New Hope, PA 1966
In 1970, I had a child and my relationship with music became much more distant. I felt like I needed to leave rock behind and go forth to classical and jazz.
In the sixties, music was very important to me. As I looked through the list of songs from the years that I was 12 to 22, I realized I could sing many of them--maybe even half. I also realized that the songs I liked most often had a memory attached to it. So here they are and with some I have added a memory. I see they are mostly the music a young girl would choose. Not songs I might choose today.
If I misidentify a year, it doesn't really matter.
1) Gigi, Lerner and Lowe, well this is a year or two earlier than 1960, but my grandfather gave me my first turntable and this is the album he gave me to go with it. I definitely can sing every song on this album as well as songs all of the fantastic musicals from this era.
2) The Twist, Chubby Checker-This was the first dance that came along that I worked hard to master. We had dancing in our middle school at lunchtime and I really wanted to do it well. I practiced every day after school at my friend, Karen's house. We put on American Bandstand and danced the afternoon away.
3) The Theme from the Apartment, Ferrante and Teicher-The movie was important to me--giving me an insight into adult life before I was ready for it but yearned to know.. And with horrible misperceptions because I really never understood what was going on it that apartment. And the music was gorgeous.
4) Runaway, Dell Shannon.
5) Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, Shirelles. I literally could put all of their songs on here. I think they spoke to young teenage girls better than anyone in the early sixties.
6) Runaround Sue, Dion. At our church on Sunday nights, we had an activity called Luther League where for some reason they allowed us to dance and flirt with each other. I remember this song playing often.
7) Sheila, Tommy Roe, In the summer of 1962, I walked up on the boardwalk at Ocean City, alone for the first time, (visiting a friend whose father owned a bakery in OC, NJ. ) and this song was blasting from a pizza joint named Bob's.
8) Sherry Baby, Four Seasons-same as above. It takes me back to that summer when I poured a bottle of bleach on my hair, sat on the beach, and became a blonde until I went home and my mother had it dyed black within hours.
9) Where Have All the Flowers Gone-Kingston Trio-same summer (maybe Megan is right about being 14 your whole life) We went down to the beach one night and a group of strange people are strumming guitars and singing this song. I decide immediately to become a beatnik.
10) Be My Baby-Ronettes- I fell in love with a boy named Jerry the next year. This was "our" song. Or at least I thought so. We had a tumultuous romance because he found it very hard not to spend all of his spare time drinking and stealing cars with his male friends. It ended when my parents enrolled me in a private Christian school.
11) One Fine Day, Chiffons, (see above)
12) I Want to Hold Your Hand/She Loves You (or any Beatles' song) We are out in our new gold Chevy when my brother and I hear this. Lightening Strikes.
13) Where Did Our Love Go, Supremes. I have a summer job in New Hope, waitressing. This song wafted down the street every day of that summer. I am an adult. HA!
14) The House of the Rising Sun, Animals. Not sure I knew what the House was!
15) Louie, Louie, The Kingsmen
15) I Can't Get No Satisfaction-Rolling Stones. I meet Phil. This song and My Man by Barbra Streisand remind me of the summer of 1965.
16) Positively Fourth Street, Bob Dylan. It could have been many early Dylan songs but I remember howling this one with four friends, driving home from college in Massachusetts.
17) California Dreaming, The Mamas and the Papas. Love the harmony. Love Mama Cass.
18) You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, Dusty Springfield. another song to fall in love to
19) Light My Fire, The Doors. The sixties are now in full bloom
20) Different Drum, Linda Ronstadt, (The Stone Ponies) what a powerful voice
21) Respect, Aretha Franklin. What a powerful statement
22) White Rabbit-Jefferson Airplane but really Grace Slick. So surreal
23) Hey Jude, Beatles. I remember them singing this on THE SMOTHER BROTHERS. It seems like they sang it for fifteen minutes.
24) Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, The Fifth Dimension- HAIR-finally a musical for young people.
25) Bad Moon Rising, Credence Clearwater-Love that pulsating beat.
So this is my list.
20 comments:
Great list. I miss the old days.
Great list, Patti. And I love the picture! A couple of those that I didn't mention just missed my top 25 too.
Jeff M.
Impressive list! Like you, I listened to music all day long. The radio was always on in our house in the 1960s. I always had my transistor radio with me. Today, everything seems to be video and digital. I only listen to the radio when I'm driving around in my car.
My list would start with the Beatles and include a lot of seventies (especially Disco) and eighties (particularly English New Wave). I went into hibernation music-wise once my kids came along ( starting in 1992), but as they've gotten older (along with working in a high school), i do find myself occasionally listening to new music, but only when it's pretty much ubiquitous (such as Pharrell's Happy or Bastile's Pompeii). But I can no more incorporate something by, say, Iggy Azalea into my sense memories than my patents would be able to incorporate something by Duran Duran.
Parents. Although I suppose patents would make an odd sort of sense.
Patti, Jackie says she learned how to do all the dances watching American Bandstand. She used the closet doorknob as a partner.
She flunked out of college after two years because she spent most of her time in the lounge at Hunter College dancing and playing cards.
Jeff M.
Deb, I was jsut thinking about that earlier. When someone says, "You know [whatever] by Beyonce or Lady Gaga or Rihanna...?" I can honestly say, no. I have virtually no contact with current music at all and no matter how ubiquitous a song may be the odds are I don't know it. Occasionally it is necessary to change the channel to avoid "Gangnam Style" or whatever but mostly I am lost in my own era.
I'm fine with that.
And stay off my lawn!
Jeff M.
Nice list, Patti, and the verbal snapshots you provide with each add to it. I just made a list, as you know, but now I wish I'd done what you did. My list started earlier, as I was listening in the mid-1950s, and I took it into the Eighties for a more complete picture, but like everyone else here, I lost interest in "current music" at some point , in my case the early-mid Eighties, as I was listening mostly to classical and jazz.
I do hear current music sometimes now, but not enough to identify it or with it.
So funny, Jeff. I have to put that in a story. I used to play cards at lunch every day when I worked at Bell. Does anyone play now?
I started listening to rock music again when my kids hit their teens in the mid-eighties. So I could make a list from the mid-eightes to the mid-nineties and then I go deaf again.
My list is too personal to be a good one in terms of quality.
Oh, Patti, I love this list! Such great songs :-)
The House of the Rising Sun, California Dreaming, CCR. Yep, liked some of these quite a bit.
We must have gone through similar things in the sixties. All these songs are ones I listened to and loved. I loved the Fifth Dimension. I remember "My Girl", and "Tracks of my Tears". I did not have a child in the seventies, but I got married for the first time in 1971 and the relationship with music was different after that.
Yes. You seem to do other things, don't you.
All of them resonate with me except Respect. That was popular when I was in an unhappy place. For Aretha I'd pick Say a Little Prayer For Me; so much better than Dionne Warwick's version, which isn't bad, btw.
I guess most of us were born around the same time and so the same music speaks to us. Although I am sure this list reflects a love of romantic songs more than yours would.
Great list, all terrific songs that resonate with me. I, too, miss back in the day, but thanks to Sirius I can hear these all the time. My own personal favorites, Everyone's Gone to the Moon and Rainy Night in Georgia.
Love EVERYONE'S GONE TO THE MOON especially.
12 to 22 is kinda formative age, isn't it? Mine were 1975-1985. Another era entirely. It began with Dr. Feelgood and ended with Live Aid.
Nevertheless, two similarities between your 1959-1969 and my 1975-1985 periods:
1) Pop culture changed A LOT during both periods, especially in 1964-1967 and 1977-1981.
2) Singles ruled, though admittedly more during 1959-1969.
Fantastic list, Patti.
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