Is it Tuesday already? This challenge is making my life go by too fast.
I’ve been unsure about how far back in time we should go with this. Hearing people’s reminiscences has been every bit as fun as listening to the music, and the further back we go, the fewer of these there’ll be. There’s also the danger that we’ll end up with more of a canonical “best of” list, and fewer personal choices and offbeat discoveries.
But let’s give it a try, and see how it works.
1965. Half a century ago. The year that popular music began to change from light entertainment to the most vibrant contemporary art form? Maybe.
If you were there, tell us about it.
If you weren’t – well, imagine you were…
The 'Spill 
I was there but I was seven years old so I won’t be picking the songs I was listening to then – probably.
Oh – except The Carnival is Over by The Seekers which I loved then and still do now.
As Ticket to Ride is now spoken for, I’ll add the Beatles – You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.
Scrub that – I’m going to go with the three songs I really liked at the time and still rate as high as any others for that year. So………….
Seekers – I’ll never Find Another You
Seekers – World of Our Own
Seekers – The Carnival Is Over
My apologies for accidentally putting the first of those titles on the playlist twice. I’m afraid I don’t know how to delete.
Oh yes – I loved that too …
I only know this through Nick Cave’s cover of it, he loved it and I can see why, dond.
I understand that Judith Durham also enjoyed Nick Cave’s version of the song. Sadly, I don’t think they have ever duetted.
Fifty years on, the idea that an artist should record arguably the greatest LP anyone had ever made, and then make an even better one in the same year, is insane.
My all Dylan top 3:
– Subterranean Homesick Blues
– It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding
– Like A Rolling Stone [not on YouTube in my territory]
I added LARS for you. I was asked to play it a one of the sixties nights I’ve done recently. The guy who asked had lots of friends there and they had been good customers, so I agreed. I missed out about four minutes from the middle because it was killing the atmosphere. The guy who requested it walked over to me and I thought “Uh oh! Here comes trouble”. He thanked me. He seemed like the sort of guy who experienced inexplicable memory loss on a daily basis and didn’t seem to mind the missing minutes.
The Rolling Stones – Satisfaction
The Supremes – Stop in the Name of Love
The Four Tops – I Can’t Help Myself
If I looked at labels and checked the release date I could come up with a list that’s not er “classic”. But all the Northern Soul and Nuggets-style garage rock stuff I listen to comes on compilations and I rarely check things like release dates but… too much haste… The Sonics “Psycho” was 1965, wasn’t it? Sod it! That’s a fine three in my book.
The year before my birth and as I wasn’t born till November of the following year can’t even pretend to have heard anything in the womb.
Had I been able to hear anything then the top three would probably be:
Unit 4+2 Concrete And Clay
The Animals We Gotta Get Out Of This Place
The Righteous Brothers You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’
Wasn’t around but how about:
Frank Wilson: Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)
Sandie Shaw: Long Live Love
Tom Jones: Thunderball
Oh my! Frank Wilson was 1965. I’d have swapped I Can’t Help Myself for that. One of my favourite ever songs.
Mine too. I obviously had no idea but struck lucky by googling my fave Northern Soul song… et voilà!
Very happy you googled that. Just checked my second fave NS song and I can save it for the year of my birth. Think I can sit back and see what gets put on the playlist now.
I dond Tom Jones 🙂
1965, Birmingham, Alabama – Like the old curse says: “May you live in interesting times.”
Mum and Dad got married that year. I wouldn’t be around for another five years. They both worked in a bread factory where they had met in late ’63/early ’64.
Not a bakery, mind you, but an industrial factory churning out thousands of loaves, buns, and biscuits every hour. According to Dad, the oppressive heat combined with the amount of yeast and flour breathed in the air made it a hellish place to work. Mum was lucky: she worked in the office.
1.) Billy Stewart – Sitting In The Park – This is actually his most traditional recording with none of the scat singing and distinctive ad libbing he was known for. Just a perfect arrangement.
2.) The Strangeloves – I Want Candy – “Got that good time music with the Bo Diddley beat.”
3.) The Walker Bros. – Make It Easy On Yourself – They outdid the Ice Man. That takes some effort!
an industrial factory churning out thousands of loaves,
And then along came you, their little bun in the over
I’ve fairly recently come to the Walker Brothers, it’s so sweet my punky side rebels, but that is a great song.
I was ten at the end of 1965, so my musical sophistication was pretty limited, but I did listen to pop music, mainly at my friends’ houses or when my mum was at home but my father wasn’t , because my father hated it.
I will limit my choices to songs I know I liked back then and not ones that I wish I did in hindsight.
So, first up is a Fab Four song, then one that I discovered via my friend Anita’s brother (he was a lot older that we were, he had a job) and finally one that was a huge smash and which used to outrage my father every time it was on the telly
The Beatles – Ticket To Ride
The Yardbirds – Heart Full of Soul
Sonny and Cher – I Got You Babe
It is fair to say that 1965 really was an absolutely fantastic year for music, though. As far as I am concerned, it is the year when everything changed.
I think I first heard Ticket to Ride on BBC “Family Favourites” on the wireless. I thought it was about a fairground. Couldn’t figure out why she didn’t care.
It seems to be when a lot of bands I like were just starting out and there was a lot of potential and optimism and newness.
I think that, for me, 1965 is where much of the music I love and listen to has its first expression. The roots obviously go deeper, but I think that the actual sounds of 1965 are the first glorious flowering.
I thought of Sonny & Cher too – donded. I saw them on UK TV singing I got you babe. They were like something from outer space – him in a fur coat, her in skin tight black and white striped jeans. And of course her Cherokee looks had my testosterone-laden teen blood pumping. I immediately resolved to go to California for some of what they were on. And three years later I did. I still have the fur coat I bought on Haight Street!
I wasn’t born – Subterranean Homesick Blues is genius – the stuff I liked was all second hand and it’d go like this:
THIS IS THE PLAYLIST
Ennio Morricone – Per qualche dollaro in più
Chérifa – Azwaw (Algeria)
The Sonics – Night time is the right time
Sonics might be replaced by either of these three – can’t choose:
The Kinks – All Day And All Of The Night
Marianne Faithfull – House Of The Rising Sun Ver.1
Rain or shine – Don Drummond
That’s a fun list. Proper diverse. Imagine if Dylan had gone electro in 1981 and used Manchester’s finest as a backing band!? I wonder watt the audience reaction would’ve been like? Bet it would’ve made their toes proper curly.
Fuel
Suddenly remembers that it is Lofty in the video and the bad puns are suddenly irrelevant. Blame it on the fact that I never ever followed soap operas.
Azwaw gets better with every listen.
The reason I like that video of Lofty so much is I saw it on NightNetwork – the first overnight TV in the UK if you remember it – but I never watched soaps myself either.
I knew of Tom Watt from the clips on TV and the papers – in ’89 or ’90 he came to our collage to do some film work with the students and was sitting in the bar going through a script; people were hanging around slightly/oddly starstruck – Eastenders really was excessively watched at the time.
I wandered past and went “how did you get New Order to dance in the Subterranean Homesick Blues” and walked to the bar – next thing I know is my beer being bought for me and a demand to know where on earth I’d seen the video. Had an ace time ruining the script meeting and a liquid lunch bought by the great man himself while we discussed all the dodgy geezers and geezettes in the clip.
Hundreds of 7″ singles stored in his mum’s loft is what he told me too… just like the comment bellow it on youtube.
I like the puns!
Azwaw is rather off kilter to start with – on first listen – but as it progresses the track just becomes amazing – then you cease to notice and just have to play it again. I have a huge African box set from Sterns Music (their soundclound is well worth a listen) 1965 has some very excellent representation.
I don’t recall NightNetwork at all but that’s a great story. I had to WiKi the guy after that and it he obviously had a strong Manchester connection and seems like a really good bloke.
I almost wrote that I should’ve checked my Golden Afrique and Trojan collections but the three I chose were the most natural. Plus I would’ve heard them while in the womb.
What was it David Byrne said? Something like: In a hundred years time we’ll know the great pop songs from every continent not just US and UK pop. Might take longer, but songs like Azwaw deserve a wider audience. I can sort of imagine some of the characters in the video grooving to that while under the influence.
I was just four at the time and probably listening mainly to my parents’ Jim Reeves and Matt Monroe records. If they’d let me, I would definitely have chosen the following:
Otis Redding – I’ve Been Loving You Too Long
The Mamas & The Papas – California Dreamin’
The Elgins – Put Yourself In My Place
California Dreamin’ is wonderful, as is Do You Believe In Magic, both of which seem to be later on in my mind.
And donds for both of those, make my life a whole lot easier.
Bah! Anything before ’76 is sorted by decade on the phone, so had to look these up:
Charlie Walker – Pick Me Up On Your Way Down
Animals – Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
Nina Simone – Strange Fruit
huge dond for the Animals.
It’s easy to pass up ‘The Big Five’ because we’re only allowed three and I’m not going to pick only 3 of the Beatles, Stones, Elvis, Dylan and Beach Boys. Which is OK, because three of my fave bands were quite active in ’65:
1) Yardbirds – Heart Full of Soul.Best known for the Holy Triumverate of future guitar legends, fact is the band didn’t even need them – they were that good. Sharp, snarly and fiercely independent, they were punk rock before it was even a thing, although they called them rave ups.
2) Kinks – Tired of Waiting for You. Unfortunately lumped in with the other British invaders in the day, time has been kind to Ray Davies’ creds as a songwriter. The range in his back catalogue is unmatched by any other writers from that era.
3) Dicky Lee – Laurie. Three years after his mammoth Patches, this source of much RR merriment between fintan and I was back with another …. sentimental bit of poo. I couldn’t keep up this facade any longer. My real 3rd pick is the Thelonious Monk standard Round Midnight as recorded by the Miles Davis Quintet at Chicago’s Plugged Nickel nghtclub. There’s a bit of a cheat here because while released in Japan (wtf???), Live at the Plugged Nickel wasn’t released in America until 1995. Moan if y’ll like, but I’m having Davis here because it was the last ‘pure’ Davis before he went all fusion.
Not quick enough on Heart Full Of Soul, but that’s ok because it was a toss up between that and For Your Love, their highest charting song, prompting Clapton to quit because he [wrongly] felt they were going too commercial.
Hi all. I’m away in a caravan with the family, so I’ll keep it brief.
As we entered 1965, I was precisely one month old. I’m not going to claim to have been THAT early a starter, so I’ll be back at the weekend when I can research which songs from 1965 are amongst my earliest memories.
Night-night.
Suddenly I’m overwhelmed, never thought I’d get to play. Limit it to three, not possible! 1965 I was going to university and I had a job; I bought a lot of records and I listened to a lot of fm, 1965 was THE prime year for music. I was student teaching in a high school and hearing lots of stuff my students recommended. Three’s impossible, here’s my first list, I could triple it if we had to, back in a bit to edit after a think.
Norwegian Wood – Beatles
Maggies Farm – Dylan
Desolation Row – Dylan
Go Now Moody – Blues
The Sound of Silence – Paul Simon
I’ve been loving you too long – Otis Redding
Farewell Angelina – Joan Baez
Do you believe in magic – Loving Spoonful
Thirsty Boots – Judy Collins
A change is gonna come – Sam Cooke
California Dreaming – Mamas & Poppas
Catch the wind – Donovan
Eve of Destruction – Barry McGuire
My Generation – The Who
Trouble in Mind – Nina Simone
donds for the Fabs, Moodies, Spoonful
also for Donovan.
donds to Donovan and Joan Baez in particular, loads of good releases that year.
Were you in the US then, GF?
Amy: Yes, I arrived in 1958.
Donds for Norwegian Wood, the Sound of Silence and Catch the Wind.
OK, I could pick any three of those and feel happy with ’em, I suspect that Dylan, Beatles etc will get plenty of hits so I’ll say either three guys or three girls:
I’ve been loving you too long – Otis Redding
A change is gonna come – Sam Cooke
When a man loves a Woman – Percy Sledge
or
Farewell Angelina – Joan Baez
Thirsty Boots – Judy Collins
Trouble in Mind – Nina Simone
I’ll say three guys.
I was six, and I was limited to what my parents listened to, which was largely classical. But they did listen to “Family Favourites” on the radio on a Sunday lunchtime. There was so much good music around that apart from childish songs, I can’t honestly remember what I heard then and what I have come to love since. Here are some guesses because I think they were ones my parents liked too, rather than groundbreaking new music:
Burt Bacharach – Trains and Boats and Planes
Sounds Orchestral – Cast Your Fate to the Wind
Roger Miller – King of the Road
The Beatles were a phenomenon, Mum liked Paul and I liked George but not in a fanatical way, I think she was impressed with the Lennon / McCartney songwriting and I probably thought George looked like one of my big brothers.
“Half a century ago” – cheers for that, Barbryn, puts things in perspective!!!
Hah! I almost chose Roger Miller’s King of the Road, Ali.
I’ve been humming it all day. The one I really remember from that era was “Swinging on a Star” but the year doesn’t fit, it was originally 1944 but Frank Sinatra covered it in 1964. “Would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar …”
This one Ali?
Ah! Albahooky has nailed it, by, that takes me back …
But if you were asking for my all-time 20th century hit, it’d have to be Desolation Row.
It is Like A Rolling Stone for me.
Although Dylan said it about Blonde On Blonde, his phrase “that thin, that wild mercury sound” to me sounds like it could have been about LARS too.
Good one GF. I was mesmerised by Desolation Row. It’s length was novel at the time, and I listened to it incessantly for a while. So I loved it when Sad eyed lady of the lowlands took a whole side of Blonde on Blonde. Then I heard East-West and InAGaddaDaVida and…
GHE; Perfect response; Desolation Row, Sad eyed lady of the lowlands, Blonde on Blonde, East-West, In A GaddaDaVida
What a fantastic year. I turned 5 late that year, and was sure i was listening to music at the time. But it’s all kind of a blur, i want to say that i was listening to this stuff via the radio and my friends’ big brothers, but a reality check on the year shows that we didn’t move to NJ until the next year even. Could have sworn that i listened to the Monkees that year too, but i suppose that was probably a year or two down the road as well. Years might be bonked up a bit due to a) difference in albums and releases between US and UK, and b) this was really back in the singles days before AOR.
So – a shortlist that i listened to at the time, roughly. With the Dylans already covered, so i can skip those.
Stones – As Tears Go By
Stones – I’m Free
Beatles – In My Life
Byrds – Turn Turn Turn (and of course Mr. Tambourine Man, and the original as well)
McCoys – Hang On Sloopy (also the Yardbirds’ My Girl Sloopy (’64))
Miracles – Going to a Go Go
Toys – A Lover’s Concerto
Animals – It’s My Life
Sonny and Cher – I Got You Babe
Beach Boys – California Girls
As Tears Go By is so beautiful. Dond of course.
It was tough. But in the end i went for –
Miracles – Going to a Go Go
Stones – I’m Free
Byrds – Mr. Tambourine Man
can’t help it, sucker for sparkly jangly guitars.
But I like the big drums & bass before 😉
I was there, 5 years old most of the year, but I surely would have been dancing to this one, the Supremes, here in their best German: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELtdyuB_zHw
…and this one is a classic too, discovered many years later…:
the Sonics – The Witch
Ooh, I’d never heard this one before. When I saw the title I thought it was going to be the song that was a hit for the German band The Rattles several years later (and which might be cropping up in a year coming your way soon 😉
The Witch – the Rattles
Reached the grand old age of eleven in 1965. Christmas ’64 saw me get my first LP – A Hard Day’s Night. I couldn’t afford to buy records on a regular basis, so Radio Luxembourg and Caroline (not so much) were my main sources of music. And of course, 7.30 every Thursday evening was Top of The Pops time. I’d even stop playing football and come in to watch it. My mum would try relentlessly to get me and my younger brother up to dance in the front room. I think 63-65 this was the time that my love of music really established itself.
Being a Geordie, anything by the Animals was big at the time. I especially remember ‘We Gotta Get Out of this Place’ as I’d already decided by then that I wasn’t going to stick around the North East (much as I love it). I saw Eric Burdon live at the Maryport Blues Festival in 2009 and when he did this I was in tears.
I’d pretty much dond everything that’s been offered so farThree picks? Have to be pop singles, so I’ll go for:
The Supremes: ‘Stop in the Name of Love’ – the start of a lifelong love of Tamla music
Dusty Springfield: ‘In the Middle of Nowhere’ – that hair!
Petula Clark: ‘Downtown” – seemed so sophisticated (I think she spoke French and she was older), the song had great orchestration and there was that big trumpet sound to finish the song off.
There’s a fascinating programme about French chanson presented by Pet Clark currently available on iPlayer. She did indeed speak perfect – if somewhat clipped, it seemed to me – French, was quite the star in France and was gifted songs by the likes of Brel and Gainsbourg. Downtown-dond.
Downtown is a big hit im our house, when the kids were small they kept on asking for it to be played in the car, it remains listenable which is a testament to quality! Donds.
Downtown, along with the Toys (Americans) and Seekers, esp. Georgy Girl (Aussies) all somehow get tangled up in my brain with Yardley of London and Mary Quant and Love perfume and the whole swinging London thing. I don’t know why, those were probably the ads on the radio that went along with the songs.
Georgy Girl! remember that. And my mum used Yardley’s Lavender.
I loved Downtown, and I even bought the single with money my gran gave me. It was 6 shillings and eight pence, from a record shop in Poole high street. I didn’t even have a record player to play it on!
GHE: Great minds…. In about 1947 I bought a 78rpm of the Duke Ellington orch. playing ‘Skin Deep’, my first music purchase and we didn’t have a record player. Worse yet it was a drum solo on two sides of a record! Still got it.
I wasn’t born, so it’s stuff I still listen to from that year for me. I see some Donovan has been chosen already, ditto Dylan, Stones and Beatles, so I’m going to leave him for now and select
Bert Jansch – Strollin Down the Highway
Marc Bolan – Beyond the Rising Sun
Jackson C Frank – Blues Run The Game
A bit samey, but these have survived the test of time for me.
Keep it in this groove for a while, Notice the vibe it’s generating.
it’s a somewhat melancholy vibe, but one which suggests freedom and possibilities I think.
I’ve been thinking about those far away days a bit. I mentioned that my father hated pop music, and his dislike of it tended to mean that exposure was limited while he was around. We used to listen to the BBC, both the Light Programme and the Home Service, mainly the latter if Dad was around. I was allowed to watch pop music on the telly, unless Dad was in a particularly bad mood. Mostly, he would “take the dog for a walk” (a.k.a. go to the pub) when something like Top of the Pops was on. He had odd likes and dislikes. For reasons I cannot understand, he hated The Beatles but tolerated Gerry and the Pacemakers and, bizarrely Freddie and the Dreamers. He also liked some earlier acts like the Shadows and Tommy Steele but anything that smacked even vaguely of rebellion was completely out of the question. Needless to say, The Rolling Stones weren’t tolerated and nether were Dylan and Donovan. His idea of decent trendy pop music was someone like Val Doonican or The Batchelors.
My mother was more tolerant but her real love was the classic female solo singer, people like Kathy Kirby, Susan Maughan, Alma Cogan, Helen Shapiro and later on, Cilla Black. For reasons I didn’t really understand, she disliked Dusty Springfield intensely.
It was a real uphill struggle to get to hear the kind of music I wanted to at home, so most of my musical education came from friends. Of course much later on, I was able to listen to late night Radio One. That was the real game changer for me.
How odd to like Cilla but not Dusty. Doesn’t everyone find Cilla’s voice a bit ‘nails down a blackboard’? (Evidently not.) Mind you, I do love Surround Yourself With Sorrow. The Dusty dislike wasn’t a sexuality thing, was it? Surely it wasn’t common enough knowledge…
Dusty was kind of a soul singer, wasn’t she?
No, I don’t think that it was a sexuality thing. I think that my Mum just didn’t like her image. The big hair was too big, the make-up too made-up. It is bizarre, though.
My parents were Sinatra, Glenn Miller, Kingston Trio, and Herb Alpert, but they were surprisingly tolerant of the music i loved. They couldn’t have given a rats’ about the Beatles, but bought me their albums for holiday and birthday gifts. They didn’t complain much when i later blasted the Stones and Zep. I did get my Exile on Main Street songbook briefly confiscated when i crossed out some of the lyrics and wrote in the (accurate and actual) swear words.
I’ve said before that i actually did see the Beatles on Ed Sullivan (but not the Stones) and was allowed to stay up late for it. I would have been 3 or 4 at the time, how on earth did i know who they were or that it was something that needed to be seen? I have no idea. My dad was working in Greenland at the time, and my mom wasn’t a Beatles fan at all.
I think that anyone over 50 has parents who are from the end of the period before teenagers actually had a teenage. People overwhelmingly went from school straight into work, often at the age of 14, in the years before the 1950s, unless they were privileged or clever enough to stay on at school and maybe go into tertiary education, and magically changed from being children to adults.
I’ve long thought that those of my parents generation had a lot of inner jealousy towards the succeeding generations who were able to take advantage of the changes in society after 1945 which allowed for the creation of a whole new teenage demographic. Changes in personal ideas around freedom, rising employment, more affluence, better education and advertising and the creation of a consumer society gradually changed the way young people saw the world forever. The end of the war broke down the old certainties about our culture for good. It took another decade or so for the effects to really take hold but by 1960 the world was such a different place that the age divide was massive.
My parents were both educated, dad worked for RCA and then IBM, mom was a teacher. But they came from a relatively conservative and sheltered part of the country (western PA). Dad had already been in the air force before they met in college so had already travelled a bit. Luckily for us, after they got married, they said, we’re so out of here. So they lived around the country a bit while dad got training, and settled in NJ when they had us. While dad worked in Greenland, we stayed back in PA to be near my mom’s family while she taught. When my dad got home for good is when we moved back to NJ.
But i think that was as much a shock to them as the change in the times. We were across the bridge from Philly, which was a whole different deal from western PA. It was a kind of weird dichotomy living there – we had Soul Train and all of this great soul music coming out of there, but the town i live in across the bridge was really pretty segregated and racist. We also had great FM radio out of Philly – as 12 year olds we had fantastic taste – we were listening to Stones and Zep, Bowie, Mott, and prog too.
We had the Viet Nam thing going on here too. You got the worst of it over there in the aftermath of WWs I and II. We got GI bills for education and housing here which, along with innovation and manufacturing, is what started the rise of the working classes here. My dad said he pushed a pencil in Alaska in the Air Force during the Korean War, which then paid for his education. But then we had the Viet Nam war.
Even these days, an awful lot of my friends and people my age have kids who went into the service for 4 years. Not out of any sense of patriotism, as far as i can figure, but as a practical matter. If they don’t have the academics or the money for college, the service gives them training, skills, travel, a paycheck, and money for college afterwards. Can’t say i blame them, the opportunities otherwise in shit towns and states with no jobs are pretty slim.
My parents were born either side of WW1, my dad left school at 14 and my mum a bit later – she was bright and could probably have studied further but there weren’t the opportunities then. They married in 1939 and my brothers were born in 1940 and 1945, so they remember rationing and all that after WW2.
You would think that my brothers would have influenced my musical taste – we certainly like similar things now – but Ian was 18 when I was born and had left home; Alan was 13 and at school, also heavily involved with the scouts so always “out”. They have said they were jealous of me in some ways because I had so much more “stuff”, if you like, but on the other hand they felt sorry for me as the only girl with quite conservative (with a small c) and old-fashioned parents. They all loved music though, even if their tastes were different, so it was always there on the radio in the background and must have influenced my burgeoning tastes.
I was 12/13 in 1965 and it was a fantastic time for singles. I can’t claim to have been into Dylan that early, so I’ll happily dond the hits from the Stones, Beatles, Beach Boys, Mamas & Papas, Motown, Animals, Kinks, Byrds etc etc.
Attempting to pick some faves not yet mentioned:
Spencer Davis Group – Keep On Running
Wilson Pickett – In the Midnight Hour
Little Jimmy Dickens – May The Bird Of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose.
Novelty songs were all the rage back then and this is a fun one that, fortunately, stuck in my head, in preference to the one about a chap with a peg-leg, also released in 1965….
Spencer Davis and Wilson Pickett are both memorable.
There’s an embarrassment of riches for this year, & as I was 3 years old I would not have had a scooby of at that time. A technicolour disc of Danny Kaye’s ‘The Ugly Ducking was my jam.
So – to pick three songs and wished to have seen live, for my teenage sensibilities I’d go for :
‘I Got Mine’ – Small Faces
Groovy years :
‘Nowhere To Run’ – Martha Reeves & The Vandellas (as part of The Motown Revue that hit Britain in ’65)
Mid-life marvelling of :
‘A Love Supreme’ – John Coltrane Quartet
A tricky one this, as I as only one year old and the music I’ve ever been aware of listening to is dated ca. 1967 onwards. I would imagine that I was carolled by Jim Reeves at my grandparents’ house – they liked songs that told a story, not all that love stuff, and they liked to sing along – and that my mum would’ve had whatever the predecessor of Radio 2 was on all day. My dad was heavily into trad jazz, so if he had any energy left once he got in from work he’d probably have played Ken Colyer records.
I have just spent hours on google, trying to come up with something that hasn’t been mentioned yet. I had no idea before this evening that these were UK hits in 1965, but I give you
Georgie Fame 6 the Blue Flames – Yeh Yeh
Them – Here Comes The Night
Shirley Ellis – The Clapping Song
My parents were born in 1930 and 1931 and weren’t really that bothered about popular music. Mum preferred classical and dad could sing the odd line of a show tune usually with startling inaccuracy which, in retrospect, was probably deliberate.
In 1965 I liked the Beatles and hated the Rolling Stones. I knew nothing about Bob Dylan beyond Blowing in the Wind and even that was because it was performed at a church concert – not by Bob I hasten to add.
Didn’t much care for Cilla or Lulu. Never knowingly heard Sandie Shaw until she was in Eurovision. Thought of Dusty as “that girl who used to be in the Springfields”. Adored Anita Harris.I think it was the eyelashes more than the singing.
I honestly had no idea that pirate radio existed until they were closed down. We listened to nothing but the BBC. The Home Service, Light Programme and Third Programme. As far as I was concerned Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, Handel and Danny Kaye were all doing more or less the same sort of thing. Which I suppose they were. In a way.
Would have been eight and not too fussed with music but me sister, a year or so older was big Beatle fan. For her birthday she was given a cheap Beatles covers collection on the grounds that it had lots more songs – about 40 crammed onto one Lp -so obviously better – by a band called Billy Pepper and the Pepperpots
A couple of years later me Mum bought sister a new one by the same lot – who seemed to be still going – which was the actual Sergeant Pepper
A cousin was old enough to be trying to learn guitar and be in a band – ‘cos he wore glasses – i thought Hank and the Shadows were the kings of cool
I was but 7 and more interested in Dr Who and frogspawn than music, though I do remember hating Mr Tambourine man on account of my mate’s mum singing it all the time ( very badly).
What I was listening to at the time would have been Val Doonican’s Walk Tall ( though released in 64 I think) , the New Christie Minstrels Three wheels on my wagon and Telstar ( older still but we didn’t really buy too many records back then as a family).
What I’d chose today –
Francoise Hardy – Non c’est n’est pas un reve
The Beau Brummels – Just a little
The Spades – You’re gonna miss me. ( Roky Erickson’s pre 13th Floor Elevators group).
What strikes most is how many real classic tracks were made in such a short time span that year. I don’t think today’s musical output will be regarded so fondly in 50 years time.
Incidentally , when quickly glancing at the title I thought it was Spilly Ear !
A good name for a medical condition , perhaps ?
Yep, weepy eye, runny nose and spilly ear – classic symptoms of a head cold?
‘Spillfever
Unchained Melody ~ Righteous Bros.
Wooly Bully ~ Sam the Sham & Pharaohs
Zorba The Greek ~ Mikis Theodorakis
Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag ~ James Brown
Shot Gun ~ Ramsey Lewis Trio
Shot Gun by Junior Walker & All Stars (not Ramsey Lewis)
I have to add: Mel Carter ~ Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me
Mel Carter ~ Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me
The Drifters ~ Saturday Night at the Movies
Sam Cooke ~ Shake