Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2501 (starts 12/30/24)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/556157

    After a Yule show dominated by R&B and novelty tunes followed by a show split 50/50 between punk/new wave and, well, a 50/50 split of songs, we figured were about due for something more in line with what you'd expect from a show called Stuck in the Psychedelic Era. So what we have is a mixture of sets from 1966 and 1968 (including Arlo Guthrie's original version of the Motorcycle Song), some progressions (and a regression) though the years, an Advanced Psych set and, to top it all off, an uninterrupted final segment made up entirely of tracks from 1969. It starts with an eerily prophetic track from the Mothers Of Invention...

Artist:    Mothers Of Invention
Title:    Help, I'm A Rock, 3rd Movement: It Can't Happen Here
Source:    45 RPM single B side (reissue)
Writer(s):    Frank Zappa
Label:    Barking Pumpkin (original label: Verve)
Year:    1966
    Help, I'm A Rock and its follow up track It Can't Happen Here are among the best-known Frank Zappa compositions on the first Mothers Of Invention album, Freak Out! What is not so well known is that the band's label, Verve, issued an edited mono version of the track under the title Help, I'm A Rock, 3rd Movement: It Can't Happen Here, as the B side of the band's first single. This version removes the avant-garde jazz piano and drum section from the piece, making the track slightly over three minutes in length. The result is one of the strangest a cappella performances ever committed to vinyl.

Artist:    Vagrants
Title:    Respect
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Otis Redding
Label:    Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    Sounding a lot like the Rascals, the Vagrants were a popular Long Island band led by singer Peter Sabatino and best remembered for being the group that had guitarist Leslie Weinstein in it. Weinstein would change his last name to West and record a solo album called Mountain before forming the band of the same name. This version of Respect is fairly faithful to the original Otis Redding version. Unfortunately for the Vagrants, Aretha Franklin would release her radically rearranged version of the song just a few weeks after the Vagrants, relegating their version of the tune (and the Vagrants themselves) to footnote status.

Artist:    Quicksilver Messenger Service
Title:    Light Your Windows
Source:    CD: Quicksilver Messenger Service
Writer(s):    Duncan/Freiberg
Label:    Rock Beat (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1968
    There are differing opinions on just how serious legendary San Francisco singer/songwriter and general iconoclast Dino Valenti was being when, at a jam session with guitarist John Cippolina one night, he suggested that the two of them form a band. Since Valenti was busted for drugs the very next day (and ended up spending the next two years at San Quentin), we'll never know for sure. Cippolina, however, was motivated enough to begin finding members for the new band, including bassist David Freiberg (later to join Starship) and guitarist/drummer Skip Spence. When Marty Balin stole Spence away to join his own new band (Jefferson Airplane), he tried to make up for it by introducing Cippolina to vocalist/guitarist Gary Duncan and drummer Greg Elmore, whose own band, the Brogues, had recently disbanded. Taking the name Quicksilver Messenger Service (so named for all the member's astrological connections with the planet Mercury), the new band soon became a fixture on the San Francisco scene. Inspired by the Blues Project, Cippolina and Duncan quickly established a reputation for their dual guitar improvisational abilities. Unlike other San Francisco bands such as the Airplane and the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service did not jump at their first offer from a major record label, preferring to hold out for the best deal. This meant their debut album did not come out until 1968, missing out on the initial buzz surrounding the summer of love. The band toned down their jamming for their first LP, preferring to concentrate on more structured compositions such as Light Your Windows, which clocks in at less that three minutes.

Artist:    Fairport Convention
Title:    Million Dollar Bash
Source:    French import CD: Unhalfbricking
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Island (original US label: A&M)
Year:    1969
    While much of the country was focused on what was going on in San Francisco during the so-called Summer of Love, Bob Dylan was quietly writing a batch of new songs and teaching them to members of the Hawks that had been his stage band the previous year and were now living on a quiet country road in upstate New York in a house they nicknamed Big Pink. Band member Garth Hudson set up a recording unit using equipment lent to him by Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, and ended up recording about 30 new songs before Dylan left for Nashville in October to record his John Wesley Harding album. It wasn't long before a fourteen song demo tape was copyrighted by Dylan and Grossman and copies began making the rounds in musicians' circles, leading to several of the songs being recorded by other artists before Dylan's own versions with the Hawks (soon to be known as The Band) were officially released. The members of the British folk-rock band Fairport Convention were so taken with the songs that they ended up including their own versions of three of them, including Million Dollar Bash, on their 1969 LP Unhalfbricking. Fairport's Ashley Hutchings later said  "We loved it all. We would have covered all the songs if we could."

Artist:    Birds
Title:    Say Those Magic Words
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Feldman/Gettehrer/Goldstein/Shuman/Pomus
Label:    Rhino (original label: Reaction)
Year:    1966
    The Birds are best known for two things. First, they were future Rolling Stone Ron Wood's first band. They also gained notoriety when they took legal action against the Byrds for stealing their name. Originally formed in 1963 as the R&B Bohemians, the band soon changed its name to the Thunderbirds, later shortening it to the Birds to avoid confusion with Chris Farlowe's backup band. The Birds released only four singles between 1964 and 1966, the last of which was an amped up cover of a McCoys tune, Say Those Magic Words. When the single (their first for the Reaction label) failed to chart the group began to disentegrate and officially disbanded in early 1967.

Artist:    Haunted
Title:    1-2-5
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in Canada on LP: The Haunted)
Writer(s):    Burgess/Peter
Label:    Rhino (original label: Quality)
Year:    1966
    Formed in Montreal in 1964, the Haunted was one of the most popular bands in the Canadian province of Quebec, as well as Southern Ontario. In January of 1966 the band won an eight-hour long battle of the bands, resulting in a contract with Quality Records. The Haunted's first single was a song called 1-2-5, which the label refused to release due to the song's subject matter (a liason with a prostitute). Undaunted, the band changed a few lyrics, substituting lines like "a roomful of clowns" and "a line of executives" for the original references to working girls and re-recorded the song. The label, being somewhat clueless, released the song in its new form, but messed up the band's name on the label, calling them the Hunted. Finally, the band changed labels, issuing the song as an album track on Trans World Records in 1967.

Artist:    Love
Title:    My Flash On You
Source:    Mono LP: Love
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    Sounding a bit like the fast version of Hey Joe (which was also on Love's debut LP), My Flash On You is essentially Arthur Lee in garage mode. A punk classic.
 
Artist:    Frantics
Title:    Human Monkey
Source:    Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Miller/Stevenson
Label:    Rhino (original label: Action)
Year:    1966
    The Frantics were a popular cover band in Tacoma, Washington in the early 60s. Guitarist Jerry Miller, however, had greater ambitions and eventually relocated to San Francisco, taking the band's name and two of its members, keyboardist Chuck "Steaks" Schoning and drummer Don Stevenson, with him. After recruiting bassist Bob Mosely the Frantics cut their only single, an early Motown-style dance number called the Human Monkey, in 1966. The group would soon shed Schoning and pick up two new members, changing their name to Moby Grape in the process.

Artist:    Luv'd Ones
Title:    Dance Kid Dance
Source:    Mono CD: Truth Gotta Stand (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Char Vinnedge
Label:    Beat Rocket (original label: Dunwich)
Year:    1966
    In 1963, 20-year-old Char Vinnedge of Niles, Michigan, who had been playing piano since the age of four, helped her brother pick out an Airline guitar from Montgomery Ward. It soon became apparent that he was never going to learn to the play the thing, however, and Char ended up buying it from him. She soon found that she had an affinity for the instrument, and by 1964 had recruited her younger sister Faith (who chose to play bass because that was what Paul McCartney played), along with drummer Faith Orem and rhythm guitarist Terry Barber, to form a group called the Tremelons. Barber soon left the group, to be replaced by Mary Gallagher, and in 1966 the band was signed to Chicago's Dunwich Records, changing their name to the Luv'd Ones at the suggestion of label owner Bill Traut. They ended up releasing three singles for Dunwich that year, the last of which was the antiwar song Dance Kid Dance. After the Luv'd Ones disbanded, Vinnedge spent the next few years studying and deconstructing the music of Jimi Hendrix, eventually coming to the attention of bassist Billy Cox and recording an album called Nitro Function with him in 1971 that for some reason was only released in Europe.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    A Well Respected Man
Source:    Mono Canadian import CD: 25 Years-The Ultimate Collection (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Polygram/PolyTel (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1966
     The Kinks were one of the original British Invasion bands, scoring huge R&B-influenced hits with You Really Got Me and All Day And All Of The Night in 1964. The hits continued in 1965 with more melodic songs like Set Me Free and Tired Of Waiting For You. 1966 saw Ray Davies's songwriting take a satiric turn, as A Well Respected Man amply illustrates. Over the next few years the Kinks would continue to evolve, generally getting decent critical reviews and moderate record sales for their albums. The title of one of those later albums, Muswell Hillbillies, refers to the Davies brothers hometown of Muswell Hill, North London.

Artist:    Adam
Title:    Eve
Source:    Mono CD: A Lethal Dose Of Hard Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Taylor/London/Dawson/Schnug
Label:    Arf! Arf! (original label: Malo)
Year:    1966
    Obviously a one-note gimmick, Adam consisted of Adam Taylor, Adam London, Adam Dawson and Adam Schnug, releasing one single called Eve in 1966. The following year a band called the Balloon Farm released A Question Of Temperature. It has long been suspected that they were both the same band. My own theory is that both tracks are the work of New York studio musicians having a little after-hours fun, similar to what was going on in Los Angeles with projects such as Sagittarius and the Ballroom.

Artist:    Monocles
Title:    The Spider And The Fly
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 2 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Strong/Stevens
Label:    Elektra (original label: Chicory)
Year:    1967
    Once upon a time (1958) there was a B movie called the Fly. The most memorable thing about the film was hearing a tiny high-pitched voice emanating from a human head on a fly's body yelling "help me". This inspired a composer and conductor named Charles H. Sagle to write a song called The Spider And The Fly. Not wanted to destroy his career, he used not one, but two pseudonyms, Bob Strong and Carl Stevens. As Carl Stevens he was leader of Carl Stevens And His Orchestra, which included percussionist Bobby Christian, who in turn led a group called Bobby Christian And His Band that included as a member (you guessed it) Carl Stevens. The Spider And The Fly was released on Mercury's Wing Records subsidiary with the song title preceeded by: WARNING: Do Not Listen to this Record in the Dark or Alone. Nine years later, a band from Greeley, Colorado calling themselves the Monocles recorded an even stranger version of The Spider And The Fly, releasing it on the local Chicory label. A copy of this single has been known to sell for upward of seven-hundred dollars in recent years.

Artist:    Asylum Choir
Title:    Welcome To Hollywood
Source:    Mono European import CD: Look Inside The Asylum Choir (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Russell/Benno
Label:    Rev-Ola (original label: Smash)
Year:    1968
    Leon Russell and Marc Benno were both well-established as studio musicians in L.A. when they teamed up to create an album called Look Inside The Asylum Choir in 1968. Although the album was not a hot seller (the fact that the cover featured a roll of toilet paper probably didn't help), it did provide the two a chance to indulge their own particular brand of insanity, as heard on the album's opening track, Welcome To Hollywood. Look Inside The Asylum Choir was re-released (with a new cover) three years later in the wake of Russell's emergence as a superstar in his own right.

Artist:    SRC
Title:    Up All Night
Source:    Mono import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and on LP: Milestones)
Writer(s):    Clawson/Richardson/Quackenbush/Lyman/Quackenbush
Label:    Zonophone UK (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    1969
    Stylistic and regional contemporaries of bands such as the MC5 and the Amboy Dukes, SRC were formed in 1965 as the Tremelos, soon changing their name to the Fugitives and releasing four singles and an album on various local Detroit labels. They released their first records under the name SRC in 1967, a pair of singles for the A[squared] label, which led to a contract with Capitol that resulted in one album per year from 1968-70. The most successful of these was the 1969 LP Milestones, which included the single Turn Into Love and its B side, Up All Night. After being dropped from the Capitol roster the group continued on for a couple more years, releasing a final single under the name Blue Scepter for Rare Earth Records in 1972.

Artist:    Arlo Guthrie
Title:    The Motorcycle Song
Source:    LP: Arlo
Writer(s):    Arlo Guthrie
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1968
    Arlo Guthrie originally recorded the Motorcycle Song as a straightforward three minute long folk song for his 1967 debut album, Alice's Restaurant. He then opened his 1968 live album Arlo with a nearly eight-minute long rendition of the song that included his somewhat fanciful explanation of how the song came to be. But when it came time for his label to release a compilation album of his best-known tunes in 1977, an entirely different live version in which he stated that he had been doing the song for twelve years was used. Although there has never been any official explanation of the substitution (or for that matter any information about where the later version even came from ), I believe it has to do with the part of the story about landing on a police car. The 1968 version includes the words "and he died", while the later one says "and it died" and goes on to tell a revised version of the rest of the story in which he is confronted by a rather short, but very much alive, police officer.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    It's Breaking Me Up
Source:    CD: This Was
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis/Capitol (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    Jethro Tull originally was part of the British blues scene, but even in the early days the band's principal songwriter Ian Anderson wanted to expand beyond the confines of that particular genre. Ironically It's Breaking Me Up, from Jethro Tull's first LP, is an Anderson composition that is rooted solidly in the British blues style.

Artist:    Amboy Dukes
Title:    Journey To The Center Of The Mind
Source:    CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Journey To The Center Of The Mind)
Writer(s):    Nugent/Farmer
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1968
    Detroit was one of the major centers of pop music in the mid to late 60s. In addition to the myriad Motown acts, the area boasted the popular retro-rock&roll band Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, the harder rocking Bob Seger and the Heard, the proto-punk bands MC5 and the Stooges, and Ted Nugent's outfit, the Amboy Dukes, who scored big in 1968 with Journey To The Center Of The Mind.
    
Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    The People In Me
Source:    CD: The Very Best Of The Music Machine-Turn On (originally released on LP: Turn On The Music Machine and as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year:    1966
    After Talk Talk soared into the upper reaches of the US charts the Music Machine's management made a tactical error. Instead of promoting the follow-up single, The People In Me, to the largest possible audience, the band's manager gave exclusive air rights to a relatively low-rated Burbank station at the far end of the Los Angeles AM radio dial. As local bands like the Music Machine depended on airplay in L.A. as a necessary step to getting national exposure, the move proved disastrous. Without any airplay on influential stations like KHJ and KRLA, The People In Me was unable to get any higher than the # 66 spot on the national charts. Even worse for the band, the big stations remembered the slight when subsequent singles by the Music Machine were released, and by mid-1967 the original lineup had disbanded.
 
Artist:    Squires Of The Subterrain
Title:    Surfin' Indiana
Source:    Mono CD: Sandbox
Writer(s):    Christopher Zajkowski
Label:    Rocket Racket
Year:    2012
    Christopher Earl of Rochester, NY, who records as Squires Of The Subterrain, has been releasing independent recordings on his own Rocket Racket label for the better part of 20 years. His 2012 album Sandbox is a tribute to Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, who actually had a sandbox installed in his living room while working on the aborted Smile album. In keeping with the spirit of Wilson, the album, which includes tunes like Surfin' Indiana, was mixed monoraully rather than in stereo like other Squires albums.

Artist:    Chesterfield Kings
Title:    Ain't No Use
Source:    LP: Don't Open Til Doomsday
Writer(s):    Babiuk//Prevost/O'Brien/Cona/Meech
Label:    Mirror
Year:    1987
    Formed in the late 1970s in Rochester, NY, the Chesterfield Kings (named for an old brand of unfiltered cigarettes that my grandfather used to smoke) were instrumental in setting off the garage band revival of the 1980s. Their earliest records were basically a recreation of the mid-60s garage sound, although by the time their 1987 album, Don't Open Til Doomsday, was released they had gone through some personnel changes that resulted in a harder-edged sound on tracks like Ain't No Use.     

Artist:    Sand Pebbles
Title:    Wild Season (single edit)
Source:    CD: A Thousand Wild Flowers (originally released in Australia on CD: Ceduna)
Writer(s):    Sand Pebbles
Label:    Double Feature (original label: Sensory Projects)
Year:    2008
    Neighbours is the longest-running drama series on Australian television, having aired its first episode in March of 1985. It is also the unlikely origin point for the Sand Pebbles, a band formed in 2001 by three Neighbours screenwriters. Those three founding members, bassist Christopher Hollow, guitarist Ben Michael and drummer Piet Collins were soon joined by guitarist/vocalist Andrew Tanner. The band's fourth album, Ceduna, also featured guitarist/vocalist Tor Larsen. As of 2008 the Sand Pebbles had never released any albums outside of Australia and New Zealand, but in 2009 they released a compilation album called A Thousand Wild Flowers in the US. The album included tracks from three of their previous CDs, along with a previously unreleased edited version of Wild Season that is two minutes shorter than the album version heard on Cedona.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    It's All Too Much
Source:    CD: Yellow Submarine
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Apple/Capitol
Year:    1969
    A month after completing the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles gathered at London's De Lane Lea studios to begin recording a new George Harrison composition that they called Too Much, based on the popular beatnik exclamation. The song itself was Harrison's attempt to express the revelations he had experienced while taking LSD. The basic tracks were laid down in late May without the participation of producer George Martin, and the sessions have been described as chaotic, in contrast to the tightly controlled sessions for Sgt. Pepper's. The following month horns and clarinet overdubs were added to the six-minute-long track by Martin. Harrison later expressed regret over those overdubs, saying  "To this day I am still annoyed that I let them mess it up with those damn trumpets. Basically, the song's quite good but, you know, messed up with those trumpets."

Artist:    Lothar And The Hand People
Title:    Milkweed Love
Source:    LP: Also Dug-Its (originally released on LP: Presenting…Lothar And The Hand People)
Writer(s):    Conly/Emelin/Ford/Flye/King
Label:    Elektra (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1968
    Originally from Denver, Colorado, Lothar and the Hand People found themselves relocating to New York City in 1967, releasing a series of singles that ranged from blue-eyed soul to pop. By 1968, however, the band had fully incorporated the Moog synthesizer and the theramine into their sound. Lothar was, in fact, the name of the theramine itself, essentially a black box with an audio modulater that was activated by waving one's hands above it. As for this week's track, Milkweed Love (from the band's debut LP)...well, you can decide for yourself what to think of it.

Artist:    Barnsley And Bradley
Title:    Sister Of Wisdom
Source:    Mono CD: Lost Souls Volume 4 (taken from an unreleased studio acetate)
Writer(s):    Barnsley/Bradley
Label:    Psych Of The South (acetate from Jaggars Recording Studio)
Year:    1967
    Barnsley And Bradley were a folk duo from Little Rock, Arkansas, who recorded Sister Of Wisdom and other songs in mid-1967. Although the recordings were not released, the duo went on to become the core of a group called Country Coalition, which recorded an LP for the Bluesway label in 1969 and made a 1970 appearance on American Bandstand.

Artist:    Simon and Garfunkel
Title:    A Hazy Shade Of Winter
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bookends)
Writer:    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966 (first stereo release: 1968)
    Originally released as a single in late 1966, A Hazy Shade Of Winter was one of several songs slated to be used in the film The Graduate. The only one of these actually used was Mrs. Robinson. The remaining songs eventually made up side two of the 1968 album Bookends, although several of them were also released as singles throughout 1967. A Hazy Shade Of Winter, being the first of these singles (and the only one released in 1966), was also the highest charting, peaking at # 13 just as the weather was turning cold in most of the country.

Artist:    Ban
Title:    Thinking Of Your Fate
Source:    Mono British import CD: With Love...A Pot Of Flowers (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Tony McGuire
Label:    Big Beat
Year:    Recorded 1965, released 2010
    One of the first garage bands signed to Bob Shad's Brent label was The Ban. Based in Lompoc, California, the Ban was led by guitarist/vocalist Tony McGuire, who also wrote the band's original material, and also included Oliver McKinney, whose wailing organ combined with Frank Straits's distorted bass and Randy Gordon's driving drums to create Thinking Of Your Fate, a garage band classic that sat on the shelf for 35 years before finally being released on the expanded version of the Mainstream Records' sampler With Love...A Pot Of Flowers.

Artist:    Allman Brothers Band
Title:    Whipping Post
Source:    CD: Beginnings (originally released on LP: The Allman Brothers Band)
Writer(s):    Gregg Allman
Label:    Polydor  (original label: Atco)
Year:    1969
    It's hard to believe now, but when it was released in 1969, the first Allman Brothers Band LP did not sell all that well. Even stranger, the critics were at best lukewarm in their reviews of the album. It wasn't until the band released a live album in 1971 that had been recorded during the final days of the Fillmore East that the Allman Brothers became a major force in rock. Not long after that Atco Records re-released both the Allman Brothers Band and its followup, Idlewild South, as a double-LP entitled Beginnings. One of the high points of the Fillmore East album was the band's rendition of Whipping Post, heard here in its original studio form.

Artist:    Steve Miller Band
Title:    Brave New World
Source:    LP: Homer soundtrack (originally released on LP: Brave New World)
Writer(s):    Steve Miller
Label:    Cotillion (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1969
    It took the Steve Miller Band half a dozen albums (plus appearances on a couple of movie soundtracks) to achieve star status in the early 1970s. Along the way they developed a cult following that added new members with each successive album. The fourth Miller album was Brave New World, the title track of which was used in the film Homer, a 1970 film that is better remembered for its soundtrack than for the movie itself.

Artist:    Kak
Title:    Lemonade Kid
Source:    CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Kak)
Writer(s):    Gary Lee Yoder
Label:    Rhino (original label: Epic)
Year:    1969
    Kak was a group from Davis, California that was only around long enough to record one LP for Epic. That self-titled album did not make much of an impression commercially, and was soon out of print. Long after the band had split up, critics began to notice the album, and copies of the original LP are now highly-prized by collectors. Songs like the Lemonade Kid show that Kak had a sound that holds up better today than many of the other artists of the time. In fact, after listening to this track a couple times I went out and ordered a copy of the import CD reissue of the Kak album. It turns out the album isn't bad at all (and the CD has some decent Gary Lee Yoder solo songs as bonus tracks) but Lemonaide Kid is by far the best song on the album.

Artist:    David Bowie
Title:    God Knows I'm Good
Source:    CD: David Bowie (originally US title: Man Of Words/Man Of Music)
Writer(s):    David Bowie
Label:    Parlophone (original US label: Mercury)
Year:    1969
    David Bowie gets inside the head of a shoplifter in God Knows I'm Good on his second self-titled album, released in 1969 in the UK and the following year in the US, with the words Man Of Music/Man Of Words above Bowie's name on the album cover. The album itself went largely unnoticed until 1972, when it was re-released on a different label under the name Space Oddity and made the top 20 on the US albums chart.

Artist:    Parking Lot
Title:    World Spinning Sadly
Source:    Mono British import CD: Insane Times (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Paul Samwell-Smith
Label:    Zonophone (original label: Parlophone)
Year:    1969
    Virtually nothing is known about the band called the Parking Lot. In fact, it is not even known whether there actually was a band called the Parking Lot, as it could just as easily have been a group of studio musicians hired by the producer/songwriter of World Spinning Sadly, a one-off single from 1969. The producer himself, on the other hand, was definitely a real person. Paul Samwell-Smith was, in fact, the original bass player for the Yardbirds, who had left the group in 1966 (after playing on all of their major hits through Over Under Sideways Down) to pursue a career as a record producer. Although he was never a major figure in the music industry in that capacity, he did manage to remain active well past the demise of the Yardbirds themselves, which was probably his goal all along.

Artist:     Country Weather
Title:     Fly To New York
Source:     Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released only to radio stations, later included on Swiss CD:     Country Weather)
Writer:     Baron/Carter/Derr/Douglass
Label:     Rhino (original label: RD)
Year:     Recorded 1969, released 2005
     Country Weather started off as a popular dance band in Contra Costa County, California. In 1968 they took the name Country Weather and began gigging on the San Francisco side of the bay. In 1969, still without a record contract, they recorded an album side's worth of material, made a few one-sided test copies and circulated them to local radio stations. Those tracks, including Fly To New York, were eventually released on CD in 2005 by the Swedish label RD Records.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2501 (starts 12/30/24)

 https://exchange.prx.org/p/556156

    Following a couple weeks of special shows, it's time for an hour of free-form rock, starting with a classic blues cover from Cream's Wheels Of Fire album and ending with Harvey Mandel's take on a traditional African jazz standard. As for what's in between the two, read on...

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Born Under A Bad Sign
Source:    LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer:    Jones/Bell
Label:    RSO (original label: Atco)
Year:    1968
    Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker were pretty much considered the cream of the crop of the British blues scene in the mid 1960s, so it came as no surprise when they decided to call their new band Cream. Although the trio would go on to record several memorable non-blues tunes such as I Feel Free and White Room, they never completely abandoned the blues. Born Under A Bad Sign, originally recorded by Albert King  for the Stax label and written by labelmates William Bell and Booker T. Jones, is one of the better known tracks from Cream's double-LP Wheels Of Fire, the last album released while the band was still together.

Artist:    Yes
Title:    Every Little Thing
Source:    CD: Yes
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Rhino/Elektra (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1969
    At first glance you'd think that the British band Yes and the San Francisco group Big Brother And The Holding Company had little in common. They did, however, have similar first experiences in a recording studio. Both bands were saddled with producers and engineers who knew virtually nothing about how a rock band should sound, and in the case of Yes, an engineer who made little effort to hide his distaste for rock music itself. In both cases the results were disappointing to the band members themselves, although the rock press, at least, had a favorable opinion of Yes. Neither album was a commercial success when originally released, yet both groups went on to become chart-toppers with their later efforts. Both albums featured a pair of cover versions of relatively obscure songs to supplement the bands' original material. Even the Beatles' song covered by Yes was one of their least popular, having originally appeared on the 1964 album Beatles For Sale, often cited as the weakest of all Beatles albums. Yes's version of Every Little Thing includes a long original intro, and even sneaks in the guitar riff from Day Tripper before getting into the song itself. Original Yes guitarist Peter Banks would find himself increasingly at odds with the band's other three members, Jon Anderson, Chris Squire and Bill Bruford, and would end up leaving Yes the following year to form his own band, Flash.

Artist:    Joe Walsh
Title:    Time Out (live version)
Source:    LP: You Can't Argue With A Sick Mind
Writer(s):    Joe Walsh
Label:    ABC
Year:    1976
    If there is any one song that could be called a typical example of a Joe Walsh tune, it could very well be Time Out, a song originally released on the 1974 album So What and then as a single the following year. It has all the hallmarks: a smooth guitar riff played against a background of power chords, a vocal line that starts on a high pitched note and stays there long enough to create tension before dropping down a bit, and lyrics that are suitably cryptic, yet down to earth. Although not a top 40 hit, the song got plenty of play on mid-70s FM rock radio stations, especially after being included on Walsh's 1976 live LP You Can't Argue With A Sick Mind.

Artist:    Mothers
Title:    Fifty-Fifty
Source:    CD: Over-Nite Sensation
Writer(s):    Frank Zappa
Label:    Zappa (original label: Discreet)
Year:    1973
    Frank Zappa was already well-established by the time he recorded Over-Nite Sensation and Apostrophe(') in 1973. The two albums, recorded at the same time but released months apart, were his commercial breakthrough, thanks to radio-friendly tunes like Montana and Don't Eat Yellow Snow. Both albums use the same pool of talented musicians, including keyboardist George Duke and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, both of which would go on to establish themselves as first-tier stars in the world of jazz fusion. Fifty-Fifty, from Over-Nite Sensation, features solos from Duke, Ponty and Zappa himself, with lead vocals from Ricky Lancelotti. Powerful stuff.
    
Artist:    Deep Purple
Title:    Smooth Dancer
Source:    Japanese import CD: Who Do We Think We Are
Writer(s):    Blackmore/Gillan/Glover/Lord/Paice
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1973
    Deep Purple's most iconic lineup (the so-called Mark II group consisting of Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord and Ian Paice) only recorded four studio albums together before internal tensions and conflict with their own management led to the departure of Gillan and Glover. The last of these was Who Do We Think We Are, released in 1973. By this point some of the band members were not on speaking terms, and their individual parts had to be recorded at separate times. Nonetheless, the album is full of strong tracks such as Smooth Dancer, which closes out side one of the original LP. Despite all the problems getting Who Do We Think We Are recorded and the band's subsequent disintegration, Deep Purple sold more albums in the US than any other recording artist in the year 1973 (including continued strong sales of the 1972 album Machine Head and their live album Made In Japan).

Artist:    Robin Trower
Title:    Daydream
Source:    CD: Essential Robin Trower (originally released on LP: Twice Removed From Yesterday
Writer(s):    Dewar/Trower
Label:    Chrysalis
Year:    1973
    Robin Trower's nearly six year long run with Procol Harum became increasingly frustrating for the guitarist, who felt that the band's songs, mostly written by keyboardist Gary Brooker and lyricist Keith Reid, did not give him a lot of opportunity to express himself as a musician. So in 1971 he left the group and co-founded a group called Jude. Although this group was short-lived and made no recordings, it did serve to establish the songwriting partnership of Trower and the Scottish bassist/vocalis James Dewar. With drummer Reg Isidore they formed the Robin Trower Band in 1973, releasing their first album, Twice Removed From Yesterday, that same year. The longest track on the album was Daydream, a slow moody piece that runs in excess of six minutes.

Artist:    Graham Nash
Title:    Prison Song
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Graham Nash
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1973
    Graham Nash's Prison Song is one of those songs that by all rights should have been a huge hit. It was by a name artist. It had a catchy opening harmonica riff and a haunting melody. I can only surmise that once again Bill Gavin (whose Gavin Report was considered by many in the industry to be the top 40 "bible") decided that the lyrics were too subversive for AM radio and had the song blacklisted, much as he had done with the Byrds Eight Miles High a few years earlier. Those lyrics center on a subject that is unfortunately still relevant today: the utter absurdity of drug laws and the disproportionate sentences for violation of those laws in various part of the United States.

Title:    Down By The River
Source:    CD: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Writer(s):    Neil Young
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1969
    Down By The River is one of four songs on the album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere that Neil Young wrote while running a fever of 103 degrees Fahrenheit (that's 39.5 degrees for people in civilized nations that use the Celsius, aka centrigrade, scale). By some strange coincidence, they are the four best songs on the album. I wish I could have been that sick in my days as a wannabe rock star.

Artist:    Savoy Brown
Title:    Money Can't Save Your Soul
Source:    CD: Looking In
Writer(s):    Simmonds/ Peverett
Label:    Deram (original label: Parrott)
Year:    1970
    Looking In was the sixth album by British blues-rockers Savoy Brown, and the first without original lead vocalist Chris Youlden. It was also the final outing for guitarist Dave Peverett, bassist Tone Stevens and drummer Roger Earl, who would go on to form Foghat after being dismissed by bandleader Kim Simmonds. The album was made up entirely of original compositions such as the low-key Money Can't Save Your Soul, which was written by Simmonds and Peverett, who had taken over lead vocals upon Youlden's departure. Both Foghat and a new Savoy Brown lineup would continue to have success, especially in the US, where both bands toured extensively throughout the 1970s.

Artist:    Harvey Mandel
Title:    Wade In The Water
Source:    LP: Cristo Redentor
Writer(s):    Traditional
Label:    Philips
Year:    1968
    Harvey Mandel first came to national attention as the guitarist on Stand Back! Here Comes Charlie Musselwhite's South Side Band, one of the first blues albums to be also targeted to rock listeners. One of the standout tracks on the album was Christo Redemptor, which has come to be considered Musselwhite's signature song. Not long after the album was released, Mandel moved to San Francisco, performing regularly at the Matrix club and often jamming with fellow guitarists Elvin Bishop and Jerry Garcia. A chance meeting with local disc jockey Abe "Voco" Kesh led to Mandel's first solo LP, the instrumental Cristo Redentor, released in 1968. The traditional African song Wade In The Water (attributed on the label to James Alexander and Sam Cooke) is often cited as the album's most outstanding track, and led to Mandel being invited to replace Henry Vestine in Canned Heat the following year. 

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2452 (starts 12/23/24)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/555413 

    Once upon a time there was an angry rebellious music called rock 'n' roll. But then the music factories got hold of it and filtered out everything that was angry and rebellious about it. But then the British came up with their own brand of angry and rebellious rock 'n' roll and invaded the entire world with it, which prompted a lot of angry and rebellious teenagers to do the same in their own garages and basements, creating what soon became known as the psychedelic era. This time it was the musicians themselves that sucked the angry rebelliousness out of rock 'n' roll (it's hard to be angry and rebellious when you're making money hand over fist), until a new generation of angry rebellious young people started calling themselves punk rockers. This week, in our first hour, we check out a sampling of punk and what is now called post-punk (but was known as "new wave" at the time). For our second hour we have our first ever Battle of the Songs, featuring several different versions of two of the most covered songs of the psychedelic era. Happy New Year!

Artist:    Iggy And The Stooges
Title:    Search And Destroy
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released on LP: Raw Power)
Writer(s):    Pop/Williamson
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1973
    Raw Power, the third album by the Stooges, saw the addition of James Williamson on guitar, with Ron Asheton moving over to bass to replace the departing Dave Alexander. Williamson also co-wrote all the songs on Raw Power with vocalist Iggy Pop. The album's opening track, Search And Destroy, has been called "an archetype for punk rock" and has been covered by numerous bands over the ensuing years.

Artist:    Modern Lovers
Title:    Roadrunner
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released on LP: The Modern Lovers)
Writer(s):    Jonathan Richman
Label:    Rhino (original label: Beserkley)
Year:    Recorded 1972, released 1976
    In April of 1972 20-year-old Jonathan Richman and his band, the Modern Lovers, made a trip to Los Angeles to record a demo tape with producer John Cale (formerly of Velvet Underground). The tape sat on a shelf for several years as the band went through both artistic and personnel changes, finally surfacing (along with a few tracks recorded with different producers) in 1976 as an album called The Modern Lovers on Matthew "King" Kaufman's new Beserkley label. By then Richman had changed his style considerably and did not acknowledge The Modern Lovers as his first LP. Nonetheless, the album, featuring tracks like Roadrunner, was a critical success and has been cited as an influence by punk rock bands such as the Sex Pistols.

Artist:    Ramones
Title:    Sheena Is A Punk Rocker
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Joey Ramone
Label:    Rhino (original label: Sire)
Year:    1977
    The Ramones are often cited as the first true punk-rock band. Formed in the New York City borough of Queens in 1974 by four guys with no familial relation to each other who, inspired by Paul McCartney's practice of using the alias Paul Ramon when checking into hotels, all took the last name Ramone. Their 1977 single Sheena Is A Punk Rocker was one of the first songs to actually use the term punk rock in the lyrics.

Artist:    Runaways
Title:    Cherry Bomb
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released
Writer(s):    Jett/Fowley
Label:    Rhino (original label:
Year:    1976
    In early 1975 Hollywood hustler Kim Fowley decided that what the world needed was an all-female rock band. As one of the most well-connected people in town, he managed to find guitarist Joan Jett, drummer Sandy West and vocalist/bassist Micki Steele within a few months, officially forming the Runaways in August of 1975, their first gig was at the Whisky a Go Go the following month, opening for another Fowley creation, the Hollywood Stars (by then known as the Stars). After a few personnel changes, the band ended up as a quintet featuring Jett, West, lead guitarist Lita Ford, bassist Jackie Fox and lead vocalist Cherie Currie by the end of the year. Fox, however, at the insistence of Fowley, who had become the group's manager, did not play on the first Runaways album. Instead, all the bass part were played by Nigel Harrison. The song Cherry Bomb was actually written quickly by Jett and Fowley specifically for Currie to use as an audition song when joining the band. It went on to become one of the group's best-known tunes.

Artist:    Sex Pistols
Title:    Anarchy In The UK
Source:    British import LP: Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Lydon/Jones/Cook/Matlock
Label:    Virgin (original label: EMI)
Year:    1976
    Anarchy In The UK is the first single released by the Sex Pistols, and the only song on their album to feature original bassist Glen Matlock. The song, described by Pistols' manager Malcolm McLaren as "a call to arms to the kids who believe that rock and roll was taken away from them", was the only Sex Pistols song issued on the EMI label, which dropped the band from its roster after band members used profanity on a live television broadcast. The Sex Pistols are credited with initiating the punk movement in the UK.

Artist:    Clash
Title:    White Riot
Source:    CD: The Singles (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Strummer/Jones
Label:    Epic (original UK label: CBS)
Year:    1977
    The most commercially successful of the original English punk rock bands, the Clash released their debut single, White Riot, in March of 1977. The song was immediately denounced by some critics as racist, but vocalist/guitarist Joe Strummer angrily responded that the song was actually a call to white youth to do the same as inner city black youth were doing and fight back against poverty and police brutality, implying that the two groups actually had a common enemy. The Clash were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003.

Artist:    Adverts
Title:    One Chord Wonders
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released
Writer(s):    T.V. Smith
Label:    Rhino (original label:
Year:    1977
    The Adverts were formed in London in 1976 by T.V. Smith and Gaye Advert, the latter often cited as the first female punk rocker. The two had both recently arrived in the Smoke from small towns in the English county of Devon. After being joined by guitarist Howard Pickup and drummer Laurie Driver they became one of the first bands to play the Roxy in its first 100 days, appearing there nine times between January and April of 1977. Their self-descriptive debut record, One Chord Wonders, released on April 22, 1977, was the 13th single released on the Stiff label.

    By 1978 a new wave of bands started showing up in London clubs that began to expand upon the basic punk sound to create something that was originally called new musick, but in recent years has come to be known as post-punk or early alternative rock.

Artist:    Gang Of Four
Title:    Love Like Anthrax
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Gang Of Four
Label:    Rhino (original label: Fast Product)
Year:    1978
    Taking their name from the notorious Chinese political cadre, Gang Of Four was one of the first post-punk bands to emerge in the UK. Formed in Leeds by singer Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill, bass guitarist Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Burnham, the band took a more experimental approach to punk rock, as can be heard on the B side of their debut single, Love Like Anthrax. A considerably longer version of the song appeared on their 1979 LP Entertainment! using the title Anthrax.

Artist:    Magazine
Title:    Shot By Both Sides
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Devoto/Shelley
Label:    Rhino (original label: Virgin)
Year:    1978
    Buzzcocks were formed in Manchester, England in 1976 by Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto. Although the two wrote several songs together, Devoto left the band to form Magazine with guitarist John McGeoch before the Buzzcocks made any recordings. Magazine's first single was Shot By Both Sides, a song based on a guitar riff by Shelley, which was released in January of 1978. Buzzcocks used the same riff in the song Lipstick, released as a B side later the same year.

Artist:    Buzzcocks
Title:    Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Pete Shelley
Label:    Rhino (original label: United Artists)
Year:    1978
    Buzzcocks made a name for themselves by releasing a steady series of singles that have been described as a synthesis of punk and pop until their breakup in 1980. The most successful of these was Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've), which hit #12 on the British top 40 chart in 1978. The song's lyrics were inspired by a line from the 1955 film version of Guys And Dolls, which Shelley was half paying attention to in a hotel room. When he heard Adelaide say the line "Wait till you fall in love with someone you shouldn't have" he thought it was a good idea for a song, and wrote one the next day.

Artist:    Talking Heads
Title:    Psycho Killer
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released on LP: Talking Heads: 77)
Writer(s):    Byrne/Frantz/Weymouth
Label:    Rhino (original label: Sire)
Year:    1977
    At its core, punk-rock is a blue-collar kind of music with lower class sensibilities. The new wave of post-punk bands, however, tended to be a bit more sophisticated. For example, the three original members of Talking Heads, David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, met while they were all students at the Rhode Island School of Design; it's hard to imagine Sid Vicious sitting in a college classroom. The band actually turned down their first offers from record labels, feeling that they needed to improve musically before entering a recording studio, something no original punk band would even give a second thought to. Their fourth member, Jerry Harrison (formerly of Modern Lovers), waited until Talking Heads had a recording contract before agreeing to join the band; as a result he was not on their first single at all. Talking Heads' first major hit was Psycho Killer, released as their third single in late 1977. Although some critics linked the song with the Son Of Sam killings of 1976-1977, the band had actually been performing the song since 1975. Talking Heads went on to become one of the most popular and influential bands in rock history.

Artist:    Elvis Costello
Title:    Alison
Source:    Stereo British import 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Elvis Costello
Label:    Stiff
Year:    1977
    When I started thinking about doing this week's show I knew that there was no way I could do it without including something from Elvis Costello. Born Declan Patrick MacManus in West London to a record shop worker and a jazz musician from Liverpool, Costello was exposed to a wide variety of music growing up, and as an adolescent became a fan of British beat groups like the Kinks and the Who. He also had a liking for reggae and Motown soul, and after moving back to Liverpool in the late 1960s started getting into California bands like the Byrds and the Grateful Dead, and even country music. McManus taught himself to play guitar at age 14, and before moving back to London had become a member of a local folk-rock band called Rusty. At age 19 he realized that to achieve his musical ambitions he would have to return to London, taking on the stage name Declan Costello. In 1973 he formed a band called Flip City, playing the London pub-rock circuit until 1975. By 1976 he was performing as a solo artist under the name D.P. Costello while making demo tapes to send to various record labels. Among those receiving demos were Charlie Gillett, owner of Oval Records and, more importantly for Costello's career, a disc jockey on Radio London. After Gillett played several of the songs from the demo on his weekly show, Costello began to get offers from several labels, eventually signing with the new Stiff label, which seemed, in Costello's opinion, to be prepared to move the fastest. Over a period of several weeks, working with a country-rock band named Clover from Marin County, California, he recorded the songs that made up his debut album, My Aim Is True. The album's title was taken from the song Alison, which, although not a hit single at the time, has gone on to achieve classic status. Around this same time his managers gave him a new stage name, Elvis Costello. The rest is history.

Artist:    Police
Title:    Roxanne
Source:    LP: No Wave (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Gordon Sumner
Label:    A&M
Year:    1978
    Stewart Copeland was already an experienced drummer, having been a member of the second incarnation of Curved Air from 1975 through 1976, when the band quietly dissolved. It turns out that was a good thing for Copeland, though, as it led to him forming a new band with vocalist/bassist Gordon Sumner, who went by the stage name of Sting, in early 1977. They soon recruited guitarist Henry Padovani as the band's guitarist and third member. In May of that year Sting was invited by former Gong member Mkke Howlett to participate in a band project called Strontium 90. As the original drummer for the project was unavalable, Sting brought Copeland with him. The fourth member of the project was a guitarist named Andy Summers, who was considerably older than the other band members. Strontium 90 ended up playing only a couple gigs (one under a different name), and Sting invited Summers to replace Padovani as the guitarist for the Police. The other band members, however, voted to keep both guitarists in the band, but after a couple of gigs Padovani was let go, and the Police remained a trio for the rest of its existence. With Summers, who had previously recorded with Kevin Ayers and Eric Burdon & The Animals, now in the band, some on the punk scene saw the Police as posers, and the group struggled to gain street cred (while at the same time quietly moonlighting as art rockers). Among the skeptics were Copeland's older brother Miles, who was nonetheless persuaded to finace the band's first album Outlandos d'Amour. Upon hearing the song Roxanne for the first time, Miles Copeland became a convert, using his contacts to get the Police a contract with A&M Records and eventually becoming the band's manager. The Roxanne single, released in February of 1978, did not initially chart, having been passed over by the BBC, possibly due to the song's subject matter, but after doing well in the US, it was re-released in the UK the following year, eventually peaking in the #12 spot. From that point on the Police were a first-tier mainstream rock band on both sides of the Atlantic.

Artist:    Joe Jackson
Title:    It's Different For Girls
Source:    7" box set: I'm The Man
Writer(s):    Joe Jackson
Label:    A&M
Year:    1979
    Although he is known to American audiences for jazz-inspired songs like Steppin' Out and Breaking Us In Two, Joe Jackson first made his mark as part of the British New Wave scene with his debut album Look Sharp! getting rave reviews from the rock press. His biggest British hit was It's Different For Girls from the album I'm The Man, which peaked at #12 on the UK charts. Jackson is considered a key artist of the so-called Second British Invasion of the 1980s.

Artist:    Joy Division
Title:    Love Will Tear Us Apart
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Hook/Curtis/Sumner/Morris
Label:    Cleopatra (original label: Factory)
Year:    1980
    Originally known as Warsaw, Joy Division was formed in 1976 by Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook, who were inspired by seeing the Sex Pistols perform and realized that they could do it too. Neither of the two owned or played a musical instrument at the time, but they soon recruited another audience member, Terry Mason, to form a band, then all three went out and bought instruments, learning to play them over the next few months. They still needed a singer, however, and after placing an ad for a vocalist at a local music shop hired Ian Curtis without an audition because, as Sumner would later say, they "knew he was all right to get on with and that's what we based the whole group on. If we liked someone, they were in." Mason eventually became the bands manager, and after going through a couple of personnel changes they finally settled on Stephen Morris as the band's permanent drummer. Curtis, however, had deep mental and emotional problems, and committed suicide at age 23 the night before the band was scheduled to fly to the US to begin a tour. The following month Love Will Tear Us Apart was released as a single, becoming Joy Division's biggest hit. The remaining band members, honoring a pact they had made to change the band name if any member ever left the group, became known as New Order and in 2023 were nominated along with Joy Division as a single act for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Artist:    Adam And The Ants
Title:    Press Darlings
Source:    LP: Kings Of The Wild Frontier (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Adam Ant
Label:    Epic (original UK label: CBS)
Year:    1980
    By the 1970s the practice of reordering and omitting songs from British albums for their US release was a thing of the past, yet once in a while there were exceptions. All of the songs on the original British version of the second Adam And The Ants album, Kings Of The Wild Frontier, we co-written by guitarist Marco Pirroni, who had joined the band after the release of the band's debut LP, Dirk Wears White Sox. For the US release of Kings Of The Wild Frontier, however, two songs, (You're So) Physical and Press Darlings, that had been written before Pirroni joined the band and previously released in the UK as B sides, were included on the album, replacing a song called Making History. Press Darlings is a somewhat satirical look at the band's own success.

    The second half of the show is our first ever Battle Of The Songs, featuring two of the songs most performed by garage bands in the 1960s.

Artist:    Richard Berry And The Pharaohs
Title:    Louie Louie
Source:    LP: The Best Of Louie Louie (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Richard Berry
Label:    Rhino (original label: Flip)
Year:    1957
    Hard to believe that the greatest party song of all time started off as a lowly B side. Even more ironic is the fact that Berry sold the songwriting and publishing rights to Louie Louie and four other songs to Max Fiertag, the head of Flip Records, for a grand total of $750 to pay for his upcoming wedding. Nearly 30 years later, however, Berry was visited by a lawyer who mentioned the possibility of taking court action to gain Berry the rights to Louie Louie. As he was living on welfare at the time, Berry figured there was nothing to lose by trying, and he ended up dying a millionaire in 1997.

Artist:    Leaves
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Billy Roberts
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year:    1966
    In 1966 there were certain songs you had to know how to play if you had any aspirations of being in a band. Among those were Louie Louie, Gloria and Hey Joe. The Byrds' David Crosby claims to have discovered Hey Joe, but was not able to convince his bandmates to record it before their third album. In the meantime, several other bands had recorded the song, including Love (on their first album) and the Leaves. The version of Hey Joe heard here is actually the third recording the Leaves made of the tune. After the first two versions tanked, guitarist Bobby Arlin came up with the idea of adding fuzz guitar to the song. It was the missing element that transformed a rather bland song into a hit record (the only national hit the Leaves would have). As a side note, the Leaves credited Chet Powers (aka Dino Valenti) as the writer of Hey Joe, but California-based folk singer Billy Roberts had copyrighted the song in 1962 and had reportedly been heard playing the tune as early as 1958.

Artist:     Kingsmen
Title:     Louie Louie
Source:     Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Richard Berry
Label:     Rhino (original labels: Jerden/Wand)
Year:     1963
     Although Paul Revere and the Raiders had recorded the song just a few days earlier, the version of Louie Louie that is remembered as the greatest party song of all time came from another Portland, Oregon band, the Kingsmen. With its basic three-chord structure and incomprehensible lyrics, the most popular song to ever come out of the Pacific Northwest was considered a must-learn song for garage bands everywhere. The fact that the FBI actually launched an investigation into the possibility that the lyrics were obscene just made the recording that much more popular.

Artist:    Tim Rose
Title:    Hey Joe (You Shot Your Woman Down)
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer:    Billy Roberts
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    The folk music revival of the late 50s and early 60s is generally thought of as an East Coast phenomena, centered in the coffee houses of cities such as New York, Boston and Philadelphia. California, though, had its share of folk music artists, especially in the San Francisco area, where the beatniks espoused a Bohemian lifestyle that would pave the way for the Hippy movement centered in the city's Haight-Ashbury district. Among the California folkies were Billy Roberts, who copyrighted the song Hey Joe in 1962, and Tim Rose, who (along with the Music Machine's Sean Bonniwell) came up with a slower version of the song. Rose's version, released as a single in mid-1966, got considerable airplay on San Francisco radio stations and was the inspiration for the more famous Jimi Hendrix version of the song that made the British top 10 toward the end of the year. Rose's version was not widely available until 1967, when his debut LP for Columbia was released. By then, however, the Hendrix version was all over the progressive FM airwaves in the US, and the Rose version (now in stereo) remained for the most part unheard.

Artist:    Sonics
Title:    Louie Louie
Source:    Mono LP: The Best Of Louie Louie (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Richard Berry
Label:    Rhino (original label: Etiquette)
Year:    1965
    Of course, being from the Pacific Northwest, the Sonics had to record their own version of Louie Louie. This one rocks out harder than most.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    Hey Joe (Where You Gonna Go)
Source:    LP: Fifth Dimension
Writer(s):    Billy Roberts
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    David Crosby always claimed that he was the one who first discovered and popularized this tune on the LA club scene, but that resistance from other band members kept the Byrds from recording the song until after versions by the Leaves, Love, Tim Rose and the Music Machine, among others, had already been released. Crosby would later say that recording the song with the Byrds was probably a mistake, but at the time he was quite incensed that other groups had beaten him to the punch with a song he had come to regard as his own, being under the assumption that it was a traditional folk song. As it turns out the song had been copyrighted in 1962 by California folk singler Billy Roberts, although at least half the recorded versions had credited the song to other writers, particularly Dino Valenti.

Artist:    Sandpipers
Title:    Louie Louie
Source:    LP: The Best Of Louie Louie (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Richard Berry
Label:    Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year:    1966
    The Sandpipers were an easy listening vocal group best known for their 1966 hit version of the Cuban patriotic song Guantanamera. They followed it up possibly the least likely song to be done in an easy listening style: Louie Louie.

Artist:    Love
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    German import CD: Love
Writer(s):    Billy Roberts
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    There are contradictory stories of the origins of the song Hey Joe. Some say it's a traditional folk song, while others have attributed it to various songwriters, including Tim Rose and Dino Valenti (under his birth name Chet Powers). As near as I've been able to determine the song was actually written by an obscure California folk singer named Billy Roberts, who reportedly was performing the song as early as 1958. The song circulated among West Coast musicians over the years and eventually caught the attention of the Byrds' David Crosby. Crosby was unable to convince his bandmates to record the song, although they did include it in their live sets at Ciro's on L.A.'s Sunset Strip. One of the Byrds' roadies, Bryan Maclean, joined up with Arthur Lee's new band, Love, and brought Crosby's version of the song (which had slightly different lyrics than other, more popular versions) with him. In 1966 Love included Hey Joe on their debut album, with Maclean doing the vocals. Meanwhile another L.A. band, the Leaves, recorded their own version of Hey Joe (reportedly using misremembered lyrics acquired from Love's Johnny Echols) in 1965, but had little success with it. In 1966 they recorded a new version of the song, adding screaming fuzz-drenched lead guitar parts by Bobby Arlin, and Hey Joe finally became a national hit. With two other L.A. bands (and Chicago's Shadows Of Knight) having recorded a song that David Crosby had come to regard as his own, the Byrds finally committed their own version of Hey Joe to vinyl in late 1966 on the Fifth Dimension album, but even Crosby eventually admitted that recording the song was a mistake. Up to this point the song had always been recorded at a fast tempo, but two L.A. songwriters, Sean Bonniwell (of the Music Machine) and folk singer Tim Rose, came up with the idea of slowing the song down. Both the Music Machine and Tim Rose versions of the songs were released in 1966. Jimi Hendrix heard the Rose recording and used it as the basis for his own embellished version of the song, which was released as a single in the UK in late 1966 (although it did not come out in the US until the release of the Are You Experienced album in 1967). Yet another variation on the slow version of Hey Joe was released by Cher in early 1967, which seems to have finally killed the song, as I don't know of any major subsequent recordings of the tune (unless you count the Mothers Of Invention's parody of the song, Flower Punk, which appeared on the album We're Only In It For The Money in 1968).

Artist:    Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title:    Louie Louie
Source:    Mono LP: Greatest Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Richard Berry
Label:    Columbia (original label: Sande)
Year:    1963
    The greatest party song of all time came from the pen of Richard Berry, a west coast singer/bandleader who released his original "soft" version of the song in 1957. In 1963 two west coast bands, the Kingsmen and Paul Revere And The Raiders, recorded competing versions of the song within days of each other. The Kingsmen version, with its raw sound and unintelligible lyrics, became popular on the east coast, while the better-produced (and more professionally performed) Raiders version quickly went to the top of the charts on the west coast and Hawaii. Columbia Records picked up the band's contract and re-released the single nationally. Columbia's top A&R man, Mitch Miller, however, was a notorius rock and roll hater (as a listen to one of his old Sing Along With Mitch TV shows proves) and refused to promote the record. Eventually the Kingsmen version of Louie Louie went gold while the Raiders version has become little more than a footnote (although the band itself has always championed their recording of the song).

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    LP: Smash Hits (originally released in US on LP: Are You Experienced?)
Writer(s):    Billy Roberts
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1966
    The first track recorded by the Jimi Hendrix Experience was Hey Joe, a song that Hendrix had heard Tim Rose perform in Greenwich Village before relocating to London to form his new band. Hendrix's version, released as a single in the UK and Europe in late 1966, is a bit heavier than Rose's and leaves off the first verse ("where you going with that money in your hand") entirely. The song itself was copyrighted in 1962 by California folk singer Billy Roberts and a much faster version by the Leaves had hit the US charts in early 1966.

Artist:    Rockin' Robin Roberts
Title:    Louie Louie
Source:    Mono LP: The Best Of Louie Louie (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Richard Berry
Label:    Rhino (original label: Etiquette)
Year:    1961
    rockin' Robin Roberts's  version of Louie Louie starts off exactly like the Paul Revere And The Raiders version and has the same guitar solo (note for note) as the Kingmen version. Both of those were recorded and released in 1963, while Roberts's came out in 1961. Hmmm.

Artist:    Shadows Of Knight
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    LP: Back Door Men
Writer(s):    Billy Roberts
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Dunwich)
Year:    1966
    Possibly the greatest garage-rock album of all is the second Shadows Of Knight LP, Back Door Men. Released in 1966, the album features virtually the same lineup as their debut LP, Gloria. Unlike many of their contemporaries, the Shadows were capable of varying their style somewhat, going from their trademark Chicago blues-influenced punk to what can only be described as early hard rock with ease. Like many bands of the time, they recorded a fast version of Billy Roberts' Hey Joe (although they credited it to Chet Powers on the label). The Shadows version, however, is a bit longer than the rest, featuring an extended guitar break by Joe Kelley, who had switched from bass to lead guitar midway through the recording of the Gloria album, replacing Warren Rogers, when it was discovered that Kelley was by far the more talented guitarist (Rogers was moved over to bass). Incidentally, despite the album's title and the Shadows' penchant for recording classic blues tunes, the band did not record a version of Howlin' Wolf's Back Door Man. The Blues Project and the Doors, however, did.
    
Artist:    Black Flag
Title:    Louie Louie
Source:    LP: The Best Of Louie Louie (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Richard Berry
Label:    Rhino (original label: Posh Boy)
Year:    1981
    Of course Black Flag did a hardcore punk version of Louie Louie. How could they not?

Artist:    Patti Smith
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    Mono 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Billy Roberts (spoken intro written by Patti Smith)
Label:    Mer
Year:    1974
    Before signing with Arista Records in 1975, the Patti Smith group recorded a 1974 single for the independent Mer label. Financed by art collector/curator Sam Wagstaff, the record featured Smith's version of Hey Joe, with a spoken introduction concerning Patty Hearst, who had been kidnapped by, and subsequently became a member of, a radical group calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army that year.

Artist:    The Last
Title:    Louie Louie
Source:    LP: The Best Of Louie Louie (originally released in France on LP: Painting Smiles On A Dead Man)
Writer(s):    Richard Berry
Label:    Rhino (original label: Lolita)
Year:    1983
    Formed somewhere in Southern California in 1976 by Joe Nolte, Vitus Mataré and Dave Harbison, The Last by 1978 included brothers Mike and David Nolte as well. Their sound was billed as a mix of garage rock, surf rock, folk rock and psychedelic rock (sounds like a perfect candidate for a future Advanced Psych segment...anyone have a copy of any of the records they released on a variety of labels over a ten year period they can send me?) In 1983 the band was on the verge of collapse, but then came a ray of hope. In the words of Joe Nolte "Vitus had hooked up an 8 Track setup at the Venice garage we practiced in, and I had gotten word that Rhino was planning a "Best of Louie Louie" album. The perverse idea of doing to "Louie Louie" what we'd done to "Be Bop A Lula" seemed irresistible, so we inaugurated the new machine with a gothic, dirge like version. It made the album. Appropriately, it's the Last version of Louie Louie to be heard this week.

Artist:    Cher
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    LP: Cher's Golden Greats (originally released on LP: With Love, Cher and as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Billy Roberts
Label:    Imperial
Year:    1967
    Considering that Cher's first major hit as a solo artist was Bang Bang, a song about shooting one's lover, it was probably inevitable that she would record her own version of the venerable Hey Joe, which deals with the same subject. Also, given Cher's established style with Bang Bang, it is no surprise that she chose to go with the slowed-down arrangement first used by Tim Rose and popularized in England by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. What may come as a surprise, however, is that Cher's 1967 version of Hey Joe actually did better on the US charts than any other version except the Leaves' fast-tempo hit from 1966.

    And that wraps up our first (and probably last) Battle of the Songs. Who won? Who knows? Who cares? It was fun listening to all these different versions of Louie Louie and Hey Joe, and that's what counts, right?

Prog-Rockin' with a hermit in 1974 (starts 12/22/24)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/555412

    It was 50 years ago that 1974 was coming to an end, and as it turns out, it was a banner year for progressive rock, with albums by Renaissance and Gentle Giant making the top 100, and new groups like Germany's Triumvirat touring the US for the first time. Frank Zappa released his most commercially successful album, Apostrophe ('), in 1974, as did Robin Trower with his breakthrough album Bridge Of Sighs, while King Crimson, now a trio, released their heaviest album ever.

Artist:    Frank Zappa
Title:    Don't Eat Yellow Snow/Nanook Rubs It/St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast/Father Oblivion
Source:    CD: Apostrophe (')
Writer(s):    Frank Zappa
Label:    Zappa (original label: Discreet)
Year:    1974
    Despite being one of the most prolific composer/performers of the 20th century, Frank Zappa only put three songs on the top 100 charts in his career. The first of these was an abbreviated version of Don't Eat Yellow Snow, the opening track on his 1974 LP Apostrophe ('). On the album itself the song segues directly into the next three tracks, Nanook Rubs It, St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast and the instrumental Father Oblivion to form the suite heard here.

Artist:    Gentle Giant
Title:    Cogs In Cogs
Source:    CD: The Power And The Glory
Writer(s):    Shulman/Minnear/Shulman
Label:    Alucard (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1974
    The Power And The Glory is a 1974 album by Gentle Giant that focuses on an individual that chooses politics as a means to make the world a better place. Like his predecessors, however, he becomes corrupted by power and ultimately becomes that which he originally fought against. Cogs In Cogs, which opens the original LP's second side, highlight's the protagonists frustration at being unable to actually change anything, which leads to his acceptance of, and later embracing of, authoritarianism. Lyricist/vocalist Derek Shulman, had this to say about the album: "Money and power will win no matter what and the people that are hoping for the best won’t usually get the best. The label we were on at that time, WWA, was an imprint of Vertigo. Vertigo was a fully owned company of Phonogram which is Polygram which is now Universal which will probably be GE in a week which is going to be the government soon enough. So there’s the corruption of power right there! The power and the glory! Again! Still to this day!" As of 2014, The Power And The Glory is available on Blu-Ray, with each song fully animated with various abstract patterns and all the lyrics displayed prominently on the screen. The latter makes a huge difference in the ability to enjoy the album, as Gentle Giant's vocals are often hard to decipher.

Artist:    Renaissance
Title:    Running Hard
Source:    LP: Turn Of The Cards
Writer(s):    Dunford/Thatcher
Label:    Sire
Year:    1974
    Formed in 1969 by former Yardbirds Jim McCarty and Keith Relf, Renaissance was one of the first bands to merge rock, classical and jazz into a coherent whole. The group went through several lineup changes in its early years. In fact none of the original members were still in the band as of the third Renaissance album Prologue. By 1974 the band was incorporating excerpts from classical pieces (mostly from the Romantic period) into what was otherwise progressive rock, with very few jazz elements remaining. The focus of the group had also changed, with a greater emphasis being placed on the vocals of Annie Haslam, who had joined Renaissance after the departure of Jane Relf in the early 1970s. Running Hard, which opens the band's fifth LP, Turn Of The Cards, is one of the group's better known tunes, as it also was featured on their 1976 album Live At Carnegie Hall.

Artist:    Triumvirat
Title:    Triangle/Illusions/Dimplicity/Last Dance
Source:    LP: Illusions On A Double Dimple
Writer(s):    Hans-Jürgen Fritz
Label:    Harvest
Year:    1974
    Formed by keyboardist  Hans-Jürgen Fritz in Cologne, Germany in 1969, Triumvirat started off doing mostly cover songs in a style heavily influenced by that of Keith Emerson's bands the Nice and later, Emerson, Lake & Palmer. By the early 1970s Triumvirat was doing original material, but still heavily influenced by Emerson. They released their first LP, Mediterranean Tales, in 1972, following it up with Illusions On A Double Dimple in 1974, the same year they did their first US tour, opening for Fleetwood Mac. The group never seemed to be able to nail down a permanent bass player/vocalist, resulting in each album having a quite different sound from the previous one. The final Triumvirat album, 1980s Russian Roulette, was essentially Fritz accompanied by two members of Toto, Steve Lukather and Jeff Porcaro, and an assortment of studio musicians.

Artist:    King Crimson
Title:    Starless
Source:    LP: A Young Person's Guide To King Crimson (originally released on LP: Red)
Writer(s):    Cross/Fripp/Wetton/Bruford/Palmer-James
Label:    Editions EG (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1974
    Starless, as written by bassist/vocalist John Wetton, was intended to be the title track of King Crimson's sixth LP, Starless And Bible Black. Guitarist Robert Fripp and drummer Bill Bruford, however, disliked the song and chose not to record it. This might have been the end of the story except that Bruford later came up with a riff in 13/4 time that became the basis for a long instrumental jam that was added to Starless, making the entire piece over twelve minutes long. Starting off sounding quite a bit like Epitaph (from the band's 1969 debut LP In The Court Of The Crimson King) and containing a frenetic double-time section reminiscent of 21st Century Schizoid Man (also from Court), Starless was included as the final track on the seventh (and, for several years final) King Crimson album, Red.

Artist:    Robin Trower
Title:    About To Begin
Source:    CD: Bridge Of Sighs
Writer(s):    Robin Trower
Label:    Chrysalis/Capitol
Year:    1974
    Many of the artists featured on FM rock radio in the 1970s had already established themselves in the latter part of the previous decade, getting airplay on underground stations as well as the occasional top 40 hit. Others were newcomers that would go on to become stars in the 1980s. Then there are those few who seem to be exclusively associated with the 1970s. Among this group is Robin Trower, former guitarist of the art-rock oriented Procol Harum. Trower seldom got a chance to shine in the keyboard-dominated Harum, however, and left the group in 1972 to form his own band, Jude. Jude did not last long enough to record an album, but it did provide Trower with the core of his new trio, consisting of Trower himself on guitar, James Dewar on bass and vocals and Reg Isidore on drums. Trower's first solo album, Twice Removed From Yesterday, was fairly well-received by the rock press, but it actually was only setting the stage for what is now considered one of the greatest rock guitar albums ever recorded: 1974's Bridge Of Sighs. Even the lesser-known tracks like About To Begin got at least some airplay, and deservedly so.

Having a Cool Yule with a Hermit/Listening to Scratchy Old Christmas 45s (show # 2451)(starts 12/16/24)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/554525

Just about every weekly radio show does a Christmas special this time of year, and for several years now Stuck In the Psychedelic Era has been no exception. There is a problem, though, and that is the unavoidable fact that for the most part the artists featured on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era never had the opportunity (or inclination, for that matter) to record Christmas songs. There are exceptions, of course, and this week you'll hear some of those by Jethro Tull, the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beach Boys, and others. But, unless I wanted to spend over half the show on Beach Boys Christmas songs (and there are nearly enough of those for an entire show), I knew I would have to take an entirely different approach to selecting the songs. After a couple of years of experimenting around with various approaches I finally decided to just pick out the coolest holiday tracks I could find, regardless of genre or year they were recorded, and have been doing it that way ever since. The addition of our second show, Rockin' in the Days of Confusion, gave me the opportunity to dig even deeper into the Yule (cata)log, adding artists like Bob Seger (with his mid-60s band The Heard), Ike And Tina Turner, The Royal Guardsmen and even Soupy Sales. And this year I'm throwing in something extra. Remember all those scratchy old Christmas records that always seemed to show up in a pile by the record player every December? Ever wonder what happened to them? Well, here they are, just as scratchy as you remember them. So get ready to kick back and have a Cool Yule!  

                                                                                                                                                            Artist:      John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Title:     Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
Source:      CD: Now That's What I Call Christmas (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Lennon/Ono
Label:     Zomba (original label: Apple)
Year:     1971
     Originally intended as an anti-Vietnam War song, John and Yoko's Happy Xmas (War Is Over) has long since acquired classic status and is now one of the most familiar songs of the season. It was first released in the US in December of 1971, but due to a problem with the publisher did not appear in the rest of the world until November of 1972.

Artist:      Beatles
Title:     Christmas Time (Is Here Again)
Source:      CD single: Free As a Bird
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starkey)
Label:    Apple/Capitol
Year:     Recorded 1966 and 1967, released 19671997
     Every year the Beatles would record a special Christmas message to go out to members of their fan club, and mail it out on what was then known as a floppy disc. This was not the same as a computer floppy disc, however. In fact, the medium the Beatles used eventually came to be known as a flexi-disc, just to keep things from getting any more confusing. Regardless of what you called it, the things tended to wear out after just a few plays and I doubt there are many playable copies of these discs left in the universe. Luckily for us, George Martin had the foresight to hang on to everything the Beatles ever recorded, including this tune, which was chopped up and used for the 1967 Christmas Greeting. When the Beatles Anthology was released in 1997, the piece was included on the Free As a Bird CD single, and we got to hear the song in its uninterrupted entirety for the first time. Included at the end are Christmas greetings from the 1966 fan club disc and a bit of poetry read by John Lennon.

Artist:      Simon And Garfunkel
Title:     Silent Night/7 O'Clock News
Source:      CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)
Writer(s):    Gruber/Muhr, arr. Paul Simon    
Label:     Columbia        
Year:     1966
     Simon and Garfunkel's Silent Night/7 O'Clock News is unique for several reasons. The most obvious is that it uses two unrelated recordings to make an ironically chilling point. The first is a rendition of Franz Gruber's Silent Night, with vocals in the center channel and piano only coming from one speaker. As the song progresses a newscast in the other channel slowly gets louder. Eventually the song ends and there is only the news. What's also unusual is that this well-known Christmas carol is not featured on a Christmas album at all; instead it appears as the final track of the duo's 1966 LP Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme.

Artist:      Simon And Garfunkel
Title:     A Hazy Shade of Winter
Source:      CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bookends)
Writer:    Paul Simon
Label:     Columbia
Year:     1966
     I wish I could take credit for putting Simon And Garfunkel's Silent Night/7 O'Clock News and A Hazy Shade of Winter back to back. The truth is I don't know who came up with the idea; my best guess is someone from Westwood One radio, as I first heard it done on one of their syndicated programs. Still, it's not a bad idea, and I happened to have a copy of the Westwood One version of the paired tracks, so there it is.

Artist:      Chuck Berry
Title:     Merry Christmas, Baby
Source:      Mono CD: The Chess Box (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer:    Baxter/Moore
Label:     Chess/MCA
Year:     1958
     Chuck Berry did not record too many cover tunes, as he was a prolific songwriter himself. However, for his 1958 Christmas single he cut this tasty version of Charles Brown's "other" Christmas song, Merry Christmas, Baby, originally recorded by Johnny Moore's Three Blazers (with Brown on lead vocal). The B side of Berry's single, Run Rudolph Run, was also a cover song, although the tune has come to be almost exclusively associated with Berry himself.

Artist:    Ike And Tina Turner
Title:    Merry Christmas Baby
Source:    CD: Cool Yule (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Baxter/Moore
Label:    Rhino (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year:    1964
    Ike Turner was a talent scout for Chess Records that formed a band called the Kings Of Rhythm in the early 50s, immediately scoring a #1 R&B hit backing Jackie Brenston on a song called Rocket 88. By 1964 he had married Anna Mae Bullock, who changed her name to Tina Turner and began receiving co-billing on Ike's records, such as the 1964 B side, Merry Christmas Baby. Although lyrically the same as the Charles Brown song of the same name, the track is musically worlds away from Brown's slow blues number.

Artist:      Solomon Burke
Title:     Presents For Christmas
Source:      CD: Cool Yule (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Burke/Burke/Burke
Label:    Rhino (original label: Atlantic)
Year:     1966
     Solomon Burke was a staple artist for the Atlantic label at a time when Atlantic itself was being overshadowed by the Stax/Volt labels that it distributed. Nonetheless, Burke had several R&B hits throughout the sixties and was highly respected by his fellow artists. Presents For Christmas captures Burke at his peak in 1966.

Artist:      Jimmy McCracklin
Title:     Christmas Time
Source:      Mono CD: Blue Yule (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Jimmy McCracklin
Label:    Rhino (original label: Art-Tone)
Year:     1961
     Jimmy McCracklin recorded one of the catchiest, yet underplayed, tunes of the 50s when he did The Walk. Christmas Time, from a few years later, actually sounds like beach music. Go figure.

Artist:      James Brown
Title:     Santa Claus, Santa Claus
Source:      CD: Cool Yule (originally released on LP: Soulful Christmas)
Writer(s):    Bobbitt/Jones
Label:     Rhino (original label: King)
Year:     1968
     Few people would ever accuse James Brown of being a blues artist, but this recording of Santa Claus, Santa Claus (sometimes called just Santa Claus) from 1968 shows what it would have sounded like if he was.
    
Artist:      Ed "Cookie" Byrnes
Title:     Yulesville
Source:      CD: Cool Yule (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Galanoy/Olafson/Barker
Label:    Rhino (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year:     1959
     The ABC TV network was a perennial also-ran that was just starting to find a winning formula in the late 50s with shows targeted toward a younger audience. The most popular of these was 77 Sunset Strip, starring Ed "Cookie" Byrnes. He and co-star Connie Stevens, staying in character, cut a hit novelty record called Cookie, Cookie, which played on Cookie's propensity for combing his hair. Byrnes, again in character, followed it up with this hip retelling of the classic poem Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Artist:    Elvis Presley
Title:    Santa Claus Is Back In Town
Source:    45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Lieber/Stoller
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1957
    Santa Claus Is Back In Town is the opening track on the 1957 LP Elvis' Christmas Album.  The song, written by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, was also released that year in the UK as a single, going to the #7 spot on the charts. In the US, however, it remained available only as an album track until 1965, when it was released as a single, going to the #4 spot on the Billboard chart. For the B side, RCA reissued Blue Christmas, which had gone into the top 10 the previous year. The Blue Christmas/Santa Claus Is Back In Town single was certified platinum in 1999.

Artist:    Martels
Title:    Rockin' Santa Claus
Source:    Mono CD: Cool Yule (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Mason/Robinson
Label:    Rhino (original label: Bella)
Year:    1959
    Rock history is littered with one-hit wonders, many of whom only got to release one single. The Martels, however, released only half a single, as the other side of the record was by another artist altogether. They cut Rockin' Santa Claus for the tiny Bella label in San Jose, California in 1959, and were never heard from since.

Artist:      Ray Stevens
Title:     Santa Claus Is Watching You
Source:      45 RPM single
Writer:    Ray Stevens
Label:     Mercury
Year:     1962
     I've mentioned something called the Grab Bag before. Basically, it was a sealed paper bag (sometimes with a clear plastic front) containing four 45 RPM records, generally "cut-outs" that were no longer in print. The one my family bought for Christmas of 1964 had a Sing Along With Mitch Christmas EP in the front. By far the oddest record in the bag was Santa Claus Is Watching You by Ray Stevens, although I seem to remember that version being slightly different than the one heard here. One thing that both versions had in common was the presence of Clyde the Camel from Stevens's first hit, Ahab the Arab.

Artist:      Sonics
Title:     Santa Claus
Source:      Mono CD: Cool Yule (originally released on LP: Merry Christmas)
Writer:    Greg Roslie
Label:     Rhino (original label: Etiquette)
Year:     1965
     The Pacific Northwest was home to several bands that can only be described as proto-punk (think Louie Louie). One of the top bands on the scene up there was the Sonics, who recorded raw hard-driving songs with titles like Psycho, the Witch and Strychnine. Santa Claus is very much in the same vein, making it the punkiest Christmas song of the sixties, if not all time.

Artist:    Bob Seger And The Last Heard
Title:    Sock It To Me Santa
Source:    Mono: Christmas A Go-Go (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Seger/Honaker/Lagassa
Label:    Wicked Cool (original label: Cameo)
Year:    1966
    Years before he was singing that old time rock 'n' roll on his way to Katnandu, Bob Seger led a band called the Last Heard. The band was formed when Seger decided to leave his former band, the Omens, to record a song called East Side Story. The song, released on the local Hideout label, was Seger's first hit, selling about 50,000 copies, mostly in the Detroit area. This led to a deal with Cameo-Parkway Records. The first single released by the band on Cameo was a Christmas tune called Sock It To Me Santa that predates fellow Detroiter Mitch Ryder's Sock It To Me-Baby by a few weeks. Seger, of course, would eventually sign with Capitol Records, changing the name of the band to the Bob Seger System, and later, the Silver Bullet Band.

Artist:      Beach Boys
Title:     Little Saint Nick (stereo single version)
Source:      CD: Beach Boys Ultimate Christmas (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Wilson/Love
Label:    Capitol
Year:     1963
     When the Beach Boys first recorded Little Saint Nick they were the hottest surf music band in the country. A year later Beatlemania had set in, and a new version of Little Saint Nick was recorded for the Beach Boys Christmas Album. The new version put a greater emphasis on the vocals, and much of the original instrumentation was deleted from the arrangement. That is the version that usually gets heard on commercial radio every year. In the mid-70s, Carl Wilson, who by then had stepped into the leader's role formerly held by older brother Brian, pulled out the original 1963 tapes and created a new stereo mix of the song. The instruments have greater prominence in this version and include the distinctive sound of sleighbells that were completely exorcised from the 1964 version.

Artist:    Soupy Sales
Title:    Santa Claus Is Surfin' To Town
Source:    Mono CD: Christmas A Go-Go (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Gillespie/Coots
Label:    Wicked Cool/Reprise
Year:    1963
    Best known as the host of a popular kids' show on TV, Soupy Sales cut this bit of weirdness for the Reprise label in 1963. Need I say more?

Artist:      Eartha Kitt
Title:     Santa Baby
Source:      Mono CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1935-1954 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Javits/Springer/Springer
Label:     Rhino (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:     1953
     Eartha Kitt has one of the most unique voices in the history of jazz, and put it to good use on the original 1953 version of Santa Baby, a tune that has unfortunately in recent years become associated with Madonna. Kitt continued to perform with nearly as much energy as she had in the 50s right up to her death on Christmas Day, 2008.

Artist:      Rufus Thomas
Title:     I'll Be Your Santa Baby
Source:      Mono CD: Christmas A Go-Go (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Thomas/Roberts
Label:     Wicked Cool (original label: Stax)
Year:     1973
     Rufus Thomas had a long and storied career going back to the 1950s, first with Bear Cat, an answer song to Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller's Hound Dog, and later with his own series of "dog" hits (Walking the Dog being the most famous). By the mid-1960s he was an important member of the Stax/Volt stable of artists, where his daughter Carla was making a name for herself with hits like B-A-B-Y and (with Otis Redding) Tramp. After Stax severed its distribution deal with Atlantic Records Rufus Thomas stayed with the now fully independent Stax, releasing I'll Be Your Santa Baby in 1973.

Artist:      Clarence Carter
Title:     Back Door Santa
Source:      CD: Christmas A Go-Go (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Carter/Daniel
Label:     Wicked Cool (original label: Atlantic)
Year:     1969
     Clarence Carter is an icon of the beach music (for you non-Carolinians, beach music has nothing to do with surf music) crowd. For everyone else, he is a moderately successful soul artist known mostly for his mid-70s hit Slip Away. Regardless of where you might know him from, his Back Door Santa will surprise you with its down and funky energy.

Artist:    Ramsey Lewis Trio
Title:    Winter Wonderland
Source:    45 RPM single B side (reissue)
Writer(s):    Bernard/Smith
Label:    Cadet (original label: Argo)
Year:    1960
    The Ramsey Lewis Trio released their first LP, Ramsey Lewis and the Gentlemen of Swing, in 1956. They remained primarily a jazz band over their first ten years of existence, releasing several singles on the Argo label, a Chess subsidiary. As well as original material, the group recorded their own distinctive versions of standards such as the holiday-oriented Winter Wonderland, which appeared as a B side in 1960.

Artist:      Bobby "Boris" Pickett
Title:     Monster's Holiday
Source:      45 RPM single
Writer:    Bobby Pickett
Label:     Garpax
Year:     1962
     Bobby Picket scored big with his Halloween hit Monster Mash in 1962, and quickly followed it up with this sequel set around the Christmas holidays. Legendary producer Gary Paxton was responsible for both recordings making it onto vinyl and on the air.

Artist:      Spike Jones and His City Slickers
Title:     All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)
Source:      Mono CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1935-1954 (originally released as 78 RPM single)
Writer:    Don Gardner
Label:    Rhino (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:     1948
     Spike Jones and His City Slickers were a highly talented bunch who made music out of sound effects, toy instruments, and whatever else it occurred to them to use. Their forte was the novelty record, and no one did it better.  All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth) was written by Middleton, NY schoolteacher Donald Yetter Gardner, who was inspired to write the song when he asked his second grade class what they wanted for Christmas and was struck by how many of them were lisping due to missing front teeth.

Artist:      Chipmunks
Title:     The Chipmunk Song
Source:      CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1955-Present (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Ross Bagdasarian
Label:    Rhino (original label: Liberty)
Year:     1958
     In 1958 pop-jazz composer/bandleader Ross Bagdasarian decided to play around with a variable-speed tape recorder and came up with the novelty hit Witch Doctor. He followed it up by using multiple tape machines to create a trio of sped up voices that he called the Chipmunks, and released this smash hit in time for the Christmas season. The success of The Chipmunk Song led to a Saturday morning cartoon series and a series of albums for the Liberty label. His son, Ross Bagdasarian Jr. has revived the concept in recent years, although not with the same level of success. Bagdasarian himself, incidentally, had a small part as a lonely pianist in the Alfred Hitchcock film Rear Window.

Artist:    Royal Guardsmen
Title:    Snoopy's Christmas
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Hugo & Luigi/Weiss
Label:    Laurie
Year:    1967
    Like many American bands, the Ocala, Florida based Posmen decided to change their name to something more Anglo sounding in the wake of the British invasion of 1964. As the Royal Guardsmen they had their first regional hit in 1966 with a song called Baby Let's Wait. It was their next release, however, that established the direction the group's career would take from that point on. Snoopy vs. the Red Baron was a huge national hit, going all the way to the #2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in late 1966. Several more Snoopy themed songs followed, including Snoopy's Christmas, released in 1967. The most recent of these is Snoopy vs. Osama, which came out in 2006.

Artist:    Dodie Stevens
Title:    Merry, Merry Christmas Baby
Source:    Mono CD: Cool Yule (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Sylvia/Lopez
Label:    Rhino (original label: Dot)
Year:    1960
    Dodie Stevens only had one hit record, the semi-novelty Pink Shoelaces, which came out in 1959. That didn't stop her from trying her luck with a contemporary holiday tune called Merry, Merry Christmas Baby the following year. The song, based on the Tune Weavers' Happy, Happy Birthday Baby, came out on the Dot label, which was no stranger to cover songs, having established itself by releasing sanitized Pat Boone remakes of songs originally recorded by Little Richard and other early rock 'n' roll artists.

Artist:    Otis Redding
Title:    Merry Christmas Baby
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Baxter/Moore
Label:    Atco
Year:    1968
    Merry Christmas Baby was originally released by Johnny Moore's Three Blazers, which featured Charles Brown on guitar and vocals, in 1947. Several different versions of the song have been recorded over the years by such diverse artists as Chuck Berry, Ike & Tina Turner, Hansen, Christina Aguilara, Bruce Springsteen and Brown himself. Otis Redding's version of the song was released in 1968, almost a year after the plane crash that killed the singer and most of his band.

Artist:      Charles Brown
Title:     Please Come Home For Christmas
Source:      CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1955-Present (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Brown/Redd
Label:    Rhino (original label: King)
Year:     1960
     By now just about everyone is familiar with the Eagles version of Please Come Home For Christmas. Not everyone, however, knows the song was written by blues great Charles Brown. Even fewer have actually heard Brown's 1960 original, which is a shame, as it blows the Eagles version clean out of the water.

Artist:      Johnny Preston
Title:     (I Want a) Rock and Roll Guitar
Source:      CD: Cool Yule (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer:    J.P. Richardson
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mercury)
Year:     1960
     Johnny Preston recorded his signature song in 1960, the classic Running Bear, penned by J.P. Richardson, the Big Bopper. The pair teamed up again to create a brand new Christmas song, (I Want a) Rock and Roll Guitar, later the same year. Interesting enough, by the middle of the decade a guitar was exactly what many kids were indeed asking for. I should know; I got my first guitar (and amp) as a Christmas present after badgering my parents mercilessly for months. I think between the two they might have run about $100, which made it the most expensive Christmas I ever had.

Artist:      Ventures
Title:     Sleigh Ride
Source:     LP: The Ventures Christmas Album
Writer:    Leroy Anderson
Label:    Dolton
Year:     1965   
        The Ventures are by far the most successful instrumental rock group in history, with over 100 albums released over several decades. One of the most successful of these was their 1965 Christmas album, which featured this surfinated version of Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride, a piece usually associated with the Boston Pops Orchestra.

Artist:    Brenda Lee
Title:    Papa Noel
Source:    CD: Cool Yule (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Ray Botkin
Label:    Rhino
Year:    1958
    Just about everyone is familiar with Brenda Lee's 1958 hit Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree. Not as well known is the flip side of that single, a song called Papa Noel. Lee, known as "Little Miss Dynamite" was first discovered by country legend Red Foley when still in her teens.

Artist:    Crystals
Title:    Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
Source:    Mono CD: A Christmas Gift For You
Writer(s):    Coots/Gillespie
Label:    Phil Spector Records (original label: Philles)
Year:    1963
    In 1963 Phil Spector was riding high as one of the most successful record producers on the East coast. His "wall of sound" was heard on top 40 radio stations coast to coast on recordings by groups like the Crystals, who hit it big with And Then He Kissed Me and Da Doo Ron Ron that same year. Late in the year Spector issued an album called A Christmas Gift For You, which featured all the groups on his Philles label. The Crystals had three songs on the album, including an arrangement of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town that was later used by Bruce Springsteen.

Artist:    Ronettes
Title:    Frosty The Snowman
Source:    Mono CD: A Christmas Gift For You
Writer(s):    Nelson/Rollins
Label:    Phil Spector Records (original label: Philles)
Year:    1963
    1963 was probably the peak year for the Ronettes, with two of their biggest hits, Baby I Love You and Be My Baby, being released that year. To cap it all off they contirbuted a trio of tunes to Phil Spector's classic holiday LP, the first of which was their unique take on Frosty The Snowman.    

Artist:    Darlene Love
Title:    Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
Source:    Mono CD: A Christmas Gift For You (also released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Spector/Greenwich/Barry
Label:    Phil Spector Records (original label: Philles)
Year:    1963
    Only one song from Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift For You was ever released as a single: Darlene Love's solo track, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). Surprisingly, it was not a major hit and to this day is one of the least-played songs on the album.

Artist:      Jack Scott
Title:     There's Trouble Brewin'
Source:      CD: Cool Yule (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Laura Veronica
Label:    Rhino (original label: Groove)
Year:     1963
    Canadian born Jack Scott was one of the great rockabilly performers of the late 50s, scoring several top 10 hits, including My True Love and Burning Bridges. This 1963 recording of There's Trouble Brewin' shows him at the peak of his vocal powers.

Artist:      Canned Heat
Title:     Christmas Blues
Source:      Mono CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Canned Heat
Label:    Rhino (original label: Liberty)
Year:     1968
     Possibly the strangest pairing on record was the 1968 remake of The Chipmunk Song by the Chipmunks and Canned Heat. Yes, you read that correctly. Canned Heat did indeed provide the instrumental backing tracks for Simon, Theodore and Alvin's 10th anniversary remake of their best-known song. The B side of that record is a true gem: an original Canned Heat composition called Christmas Blues.

Artist:      Jethro Tull
Title:     Christmas Song
Source:      British import EP
Writer:    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis
Year:     1968
     I wanted to play one set made up entirely of songs from the psychedelic era performed by artists that I feature on the show on a fairly regular basis. One of these artists is the band Jethro Tull, led by flautist/acoustic guitarist/vocalist Ian Anderson. His somewhat cynical Christmas Song, originally released in the UK in 1968, did not appear in the US until the 1973 anthology album Living In the Past.
    
Artist:      Cadillacs
Title:     Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Source:      45 RPM vinyl
Writer:    Johnny Marks
Label:    Josie
Year:     1956
     Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has been recorded by a lot of different artists over the years, but this version by the Cadillacs stands out for its pure sense of fun. Doo-wop was at the peak of its popularity in 1956 and the Cadillacs, led by Earl "Speedoo" Carroll, were among the best of the bunch.

Artist:      Drifters
Title:     White Christmas
Source:      Mono CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1955-Present (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Irving Berlin
Label:    Rhino (original label: Atlantic)
Year:     1955
     The Drifters were a kind of early R&B doowop supergroup made up of ex-members of other R&B groups such as Billy Ward's Dominoes. The most distinctive voice of the original Drifters was high tenor Clyde McPhatter (for whom Ray Stevens's famous camel was named), which is heard prominently on their version of Irving Berlin's White Christmas. Over the years the group's lineup changed many times and led to several former members forming competing groups, all using the Drifters name. Over time, members of these offshoots would in turn form their own Drifters, despite having virtually no connection to the original group. This is why it sometimes seems that half the doowop singers in the world claim to be former members of the Drifters.

Artist:      Marquees
Title:     Christmas In the Congo
Source:      Mono CD: Cool Yule (Originally released as 45 RPM single, possibly promo only)
Writer(s):    Masten/Botkin
Label:    Rhino (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year:     1959
     I recently saw a signed publicity photo of the Marquees taken sometime in the late 1950s. One of the signatures is Marvin Gaye's. What I have not been able to find is any evidence that this record was actually released commercially, although at least one promo copy is known to exist.

Artist:      King Curtis
Title:     The Christmas Song
Source:      45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Mel Torme
Label:    Atco
Year:     1966
     King Curtis was one of the most in-demand saxophone players of the first wave of rock and roll. His best known work was on the song Yakety Yak by the Coasters in 1958. In the sixties he became the music director for the Atlantic Records group, appearing on a variety of recordings by artists such as Solomon Burke and occassionally releasing material on the Atco label under his own name. Tragically, his life was cut short when he was the victim of a stabbing when he attempted to stop junkies from shooting up on his front steps in New York.

And as promised here come those old Christmas 45s, just as scratchy as you remember them. Enjoy!

Artist:    Ramsey Lewis Trio
Title:    Winter Wonderland
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Bernard/Smith
Label:    Cadet (original label: Argo)
Year:    1960
    Playing in the background over my overly wordy opening speil we have an instrumental B side by the Ramsey Lewis Trio, originally released in 1960 on the Chess subsidiary Argo. Nobody seems to know, however, when this reissue of the single with the same original catalog number came out on a different Chess subsidiary.

Artist:    Arthur Godfrey and All The Little Godfreys
Title:    White Christmas
Source:    45 RPM 3-disc EP set: Christmas With Arthur Godfrey and All The Little Godfreys
Writer(s):    Irving Berlin
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1953
    Arthur Godfrey changed radio. Prior to his arrival on the scene radio announcers all sounded like orators giving a speech, or at least emcees in front of an audience made up of people dressed for a night on the town. Godfrey, however, realized that the majority of radio listeners were at home, either by themselves or gathered around the set with their families. Accordingly, he developed a folksy style that made the listener feel like Godfrey was right there in the same room. He first came to national prominence when, as a staff announcer for a Washington, DC radio station, he was called upon to provide coverage of the funeral of Franklin D. Roosevelt for national broadcast on CBS radio. His delivery so strongly connected with listeners that he was soon offered his own daily morning show on the CBS Radio Network. By the early 1950s Arthur Godfrey Time was on five days a week, both on radio and television, and had been joined by a weekly hour long TV variety show called Arthur Godfrey And His Friends. In October of 1953 they released an album called Christmas With Arthur Godfrey and All The Little Godfreys. The album came out in three different formats: a traditional four record 78 RPM set resembling a photo album (in fact, this is where the term "album" to describe a multi-song collection came from), the newer single disc 33 1/3 LP format and, taking advantage of Columbia's own microgroove technology, a 3-disc extended play 45 RPM set. White Christmas, featuring pretty much every member of the cast, opens the album.

Artist:    Jimmy Boyd
Title:    I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Tommie Connor
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1952
    A lot of Christmas songs make it to the top of the Christmas Singles lists, but only a handful have been able to top the main pop charts as well. One of these was I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, recorded by 13-year-old Jimmy Boyd in July of 1952 and released the following November. The following year it was released in the UK and went to the #3 spot there.

Artist:    Spike Jones And His City Slickers
Title:    Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Marks/Maxwell
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1950
    Spike Jones And His City Slickers managed to top the pop charts in 1948 with All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth) and again in 1949. The following year they released their own version of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. The label of the record includes the words "Vocal refrain by Rudolph (himself) with Santa Claus and The Four Reindeer". Who am I to argue with that?
    
Artist:    Gene Autry
Title:    Santa's Comin' In A Whirlybird
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Ashley Dees
Label:    Republic
Year:    1959
    Gene Autry was literally a five star performer, and is the only person to have stars on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame in all five categories: film, radio, television, music and live performance. He started performing while still in high school in southern Oklahoma and managed to get himself fired from a job as an overnight telegraph operator for singing and playing guitar while on duty. One of the customers, a guy named Will Rogers, heard him singing one night and told him he ought to try going pro. He did, and at age 21 was billed as "Oklahoma's Yodeling Cowboy" on a Tulsa radio station. This led to a contract with Columbia Records and a four-year stint on Chicago station WLS's National Barn Dance. He made his first film as The Singing Cowboy in 1934; he would appear in 92 more, and in the early 1950s had his own television show. Many of these films were for Republic Pictures. He continued to make records through the end of the 1950s, with no less than three of his hits, Here Comes Santa Claus, Frosty The Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, becoming Christmas standards. His last new single was Santa's Comin' In A Whirlybird, released on Republic's own record label in 1959. In the 1960s Autry became known for his business interests, including L.A.'s powerhouse independent TV station KTLA and the Los Angeles Angels baseball team. He also served as vice-president of baseball's American League from 1983 until his death in 1997.

Artist:    Melanie
Title:    Merry Christmas
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Melanie Safka
Label:    Buddah
Year:    1970
    Although plenty of pop artists had released Christmas records in the early to mid-1960s, by the end of the decade the practice was frowned upon by "serious" rockers. Nonetheless, artists like Melanie found a way to sneak in songs like Merry Christmas by putting them on the B sides of singles. This particular track carried a message that resonated with counter-culture values.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    Another Christmas Song
Source:    Stereo British import 7" EP: Ring Out Solstice Bells 40th Anniversary Edition (originally released on CD: The Jethro Tull Christmas Album)
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis
Year:    2003
    Jethro Tull first released A Christmas Song as a B side in 1968, but not in the US. Its first American release was on the album Living In The Past, which came out in 1972. Four years after that the song was included on a four-song EP that once again was not released in the US. In 2003 a Jethro Tull with considerably a different membership recorded Another Christmas Song, which immediately followed a re-recording of A Christmas Song on The Jethro Tull Christmas Album. Most recently, both A Christmas Song and Another Christmas Song were included on the 40th Anniversary Edition of the EP, once again not released in the US. Technically this has to be considered a ringer on this show as it's a) not scratchy, and b) not a 45 (the 7" EP runs at 33 1/3 RPM).

Artist:    Elton John
Title:    Ho Ho Ho (Who'd Be A Turkey At Christmas)
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    John/Taupin
Label:    MCA
Year:    1973
    Although it was released in plenty of time for Christmas of 1973, Elton John's Step Into Christmas didn't get a whole lot of airplay when it first came out. It has, however, gotten more popular over the years. Personally I much prefer the B side, Ho Ho Ho (Who'd Be A Turkey At Christmas), which doesn't get played on the radio at all.

Artist:    Greg Lake
Title:    Humbug
Source:    Stereo British import 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Lake/Sinfield
Label:    Manticore
Year:    1975
    For the B side of I Believe In Father Christmas, Greg Lake and lyricist Peter Sinfield came up with a rather silly semi-instrumental track called Humbug. I hope Sinfield didn't get paid by the word on this one.

Artist:    Royal Guardsmen
Title:    It Kinda Looks Like Christmas
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Dick Holler
Label:    Laurie
Year:    1967
    Did you know that Snoopy's Christmas had a B side? Neither did I until I bought a copy of the original 45. Here it is.

    Some of the coolest Christmas tracks ever released were recorded by R&B artists. Here are three of them that got squeezed out of Stuck With a Hermit at Yuletide.

Artist:    Solomon Burke
Title:    All I Want For Christmas
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Solomon Burke
Label:    Pride
Year:    1972
    Hidden on the B side of his 1972 version of I Can't Stop Loving You, we have a Solomon Burke Christmas original called All I Want For Christmas. It's classic Burke..

Artist:    Amos Milburn
Title:    Christmas (Comes But Once A Year)
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Milburn/Shubert
Label:    King
Year:    1960
    It's debatable whether this one should be considered a B side or half of a double A side. It appeared in 1960 as the other side of Charles Brown's original version of Please Come Home For Christmas. Two classics for the price of one!

Artist:    Otis Redding
Title:    White Christmas
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Irving Berlin
Label:    Atco
Year:    1968
    The year 1968 saw eight singles on four labels released by Otis Redding, who had been killed in a plane crash in December of 1967. It was the highest number of singles released by Redding in his entire career, and included his version of White Christmas, released in November of that year.

Artist:    José Ferrer
Title:    Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Barrett/Baker
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1960
    Imagine the following scenario: two songwriters come up with the idea of putting out a spoken word Christmas record based on a famous editorial response to a reader's question that had appeared in the September 21, 1897 edition of a New York newspaper called The Sun. But who can we get to record it, the writers ask? Their producer responds: how about the guy who played Captain Alfred Dreyfus in the film I Accuse a couple years ago? And so José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón was recruited to record Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus. That may not have been what really happened, but that's the way I imagine it.

Artist:    Johnny Horton
Title:    They Shined Up Rudolph's Nose
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Johnny Horton
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1959
    Johnny Horton was riding high from the success of his #1 hit single Battle Of New Orleans when he recorded the self-penned Christmas Song They Shined Up Rudolph's Nose. A year later he was killed in a traffic accident at age 35.

Artist:    Ruby Wright
Title:    Let's Light The Christmas Tree
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Ruth Lyons
Label:    Fraternity
Year:    1957
    Ruby Wright (not the country singer) was a big band style vocalist from Indiana who had more success in the UK than in her native country. Her biggest American hit was Let's Light The Christmas Tree, released in November of 1957. The song was written by Ruth Lyons, at the time one of the most powerful women in the broadcasting industry, particularly in Cincinnatti, Ohio, where she created, produced and hosted The Ruth Lyons 50-50 Club, considered by many to be the first daytime TV talk show.

Artist:    Dan Fogelberg
Title:    Same Auld Lang Syne
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Dan Fogelberg
Label:    Full Moon
Year:    1980
    There aren't too many New Year's songs out there. Dan Fogelberg's Same Auld Lang Syne from 1980 is one of the most successful.

Artist:    King Curtis
Title:    What Are You Doing New Year's Eve
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Frank Loesser
Label:    Atco
Year:    1968
    King Curtis (born Curtis Ousley) was a saxophonist who could play jazz, R&B and rock 'n' roll equally well, and was considered a master of the tenor, alto and soprano saxophone. His playing was heard on dozens of recordings in the 50s and 60s, including the Coasters' Yakety Yak, Aretha Frankin's Respect and his own Memphis Soul Stew. After signing with Atlantic in the mid-1960s, Curtis's singles consisted mainly of instrumental versions of hit songs such as Ode To Billie Joe and A Whiter Shade Of Pale. In 1968 he released his own version of The Christmas Song, backed with What Are You Doing New Year's Eve.