insisted that he never liked the song because it was too pretentious. Art may have been correct: the single stalled at #25.

The duo recorded three more new singles in late 1966 and 1967, but none of them even reached the top ten. It would be their work with the film The Graduate and the song Mrs. Robinson that brought them back to the top of the charts in 1968.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_%26_Garfunkel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_%26_Garfunkel_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dangling_Conversation

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

Please visit my author page on Amazon where I sell my paperbacks, eBooks, and audiobooks. The Lost or Forgotten Oldies series starts with a volume entitled Introduction, which is only 99 cents.

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1965 Sonny – Laugh At Me 

The name Caesar and Cleo sounds like a terrible movie that ends with an asp, but it was actually the name that Sonny and Cher used when they first started making records for Reprise Records. They recorded several songs for the label, and the label chose to release their remake of an old song by Mickey and Sylvia (Love Is Strange) in September 1964. Before they actually released the record, Sonny and Cher signed a new contract with Reprise using their own names and recorded the song Baby, Don’t Go. Details about the release of the two singles are sketchy, but the releases appear to have been almost simultaneous. Neither record had any success.

After those multiple failures, Sonny and Cher moved to the ATCO label and started recording there, producing their career song I Got You, Babe. That jumped up the charts to #1 in July 1965.

Sonny and Cher had what at the time qualified as a unique look, and Sonny’s long hair and unusual clothing no doubt led to confrontations with people who resisted change in the sixties. As a result, he wrote and recorded a solo protest record, Laugh At Me, that was their next single on the charts released with only Sonny’s name on the label.

Sonny’s protest song may have been the first song with that theme that made the charts, but the topic was revisited in the future by such diverse acts as the Charlie Daniels Band (Uneasy Rider) and Bob Seeger (Turn the Page).

ATCO also released Sonny and Cher’s follow up single, Just You, but that didn’t fare as well as either Sonny’s solo release or their surprise hit: Reprise re-released Baby, Don’t Go as a single, and it hit the charts the same day that Laugh at Me did. The old Reprise single reached #8 on the Hot 100 in 1965 the second time around.

Reissue of their other songs from the Ceaser and Cleo catalog didn’t fare as well.

Sonny released at least eight other singles over the next decade, but the only time he reached the charts again was with The Revolution Kind which stalled at #70 and quickly disappeared.

Sonny and Cher finally had a string of chart hits in the future. No doubt having their own television show off and on from 1971 to 1977 helped a bit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_%26_Cher_discography

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

Please visit my author page on Amazon where I sell my paperbacks, eBooks, and audiobooks. The Lost or Forgotten Oldies series starts with a volume entitled Introduction, which is only 99 cents.

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1964 Frank Sinatra – Softly, As I Leave You

Composer Tony De Vita wrote the melody for a song named Piano (Italian for “softly”) and Giorgio Calabrese added Italian lyrics to the song. Singer Mino scored a hit with the song in Italy in 1960.

Hal Shaper translated the lyrics to English in 1961 and that version of the song was re-titled Softly, As I Leave You.

Matt Monro had a pair of top ten singles in the UK in 1960 and 1961. The second single, My Kind Of Girl, even reached #18 on the US Hot 100. His single version of Softly, As I Leave You topped the charts in the UK in 1962 but failed to even reach the Hot 100 in the US.

Frank Sinatra released hit records with ease through the forties and most of the fifties, but Witchcraft in 1957 became his last top ten single for nearly a decade. In 1962 and 1963, before the British Invasion even started, Frank failed to even reach the top forty on the Hot 100.

In 1964, he worked with arranger Ernie Freeman and producer Jimmy Bowen on the album Softly, As I Leave You. The album mostly comprised failed singles from the early sixties, but he also recorded a few new songs.

In 1948, Frank released a recording of the song Everybody Loves Somebody. His single was a typical recording for the time, with Frank singing a ballad backed up by an orchestra. His single only reached #25.

Dean Martin recorded a modern version of Everybody Loves Somebody and reached #1 on the Hot 100 in 1964. The new songs on Frank’s album attempted to reproduce the production of Dean’s single.

Ernie and Jimmy used a drum kit, backup singers, and keyboards on those three songs, but the changes were only moderately successful: the album’s title song stalled at #27 on the Hot 100.

Since it reached #4 on the Adult Contemporary chart, the single was at least a partial success: it was his first top ten single on that chart in over three years.

Frank wouldn’t reach as high as #27 on the Hot 100 again until the release of his chart-topping single Strangers In The Night in 1966. That song began a series of hits in the sixties that ended when My Way also peaked at #27 in 1969.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sinatra_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softly,_as_I_Leave_You_(album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softly,_as_I_Leave_You_(song)

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

Please visit my author page on Amazon where I sell my paperbacks, eBooks, and audiobooks. The Lost or Forgotten Oldies series starts with a volume entitled Introduction, which is only 99 cents.

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1963 Crystals – He’s Sure The Boy I Love 

With the help of her uncle Benny Wells, Barbara Alston joined with Myrna Giraud, Dolores “Dee Dee” Kenniebrew, Mary Thomas, and Patricia “Patsy” Wright to form the Crystals in 1961. They signed with Phil Spector’s record label, Philles Records, and he produced a song he co-wrote with Leroy Bates. Barbara sang lead vocals, and There’s No Other (Like My Baby) popped up to #20 on the Hot 100 late that year. 

He also produced their next hit, a song written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil: Uptown. That single did even better, reaching #13 on the Hot 100.

While the group was touring on the East Coast, back in California, Phil produced the song He’s A Rebel. Gene Pitney wrote the song, and Phil wanted to record the song with the Shirelles, but they declined to record it. He has claimed that the members of the Crystals had troubles with hitting some notes in their songs during live performances, so he recorded the song with vocals by the Blossoms. Darlene Love sang lead vocals on the single. Phil released the single with “The Crystals” on the label instead of “The Blossoms.” 

It surprised the members of the Crystals to hear their name announced on the radio for a song they didn’t record. When the record started climbing the charts, they were forced to learn and perform the song in concerts. Within a few months, the record had reached the top of the Hot 100.

Myrna got pregnant, and Dolores Brooks replaced her in the group.

A second single recorded with the Blossoms and released as the Crystals came out a few months later. He’s Sure the Boy I Love reached #11 on the Hot 100 in 1963.

Mary left the group and the remaining four singers returned to the studio in 1963 and recorded two more top ten singles with Dolores singing lead vocals. After two other singles failed to reach the top forty, the group abandoned Phil and moved to United Artists. They never again reached the charts.

By 1967, the group had disbanded. Dolores led a reunited group beginning in 1971 with a few replacements for backup singers, and still leads a group of Crystals in oldies shows.

The Blossoms later sang backup vocals on numerous successful records.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blossoms
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darlene_Love

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

Please visit my author page on Amazon where I sell my paperbacks, eBooks, and audiobooks. The Lost or Forgotten Oldies series starts with a volume entitled Introduction, which is only 99 cents.

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1962 Duane Eddy – Dance With The Guitar Man 

When he was only 16, Duane Eddy began playing in a group Jimmy and Duane called with Jimmy Delbridge. They played at a local radio station where they met disk jockey Lee Hazlewood. In 1955, Lee produced the single Soda Fountain Girl for the duo. No, it wasn’t a hit.

Duane figured out how to play bass notes on his guitar in a way that generated the twangy guitar sound we now associate with him. He even bought a  2,000-gallon water storage tank and used it as an echo chamber to make the twanging more pronounced.

Duane and Lee co-wrote the instrumental Movin’ n’ Groovin’, which reached #72 on the Hot 100 in early 1958. The opening riff for the song may well have influenced the Beach Boys when they recorded Surfin’ U.S.A., but the 1956 B-side of a single by Chuck Berry had a very similar opening as well.

The pair also wrote his next single, Rebel-‘Rouser, which Lee again produced. The single earned a gold record and peaked in the Hot 100 top ten in 1958.

More than a dozen top forty singles followed over the next four years. His last top twenty single, (Dance With The) Guitar Man, reached #12 on the Hot 100 in 1962. The record also reached #4 in the UK. The Blossoms provided the vocals on the record. 

Duane’s follow-up single, Boss Guitar, stalled at #28 and he never reached the top forty with a solo record again. His distinctive guitar playing has shown up in hits by other artists, including Rock and Roll Lullaby by B. J. Thomas in 1972 and a remake of Peter Gunn by the Art of Noise in 1986.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Eddy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(Dance_with_the)_Guitar_Man

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

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