1971 Al Green – Tired Of Being Alone

1971 Al Green – Tired Of Being Alone

Albert Leornes Greene was born into an Arkansas family that included nine other brothers and sisters. When he was ten, he joined the other young men in the family and began singing as a member of The Greene Brothers. His family moved to Michigan a few years later. When Al got caught listening to secular music by Jackie Wilson, Al’s religious father kicked him out of the house. He lived on the streets and then with a prostitute and became all too familiar with drugs.

Al formed a group while still in high school, Al Greene & the Creations. Two of the other members of the group formed their own record label. The group got renamed, and in 1967, Al Greene and the Soul Mates recorded Back Up Train, which turned into a surprise hit. The single reached #5 on the R&B chart and peaked at #41 on the Hot 100. None of the other records they recorded for the label repeated that success.

Willie Mitchell began his career as a trumpet player and became a bandleader and record producer based in Memphis. He took over the Hi Records label and hired Al to sing in a show in Texas in 1969. The performance convinced him to sign Al to a contract and begin training him to sing better. He also got Al to remove the last ‘e’ from his name, leaving his name as Al Green.

Al and Willie produced a cover of the Temptations hit I Can’t Get Next To You. His single reached #11 on the R&B chart but only got to #60 on the Hot 100 in 1970.

Al had written another song, Tired Of Being Alone, that was intended for his first solo album in 1969, but he and Willie decided that something had gone wrong when it was recorded and it was left off that album. Willie produced a second version of the song in 1971 that they were both satisfied with. The final single reached #11 on the Hot 100 and #7 on the R&B chart that year and sold over a million copies.

Al’s next single was the chart-topping Lets Stay Together, after which his career took off. By the time his hit singles slowed up in 1977, Al had already recorded six more singles that reached the top ten on the Hot 100 and five more records that topped the R&B chart.

Al became a minister and began only recording gospel music. That change paid off in a big way: he won eight Grammy awards for Gospel recordings.

Al recorded a secular record again when he cut a duet with Annie Lennox in 1988, Put A Little Love In Your Heart. The single reached the top ten on the Hot 100 and #2 on the Adult Contemporary chart, but completely missed the R&B chart. He continued recording secular music again, although his remaining singles only reached the R&B chart.

Al has been nominated for 21 Grammy Awards and has collected 11 wins. They inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 1995.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Green
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Green_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_of_Being_Alone

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1970 Gene Chandler – Groovy Situation

1970 Gene Chandler – Groovy Situation

Eugene Drake Dixon was born in Chicago in 1937. In 1957 he began singing as a member of the Dukays, and he quickly became their lead singer. He left the group when the draft took him into the military but rejoined as soon as he returned to civilian life. The Dukays released the single The Girl’s A Devil on Nat Records in 1961 and the record reached #64 on the Hot 100.

That success resulted in a recording session that produced four more songs. Nite Owl did nearly as well as their last single, reaching #73 in 1962. At the same time, Eugene took another one of the songs to Vee Jay Records and they released Duke Of Earl as a single, crediting Gene Chandler as the singer rather than listing the group. The record hit the top of both the Hot 100 and the R&B chart.

Gene bought a cape, a monocle, and a top hat and began appearing as the Duke Of Earl. He appeared in the film Don’t Knock The Twist singing his big hit in his full costume. He released his next single as The Duke Of Earl instead of using his stage name again, but after that single stalled at #91 on the Hot 100, he returned to using Gene Chandler.

Gene had just two more top forty singles on the Hot 100 in the next seven years: the single Just Be True reached #19 in 1964

Meanwhile, the single Nothing Can Stop Me reached #18 in 1965. During that time period, he placed more than a dozen singles into the R&B top forty, including four that reached the top five.

Gene moved into producing music rather than just singing on records and in concerts, and in 1969 he produced Backfield In Motion for Mel and Tim. The single reached the top ten, and Gene also produced the rest of their first album, including the song Groovy Situation.

When Mel and Tim’s did not release their version of Groovy Situation as a single, Gene recorded and released his own version in 1970.

Gene’s very similar single peaked at #12 on the Hot 100 and #8 on the R&B chart and became Gene’s last top forty single on the pop charts.

He had another seven top forty singles on the R&B chart before his string of charting releases ran out in 1986.

They used Duke Of Earl on the soundtrack of Hairspray in 1988 and Groovy Situation found a new home in Anchorman: Music from the Motion Picture. Duke Of Earl was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.

The city of Chicago reflected Gene’s music and his civic and charitable efforts in the city by naming a street after him in 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Chandler

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1967 Herman’s Hermits – No Milk Today

1967 Herman’s Hermits – No Milk Today

Herman’s Hermits had an amazing run of hit records in the US in the mid-sixties. Many of them featured one or two members of Led Zeppelin playing instruments on their recordings.

The group even managed one two-sided hit in 1967. The a-side featured the top five hit There’s A Kind Of Hush, which later reached the top twenty when the Carpenters released their own cover version of the song in 1976.

The b-side, which is mostly ignored by radio stations now, was No Milk Today. The recording just barely got into the top forty in the US in 1967, but topped the charts in Australia and reached the top ten in a half-dozen other countries where they released it as the A-side of a different single in 1966.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Milk_Today

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1969 Roy Clark – Yesterday When I Was Young

1969 Roy Clark – Yesterday When I Was Young

Roy Clark grew up in Washington, DC, and later moved to New York City. His father was a semi-professional musician who taught Roy to play guitar at a young age. Roy won the National Banjo Competition in 1947 and 1948, and that earned him an appearance on the Grand Ole Opry at the age of 17. He then began touring in the backup bands for various Country acts.

Roy began recording singles in 1954, releasing them as solo records or as Roy Clark and His Wranglers or Roy Clark and the Versitals.  None of the singles charted.

In 1960, Roy had moved to Las Vegas and begun playing guitar in a Country band. His lightning delivery was impressive enough that by 1962 he was headlining his own show.

Roy covered Bill Anderson’s song Tips Of My Fingers in 1963. Roy’s solo single reached the top ten on the Country chart. He continued recording singles, but for the next five years only four of the records charted on the national Country chart, and they each peaked between #31 and #57.

Roy began an acting career in 1968 when he was cast as both Cousin Roy and Mother Myrtle on The Beverly Hillbillies. He also appeared in a few TV movies and as himself in The Drew Carey Show.

Charles Aznavour wrote and recorded the song Hier Encore with French lyrics in 1964. Herbert Kretzmer wrote the lyrics for the English-language musical adaptation of Les Misérables. He also translated the lyrics of many of Aznavour’s songs from French to English. He re-interpreted Hier Encore as Yesterday When I Was Young. Roy’s single took him to the top ten on the Country chart again and also reached #19 on the Hot 100. It was to be the only one of his recordings to reach the pop chart.

His longest career move came about when Roy was selected as one of the co-hosts for the television show Hee Haw, which lasted for nearly 300 episodes. The show began its run on CBS from 1969 to 1972. A move to syndication kept the show on the air with new episodes through 1997. Lawrence Welk also had to move his show to syndication, and Roy scored a top ten Country record with a song entitled The Lawrence Welk – Hee Haw Counter-Revolution Polka.

The show put Roy in front of a vast audience. Even better, the show usually filmed an entire season in just two weeks so it didn’t interfere with touring or recording. While the show didn’t help Roy reach the Hot 100 again, he had steady chart records on the Country chart through the end of the eighties.

In 1975, Roy appeared on The Odd Couple and showed off his incomparable guitar playing.

Roy retired to Oklahoma and died shortly thereafter in 2018.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Clark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Clark_discography

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1968 Max Frost and the Troopers – Shapes of Things To Come

1968 Max Frost and the Troopers – Shapes of Things To Come

The 1968 film Wild in the Streets included the song Shape of Things To Come. Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil wrote the song, which was lip-synced by a fictional band, Max Frost and the Troopers. The song is not related to the Yardbirds’ song Shapes Of Things To Come or the Audioslave song Shape of Things to Come.

While Christopher Jones appears to sing the song in the film, he is merely acting. The lead vocal actually came from Harley Hatcher and an instrumental version of the song was released by Dave Allan and the Arrows. 

A very young Richard Pryor was the only other notable member of the fictional band; he appeared as the drummer in the film.

The single eventually reached #22 on the Hot 100 in 1968.

Over two dozen cover versions of the song have been recorded since then!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Frost_and_the_Troopers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_Things_to_Come_(song)
https://harleyhatcher.com/biography/

1967 Box Tops – Neon Rainbow

1967 Box Tops – Neon Rainbow

Guitarists John Evans and Gary Talley, bassist Bill Cunningham, and drummer Danny Smythe created the group The Devilles in the mid-sixties. They recruited 16-year-old lead vocalist Alex Chilton to complete the group and began playing together in the Memphis area in 1967. Alex’s vocals were exactly what producer Dan Penn had been looking for, and he produced the band’s first single, The Letter. Wayne Carson wrote the song, and the members of the group played and sang on the single.

After changing their name to the Box Tops (another group had already recorded as the Devilles), the group signed with Bell Records. The company released their single on the Mala label in 1967. The record easily jumped to the top of the Hot 100.

Wayne also wrote the group’s second song and Dan again produced the single. Neon Rainbow did not perform as well as The Letter, but the single still reached #24 on the Hot 100 near the end of 1967.

In early 1968 the band released their second album and the title song, Cry Like A Baby, brought them back near the top of the charts. Dan and Spooner Oldham wrote that single, and it peaked at #2.

Two of the band’s members returned to college to avoid the draft, and the band replaced them and switched to new producers. They had four more top forty singles in 1968 and 1969, but none of them even dented the top ten. The group disbanded in early 1970, although their ex-record company kept releasing singles, hoping to find more hits.

Alex began playing guitar and pursued a solo career for a little more than a year before becoming a founding member of the group Big Star in 1971. That group released several albums before breaking up in 1974. One song that Alex wrote that the group recorded was September Gurls.

Bands including R.E.M. and the Replacements referenced Big Star as an influence in the early eighties, leading to the re-issuance of their albums.

In 1986, the Bangles covered September Girls on their second album. The royalties from that inclusion were probably the biggest payday Alex ever had.

Big Sky reformed in 1993 and persisted until Alex had a heart attack and died in 2010.

A 2012 film, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, was a documentary about the group, their influence, and their inability to succeed commercially.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Box_Tops
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-box-tops-mn0000624504/biography

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1966 Carla Thomas B-A-B-Y

1966 Carla Thomas B-A-B-Y 

After she wrote and recorded the suprise hit Gee Whiz in 1961, Carla Thomas began recording a long series of hit R&B records through the rest of the decade. David Porter & Isaac Hayes wrote her her biggest solo hit during that period, B-A-B-Y. The single peaked at #14 on the Hot 100 and #3 on the R&B chart in 1966.

Later, Carla and Otis Redding reached the top forty with a few duets on the Hot 100. Their biggest solo hit on the Hot 100 became Tramp.

The single peaked at #26 in 1967.

Carla continued to score top ten hits on the R&B charts through the late sixties. She earned a Grammy Award nomination in 1968 for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance with her performance of The Queen Alone (the award went to Aretha Franklin for Respect).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Thomas
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1965 The Turtles – Let Me Be

1965 The Turtles – Let Me Be 

Howard Kaylan, Mark Volman, and three other high school friends in Los Angeles formed The Crossfires in 1963. After a few singles failed to catch any fire at all, the group signed with White Whale Records as a folk-rock group and changed their name to The Tyrtles. The deliberate misspelling went by the wayside, and the group made it into the top ten on the Hot 100 in 1965 with their cover of the Bob Dylan song It Ain’t Me Babe. 

P. F. Sloan had written the song Eve Of Destruction and it was offered to the Turtles. While they were looking to record a protest song, Howard felt that the record made a statement that would be career-ending. Barry McGuire recorded that song (with the help of the members of the Grass Roots playing backup music) and the single hit the top of the charts. He proved Howard’s opinion was correct by never reaching the top forty again.

Instead of ending their careers, the Turtles recorded a second song written by Sloan, Let Me Be. The milder protest song got the group back on the top forty without burning down their future. The single peaked at #29 on the Hot 100 in the fall of 1965. 

The Vogues recorded another song by P. F. Sloan & Steve Barri in 1965, but failed to release the song until 1996. You Baby was a non-protest song the Turtles released in 1966. The single took them up to #20 on the Hot 100. The group released five more singles that year, none of which charted any higher than #81 in the US.

The Turtles started off 1967 with the release of the #1 single Happy Together, and their career took off. In 1970, the group finally released a single version of Eve Of Destruction that they had recorded back in 1965. As you might expect, the record only reached #100 on the Hot 100 before fading away, and their career was seemingly over. Well, at least their charting days were over, and the band members mostly went their separate ways.

Howard and Mark stayed together and recorded and toured as Flo and Eddie. In 1983, the duo regained the rights to use of the name “The Turtles” and began touring as The Turtles featuring Flo and Eddie. Their Happy Together tours, which primarily featured singers and bands from the sixties, continued through at least 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turtles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turtles_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_Me_Be_(The_Turtles_song)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Baby_(song)

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1966 Joe Cuba – Bang! Bang!

1966 Joe Cuba – Bang! Bang! 

Gilberto Miguel Calderón grew up in Harlem, Puerto Rico, and Spanish Harlem in the fifties and sixties. He primarily played the conga and began performing in bands by the late fifties. He organized his own band as José Calderón Sextet but  his agent convinced him to change the name to the Joe Cuba Sextet shortly thereafter.

Joe,  Ray Barretto, and Richie Ray, were at the forefront of the developing Latin soul sound in New York in the mid-sixties. They worked towards the fusion of English and Puerto Rican music that became known as the developing Latin soul sound in New York.

Joe’s first hit came in 1965 with the release of El Pito (I’ll Never Go Back to Georgia), which we’ll revisit in a few days.

His first charting single was Bang Bang. While the record may have stalled at #63 in 1966, the song is instantly recognizable to anybody who ever heard it. The mixture of English and Spanish on a record pre-dates most of the crossover songs you might expect to hear many, many years later.

The Latin Boogaloo sound of his hit stretched into most of the  Latin boogaloo music that followed in the last half of the sixties, especially in the Puerto Rican sections of New York City.

Joe died at age 77 in 2009 after releasing over thirty albums.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Cuba

1965 Walker Brothers – Make It Easy On Yourself

1965 Walker Brothers – Make It Easy On Yourself 

In 1963, John Walker and Scott Engel were members of a group called itself The Surfaris that played dates in the Midwest. Another group using the name Surfaris were based in California and had a #2 hit with Wipe Out in 1962 and remained active until 1965, so it’s likely the Midwest band trying to use the same name fell apart quickly.

John and Scott moved to LA and formed the Walker Brothers Trio in 1964 with a drummer. None of them were related to each other, and (at least initially) John was the only Walker. John was the lead singer and played bass guitar, while Scott sang back-up vocals and played an acoustic guitar. 

Gary Leeds became the drummer for the Standells in 1962. He left the group in 1964, a year before they reached the charts with the single Dirty Water.

Gary then toured the UK with P. J. Proby, who reached the top ten in the UK with Hold Me (the single peaked at #70 in the US). When Gary returned to the US, he met John and Scott and tried to convince them that based on his recent tour, their style of music would go over well in the UK.

The band began playing regularly at Gazzarri’s Club, which led to appearances on early episodes of Hollywood A Go Go beginning in late 1964. They dropped the drummer and removed the word “Trio” from the band’s name and continued appearing locally.

Gary began working as the group’s drummer, and he and Scott eventually changed their last names to “Walker” for public appearances.

The group recorded two singles in early 1965. The first did not capture much attention, but Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil wrote their second single and Jack Nitzsche arranged it. For the first time, Scott sang lead on a song. Love Her did not chart in the US and initially did not chart in the UK.

In February, Gary’s father paid the expenses so the group could travel to England. They quickly signed with Philips Records. By June, Love Her had reached the top twenty in the UK. 

Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote Make It Easy On Yourself and produced a demo by Dionne Warwick in 1962. Producer Calvin Carter took the demo to Jerry Butler and produced a single using an arrangement from Burt.

The single peaked at #20 on the Hot 100. John insisted that the Walker Brothers follow up their success with Love Her by recording Make It Easy On Yourself. The single quickly topped the UK chart, and late in the year it reached #16 on the Hot 100 in the US. 

The group’s next single reached #3 in the UK, but only got as high as #63 in the US. The group had one other hit in the US. The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore again took the group to the top of the UK chart, but peaked at only #13 on the Hot 100 in the US in 1966.

They had five more hits in the UK that failed to chart in the US. The group split up in 1968 after a brief tour in Japan that also yielded a live album. The members pursued solo careers, none of which produced reasonable sales.

The group reunited in 1975 and again reached the top ten in the UK with the single No Regrets. They released three albums before splitting up again.

John died in 2011, and Scott died in 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walker_Brothers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walker_Brothers_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Her
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_It_Easy_on_Yourself

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