#1954-1976

[weaversweek]

"Please please me" - The Beatles

1962 Written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon

An entry in Let's Do It, my personal favourite singles from 1954-76.

"Congratulations, gentlemen. You've just made your first No. 1."

Lennon's original arrangement featured a Roy Orbison-style vocal leap in the chorus, and was significantly slower than the song we know and love. Producer George Martin suggested they speed up the tune, put some harmonica in the mix, and add a second vocal line. That trick of diverging harmonies? Directly copied from "Cathy's clown".

It gave the young lads from Liverpool lots of firsts. First big hit single, hitting the top spot in early 1963. First television appearance, on Thank Your Lucky Stars. First song onto their album, first release stateside, and first record bought by Glasgow schoolboy James Gordon Brown.

Unlike that budding politician, The Beatles would bestride the world like a four-headed colossus. A seven-year reign as The World's Biggest Band begins here.

[weaversweek]

"Nel blu dipinto di blu (Volare)" - Domenico Mudugno

1958 Music: Domenico Mudugno; lyric: Domenico Mudugno and Franco Migliacci

The Eurovision Song Contest has produced many hits. None are as recognisable as this one. It's number 11 in Let's Do It, my personal fifty favourite singles from 1954-76.

Volare! (Fly!) Oh-oh! (Oh-oh!) Cantare! (Sing!) Oh-o-oh-oh! (Oh-o-oh-oh!)

Domenico Modugno co-wrote "Volare" after having a weird dream, and then he turned his song about that weird dream into this massive smash. It's a hulking great piece of ham, this cheese dream song, as subtle as being hit over the head with a brick.

A proper piece of light opera, Domenico performs "Volare" with great vocal capacity. And he remembers that it is just a silly little song, performed with a little chuckle in his voice.

In short, it's exactly what any contest of popular song should reward. No wonder that it won the San Remo festival in 1958, and swept to an overwhelming third place at that year's Eurovision festival.

Popular taste has always been a strange and inexplicable thing, "Volare" was later covered (in English translation) by Dean Martin; he has the vocal brilliance, but doesn't quite have the playfulness Domenico brings to the song.

It was the most successful of a squillion covers, ranging from the sublime (David Bowie on the Absolute Beginners soundtrack), to the flamenco (Gypsy Kings), to the unspeakable (Aled Jones and Russell Watson).

And if you can't sing well, there's always a call-and-response section. "Volare" is the one Eurovision song that a desperate producer can expect a crowd to know and love. Chantel Janzen led the crowd in a singalong when technical problems delayed a rehearsal in 2021; producers in Istanbul used "Volare" to fill a gap when an item proved unbroadcastable in the 2004 final. These days, they might use "Snap".

[weaversweek]

"Dancing queen", ABBA

1976 Written by Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson

An entry in Let's Do It, my personal favourite singles from 1954-76.

Don't bore us, get to the chorus!

"You can dance! You can jive! Having the time of your life!" So why is this song in a minor key, how come it's reflective and poignant so soon? Turns out that "Dancing queen" isn't a self-insert, the singer is not the titular dancer. No, the singer sees tonight's queen, and perhaps reflects on the time - not so long ago - that she was queen.

Benny and Bjorn know how to write a song, so much that Agnetha had a little sniffle when she realised she'd be singing on pop genius. The lads had drawn inspiration from George McCrae's "Rock your baby", from Elton John's piano, from the fashionable disco thing that's breaking out.

"Dancing queen" has become an absolute cliché, ripped off by Elvis Costello and Blondie, covered by lesser acts like Lewis Capaldi, anchoring the Mamma Mia! musical, and kicking off every wedding disco ever. When we can listen with fresh ears, it still sounds like magic.

[weaversweek]

"Send in the clowns", Judy Collins

1975 Written by Stephen Sondheim

An entry in Let's Do It, my personal favourite singles from 1954-76.

Another song from the shows? Get used to it, there's a whole CD's worth of show tunes coming in the top fifty…

This one was written for A Little Night Music, Sondheim's 1973 musical. It was written for leading lady Glynis Johns, who had correctly pointed out that she didn't have a number of her own. And it was written for Glynis: short phrases, no great vocal range, plenty of emotional heft.

In the musical, Desirée looks back on her life, and tries to come to terms with all the disappointments and strife she'd put up with. It's Sondheim at his best: we get the point on first listen, and there are layers to unpack when we hear the song again.

During this era, musical theatre songs would often cross over to the pop charts. Judy Collins had the definitive recording, adding her sincerity and regret to the tune. The performance allowed Sondheim to win Song of the Year at the Grammy awards.

The video comes from The Muppet Show. The literal choreography is something to keep the children watching, while we're exposed to one of the instant classics of the era.

[weaversweek]

"See my baby jive" - Wizzard

1973 Written by Roy Wood

Gather round, children, because the painted man is going to tell you a story in Let's Do It, my personal favourite singles from 1954-76.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, Mister Roy wrote a song. Start with Phil Spector's wall of sound. Change the tune a bit. Add a lyric that doesn't mean particularly much, but sounds great - "She said my bed gets into your hair, so give me back my comb". Apply lots and lots and lots of face paint, and perhaps a feather boa. And be sure to put in a hook, "who-a! who-a! who-a!"

"See my baby jive" captured the zeitgeist in early summer 1973, mixing the fashionable with doo-wop harmonies from the fifties, and the ubiquitous ultra-loud production from a few years ago. Although it's five minutes long, "See my baby jive" never feels that long, because so much is going on every moment.

Bob Stanley wrote, "Roy Wood loved pop. He was a superfan. He wanted to be all of pop, all at the same time."

The follow-up single became a classic in its own right. Over in Sweden, Benny and Bjorn aped the sound for their next Melodifestivalen entry, "Waterloo".

[weaversweek]

"To be young, gifted and black" - Nina Simone

1970 Music: Nina Simone; lyric: Weldon Irvine

Nina Simone sums up the late 1960s Black power movement in one graceful, angry song. It's number 12 in Let's Do It, my personal fifty favourite singles from 1954-76.

The song takes its title from something said by Lorraine Hansberry, who had died in 1965. A memorial book of her works was published, turned into a stage show, of which one critic wrote, "Never in the history of the American theatre had so much of the truth of black people's lives been seen on the stage."

Nina wanted lyrics that "will make Black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever." Her friend, the beat poet Weldon Irvine, wrote the words in a relaxed session.

Captures the moment of Black Power, the era of big hair and raised fists. It's an affirmation to the global majority: you are worthy of respect, don't let anyone say otherwise.

Nina Simone's version was a big hit Stateside; on this side of the pond, Bob and Marcia had the hit. The original is better, Nina completely got what she was singing.

[weaversweek]

"The flying saucer" - Buchanan & Goodman

1956 Written by Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman

We interrupt this post to bring you a special bulletin. The reports of Let's Do It, the 50 greatest singles from 1954-76, are real.

On the surface, "The flying saucer" is War of the Worlds set to music, and played much less seriously than Orson Welles. A radio announcer (played by Buchanan, and based on real-life dj Alan Freed) has his show interrupted by on-the-spot reporter John Cameron-Cameron (played by Goodman, and based on real-life newshound John Cameron Swayze). What's Cameron-Cameron blithering on about? The aliens are coming! They're here to take over the world seduce our women groove to some rock 'n' roll.

To illustrate the points his reporter makes, the announcer breaks in with snippets of pop records. "The flying saucers are real!" Then we hear "Too real when I feel what my heart can't conceal" from 'The great pretender'. And so on, through five minutes and both sides of a 78.

Although it comes across as a childish novelty, "The flying saucer" was very much in the mode of art music of the time - musique concrete. Composers like Stockhausen and Boulez and Tablet were taking short taped extracts of other works, and interpolating them into other compositions. In short, they'd invented "sampling", and Buchanan and Goodman took this technique into the pop charts.

Record companies were hacked off. How dare these comedians take their records and make them into something new. Aren't there some sorts of laws against this? "No", said a judge in a landmark trial, he said that "The flying saucer" was a new work and could not be stopped. Sampling had arrived, sampling was legal, and sampling would become a regular feature as soon as the technology allows.

[weaversweek]

"In dreams" - Roy Orbison

1963 Written by Roy Orbison

Number two in Let's Do It, my personal fifty favourite singles from 1954-76. Gets the Elf, a bonus 11th mark.

From the arms of Morpheus comes the best song of the 1960s. A half-heard guitar fades into earshot, as Roy speak-sings about "a candy coloured clown they call The Sandman". Singing, Roy closes his eyes to a cha-cha rhythm; echoing his recent hit "Blue bayou".

And then he sings about how he can be with his intended, but only when he's dreaming, because it's not possible in real life. And Roy goes up and down and up and down the scales, using all of his two-octave vocal range and that falsetto. And then, all of a sudden, the song stops.

Play it again, and note how there is no chorus, there is no verse. "In dreams" is a single work, running without repetition from start to finish. They don't write 'em like that any more. When first played in Slough (!), Roy received a standing ovation that went on, and on, and on, and only the headliners coming out to play stopped the applause; the crowd were mildly interested in The Beatles.

Roy would have his career-defining hit with "Oh! pretty woman" the next year. "In dreams" gained a new lease of life when David Lynch used it in the 1986 movie Blue Velvet. The attention sparked a new creative energy for Roy, leading to the Traveling Wilburys supergroup project, and 1989's album Mystery Girl. Sadly, he never enjoyed the accolades, as Roy Orbison died in December 1988.