580 Frank Ifield (1937- ) “I Remember You” 1962

“Birmingham is not famous for producing country singers but Frank Ifield was the exception to the rule. The man with the distinctive yodel in his voice was Coventry born, Birmingham raised and Australian bred…Frank demonstrated his abilities as a singer at an early age. As a schoolboy he used to lead the community singing in the bomb shelters during the blitz. By the time he was 13, he was already a seasoned performer and acted as a barker outside Australian tent shows and circuses…He unique yodel was a throwback to when he had a milk round in Moseley as an eight-year-old. He would walk round and call ‘Milki-lay-etee’ to attract householders’ attention” (Sunday Mercury, 2/14/1999). 

Frank Ifield “I Remember You”

579 Brian Hyland (1943- ) “Sealed With a Kiss” 1962, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini” 1960

Born in Queens, New York, “Brian Hyland was one of the better pop singers of the early 1960s, despite the fact that his first hit was the dire Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Bikini. He compensated that youthful faux pas with the superb Ginny Come Lately, Sealed With A Kiss, and Warmed over Kisses. A big country and folk music fan, in 1963, right at the height of the pop successes, he recorded COUNTRY MEETS FOLK, an excellent collection of country and folk songs” (Maverick, Dec. 2008). 

Brian Hyland “Sealed With a Kiss”

Brian Hyland  “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini”

578 Sam “Lightnin” Hopkins (1912-1982) “Mojo Hand” 1962

“He made a lot of money and spent it, gambling (he was a terrible gambler) and drinking (he was a good drinker, buying rounds for his buddies in the Third Ward). He was the king of Dowling Street, and he reveled in his fame. Much to the frustration of his record companies, he hated to fly and didn’t want to go on package tours. He was comfortable at home, living in a rooming house, working juke joints and icehouses, and cavorting with gamblers and hustlers” (Texas Monthly, June 2007). 

Sam “Lightnin” Hopkins “Mojo Hand”

577 John Lee Hooker (1912/17?-2001) “Boom Boom” 1962

Hooker “exchanged his acoustic guitar for an electric one given to him by blues performer T-Bone Walker. He went on to merge his laid-back Delta style with more visceral urban rhythms…With the rise in popularity of folk music in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Hooker reached new audiences by toning down him amplification and playing an acoustic guitar more frequently. He was hailed as a great country blues musician, performing in coffeehouses, on college campuses, and at folk festivals in the United States and Europe…When British rock groups…identified Hooker as an influence and recorded his songs, his music reached an even wider audience” (Michael Adams, Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia, 2016). 

John Lee Hooker “Boom Boom”

576 Vince Guaraldi (1928-1976) Trio “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” 1962

“Following high school, Guaraldi attended San Francisco State College from 1948 to 1949, according to school records. In 1949 he joined the Army and worked as a cook on a ship during the Korean War. Around 1952 he came down an illness so deathly, ‘they measured him for a casket,’ said his son. Back in America, Guaraldi worked in a printing press in San Francisco and almost ruined his future career. ‘He almost accidentally cut his finger off. From then on he was a musician’” (Pete Barlas, Invester’s Business Daily, 12/23/2010). 

“In 1962, San Francisco pianist Vince Guaraldi put out a single, a jazz version of a samba from the movie ‘Black Orpheus.’ It didn’t get far until disc jockeys started playing the B side, which became a hit and snared him a Grammy” (National Public Radio, Fresh Air, 2012). 

Vince Guaraldi Trio “Cast Your Fate to the Wind”

575 The Four Seasons “Big Girls Don’t Cry” 1962

“Inspired by fellow New Jersey native Frank Sinatra, [Frankie] Valli (1934- ) took his distinctive voice and started his career in the early 1950s. After establishing one of the entertainment industry’s most notable partnership with songwriter Bob Gaudio…Valli joined the Four Seasons and started racking up hits. Just after performing their song ‘Sherry’ on American Bandstand, the group witnessed a meteoric rise to fame and never looked back” (Louisville Magazine, Nov 2007).

The Four Seasons “Big Girls Don’t Cry”

574 The Four Seasons “Sherry” 1962

Frankie Valli (1934- ): “I think [back on] all of the things I did as a kid, how hard it was getting into the business. I did everything in my power…I worked construction. I went to school to learn to be a hairdresser. I worked at a wholesale florist, where I delivered to florists all over New Jersey. I’d come home and go to to work down at the Shore. The early jobs, I remember, were $5, $6 a night. And I lived in the projects right until the time I became successful. It wasn’t easy, but I was really determined. Just before ‘Sherry,’ I thought that was it. I said to myself, ‘If this doesn’t happen, I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ I was at that crossroads of life” (Wayne Robins, Billboard, 9/7/2013).

The Four Seasons “Sherry”

573 Shelley Fabares (1944- ) “Johnny Angel” 1962

“The Donna Reed Show producer asked Shelley Fabares, who played the part of a teenage daughter, if she would like to sing on an upcoming episode. Shelley replied, ‘Sorry, I can’t sing.’ Weeks later he approached her and asked her to sing. She shook her head no. Then the producer said “Would you like to return to the show next season?’ ‘Oh yes,’ the precocious star answered. ‘Then SING!’ the producer announced. The song taped soon thereafter was titled, ‘I’m Going Steady With a Dream,’ and was UPS’d off to a recording company. This resulted in Shelly recording ‘Johnny Angel,’ that became number one in the nation” (Robert Smith, Total Health, Dec/Jan 1996). 

Shelley Fabares “Johnny Angel”

572 The Exciters “Tell Him” 1962

“Formed in the Jamaica district of Queens, New York City, this aptly named group, which included sole male Herb Rooney alongside Breda Reid, Carol Johnson and Lillian Walker, first came to prominence with the vibrant ‘Tell Him’, a US Top 5 hit in 1962…the single’s energy established the pattern for subsequent releases. ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’ (later a hit by Manfred Mann) and ‘He’s Got the Power’ took elements from both uptown soul and the all-female group genre” (The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 2006). 

The Exciters “Tell Him”

571 Bob Dylan (1941- ) “Song to Woody” 1962

“I feel lucky just to know Woody. I’d heard of Woody, I knew of Woody. I saw Woody once, a long, long time ago in Burbank, California, when I was just a little boy. I don’t even remember seeing him, but I heard him play. I must have been about ten. My uncle took me. It stuck in my mind that he was Woody, and everybody else I could see around me was just everybody else” (Jonathan Cott, ed., Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews, 2006). 

Bob Dylan “Song to Woody”

570 The Drifters “Up On the Roof” 1962

The song was written by “the noted husband-wife songwriting team of Carole King and Gerry Goffin.” Born Carole Klein (1942- ) in Brooklyn, “she delved a little deeper than her classmates into the roots of rock, finding a strong interest in the still submerged rhythm & blues stylings that were mainly restricted to the black population…After marrying young lyricist Gerry Goffin (1939-2014), she became part of a writing team that soon won the attention of New York publishers. Using the pen name Carole King, by the time she was 20 she and Gerry already had a reputation as songwriting greats of the future” (Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock, and Soul, 1974). 

The Drifters “Up On the Roof”

569 Skeeter Davis (1931-2004) “The End of the World” 1962

“Wholesomeness was Skeeter Davis’s stock-in-trade. A devout Southern Baptist, she took her religious beliefs seriously and refused to perform at venues which sold alcohol. She was a stalwart of the Grand Ole Opry, the live radio show which was broadcast from Nashville, but in 1973 she was suspended from the show after she voiced her support for religious crusaders who had been arrested in the town…In 1993 Skeeter Davis published her autobiography, Bus Fare to Kentucky. In it she revealed that her childhood had been overshadowed by the murder of her grandfather by an uncle, and by her parents’ alcoholism and her mother’s attempted suicide” (The Daily Telegraph (London), 10/4/2004).  

Skeeter Davis “The End of the World”

568 Dick Dale (1937- ) and the Del-Tones “Misirlou” 1962

“‘Miserlou is a folk song. Its origins are claimed by many countries, but Dick Dale’s family was from Lebanon. He learned the song from his uncles, who played it on the oud.” Dale said, “the word miserlou is an Arabic name. It means the Egyptian. And the song itself is an actual Egyptian folk song…And then when we went to California, you know, I got my first guitar. But I was using this Gene Krupa rhythm on the guitar to make it sound full” (Hansen Liane, Weekend Edition Sunday (NPR), 2010). 

Dick Dale and the Del-Tones “Misirlou” (Deltone Records D-5019)

Dick Dale and the Del-Tones “Misirlou” (2nd version)

Dick Dale and the Del-Tones “Misirlou Twist”

567 The Crystals “Uptown” 1962

“The female artists on [Phil Spector’s] label were treated with less respect. The Crystals, five young girls from Brooklyn, started out singing the songs they recorded, but were soon cheated out of royalties when Spector hired a session singer, Darlene Love…for a flat studio fee. The girls had to tour and front No. 1 hits that they had not even recorded, yet couldn’t leave Spector because he owned their name. Fostering an air of insecurity and dependency, he played one artist off against another” (Lucy O’Brien, She Bop II: The Definitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul, 2002). 

The Crystals “Uptown”

566 Sam Cooke (1931-1964) “Bring It On Home to Me” 1962

“This was the closest Sam had come to the classic gospel give-and-take he had once created with [fellow Soul Stirrer] Paul Foster…What comes through is a rare moment of undisguised emotion, an unambiguous embrace not just of a cultural heritage but of an adult experience far removed from white teenage fantasy” (Peter Guralnick, Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke, 2005). 

Sam Cooke “Bring It On Home to Me”