← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Singing Nuns and Green Tambourines Edition Part 2
00:53:48
The 1960s will always be associated with counterculture and the Summer of Love, but the decade’s pop charts were full of novelty, schlock and bubblegum.
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Unknown Speaker
Foreign.
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Chris Melanfy
Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series. On our last episode, inspired by a rewatch of the classic premium TV show Mad Men, which depicted a fictional advertising agency in the 1960s and resurrected dozens of forgotten 60s songs, I identified whole categories of hits from that peak boomer decade, from easy listening and pre rock crooners to instrumentals, novelties and hippie bubblegum. And now we're going to walk through the 60s era by era to capture the decade as it really played out on the charts. As we walk through these eras of hits, I'll acknowledge the bangers, bops and, let's just say it, classics that marked the 60s. The decade really did produce more than its share of all time great songs, but we'll focus more of our time on the forgotten hits, the the kitsch, the cheese and even the curios that should be better remembered as classics, but maybe aren't. I'm going to divide the 60s into three early, middle and late 60s. As cultural historians and actual baby boomers who were alive during the decade have Long argued, the 60s as we understand them doesn't really begin until around late 1963, basically after the Kennedy assassination. So let's call this first period the prologue to the 60s. Or if you like Camelot 60s, the JFK years. To be sure, there were plenty of hits in this prologue period that have not been forgotten, from Chubby Checkers infectious cover of Hank Ballard's dance craze song The Twist, which famously hit number one in both 1960 and 62, to Del Shannon's operatic teen melodrama Runaway, a 1961 chart topper.
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Unknown Speaker
Why, why why why why why she Ran away?
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Chris Melanfy
The drama was also amped up in this period by the girl groups whom we discussed in depth in last year's girl group episode of Hit Parade. Classic vocal combos like the Ronettes, the Shangri Las, the Crystals and the Shirells recorded indelible heart rending number ones as earliest smashes from Motown records, which were also by girl groups like the Marvelettes. So that was the classic stuff from the prologue era of the 1960s. I could go on, but there were other chart toppers in the prologue years that fit the forgotten hit categories I outlined earlier in our show Novelty Records. For example, in 1960 alone there were three number one novelty hits, including Brian Hyland's Itsy Bitsy Teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini, a perky ode to brief bathing garb and The Truly Oddball Mr. Custer by Larry Verne, a half spoken word corn pone comedy monologue by a soldier pleading with his general not send him into the battle of Little Bighorn. Both are frankly well forgotten. But easily the best of these chart topping novelties from 1960 was a piano boogie about a caveman from the funny pages.
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Unknown Speaker
He's the toughest man that is alive Wearing clothes from a wildcat's hide he's the king of the jungle jab look at that caveman go.
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Chris Melanfy
Alley OOP was the titular character from a comic strip by cartoonist VT Hamlin, a prehistoric man in a loincloth. The song was a goofy homage to the caveman written by country songwriter Dallas Fraser, who by the way later went on to pen the country hit. Elvira Frasier's friend Gary Paxton, who was trying to get out of a previous contract he signed as Skip and Flip, Re recorded the song as a kind of beatnik proto hippie jam. He called his new act the Hollywood Argyles, a fake band that Paxton named after an LA recording studio on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Argyle Avenue.
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Unknown Speaker
He sure is hip, ain't he? Like what's happening.
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Chris Melanfy
A fun footnote about Alley Oop, which spent one week at number one in July of 1960. If you've ever heard David Bowie's 1971 glam rock ballad Life on Mars, his line about look at those cavemen go is borrowed from the Hollywood Argyll's Alley Oops. As they say, great artists steal back to the early 60s. Instrumentals were also dominating the charts. I mentioned earlier the string of wordless number ones in 1962. But several more instrumentals were smashes in 1960 and 61 as well, including German jazz bandleader Bert Kampfert, who took his sultry bop Wonderland by Night to number one. Or bandleader Lawrence Welk, who at the peak of his fame as the host of a beloved televised variety showed Took Calcutta, a German pop song Welk recorded as an instrumental all the way to the top. Once a legend in American living rooms, nowadays Lawrence Welk is only barely known to 21st century audiences, thanks to a recurring parody on Saturday Night Live. SNL veteran Fred Armisen revived his satire of Welk just last month in a sketch on SNL's 50th anniversary special. Thank you, thank you. What a wonderful evening filled with so.
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Unknown Speaker
Much whimsy and wonder.
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Chris Melanfy
Speaking of once revered cultural figures, we should also talk about the King of rock and roll, Elvis Presley isn't thought of as much of a 60s artist, but he was still a pop titan at the turn of the decade. Presley was discharged from the US army after a two year hitch in March of 1960 and he went right back to his recording career. He scored five of his 17 total career one hits between 19 and 62. And many of them could be called easy listening or were re recordings of pre rock standards.
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Unknown Speaker
It's no or Never, Come, hold me.
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Chris Melanfy
Tight, Kiss me my Darling, for example, it's now or never. His number one from the summer of 1960 was an update of O Sole Mio, an old Italian standard which dated to the late 19th century. Talk about pre rock. Its now or Never was actually Presley's biggest global hit ever. It sold 20 million copies worldwide and it was also a smash in America, spending five weeks at number one on the Hot 100. After that mega success, Presley kept going back to the pre rock. Well, he scored with covers of old standards like the 1920s ballad Are you Lonesome Tonight, a number one for the King at the end of 1960.
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Unknown Speaker
Are you Lonesome tonight? Do you miss me tonight? Are you sorry?
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Chris Melanfy
And in 1961, Presley scored with yet another Italian ballad rebooted with English lyrics. The Neapolitan chestnut Torna a suriento became the Elvis chart topper Surrender. Presley was still so huge at this time, even singles he threw away could be hits for others. A German song called Wooden Heart, Mus Ayden that Elvis recorded for the film GI Blues but then chose not to issue as a single in America was covered by Midwestern pop crooner Joe Dowell and taken to number one in 1961.
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Unknown Speaker
Treat me like you really should cause I'm not made of wood and I don't have a wood in.
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Chris Melanfy
Dig that Oompa rhythm. The German muse den kicked off another small trend atop the charts in this period. The non English hit Some Surprising Languages took turns in the number one spot in 1963, starting with this improbable Japanese chart topper. The story goes that the president of a British record label, while traveling on business through Japan in 1962, heard an enchanting pop song by a young Japanese singer named Kyu Sakamoto. It was called UI o muite Aruko and the exec brought a copy of the 45 back with him to England. He then gave it to bandleader Kenny Ball and his jazz men so they could record it as an instrumental to make the record more memorable for British listeners. The label issued Ball's instrumental cover under the nonsensical title Sukiyaki, which by the way, is the name of a popular Japanese hot pot dish. A Newsweek reporter later said this would be like remaking Moon river under the title Beef Stew in America. Kenny Ball's cover was not a hit, but in 1963, a Washington radio DJ played the original Japanese recording and found his listeners swooning for it. So Capitol Records acquired the US Rights to Ue o Muite Aruko and issued Kiy Sakamoto's original single, but under the same goofy title that the Brits used for the song Sukiyaki. Amazingly, In June of 1963, Sakamoto's Sukiyaki in its original Japanese topped the Hot 100 for three weeks. The melody of this song has proven shockingly enduring. In 1981, the Disco R and B group A Taste of Honey came up with their own English lyrics for Sukiyaki and they took their cover, an exoticized disco ballad, to number three on the Hot 100. Four years later, on the seminal rap single the Show La De Di by Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew, rapper Slick Rick sang a few bars of Sukiyaki in the middle of his rap.
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Unknown Speaker
Feeling sad and blue. You went away and now my life is filled with rainy days.
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Chris Melanfy
And more than a decade later, that rap illusion helped inspire queen of Hip Hop soul Mary J. Blige to weave the sukiyaki melody and a taste of Honey's lyrics into her top five R&B ballad Everything.
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Unknown Speaker
It's all because of you. I'm never sad and blue.
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Chris Melanfy
You ripen up all this for a melody that made an improbable journey to the west under the wrong English title sung by a Japanese pop star. Decades before the arrival of J Pop and K pop, Kiyo Sakamoto was an accidental cross cultural pioneer. Now, as unlikely as this hit was, Sukiyaki was nothing compared to the strangest pop phenomenon of 1963. Jeanette Marie Deckers, better known as the Singing Nun deckers was a 30 year old from Belgium who had joined the Fishermont monastery. Her fellow sisters nicknamed her Sister Smile. In the convent, she played guitar, sang and wrote songs. Her sisters told her she should record them. So a group of the nuns went to a local Brussels studio and asked if they could record record an LP as a gift to give the convent's visitors. The label was so taken with the songs, they offered to press thousands of copies and distribute them across Europe. The highlight of The LP was Dominique, a French language song Deckers wrote about Saint Dominic, the founder of her order. It was like the pop song version of A Prayer to a Saint. When an American label executive heard Dominique, he not only offered to release the album in the US under the name the Singing Nun, he also offered to issue Dominique as a single. No one could have foreseen how eerily well timed the record would become. Debuting on the Hot 100 in early November 1963, Dominique scaled the Hot 100, rapidly cracking the top 10 the week ending November 23, the same week President John F. Kennedy was killed. Two weeks later, both Dominique and the Singing Nun album were number one on their respective Billboard charts. My fellow critic Tom Bryan, author of Stereogum's long running blog series the Number Ones, wrote eloquently of Dominique. When a nation is confronted with grief and doubt and uncertainty, its culture can sometimes fold inward to the simple, the comforting, the seemingly pure. And maybe that's what happened late in 1963. Maybe Dominique worked as a balm. And maybe in a newly dark and chaotic landscape, a place where beloved leaders die in broad daylight, it radiated a needed sense of wholesomeness. Before we leave the 60s prologue years and shift to the mid-60s, one easy listening career that bridges the early and middle periods and deserves commemoration is Bobby Vinton.
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Unknown Speaker
Sway Roses Are Red, My Love, Violets.
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Chris Melanfy
Are Blue Though his modern Spotify streams are quite low, for a time, Vinton was one of the chart's biggest hit makers. Starting in the summer of 1962 with his chart topper Roses Are Red, My Love, Vinton racked up 15 straight top 40 hits, including four number ones, Roses Are Red, Blue Velvet, There I've said it again and Mr. Lonely, which topped the chart in 1964 after the Beatles began their chart conquest, Mr. Lonely.
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Unknown Speaker
Wish I had someone to call on the phone Now I'm a soldier.
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Chris Melanfy
Speaking of Mr. Lonely to 21st century audiences, Vinton is perhaps best remembered as the voice behind the sample that powers Lonely, a 2005 top five smash for singer and rapper Akon Lonely I Mr.
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Unknown Speaker
Lonely I have nobody for my own I'm so lonely.
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Chris Melanfy
Yo. But for a time in the early to mid-60s, Bobby Vinton was a chart dominator. At a moment when the pre rock sound of songs like Blue Velvet could command the hit parade. Like the music of the Singing Nun, Vinton's hits feel like missives from a distant galaxy.
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Unknown Speaker
She wore Blue Velvet were her eyes.
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Chris Melanfy
We'Ll be back momentarily Days Love was my favorite period of the 60s and categorically the decade's best era for hit singles was the middle period, 1964 through 66. Pound for pound, there were more great number one hits in this three year period than in any chart era. Whether it was Motown, the British Invasion, folk rock, even surf rock, it all peaked in this 60s midsection. So let's call it the Rockin Party era, or if you prefer, just the peak. However, even in this triennial of greatness, there were some head scratchers. In 1964, for example, the year of American Beatlemania, there were three number one songs by male artists who were deep into middle age and two of them actually knocked out songs by the Fab Four. In May of 64, the great Louis Armstrong, then age 63, terminated the Beatles 14 week run at number one with his cover of hello Dolly, the title song of the hit stage musical.
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Unknown Speaker
Hello Dolly, this is Louis, it's so nice to have you back.
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Chris Melanfy
Hello Dolly. The show was then brand new on Broadway in in fact, Satchmo had recorded his ragtime style cover at the behest of his manager and the song's publisher just to promote the show. But nobody could have predicted that this jazz age titan would score a chart topping hit with it in 1964. Later that summer it was 47 year old Dean Martin's turn with his aforementioned smash Everybody Loves Somebody. A pre rock oldie that the Rat Packer revived with his lounge lizard stylings. Martin actually talked shit about the Fab Four in 64, claiming that if Elvis Presley couldn't dispatch them on the charts, he could. If you can't handle the Beatles, I'll do it for ya pally, Dino reportedly told the King. Amazingly, Everybody Loves Somebody knocked A Hard Day's Night out of the number one spot in the summer of 64. You can think of Dino as the Kendrick Lamar to the Beatles Drake, Everybody.
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Unknown Speaker
Find somebody someplace there's no telling where the.
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Chris Melanfy
And in the fall of 64, the strangest oldster success of all, 49 year old Canadian actor Lorne Green, star of TV's smash show Bonanza, reached number one with Ringo, which no, was not about Beatles drummer Ringo Starr. It was a spoken word novelty record that found Green telling a fictional stem winder about western outlaw Johnny Ringo.
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Unknown Speaker
But a spark still burns so I.
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Chris Melanfy
Use my knife and late that night.
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Unknown Speaker
I saved the life of Ringo.
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Chris Melanfy
Green's recording was more than a year old. The actor had produced a whole album of these tall tales from American history in 1963 as a promotional tie in with Bonanza. Reportedly his label only released the track as a single in 64 on the premise that anything with the name Ringo would sell that year. They were craven and they were right. Nobody over the age of 30 topped the Hot 100 in 1965. And it was perhaps the greatest year of hits. Five number ones by the Beatles, four by the Supremes, two each by the Rolling Stones and the Birds, and one apiece for the Temptations and the Four Tops. But, well, they couldn't all be winners.
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Unknown Speaker
This diamond ring doesn't shine for me anymore and this diamond ring doesn't.
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Chris Melanfy
Gary Lewis, teenage son of comedian Jerry Lewis, took his group the Playboys to number one with a schmaltzy cover of the R and B song this Diamond Ring. Gary Lewis and the Playboy's take was so hokey even its co writer Al Cooper complained that Lewis's group quote made a teenage milkshake out of it More entertainingly, but just as randomly, 1965's top single on Billboard's year end chart was the ebullient novelty bop Woolly Bully by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. A great party record, but a strange hit to take the title in a year of all those Beatles, Stones and Supreme hits. As for the British Invasion, while most of the hits were a raucous energy boost for the American hit parade, there was a strain of UK music hall revival record that was huge at the time, but is less well remembered today. In 65, the winsome band Herman's Hermits, fronted by 17 year old heartthrob Peter Noone, hit number one on the Hot 100 twice with cheeky records that evoked the vaudeville age. In May of that year, the Hermits rang the bell with Mrs. Brown, you've got a Lovely daughter, a twee diddy from an obscure British Teleplay.
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Unknown Speaker
Mrs. Brown, you've got a lovely daughter. Mrs. Brown, you've Got a lovely daughter.
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Chris Melanfy
And In August of 65, Herman's Hermits went back to number one with a cover of an actual music hall song from the 1910s, the cockney trifle. I'm Henry VIII, I am, I'm Henry.
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Unknown Speaker
VIII, I am Henry the Eighth I am, I am, I got married to the widow next door she's been married several times before. And.
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Chris Melanfy
This British Invasion music hall Trendlet persisted into 1966, when a studio band assembled by London musician Jeff Stevens, which he actually called the New Vaudeville Band, scored an even more improbable Hot 100 number one with Winchester Cathedral, a song inspired by 1920s dance bands with a Rudy Valley Megaphone style Vocal Winchester Cathedral. As quirky as this was, the new vaudeville band weren't the most unlikely chart toppers of 1966. Arguably, that title went to the 50 year old chairman of the board, Ol Blue Eyes, the Voice. And he reportedly loathed his chart topping.
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Unknown Speaker
Comeback single, Strangers in the Night. Exchanging glances, wondering in the night what were the chances we'd be sharing love?
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Chris Melanfy
You might say 1966 was a very good year for the Sinatras. Frank sinatra started his 1966 winning album of the year at the Grammys for his LP September of My Years. Just a few weeks before that, his 25 year old daughter Nancy Sinatra hit number one on the Hot 100 for the first time with her immortal kiss off record these Boots Are Made for Walken. And by the way, I want to be clear about this, nobody has forgotten about these Boots Are Made for Walken. Among 60s hits, Nancy's killer team up with songwriter producer Lee Hazelwood will surely live on forever.
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Unknown Speaker
These boots are made for walking and that's, that's just what they'll do One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.
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Chris Melanfy
About a month after Frank won his Grammy, he went into a studio to record Strangers in the Night. He wasn't exactly excited about this. The melody was by German composer Bert Kampfert, who'd scored the aforementioned 1961 number one instrumental Wonderland by Night Comfort, composed the tune of Strangers in the Night as incidental music for the film A man could get killed. Words were added later by lyricists Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder.
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Unknown Speaker
Something in your eyes was so inviting Something in your smile Smile was so.
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Chris Melanfy
Exciting Something in my heart Frank Sinatra, to put it mildly, did not like the song, calling it a piece of shit and blanching at its libidinous lyrics. Sinatra thought the song was about a gay encounter and given his homophobia, was fairly embarrassed by it. But he was persuaded by his producer to record Strangers against his own judgment. At one point, to fill time on the track, Sinatra actually scatted his way through the vocal. Somehow this plodding, cheesy song, which Frank himself thought was beneath him him, became his first chart topper in more than a decade and his biggest hit of the 1960s when it crowned the Hot 100 in July 1966. It even spawned a brief semi imperial phase for Sinatra whereby he could get singles to the Top of the pops again. One year later, in April of 67, Frank and Nancy Sinatra took their perhaps ill advised duet Something Stupid to number one. A romantic duet between a father and daughter seriously.
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Unknown Speaker
And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you. I can see it in your eyes.
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Chris Melanfy
But something stupid would be Frank's last number one hit, Nancy's 2. The late 60s would finally prove too weird and countercultural, even for the chairman of the board. We'll be right back. Moving out of the Rockin Party era and into what I'll call the groovy era. The charts of the late 60s were, you might say, misleading. After the Beatles changed the game in the summer of 67 by dropping the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP, effectively kicking off the era of longer form album oriented rock. The album chart, not the Hot 100, became the leading indicator of where guitar rock was headed. The Beatles didn't even issue any singles from sergeant Pepper. That became standard practice for bands such as Led Zeppelin, who debuted in 1969. If you wanted to hear Zeppelin jams like Heartbreaker, you'd have to buy the LP or tune into album oriented rock radio. What this meant was that the late 60s singles charts were dominated by a mix of top notch R and B and often frilly, sometimes forgettable pop music. On the R B side, the hits from soul music's leading lights were often legendary, from Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin to the late Otis Redding.
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Unknown Speaker
Watching the Tide.
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Chris Melanfy
To Motown legend Marvin Gaye. While on the pop side, the singles that scaled the charts often fit into that hippie bubblegum category I identified in the first part of our show. Of course, many of these singles were hits for a reason. They were extremely catchy. The Turtles, for example, were often tagged psychedelic pop or sunshine pop. They scored five top 10 hits in the late 60s, including their only number one, 1967's jaunty but trippy Happy Together. And 1967's biggest charting act wasn't the Beatles, the Stones or the Doors, but rather the prefabricated TV band the Monkeys. In just over a year, the Monkees topped the album chart four times and the Hot 103 times with the singles Last Train to Clarksville, I'm a Believer and Daydream Believer. Talk about Sunshine Pop Cheer up Sleepy.
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Unknown Speaker
Jeel what can it mean to to a daydream believer?
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Chris Melanfy
Mind you, the Turtles and the Monkeys are hardly forgotten. Their big hits remain beloved today. But some of 1967's number ones are best remembered by baby boomers with firsthand memories and devoted pop aficionados. As we noted in our B Sides edition of Hit Parade, three of 1967's number one hits started out as the backsides to 45s whose A sides flopped. Bobby Gentry's Southern Gothic story song Ode to Billy Joe, a four week number one about a mystery at the Tallahatchie Bridge.
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Unknown Speaker
And Mama Said it was a shame about Billy Joe anyhow.
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Chris Melanfy
British pop diva Lulu, who took the title song from the Sidney Poitier film To Sir with love to number one in the fall of 67. Yes, this song too was relegated to the B side of a single until DJs flipped it over and made it an A side. With five weeks at number one, Lulu's To Sir With Love wound up the year's top hit and the Strawberry Alarm Clock, a psychedelic pop back band from Los Angeles who originally called themselves the Sixpence until a hastily recorded B side called Incense and Peppermints caught on at radio stations and they chose a groovier band name. The Strawberry Alarm Clock's one big hit is often compared to the Jefferson Airplane's Head Trip singles White Rabbit and Somebody to Love, but neither of those songs got to number one, so the Clock had the Airplane beat. Their phantasmagorical hit instructed listeners to turn on tune in, turn your eyes around. Incense and Peppermints led to an even heavier wave of hippie bubblegum chart toppers by one hit or short lived bands including the aforementioned Green Tambourine by the Lemon Pipers and John Fred and his Playboy Band with the supremely goofy Judy in Disguise with Glasses.
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Unknown Speaker
Cantaloupe Eyes Come Tonight Judy in the sky with Glasses.
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Chris Melanfy
By the way, that song title Judy in Disguise with Glasses was just a riff on the Beatles song title Lucy in the sky with Diamonds from sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
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Unknown Speaker
Lucy in the sky with us.
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Chris Melanfy
Yep, that whole John Fred song was built around a pun and it was a number one hit. Other half forgotten hippie bubblegum smashes from this period included a song that younger generations mostly know as a chant you sing at ballparks to taunt the losing team. Na na hey hey, kiss him goodbye. It's not only an actual song by a short lived band called Steam in 1969, it too was a number one hit. Making a longer career out of bubblegum pop was Tommy Rowe, last name R O E? Heard of him? What if I told you he scored six top 10 hits in the 60s including two number ones.
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Unknown Speaker
I'm so dizzy My head is spinning.
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Chris Melanfy
Tommy Rowe, who quit his job as an electrician in the early 60s to write and perform pop songs, is best known when he is remembered for Dizzy, his 1969 smash. But Rowe scored his first number one seven years earlier in the prologue years with 1962's Sheila, a song on which he was deliberately trying to sound like the late Buddy Holly. So Tommy Rowe was writing and singing bubblegum hits before that mini genre had a name. He kept scoring hits through the mid-60s like sweet pea and Hooray for Hazel. Then when pop got trippy in the late 60s, Row, still in his 20s, adapted to the new hippie bubblegum sound and went right back to number one. Dizzy, which pulls off the neat trick of changing key about a dozen times in under three minutes, spent four weeks at number one. Instrumentals kept right on scoring right through the end of the 60s. In addition to the Paul Mariot and Henry Mancini chart toppers I mentioned in the first part of our show, 1968 produced the cowbell fevered number one hit grazing in the Grass by South African trumpeter Hugh Masakela. And the weakness after the groovy Grazing fell out of number one, rising to number two was Classical Gas, a classical folk and flamenco instrumental by guitar virtuoso Mason Williams. In general, 1968 was a good year for one hit wonders like Masakela and Williams, but one of the best was Jeannie C. Riley, who had been toiling in Nashville looking for a hit when a producer invited her to record a sassy stem winder about a small town single mother who's scorned for wearing short skirts and enjoying the company of men. So our heroine gives her accusers some sass right back. The target of her ire and the name of the song was Harper Valley pta.
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Unknown Speaker
I don't believe you ought to be a bringing up your little girl this way.
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Chris Melanfy
On the Hot 100. Harper Valley PTA became Riley's only top 40 pop hit, but it went all the way to number one, even holding off the Beatles Hey Jude for a week. Riley also topped the country chart and went on to score over a dozen more country hits over the next decade. Her moment of pop crossover set her up for a career and showed that there was more than one way in the 60s to be countercultural. You didn't have to be a hippie to sock it to the squares.
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Unknown Speaker
The day my mama sucked it too. The the Harper Valley PTA.
- [48:34]
Chris Melanfy
As I said at the beginning of our show, my rewatch of TV's Mad Men was what inspired this tour through the forgotten hits of the 1960s, hits like Lollipops and Roses, Stranger on the Shore, the End of the World, Dominique and yes Harper Valley pta.
- [49:01]
Unknown Speaker
Well, Cindy, these are my friends Don and Roger. Pleasure. There's tacos and booze outside. If you want a joint, try the candy dish on the coffee table or make a friend. You look familiar, you'll have to do better than that.
- [49:20]
Chris Melanfy
Scenes like this really do make you reflect on not only how fiction can reflect larger cultural truths, but the ways that music can express our changing folkways, mores and generational transitions. Taking a deep dive through the 1960s via these fictional ad men and women and focusing on the music playing behind them, I realized just how varied, complex and misunderstood that decade was. So before I sign off, I'll leave you with my favorite needle drop of the whole Mad Men series. It's the finale of the show's penultimate season. For those of you planning a rewatch, that's season six. Don Draper has just been let go by his agency for revealing too much about his unhappy childhood during a pitch to the Hershey Company. It's Thanksgiving Day 1968 and Don picks up his kids in his car. But before driving them to Thanksgiving dinner, the confessional and newly unfettered Don brings them to a derelict, abandoned Victorian house. It turns out this seedy brothel is where he lived as a child. And then cue the music.
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Unknown Speaker
This is where I grew up.
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Chris Melanfy
It's Judy Collins. Achingly beautiful cover of Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now. Its lyrics are a dreamy fantasia pierced with self lacerating regret. You can think of it as the dialogue in Don Draper's head expressed in.
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Unknown Speaker
Song goes and flows of angel here and and ice cream castles in the air and feathered canyons everywhere.
- [51:41]
Chris Melanfy
One final detail for all my fellow chart nerds out there. The week before the actual Thanksgiving Day 1968, Judy Collins both sides now leapt into the top 20 on the Hot 100 on its way to a top 10 peak just before Christmas of 68. If Don Draper's kids really existed, they could have owned the 45. It's the 60s at its most personal, most real, most true to life. As songwriter Joni Mitchell might say, it's these illusions we recall. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfy. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis, our supervising producer is Joel Meyer, and Slate's editor in chief is Hilary Fry. Check out Slate's roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts. Please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the hit parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the One I'm Chris Mullanvi.
- [53:33]
Unknown Speaker
Don't know life at.