We wasted time last week by digging around in Top Adult Songs, Joel Whitburn’s compiling of the Billboard chart now called Adult Contemporary, looking at that chart’s top five acts and top five records during both the 1960s and 1970s. In the spirit of never letting a good idea go to waste, we’re going to do the same thing this morning for the Top 40, as listed in Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles.
The top five acts of the Sixties were:
The Beatles
Elvis Presley
Ray Charles
Brenda Lee
The Supremes
Not really any surprises there. Well, maybe Brenda Lee. Before I looked at the list in Top Pop Singles, hers is not a name that would have come to mind. But Lee’s individual entry tells the tale: During the Sixties, she had fifty-seven records either in the Hot 100 or bubbling under, with eleven of them – all between 1960 and 1962 – reaching the Top Ten. Her biggest hit, of course, is “I’m Sorry,” which spent three weeks at No. 1 in 1960.
Whitburn uses a point system to rank the decade’s acts. By his calculations, the Beatles racked up 4,573 points, about 500 more points than Presley. That’s a pretty significant gap, but the gap between Presley and third-place Ray Charles is more than 1,400 points, which only underlines – as if we need any more evidence – how dominant the Beatles and Presley were.
On to the singles. The top five singles of the Sixties, again based on a point system, were:
“Hey Jude” by the Beatles (1968)
“Theme from ‘A Summer Place’” by the Percy Faith Orchestra (1960)
“Tossin’ and Turnin’” by Bobby Lewis (1961)
“I Want To Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles (1964)
“I’m A Believer” by the Monkees (1966)
If there’s a surprise there, it’s the Lewis record, but seventeen weeks in the Top 40 and seven weeks at No. 1 are pretty impressive. I know the record, of course, but because I wasn’t paying any attention to the Top 40 when I was eight and nine, I missed it when it was hot. The Percy Faith, on the other hand, even though it came out a year earlier than the Lewis record, was one of those occasional omnipresent records, playing frequently enough on a wide variety of stations to make its way even to my very young ears.
Let’s go to the 1970s. (And as I type the first two words of that sentence, I hear in my head the Flowerpot Men’s 1967 record, “Let’s Go to San Francisco.”) The top five acts of the Seventies were:
Elton John
Paul McCartney
Bee Gees
The Carpenters
Chicago
Four of the five are no surprise. If I had tried to compile that list before I looked in the book, I’m not sure I would have come up with the Carpenters. But they had twenty-four hits during the decade in the Hot 100 with eleven of those records reaching the Top Ten, so I guess it’s a body of work that kind of sneaked up on me. Their biggest hit – and this I would have known without looking – was 1970’s “(They Long To Be) Close To You,” which spent four weeks at No. 1.
On to the top five singles of the 1970s:
“You Light Up My Life” by Debby Boone (1977)
“Night Fever” by the Bee Gees (1978)
“Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)”
by Rod Stewart (1976)
“Shadow Dancing” by Andy Gibb (1978)
“Le Freak” by Chic (1978)
Do I know those? Of course. Do I like those? Not all that much. The treacly “You Light Up My Life” interested me at first as an exercise in composition, putting me at the piano, sussing out the chords because it was a pretty melody. But the record was everywhere during the latter months of 1977 – I actually began hearing it on local stations in Minnesota around July, I think – and it wore out its welcome, seemingly forever.
Of the other four of the Seventies’ biggest hits, I like “Night Fever” and “Shadow Dancing,” but then, I’ve liked the Bee Gees (and brother Andy when he came along) in all of their guises since they emerged from Australia as Beatles-lite during the mid- to late Sixties.
I don’t remember hearing “Le Freak” much during its time on the radio; I was listening more to Adult Contemporary than to Top 40 by 1978, and “Le Freak” went only to No. 48 on the AC chart, so it never really came home to me. And then there’s “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright),” which falls somewhere in my list of least-favorite records of all time. In fact, it likely would give Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun” a good battle for the title of the worst pop record of my lifetime.
So how many of those records are important to me now, as those decades slide further away every day? We’ll look – as we did last week – at the Ultimate Jukebox I compiled years ago, the jukebox I would have in my living room (as I noted last week) if my living room were “part malt shop, part beer joint, part crash pad and part heaven.”
Looking at the artists of the Sixties listed above: In the UJ, there are two Beatles records (“Back in the U.S.S.R.” and “Got To Get You Into My Life”), two by Elvis, both from the Sixties (“Down In The Alley” and “Suspicious Minds”), none by either Ray Charles (I could have gone with “In The Heat of the Night”) or Brenda Lee, and two by the Supremes: “Someday We’ll Be Together” credited to Diana Ross & The Supremes, and “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” credited to Diana Ross & The Supremes and the Temptations.
None of the top five singles from the 1960s are in the Ultimate Jukebox (though perhaps “A Summer Place” should have been).
The top five artists from the Seventies? Elton John shows up with “Mona Lisas & Mad Hatters” from 1972, McCartney doesn’t show up at all (either on his own or with Wings), the Bee Gees’ Seventies work is represented by “Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)” from 1975, the Carpenters didn’t make the cut, and Chicago is listed for the single edit of “Make Me Smile” from 1970. (The Bee Gees’ 1969 track “Black Diamond” is also listed in the UJ.)
None of the top five singles from the 1970s made it into the Ultimate Jukebox. (I could have checked the artists and singles lists against my iPod, which holds about ten times more tracks than are listed in the UJ. There we’d find – as an example – seven Carpenters’ tracks from the 1970s.)
So, with ten artists and, say, six of those singles to pick from, where do we go for something to listen to on a Monday morning? We could go a number of directions – “Make Me Smile” tugs at me, as does “Fanny (Be Tender With My Love),” but I think we’ll go back to 1960 and “A Summer Place” by the Percy Faith Orchestra. The single is an instrumental, of course, but the song does have lyrics, though I don’t know how often I’ve heard them. The Lettermen had a No. 16 hit with the song in 1965, so I may check that out on YouTube. Here are the lyrics:
There’s a summer place
Where it may rain or storm
Yet I’m safe and warm
For within that summer place
Your arms reach out to me
And my heart is free from all care
For it knows
There are no gloomy skies
When seen through the eyes
Of those who are blessed with love
And the sweet secret of
A summer place
Is that it’s anywhere
When two people share
All their hopes
All their dreams
All their love
There’s a summer place
Where it may rain or storm
Yet I’m safe and warm
In your arms, in your arms
In your arms, in your arms
In your arms, in your arms
– whiteray
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