565 The Contours “Do You Love Me” 1962

“Discovered by Berry Gordy, the Contours were formed in the early ‘60s, as one of Motown’s first recording acts. Shortly thereafter, Gordy wrote ‘Do You Love Me’ for the group, which…went on to become the fastest-climbing Motown hit of all time. It shot to the No. 2 record in America slot in 1962…the use of ‘Do You Love Me’ on the ‘Dirty Dancing’ soundtrack catapulted it onto the charts yet again—25 years after it first took the nation by storm” (Katie McDowell, The Dominion Post (Morgantown, WV), 10/4/2007). 

The Contours “Do You Love”

564 Ray Charles (1930-2004) “I Can’t Stop Loving You” 1962

The album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music “is an extraordinary work of art…Invading white country music, a musical world proud of its redneck roots, was something pop-jazz singers didn’t do” (Michael Lydon, Ray Charles: Man and Music, 1998). 

Ray Charles “I Can’t Stop Loving You”

563 Gene Chandler (1937- ) “Duke of Earl” 1962

“Chandler vividly recalls how that period-piece song came into existence by accident, when he was singing with a vocal group called the Dukays. ‘We were clowning around,’ he said, ‘going up the scales to open up our throats before rehearsal.’ He and his fellow Dukays would sing ‘do, do, do, do,’ elevating their voices each time. In a moment of frivolity, Chandler added an ‘Earl’ for group member Earl Edwards. One thing led to another, and soon they were singing ‘Duke, duke, duke, duke of Earl,’ prompting a quickly penned song pitched to their record label, which chose to release another Dukays song, ‘Nite Owl,’ instead. ‘I didn’t know what a million-seller was,’ recalled Chandler, who was 20 at the time. But he had a good feeling about ‘Duke of Earl,’ so he released it as a solo artist instead, and the rest was (a prosperous) history, for which he was generous with his earnings” (Scott Tady, The Beaver County Times (PA), 12/12/2014). 

Gene Chandler “Duke of Earl”

562 The Cascades “Rhythm of the Rain” 1962

“Formed in the late 50s in San Diego, California…They were discovered at a club called the Peppermint Stick in 1962 and signed to Valiant Records. Their first single, ‘Second Chance’, failed but ‘Rhythm Of The Rain’ became a soft rock classic that still received radio airplay in the 90s…They disbanded in 1969, with only one original member remaining at that time” (The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 2006). 

The Cascades “Rhythm of the Rain”

561 Booker T and the MGs “Green Onions” 1962

“One of the most commercially successful and important acts to emerge from the fertile Memphis musical soil was Booker T. and the MGs, whose 1962 instrumental hit ‘Green Onions’ set the tone for much of that which followed. This original ‘super group’ was composed of organist Booker T. Jones (1944- ), guitarist Steve Cropper, drummer Al Jackson, and bassist Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn. Each of the members is a famed Memphis studio musician with dozens of hit record sessions…Booker T. Jones attended Indiana State University, but returned to Memphis, becoming a staff musician for Stax in 1960. His musical skills are not limited strictly to organ, for which he is best known, but his association with the MGs was predated by an earlier band, the Mar-Keys, which also featured Jones, Cropper, and Dunn” (Scott Faragher, The Hammond Organ: An Introduction to the Instrument and the Players Who Made It Famous, 2011). Listed on the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.

Booker T and the MGs “Green Onions”

560 The Blossoms “He’s a Rebel” 1962

“Darlene Love’s was the unmistakable voice cutting through Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, although she was uncredited on her biggest hit, ‘He’s a Rebel,’ by the Crystals. A vocalist with the Blossoms and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, Love also released some solo recordings, including one that would become her signature, ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),’ in 1963.” Love said, “I know we were the first black background group. Because mostly, the people that were doing sessions, they weren’t groups. They just hired a soprano, alto and tenor or whatever. But we were literally a group doing background…We worked for Dionne Warwick for 10 years. That was where we had most of our growing up—learning what you do and what you don’t do, how you take care of business, how you talk to people, how you deal with people” (Roger Catlin, The Washington Post, 12/15/2016). 

The Blossoms “He’s a Rebel”

559 The Beatles “Love Me Do” 1962

Little Richard: “Nobody knew [The Beatles] but their mothers. I thought they were a very good group when they performed with me at the Star-Club in Hamburg, but I never thought they were a hit group…They were singing my music and Chuck Berry’s and some of Elvis’s. They would sing ‘Love Me Do’ every night, ‘cause it was going to be their first record. It was really something else when they shook the world” (David Pritchard, Alan Lysaght, The Beatles: An Oral History, 1998). 

The Beatles “Love Me Do”

558 The Beatles “(P.S.) I Love You” 1962

When American rock & roll appeared in England in the mid 50s, “All the Beatles, like millions of lads of the same age, were affected. They all have the same sort of memories, of groups springing up in every class at school and in every street at home. There were overnight about a hundred dances in Liverpool with skiffle groups queuing up to perform. It was the first time for generations that music wasn’t the property of musicians. Anyone could get up and have a go. It was like giving painting sets to monkeys. Some of them were bound to produce something good sometime” (Hunter Davies, The Beatles, 1978). 

The Beatles “(P.S.) I Love You”

557 The Beach Boys “Surfin’ Safari” 1962

“The first song on the first side of their first album didn’t tell a literal truth about the lives of the young men singing it—no one save the drummer was ever likely to go surfing with anyone at any time under any circumstances—but there’s truth in the voices. It crackled through the guitars and drums, and in 1962 it spoke not just to kids in Los Angeles, but also in hundreds of far-flung, landlocked cities” (Peter Carlin, Catch a Wave, 2006).  

The Beach Boys “Surfin’ Safari”

556 John Barry (1933-2011) and his orchestra “James Bond Theme” 1962

“Before Dr. No, the most significant musical hit to have originated in a spy film was Doris Day’s ‘Que Ser Sera’ for the 1957 Alfred Hitchcock The Man Who Knew Too Much. But the use of the electric guitar connected a new generation of movie goers to the films they often saw in drive-in theatres on weekends, a generation defining itself by the sounds of rock and roll. As a result, the Clifford Essex Paragon De Luxe, the guitar Vick Flick played for the original ‘James Bond Theme,’ is now appropriately on display in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame” (Jack Becker, et al, James Bond in World and Popular Culture, 2011).

John Barry and his orchestra “James Bond Theme”

555 Joan Baez (1941- ) “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” 1962

“I had an affair with a girl when I was twenty-two. It was wonderful. It happened, I assume, after an overdose of unhappiness at the end of an affair with a man, when I had a need for softness and understanding. I assume that the homosexuality within me…saved me from becoming cold and bitter toward everyone” (Joan Baez, And a Voice to Sing With, 1987). 

Joan Baez “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”

554 Herb Alpert (1935- ) and the Tijuana Brass “The Lonely Bull” 1962

Alpert “was working in the makeshift recording studio in his garage one day in 1962 when he happened on something interesting; he discovered that he could add a new dimension to his sound by recording a second trumpet part directly on top of the original…When the two parts were combined slightly out of synchronization, another effect was produced, which he called a ‘Spanish flair.’” Inspired by a bullfight in Tijuana, Mexico, he added the “flair” and bullfight atmosphere to “a friend’s instrumental composition called ‘Twinkle Star,’ which he then retitled ‘The Lonely Bull’”(Ben Edmonds, Linda Paulson, Contemporary Musicians, 2005).

Herb Alpert (1935- ) and the Tijuana Brass “The Lonely Bull”

553 Bobby Vee (1943-2016) “Take Good Care of My Baby” 1961

“Born Robert Thomas Velline on April 30, 1943, and raised in Fargo, Vee famously got his big break under tragic circumstances at the age of 15 in 1959. He and his band, the Shadows, were recruited to fill in for Buddy Holly at the Moorhead stop of the Winter Dance Party Tour the night after Holly died in a plane crash outside of Clear Lake, Iowa. Vee’s career soon rocketed after that as he earned teen idol fame and landed 38 singles in the Billboard Hot 100 between 1959-1970…he famously remained a humble, hard-working Midwesterner who settled into a quiet life in St. Joseph, Minn., with his wife of more than 50 years, Karen…Bob Dylan said that Vee was “the most beautiful person I’ve ever been on stage with” (Chris Riemenschneider, Star Tribune—Minneapolis, October 24, 2016). 

Bobby Vee “Take Good Care of My Baby”

552 The Tokens “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” 1961, The Weavers “Wimoweh” 1952, Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds “Mbube” 1939

Solomon Linda (1909-1962) “and his boys were given a one-off chance to record a song on the only recording equipment in all of Sub-Saharan Africa in 1939…Linda was paid ten shillings, and the song became a hit in Africa, though it was beyond unlikely that it would someday become known in every corner of the world.” Ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax shared the record with Pete Seeger, whose mistranslated “Wimoweh” was recorded by the Weavers in 1952. Because of Seeger’s leftist politics, “the song disappeared from the airwaves, as did Seeger for years to come. A decade later, four Jewish teenagers from Brooklyn calling themselves the Tokens discovered a dusty copy of the Weavers’ near-hit record in the collection of a group member’s older brother” (Robert Zieger, OAH Magazine of History, April 2010). 

The Tokens “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”

The Weavers and Gordon Jenkins & his Orchestra “Wimoweh”

Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds “Mbube”

551 The Shirelles "Mama Said" 1961

Susan Douglas wrote: “The most important thing about this music, the reason it spoke to us so powerfully, was that it gave voice to all of the warring selves inside us struggling, blindly and with a crushing sense of insecurity, to forge something resembling a coherent identity…In the early 1960s, pop music became the one area of popular culture in which adolescent female voices could be clearly heard” (O’Brien, She Bop II, 2002).

The Shirelles "Mama Said"