695 Shirley Bassey (1937- ) “Goldfinger Theme” 1964

“producer Harry Saltzman complained about the song, phoning John Barry saying it was terrible and asking if it could be replaced. After the song soared to Number One, Saltzman had to eat his words…The song was also a triumph for Shirley Bassey—she was catapulted into super-stardom” (Jack Becker, et al, James Bond in World and Popular Culture, 2011).

Shirley Bassey “Goldfinger Theme”

694 Joan Baez (1941- ) “Birmingham Sunday” 1964

“Inspired by the deaths of four Negro schoolgirls when a white racist firebombed a church during services in September 1963, the song is neither a straightforward reportorial account nor a protest anthem but a gently poetic evocation of a tragedy…derived from the traditional Irish love song ‘I Once Loved a Lass.’ (Langston Hughes would describe it as ‘musically so beautifully understated…a quiet protest song.’)” (David Hajdu, Positively 4th Street, 2001).

Joan Baez “Birmingham Sunday”

693 Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) “Hello, Dolly” 1964

Armstrong’s recording “became the best-selling single in America, leaping past the Beatles’ ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and ‘Do You Want to Know a Secret?’ to reach the top of Billboard’s pop chart. It would be the last jazz record, and the next-to-last show tune, to do so. When Armstrong’s ‘Hello, Dolly!’ was replaced by Mary Wells’s ‘My Guy’ a week later, an era—the one that has since come to be known as the ‘golden age’ of American popular music—ended. Rock and roll, the preferred music of the baby boomers, thereafter supplanted golden-age popular song as the linqua franca of pop music in the U.S. and Europe” (Commentary, 2016).

Louis Armstrong “Hello, Dolly”

692 The Animals “The House of the Rising Sun” 1964

“Out of all the groups swept along with the 1964 British invasion, the Animals were the most deeply bluesy. Eric Burdon, born on May 11, 1941, in the industrial/mining town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in northeast England, combined his ravaged ‘wish-I-was-black’ vocals with the surging organ of fellow Newcastle native [Alan] Price to define the sound of the group…Burdon recalls with undisguised bitterness that the arrangement to House was a group effort, but that when it came time to issue the record, he was told there would be room for only one name for the arrangers’ credit, and he foolishly agreed to let it be Alan Price’s. This meant that…Price received all the royalties from the record’s sales” (Steve Sullivan, Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, 2013). 

The Animals “The House of the Rising Sun”

691 Little Stevie Wonder (1950- ) “Fingertips” 1963

At first, Lula Hardaway turned down Motown’s offer to sign her son, Stevie. “When she told Stevie of her decision, he embarked on a resistance campaign that consisted of beating on his drum every moment of the waking day. The incessant pounding finally broke his mother’s resistance, and she agreed to sign…The extra income was a blessing for the Hardaway family, who were struggling to make ends meet in the East Side ghetto” (Craig Werner, Higher Ground, 2004).

Little Stevie Wonder “Fingertips”

690 Don Walser and the Texas Plainsmen “Rolling Stone from Texas” 1963

“In his early years he would entertain his childhood friends by composing songs about them and he amazed them with his photographic memory for songs, able to perform any tune after only hearing it once. At 15, he lied about his age to join the Texas National Guard in 1949, leaving the oilfields to go fulltime in 1957 for a 45-year hitch as a recruiter, mechanic and auditor. At 16, he formed his first band with childhood friend, guitarist Billy Richter. He married his wife, Patricia Jane, only a year later. In 1959, the strapping ‘Little Donnie’ Walser and Richter were invited to join the Texas Plainsmen, a local outfit playing a mix of popular dance music of the day. Don became an expert in country & western, Texas swing and cowboy yodel songs” (Mark Rubin, Sing Out!, Winter 2007).

Don Walser and the Texas Plainsmen “Rolling Stone from Texas”

689 Barbara Lynn “You’ll Lose a Good Thing” 1962

“This song was a top-10 hit for Barbara Lynn when it first appeared in 1962. Its success led her to tour with major R and B stars like James Brown and Otis Redding. Lynn appeared on ‘American Bandstand,’ and artists like The Rolling Stones covered her songs…Not only did Barbara Lynn write her own material, which was unusual at the time, she also played electric guitar, and she played it lefty. Lynn didn’t just hold down the rhythm. She played riffs and leads, little bursts of notes that followed the patterns of her soulful singing” (All Things Considered, 11/19/2014). 

Barbara Lynn “You’ll Lose a Good Thing”

688 Marty Robbins (1925-1982) “El Paso” 1959

“Robbins’ grandfather was a former medicine show performer who regaled him with cowboy stories and tales of the traveling show. As a teenager he worked on his older brother’s ranch outside of Phoenix, and ran away from home for a time to hang out with hobos. While serving in the Navy in World War II, he learned to play guitar; upon returning home, he began to perform in local clubs and on radio stations…’At a time when the radio was full of watered-down rock ‘n roll sung by pretty boys bereft of talent, Marty Robbins and El Paso had the narrative arc of an epic film’” (Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, 2013). 

Marty Robbins “El Paso”

687 Lefty Frizzell (1938-1975) “Long Black Veil “ 1959

“Musically, Sonny had been heavily influenced by Ernest Tubb, and especially by Jimmie Rodgers. Personally, he was influenced by movie cowboys, like Gene Autry and Tom Mix, to name a couple. He loved the way they dressed from their hats clear down to their cowboy boots. Sonny wore a handkerchief just like them: first, because that was the cowboy look, second, because it helped to hide the birthmark on his face and neck and, and third, because our mother could sew them for him…Sonny brought in some money which, added to what little Momma took in from washing and ironing, at least put food on the table” (David Frizzell, I Love You a Thousand Ways: The Lefty Frizzell Story, 2011). Listed on the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. 

Lefty Frizzell “Long Black Veil”

686 Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown (1924-2005) “Okie Dokie Stomp” 1954

“Gatemouth’s career got started in 1947. He performed as a drummer during a year of Army service, then began taking his guitar playing more seriously after filling in one night for T-Bone Walker in Houston in 1947. Walker, one of the few guitarists he admitted liking, was ill and left the stage mid set. Gatemouth walked onstage, picked up Walker’s guitar and made up a song on the spot he called ‘Gatemouth Boogie.’ He clamed that he earned $600 in tips in 15 minutes…His music was born of the swing era and he became an architect of modern guitar playing and rock ‘n’ roll by bridging the two eras” (Joe Krown, Sing Out!, Winter 2006). 

Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown “Okie Dokie Stomp”

685 Hank Thompson (1925-2007) and his Brazos Valley Boys “The Wild Side of Life” 1952

“Hank Thompson and his Brazos Valley Boys were the most commercially successful Western swing band of the fifties and sixties. Much of their material, however, had a more mainstream country approach and could well be called honky-tonk. In his late teens, Thompson broadcast as a singer-guitarist over the local station WACO in a show called Hank the Hired Hand. After wartime service in the navy, he returned to Waco to work on KWTX and formed the first Brazos Valley Boys to play dances around central Texas. ‘Wild Side of Life’, which shared the melody of Roy Acuff’s ‘Great Speckled Bird’ and sparked Kitty Wells’ answer song ‘It wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels’, was his first No. 1” (The Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular Music, 2001). 

Hank Thompson and his Brazos Valley Boys “The Wild Side of Life”

684 Peppermint Harris (1925-1999) “I Got Loaded” 1951

“After serving in the Navy in World War II, Harris moved to Houston in 1943. He devoted his full time to music a few years later and became a protégé of Houston blues patriarch Lightnin’ Hopkins, who landed him (as Peppermint Nelson) his first recording session…it was the surprise success of his ‘I Got Loaded’ ode to alcohol…that made him a star, creating a blues subgenre in the process, one Harris repeatedly mined” (Encyclopedia of the Blues, 2006). 

Peppermint Harris “I Got Loaded”

683 Harry Choates (1922-1951) “Jole Blon” 1946

“Born in Rayne, Louisiana (‘the frog capital of the world’), on December 26, 1922, Harry Choates was raised in Port Arthur, Texas, grew up in the east Texas oilfields area, learned to play fiddle, guitar, and steel guitar, and first performed Jolie Blonde during an early stint with [Leo] Soileau’s band. He made his recording debut in February 1940 as fiddler with Happy Fats & the Rayne-Bo Ramblers. By 1946 Choates—known for punctuating songs with exuberant cries of ‘Eh…ha, ha!’—was looking for an opportunity to make records on his own, and got it with Bill Qunn’s fledgling Gold Star label in Houston, which at the time was the only independent label recording Cajun music” (Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, 2013). 

Harry Choates “Jole Blon”

682 Cindy Walker (1918-2006) “When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again” 1944

“Cindy Walker was born into a musical family on July 20, 1918, in Mart, Texas…In 1941, Walker’s first trip to Hollywood played like a scene from an old movie. ‘My father was a cotton buyer, and we took a trip to Hollywood to sell some pima cotton,’ she told The Austin Chronicle in 2004. ‘And I saw the Crosby Building, I said ‘Stop, Papa, stop! I’ve got a song for Bing Crosby…I went in and saw [Bing’s brother and publicity director] Larry Crosby there. I told him I was a songwriter. I couldn’t play the piano and didn’t play guitar very well, so I ran downstairs and got mama and made her play piano’” (Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, Mar/Apr 2006). 

Cindy Walker “When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again”

681 Ella Mae Morse (1924-1999) “Get On Board, Little Chillun” 1942

“When Ella Mae Morse was nine and living in Paris, Texas, she went to the grocery store with her mother and heard someone playing guitar out back. She’d grown up with music—her mother was a singer and her father, who was British, had been a dance-band drummer—but this music was different. Uncle Joe, the blues guitarist she met that day, encouraged her natural talent for blues, as did her mother. Her father had left when she was younger. Soon, she was singing on Paris’s radio station, and in 1936, she and her mother moved to Dallas, where she got another regular radio slot after winning a talent contest” (Fresh Air, 2/21/2011). 

Ella Mae Morse “Get On Board, Little Chillun”

680 Ted Daffan’s (1912-1996) Texans “Born to Lose” 1942

“He grew up in Houston, Texas, where his interest in Hawaiian music and electronics led to his setting up a radio repair shop to which numerous country musicians came to experiment with amplification. Deeply influenced by Milton Brown, Daffan first played with the local country swing bands the Blu Ridge Playboys…and Bar-X Cowboys. In 1940, with his own band the Texans, he had the year’s second biggest country seller with ‘Worried Mind’, but this was eclipsed by the double hit ‘No Letter Today’/’Born to Lose’. He headed a large band at the Venice Ballroom, Los Angeles (1944-6), then returned to live in Texas” (The Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular Music, 2001).

Ted Daffan’s Texans “Born to Lose”

679 Ernest Tubb (1914-1984) and the Troubadours “Walking the Floor Over You” 1941

“Stripped of all sentimental veneer and all symbolism, a honky-tonk song conveys in direct, hard-hitting, explicit language the day-to-day lives of working-class people.” When Tubb recorded “Walking the Floor Over You,” his “direct, on-the-beat, clear, believably rendered lyric with that spare single electric guitar accompaniment hit the nickelodeon crowd from Detroit to Los Angeles to Richmond like a revelation: ‘Here’s the real thing at last…’” (Ronnie Pugh, Ernest Tubb: The Texas Troubadour, 1998).

Ernest Tubb and the Troubadours “Walking the Floor Over You”

678 Floyd Tillman (1914-2003) and his Favorite Playboys “They Took the Stars Out of Heaven” 1941

“the songwriting high priest of hurtin’ and cheatin’ anthems was clearly Floyd Tillman. Tillman was born in 1914 in Ryan, Oklahoma, but grew up in Post, Garza County, Texas. As a teenager, Floyd got his musical education playing mandolin and then guitar in a family band. He later purchased a guitar with a metal resonator that provided acoustic amplification. After relocating to Houston in 1934, Tillman added an electric pickup to his guitar, and when he recorded with the Blue Ridge Playboys in 1936, Floyd’s electrified guitar licks made him of one of the earliest exponents of the instrument on record and placed him in the electric vanguard that was beginning to sweep through Texas and the Southwest” (Joe W. Specht, Southwestern American Literature, Fall 2016).

Floyd Tillman and his Favorite Playboys “They Took the Stars Out of Heaven”

677 The Five Soul Stirrers “Walk Around” 1940

Rebert Harris “helped change the group’s sound to a slower, deeper, more passionate hard gospel style. The group’s influence quickly outgrew the Houston gospel scene, where their acolytes indeed a couple of farm boy cousins from Cleveland, Texas…The Stirrers revolutionized gospel when they added a second lead singer, a fifth member of the quartet, so the four-part harmony wouldn’t be disturbed as the two leads took turns wailing” (Michael Corcoran, All Over the Map, 2005).

The Five Soul Stirrers “Walk Around”

676 The Chuck Wagon Gang “Higher” 1940

“The Carters were just tickled to be making records in 1936, a year after Dad Carter went to KFYO in Lubbock, hat in hands, to ask for a radio show for his quartet, which drew nightly praise from neighbors who gravitated to the Carters’ front porch every evening. The family, which included nine children, was dirt poor, laboring in the cotton fields, and when Anna (then called ‘Effie’) came down with pneumonia there was no money to pay a doctor. The Carters turned to music for extra cash…the quartet went on to create a body of work that stands at the top of the Southern gospel field” (Michael Corcoran, All Over the Map, 2005).

The Chuck Wagon Gang “Higher”