BEST NUMBER 1 HIT of the EARLY 1960s? (Part 2)

[NightTrain]

Dates indicate when a single peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

Watch for Part 3, coming soon to a DU Lounge near you!

[LiberalVoice]

1. Run Around Sue

or any other Dion & The Belmonts song they released!

I love "oldies". I say that becuase I'm 21. :)

[RebelOne]

31. You should have added an "All of the above" choice.

All those songs were favorites of mine. But I voted for "Lion Sleeps Tonight."

[ronnykmarshall]

2. Hit the Road Jack!

[DenverDem]

3. SUGAR SHACK by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs 1963

May not have gone #1, but one of the coolest tunes ever.

[NightTrain]

5. Yes, it was #1, but I personally can't stand the damned thing!

Sorry.... :shrug:

[DenverDem]

20. An aquired taste.

I was 8 years old at the time, so it was right up my alley. It just marks that period indellibly for me in a cultural aesthetic sense. Soon everything would change forever, and never be as innocent or as secure as it was early in 1963.

[donco6]

4. Weeommommowaaaaay!

In the jungle the mighty jungle. . .
The Lion Sleeps Tonight!

[Kahuna]

6. This is an awesome list. Lion Sleeps Tonight is my #!.

Every song on this list is grrrreat stuff.

[papau]

12. I agree - awesome list - many memories - and Lion was a neat

change of pace!

[Kahuna]

7. Wait a minute! Nothing by Mary Wells?!?..

That just ain't right. :thunbsdown:

[lucidmadman]

25. I saw her open for THE BEATLES at the Cow Palace in SF

...it was that time almost every song on the AM 'top 40' stations was a good British invasion or R 'n' B song. And then Dylan went electric...man oh man...good times...

People like Chuck Berry were still having hits...

[Whitacre D_WI]

8. IIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIII

really wanna love you!
Oh-oh!
Comeon lemme hold you, darlin'
'cause I'm the Duke of EEEEAAAAARRRRLLL!
So, hey, yea, yea, yeah!



"Hit the Road, Jack" = #2 on the list.

[H2O Man]

9. I liked Hang on Sloopy

by the McCoys. Might not have been #1 on the charts, but it was in my book. I have a bootleg album with a young Jimi Hendrix doing it, too.

[Whitacre D_WI]

10. The McCoys were from Dayton, OH.

"Hang on Sloopy" is the official rock and roll song of Ohio. Rick Derringer of the McCoys went on to record the (positively dreadful) FM radio staple "Rock 'n' Roll Hootchie Coo."

Just thought you might like to know.

By the way, "Hang on Sloopy" was from '65. Not the early '60s.

[H2O Man]

13. That's early enough for me!

Oh, sure, try to confuse me with facts, now will ya! Ha-ha. Thanks for the information. Besides any/everything the Beatles did, I am not fond of any early 60's music. I remember my siblings playing that one over and over, the McCoys, and really liking it.

[NightTrain]

11. Look for "Hang On Sloopy" when I get to the #1 hits of the middle 1960s.

It's from '65, you see. And it is, indeed, an ass-kicker of a rock 'n' roll song! :headbang:

[Whitacre D_WI]

14. By the way,

the best #2 hit of the early '60s was "Walk, Don't Run" by the Ventures.


That went to #2, right, NT?

[NightTrain]

15. You are correct! "Walk--Don't Run" peaked at #2 in 1960.

n/t

[Mz Pip]

16. Runaway

by Del Shannon. That was the best.

MzPip
:dem:

[Art_from_Ark]

33. Another vote for Runaway

That's one saaaaad song

[mac56]

17. A tossup between the two songs by Brother Ray.

Went with "I Can't Stop Loving You".

[NightTrain]

18. Went for "Hit The Road Jack" myself.

"What'd you SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY?!"

[NightTrain]

19. kick

n/t

[Gildor Inglorion]

21. I love them all!

But I went for "I Can't Stop Loving You." Ray Charles is probably God.

[OneBlueSky]

22. Where does the lion sleep tonight?

I voted for "Runaround Sue" (could just as easily voted for "Hit the Road, Jack"), but thought some here might be interested in the fascinating story of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" . . . read on . . .

http://www.3rdearmusic.com/forum/mbube2.html

In The Jungle --- it is one of the great musical mysteries of all time: How American music legends made millions off the work of a Zulu tribesman who died a pauper. After six decades, the truth is finally told.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, a small miracle took place in the brain of a man named Solomon Linda. It was 1939, and he was standing in front of a microphone in the only recording studio in black Africa when it happened. He hadn't composed the melody or written it down or anything. He just opened his mouth and out it came, a haunting skein of fifteen notes that flowed down the wires and into a trembling stylus that cut tiny grooves into a spinning block of bees wax, which was taken to England and turned into a record that became a very big hit in that part of Africa.
Later, the song took flight and landed in America, where it mutated into a truly immortal pop epiphany that soared to the top of the charts here and then everywhere, again and again, returning every decade or so under different names and guises. Navajo Indians sing it at powwows. Japanese teenagers know it as TK. ____________ Phish perform it live. Cybersurfers recognize it as the theme song of a hugely popular British website. It has been recorded by artists as diverse as R.E.M. and Glen Campbell, Brian Eno and Chet Atkins, the Nylons and ___ schlockmeister Bert Kaempfert. The New Zealand army band turned it into a march. England's 1986 World Cup soccer squad turned it into a joke. Hollywood put it in Ace Ventura Pet Detective. It has logged nearly three centuries of continuous radio air play in the U.S. alone. It is the most famous melody ever to emerge from Africa, a tune that has penetrated so deep into the human consciousness over so many generations that one can truly say, here is a song the whole world knows.

Its epic transcultural saga is also, in a way, the story of popular music, which limped pale-skinned and anaemic into the twentieth century but danced out the other side vastly invigorated by transfusions of ragtime and rap, jazz, blues and soul, all of whose blood lines run back to Africa via slave ships and plantations and ghettos. It was in the nature of this transaction that black men gave more than they got and often ended up with nothing.

This one's for Solomon Linda, then, a Zulu who wrote a melody that earned untold millions for white men but died so poor that his widow couldn't afford a stone for his grave. Let's take it from the top, as they say in the trade.

- much, much more . . . and really interesting . . .

http://www.3rdearmusic.com/forum/mbube2.html

[MrSlayer]

23. Hit the Road Jack!

Ray Charles rips on this one.

[lucidmadman]

24. I cannot chose just one song from this list...

..you got some sweet songs on this list...oh OK....Brother Ray...

[lucidmadman]

26. Is The Miracle's SHOP AROUND gonna be on the list next time?

[NightTrain]

27. 'Fraid not. It "only" peaked at #2.

Sorry....

[lucidmadman]

28. Wow. Just goes to show how good the music was then..

...there were some great country crossover hits around then, too. Johnny Horton had a few.

[NightTrain]

29. You know what, though....

It might be interesting to do a series of polls asking people to pick their favorite (and perhaps least favorite) #2 hits of decades past. You'd be surprised at some of what didn't quite make it to #1--and at some of what kept it off #1, for that matter.

Just one example: "Louie, Louie" by the Kingsmen was kept from #1 by two different records: the Singing Nun's "Dominique" and Bobby Vinton's "There! I've Said it Again." :eyes:

[lucidmadman]

30. I was thinking something kinda like that...

...I bet the number twos are really interesting. I bet the number eights are interesting!
That's so funny about LOUIE,LOUIE! I live in Portland. I live about a dozen blocks from where it was recorded.
We've had a pretty good 'oldies' stations come on the air here recently. They seem to play the whole 'top 40' instead of that really limited playlist the other oldies stations play. I always dig it the most when they play the old instrumentals like Jack Nietzsche's(SP?) THE LONELY SURFER or WILD WEEKEND. Who did WILD WEEKEND? I know Paul Schaefer does it sometimes on LETTERMAN and that Roxy Music used to do it. It always makes me happy to hear that song.

[dbt]

32. Proud to be the first vote for "Hey Baby!"

And wasn't that Delbert McClinton on harmonica?

:smoke:
dbt

[chiburb]

34. I second that!

Though it was a toss-up with Dion, one of my ALLTIME faves!

[chiburb]

35. Kick,,,, n/t

.