‘I’ve Heard Some Talk . . .’

Wandering around in Joel Whitburn’s book Top Adult Songs, 1961-2006, one generally finds an interesting nugget or twenty. (The book chronicles the records on the Billboard chart now called Adult Contemporary, the same chart that was called at various times Easy Listening, Middle Of The Road, and Pop Standards.) 

Among the fun things to do with the book is to look at the various rankings toward the back of the volume: Top 200 artists, top artists of each decade, the list of No. 1 records decade-by-decade, and so on. My attention went this morning to the charts noting the top twenty artists and top twenty singles of the 1960s and of the 1970s. 

And I wondered once again if I am a child of the Sixties or of the Seventies. And I decided, again, that I am both: I turned 12 in 1965, the mid-point of the 1960s. I was already a news junkie and still unhip to Top 40 music, leaving me far more able to discuss the war in Vietnam than the Beatles’ latest single. I liked soundtracks, trumpet music and easy listening. 

I turned 22 in 1975, the mid-point of the Seventies. Still a news junkie but far more hip than I had been ten years earlier, I could discuss with equal expertise the titles on the jukebox in the St. Cloud State student union (Simon & Garfunkel’s “My Little Town,” for one) and the headlines in the Minneapolis Tribune (the fall of Saigon that spring, for example). 

A side note here: I have long held that the cultural era we call The Sixties did not easily fall into the decades. I think the Sixties, as we think of them, began in November 1963 with the assassination of John F. Kennedy and ended in 1975 with either the fall of Saigon in the spring or the capture of Patty Hearst that autumn. Those two years also brought with them musical breaking points as well: The rise of the Beatles in 1963 in Britain and in early 1964 in the U.S. and– perhaps not as world-shaking, but notable for the waves of attendant publicity (as well as for the quality of the music) – the release of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run album in the late summer of 1975. 

With that noted, let’s look at the book’s top five Adult Contemporary artists of the 1960s: 

Frank Sinatra
Herb Alpert (with and without the Tijuana Brass)
Al Martino
Dean Martin
Andy Williams 

And the top five AC records of the 1960s were: 

“Love is Blue” by Paul Mauriat (1968)
“This Guy’s In Love With You” by Herb Alpert (1968)
“King of the Road” by Roger Miller (1965)
“Hello, Dolly!” by Louis Armstrong (1965)
“Somethin’ Stupid” by Frank & Nancy Sinatra (1967) 

Here are the top AC artists of the Seventies: 

The Carpenters
Neil Diamond
John Denver
Elvis Presley
Olivia Newton-John 

And the top five AC hits of the Seventies: 

“Time Passages” by Al Stewart (1978)
“Lead Me On” by Maxine Nightingale (1979)
“Nobody Does It Better” by Carly Simon (1977)
“Crazy Love” by Poco (1979)
“We’ve Only Just Begun” by the Carpenters (1970) 

All of that is greatly familiar, of course. Trying to gauge how much those artists and records matter to me, I went back to the 250-record Ultimate Jukebox I compiled more than ten years ago. Looking through that project, I find that I included only one of the listed artists or records from the 1960s: Frank Sinatra and his 1966 single, “Summer Wind” made the top 250. 

Two artists from the Seventies list above got records into the Ultimate Jukebox: Diamond’s “Holly Holy” from 1969 and “Done Too Soon” from 1970 got in, as did Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” from 1969. The only record included in the UJ from among the five Seventies singles listed above was “Time Passages.” 

So what does that prove? Nothing, really, except that I erred in not including “This Guy’s In Love With You” as one of the 250 singles in that mythical jukebox, which, as I wrote back then, one would find in a place that’s “part malt shop, part beer joint, part crash pad and part heaven.” 

I won’t go back and amend the UJ’s listings. But we can listen to the record today, and as I listen, I’ll remember playing it on the piano in my Danish family’s home during the autumn of 1973, and I’ll remember even more the sensation of my girlfriend’s hands coming to rest on my shoulders as I played. 

Here’s Alpert’s “This Guy’s In Love With You.”

– whiteray