1964 Joe Hinton – Funny (How Time Slips Away)
Willie Nelson signed with D Records and moved to Houston in 1958. While working as a disk jockey, he also began songs that would later become major Country hits after he moved to Nashville in 1960. One of those songs was Funny (How Time Slips Away).
Willie did not release his own version of that song until 1965, four years after Billy Walker recorded the song and reached #23 on the Country chart.
Jimmy Elledge recorded and released his slightly less Country version in 1961 and it reached #22 on the Hot 100 later that year.
Johnny Tillotson began charting hits in 1958 and his records reached the pop chart, the Country chart, and even the Adult Contemporary (AC) chart in 1962. In 1963 he covered Funny (How Time Slips Away). His single only got up to #50 on the Hot 100, but reached #16 on the AC chart.
In 1964, a completely different read on the song came from Joe Hinton. Joe was born in Evansville, Indiana, and began singing professionally with a series of gospel groups. In 1958 he signed a contract with Peacock Records in Memphis and began working on secular records with owner and producer Don Robey. A series of singles came and went before he released You Know It Ain’t Right in 1963. The single peaked at #5 on the R&B chart and reached #88 on the Hot 100.
Two singles later, Joe had the biggest hit of his career with his soulful version of Funny (How Time Slips Away). The initial records were labeled with the title Funny, but they changed to the song’s full title once the record became a hit.
Joe’s single reached #13 on the Hot 100 in 1964 and sold over a million copies.
He only released a few more singles before skin cancer ended his life in 1968.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hinton
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