1961 The Diamonds – One Summer Night

1961 The Diamonds – One Summer Night 

Four singers from Canada formed The Diamonds in the mid-fifties. They moved to the US and began recording hits by covering songs that had been hits on the R&B chart, beginning with Why Do Fools Fall In Love in 1956. By 1958, the group had recorded over a dozen top forty singles, including three top ten hits.

The Danleers started singing doo wop songs on street corners in Brooklyn in the late fifties. The five members recorded a song written by their manager, Danny Webb. The single One Summer Night reached #7 on the Hot 100 and #4 on the R&B chart in 1958 and sold over a million copies.

The Danleers continued recording for a few more years, but never again reached the charts.

The Diamonds reached #18 on the Hot 100 in early 1959 with She Say (Oom Dooby Doom), but their next nine singles didn’t even reach the Hot 100 at all. By 1960, all but one of the original members of the group had left and been replaced by new singers.

In the Summer of 1961, the group looked to recapture their success by covering the Danleers’ sole hit record. The Diamond’s version of One Summer Night was nearly a direct copy of the original and took the group back up to #22 on the Hot 100.

The single turned out to be the group’s final visit to the charts. The last original member of the group left as well, and Mercury Records dropped them. Touring groups continued singing the group’s songs; sometimes there were multiple groups touring at the same time until lawsuits gave one ex-member control of the group name.

Some of the original members even reunited for a PBS show 2004.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Summer_Night
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Danleers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamonds

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1960 Hot Rod Lincoln

1960 Hot Rod Lincoln

Jesse Lee Shibley was a disk jockey who moved from Arkansas to Washington in 1948. Folks there called him Arkie, probably a shortened form of Arkansas. He hosted a regular Country show on KBRG. He recorded the song Hot Rod Race which credited George Wilson as the songwriter. He recorded the song in a talking blues style.

When he couldn’t interest a record label with his recording, he created the Mountain Dew record label. The record listed Arkie Shibley and his Mountain Dew Boys as the singers. The single peaked at #5 on the Country chart in 1951.

Several cover versions were recorded, and Tiny Hill’s version reached #29 on the pop chart. All the versions of Hot Rod Lincoln owe more than a little to Arkie’s record.

Arkie recorded four sequels to the song that followed the drivers into court, but none of them did very well.

Singer/songwriter Charlie Ryan recorded an answer song in 1955 with backing from the Livingston Bros. Their single, Hot Rod Lincoln, failed to chart.

Charlie Ryan and the Timberline Riders released an updated version of his song in 1959. That version did much better; it reached #33 on the Hot 100 and #14 on the Country chart early the next year.

When Charlie’s second release began to fade, Johnny Bond released a cover version of Hot Rod Lincoln with slightly different lyrics. His single did better, peaking at #26 on the Hot 100 in 1960 without touching the Country chart.

One more notable cover version of the song exists. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen peaked at #9 on the Hot 100 in 1972 with their single.

The 1976 book Star-Making Machinery by Geoffrey Stokes used the single to describe the state of the music business and how the production and marketing of the single affected the band and their music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Rod_Race
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Rod_Lincoln
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Ryan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Bond
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander_Cody_and_His_Lost_Planet_Airmen

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1960 Ferlin Husky – On The Wings Of A Dove

1960 Ferlin Husky – On The Wings Of A Dove

His mother named him Furland Husky at birth, but an error on the birth certificate declared his name to be Ferlin. He dropped out of school and began working truck driver and steel mill worker while playing and singing in honky tonks in the evenings and weekends.

While in the merchant marine during World War II, Ferlin entertained others by making up and telling humorous stories about a character he named Simon Crum. After the war, he began recording. Actor Smiley Burnette convinced Ferlin that he needed to use a stage name, and he released an early version of the song Gone using the name Terry Preston.

Ferlin signed with Capitol Records in 1953 and dropped the pseudonym. He and Jean Shepard reached #1 on the Country chart and #4 on the pop chart with their single Dear John.

They immediately followed their success with an answer song, Forgive Me John, which reached #4 on the Country chart but only #24 on the pop chart.

Ferlin had two more top ten solo hits in 1955. He continued with his comedy patter about Simon Crum in his live shows and even released the single Cuzz Yore So Sweet credited to Simon Crum on the label; that single peaked at #5 on the Country chart!

In 1957, Ferlin recorded a new version of Gone. The new version of the song featured the horns and backup singers that were common in the emerging Nashville Sound. The single again took Ferlin to the top of the Country chart and also reached #4 on the Hot 100.

Ferlin had seven more singles reach the top twenty-five on the Country chart during the fifties, including a single credited to Simon Crum that reached #2.

The biggest hit of his career came in 1960 with the release of Wings Of A Dove. The single was his last chart-topping hit on the Country chart and also peaked at #12 on the Hot 100.

Ferlin had over two dozen more top forty singles on the Country chart by 1975, but his only other appearance on the Hot 100 was a single that stalled at #94 in 1962. He had heart surgery in 1977 and briefly retired, but eventually returned to appearances on the Grand Ole Opry and limited live shows. Additional heart surgery and pneumonia also affected his career later on.

Ferlin died from another bout of congestive heart failure in 2011.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferlin_Husky
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_of_a_Dove_(Bob_Ferguson_song)

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1959 Tommy Dee – Three Stars

1959 Tommy Dee – Three Stars

Tommy Dee grew up in Boston and pursued a career as a disk jockey. He worked at He became a disk jockey at KCLS in Flagstaff, Arizona, and then at KOFA in Yuma.

During his first week at KPXM in San Bernardino, a plane crash cost the lives of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens (an event immortalized as “The day the music died” in the song American Pie). He wrote a song as a tribute to the three and recorded it with his guitar on a tape recorder that his neighbor owned. His initial intention was to broadcast the recording on his radio show, but others encouraged him to record it as a single.

He took the song to Sylvester Cross, who owned Crest Records and American Music. Sylvester offered to have Eddie Cochran record the song, but a session where they worked on the song failed to come up with a recording they were happy with.

Within a week, Sylvester took Tommy to Hollywood’s Gold Star Studios and had him record the song with help from Carol Kay and the Teen-Aires. The resulting single peaked at #11 on the Hot 100 in 1959.

Tommy went on the road to promote his record. He appeared on American Bandstand twice and toured with Eddie Cochran and Conway Twitty.

Tommy returned to work as a disk jockey but recorded more singles over the next 22 years. Several of his releases were attempts to commemorate other tragedies, including the death of Patsy Cline. He also recorded An Open Letter (To Caroline and John-John) after the assassination of President Kennedy. He never reached the Hot 100 again, but came close with a single in 1981. He eventually became a talent scout in Nashville.

Several sources claim that Carol Kay began performing as Carol Kaye. She played bass on about ten thousand recordings and became one of the most well-known members of the Wrecking Crew.

Eddie Cochran died in 1960. His record company released his version of Three Stars in 1966.

Tommy Dee

https://historylink.org/File/20800
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Stars_(song)

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1958 Link Wray and His Ray Men – Rumble

1958 Link Wray and His Ray Men – Rumble

Link Wray grew up in North Carolina during the Depression. Link’s mother was a Shawnee native American, which led to persecution of his family by the local members of the KKK.

While Link served in the Army during the Korean War, he contracted tuberculosis and had to have part of a lung removed. The operation left him unable to perform as a singer, and that led him to concentrate on instrumentals. He and his two brothers formed Lucky Wray & the Palomino Ranch Hands and began playing country-infused music. The group added a bass player and began recording music in the mid-fifties.

At a local record hop, Link created a new song when the audience asked him to play a stroll. Archie Bleyer had a recording of the song cut for his Cadence Records label. His daughter said the song reminded her of the rumbles in West Side Story, and Cadence issued the single as Rumble by Link Wray and His Ray Men.

The single peaked at #16 on the Hot 100 in 1958. The title led the song to get banned in several major markets (including New York City) or the release might have performed better.

Cadence wanted Link to go to Nashville and record with the producers of the Everly Brothers, but Link did not want any part of that. Instead, he signed with Epic Records and recorded Rawhide. Epic released the single credited to Link Wray and the Wraymen.

The single peaked at #23 on the Hot 100 in 1959.

None of Link’s other releases on Epic reached the charts, and after trying to issue records on his own label, he signed with Swan Records in the early sixties. His only other charting record came on Swan in 1963 when the single Jack The Ripper reached #64 on the Hot 100.

The single may not have bounded up the charts, but they later used the song on the soundtrack of the Richard Gere version of the film Breathless.

It’s easy to underestimate the impact Link’s guitar playing had on future musicians. He popularized the guitar power chord that underlies much of rock music. A diverse list of guitarists who credit Link as an influence includes Jimmy Page, Iggy Pop, and Neil Young.

A quote from Peter Townsend sums it up best: “He is the king; if it hadn’t been for Link Wray and ‘Rumble,’ I would have never picked up a guitar.”

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/link-wray-mn0000240311/biography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_Wray

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1957 Frankie Lymon – Goody Goody

1957 Frankie Lymon – Goody Goody 

Singers Jimmy Merchant and Sherman Garnes formed the Earth Angels while still in junior high school in New York City. Herman Santiago and Joe Negroni joined the group, and they began using the name of a car, calling themselves The Coupe De Villes. Herman became the lead singer. They completed the group in 1954 when they added twelve-year-old Frankie Lymon.

More names for the group followed, including The Ermines and The Premiers.

Herman and Jimmy had written a song they called Why Do Birds Sing So Gay, and Frankie worked with them to finish the lyrics for the song when he joined the group. They went to an audition for the song with producer George Goldner in 1955. Herman was sick that day, so Frankie sang lead on the song. George signed the group to his Gee record label. He encouraged some changes to the lyrics and produced a single that was released as The Teenagers Featuring Frankie Lymon.

The single peaked at #6 on the Hot 100 and stayed at #1 on the R&B chart for five weeks in early 1956. The group followed that success a few months later with I Want You To Be My Girl. That single reached #13 on the Hot 100 and #3 on the R&B chart.

Three more singles reached the top ten on the R&B chart, but none of them reached the top forty on the pop charts. By 1957, their label billed the group as Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, which annoyed other members of the group. George dealt with that by signing Frankie to a solo contract. The other teenagers recruited Billy Lobrano as a replacement for Frankie, but never charted again.

The first single recorded by Frankie as a solo record was a cover of a 1936 song written by Matty Malneck and Johnny Mercer, Goody Goody. Gee released the single credited to Frankie Lymon and His Teenagers even though none of the Teenagers sang on the song.

The single peaked at #20 on the Hot 100 in 1957 without charting on the R&B chart.

Frankie sang the song twice on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Frankie continued recording singles through the early sixties that were credited to him as a solo performer, but had no more luck than his former band members; he never reached the charts again, either.

Frankie died from a heroin overdose in 1968. He was only 25 years old.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Teenagers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Lymon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goody_Goody

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1983 Asia – The Smile Has Left Your Eyes

1983 Asia – The Smile Has Left Your Eyes

The supergroup Asia was made up of four veterans of progressive rock groups: Geoff Downes, Steve Howe, Carl Palmer, and John Wetton. Their first album received very positive critical acclaim and sold extremely well, leading to successful tours.

The group’s second album, Alpha, did not fare as well. Much like their first album, the sophomore release boasted two hit singles, but fans seemed to feel the band had become less progressive.

The band released Don’t Cry as the first single from the album. The single topped the US Mainstream Rock chart but peaked at only #10 on the Hot 100 in early 1983.

I liked the second single from the album a lot more, but The Smile Has Left Your Eyes turned out to be too pop-oriented for their core audience. The single stalled at #34 on the Hot 100 and only reached #25 on the US Mainstream Rock chart later in 1983.

The poor response to the second album led to the John leaving the group (or being asked to leave; conflicting stories exist). As a favor to Carl, Greg Lake (of King Crimson and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer) took John’s place to continue their tour, but the rest of the tour soon got cancelled because of poor ticket sales.

The group asked John to return for a tour of Japan, but he was only willing to rejoin the group if Steve left. Following a suggestion from their label, the band replaced Steve with Mandy Meyer, a hard-rock guitarist from Krokus.

The band recorded a third album, but the reception was so poor that they cancelled their tour and disbanded in 1986.

Various groups of Asia have been formed and reformed over the years, including the reunion of the original members from 2006 to 2013. They recorded ten more albums between 1992 and 2014, but the band never again achieved the level of success they had with their first album.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_(band)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_discography

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1982 Alabama – Love In The First Degree

1982 Alabama – Love In The First Degree 

Guitar player Randy Owen and his cousin bass player Teddy Gentry grew up in Alabama and began playing and singing Country music in various groups in the early sixties. A third cousin, guitar player Jeff Cook, joined the group in 1968 and they began calling themselves Young Country. They recruited a fourth cousin (Jackie Owen) to play drums for the group.

In 1972, Bennett Vartanian replaced Jackie as their new drummer and the group changed their name to Wildcountry. Four more drummers came and went while the group moved to South Carolina and began working as full-time musicians. By 1974, Rick Scott was the drummer for the band.

The band send demos to a long list of record companies and finally signed with GRT Records for one record. The label convinced the band to change their name to The Alabama Band, which they later shortened to Alabama.

Their first single did not reach the top forty on the Country chart, and GRT Records went into bankruptcy. Unfortunately, their contract prevented the band from recording for any other label until they had saved up enough money to buy themselves out of their contract. The band began recording again in 1979, after which Rick Scott left the band. They hired rock drummer Mark Herndon to play drums for them although he never became an official member of the group.

Randy and Teddy wrote My Heart’s In Alabama and their single reached #17 on the Country chart. That success led the group to sign with RCA Records. Randy wrote their first single on RCA, Tennessee River, which came out in 1980 and quickly reached the top of the Country chart. That was the first of 21 consecutive Country number one singles.

While the band was not attempting to record music that would crossover to the pop charts, three of their singles in 1981-82 successfully reached the top twenty on the Hot 100 and the top ten on the Adult Contemporary (AC) chart.

The most successful of those records was the single Love In The First Degree.

The single peaked at #15 on the Hot 100 and number 5 on the AC chart in 1982.

Bananarama released a single entitled Love In The First Degree in 1988 which reached the Hot 100, but it was a completely different song. 

By 1984, Alabama had stopped recording songs that easily crossed over to pop. They only returned to the top forty on the Hot 100 one last time. In 1999, the band recorded God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You with some vocal background help from ‘N Sync. Their single reached #3 on the Country chart and #29 on the Hot 100 in 1999. They even appeared live with ‘N Sync to perform the song together a few times.

By 2004, Alabama had disbanded and its members moved on to solo projects. A few reunions have taken place, and the band (with help from yet more studio drummers) has even recorded a few more albums. Their most recent new recording was 2014’s The Classic Christmas Album.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_(band)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_discography

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1981 Diesel – Sausalito Summernight

1981 Diesel – Sausalito Summernight

One of the few Dutch groups to reach the US charts, Diesel was formed in 1978. Two years later, the band completed an album.

After several singles charted in the Netherlands, the group finally got their record label to release Sausalito Summernight as a single. The original song ran for over five minutes on the group’s album. 

The original release of the song in the Netherlands contained a misspelling that listed the song title as Sausolito Summernight. That was corrected for the US/Canadian release. One member of the band was inspired to write the lyrics for the song by the time he spent living in California in the mid-sixties.

The US promo records that were initially sent to radio stations ran only six seconds more than three minutes. Before it went into major release, they created a different edit that lasted three minutes and forty seconds.

The song sounded a great deal like something The Steve Miller Band might have released. The single peaked at only #25 on the Hot 100 in 1981 but sold over 600,000 copies worldwide. The record did much better in Canada: it topped the chart!

The group recorded another album in 1982, but when sales stalled, the group rotated its membership for the next three years in search of a winning sound. No additional singles were successful, and the group disbanded in 1985.

Several reunions brought the band back together a few times, but they remain a one-hit wonder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_(band)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sausalito_Summernight

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1980 Neil Diamond – September Morn

1980 Neil Diamond – September Morn

Neil Diamond spent some of his early career as a songwriter in the infamous Brill Building.

Bang Records released Neil’s second album, Just For You, in 1967. Neil had three singles from the album reach the top twenty on the Hot 100 that year. The album also included Neil’s version of I’m A Believer, a song that the Monkees covered and took to the top of the charts in 1966/1967.

Neil developed several reasons to be unhappy with his treatment by Bang Records and signed with Uni Records in 1968. While his new music quickly took Neil back into the top ten, Bang Records continued to release singles that they owned the rights to. While some of the singles were simply re-issues (like Solitary Man), Bang Records modified other songs by adding horns and strings added to the backgrounds (like Shilo). In 1971, Bang Records added orchestra backing to his original version of I’m A Believer and reissued it as a single that peaked at #51 on the Hot 100.

Lawsuits between Neil and Bang Records continued until Neil won in court in 1977, after which he bought back all his recordings on Bang Records.

Neil released the title song from his album September Morn in late 1979. The single peaked at #17 on the Hot 100 in early 1980 and reached #2 on the Adult The Adult Contemporary chart.

Since he once again owned his original recordings, Neil recorded a new version of I’m A Believer on the album and used it for the b-side of September Morn.

Similar to the remake that Neil Sedaka gave his early hit Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, Neil rerecorded a slow version of I’m A Believer on an album in 2010.

In 2018, Neil announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and retired from live shows. He has continued to record new music, including the 2020 album Classic Diamonds. He recorded the album with the London Symphony Orchestra. It included yet another version of I’m A Believer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Diamond
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Diamond_discography

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