710 Don Covay (1936-2015) “Mercy, Mercy” 1964

“Mr. Covay: I was on the stage, right? I had a guitar player. I had a group at that time called The Goodtimers, right? And all of a sudden, they stopped playing the riff—Ronnie Moon stopped playing the riffraff. All of a sudden, my mind just jumped on it. I said, ‘Have mercy.’ When we got through with it, he said, ‘Whose song is that?’ and asked, ‘Call the studio right now. I’ll call the studio on Sunday if it’s necessary.’ I said, ‘We’re going to cut this.’ When we cut it, we took two takes” (Weekend Edition Sunday, 4/22/2001). 

Don Covay “Mercy, Mercy”

709 Sam Cooke (1931-1964) “A Change Is Gonna Come” 1964

After Cassius Clay defeated Sonny Liston, he “was in the middle of an interview with television announcer Steve Ellis and former champ Joe Louis when he spotted Sam, almost disheveled with excitement, his tie removed, shirt open. ‘Sam Cooke!’ the new champion called out with unabashed enthusiasm. ‘Hey, let that man up here…Let Sam in,’ he insists with all the fervor he has put into the fight. ‘This is the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll singer’” (Peter Guralnick, Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke, 2005). Listed on the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. 

Sam Cooke “A Change Is Gonna Come”

708 Petula Clark (1932- ) “Downtown” 1964

During the rehearsal for a 1968 TV special with Harry Belafonte, Clark held his arm during an emotional rendition of an anti-war song. One of the NBC executives objected, “Screaming…because a white woman had touched a black man on screen.” Belafonte wrote, “Perhaps, I told her, we should pick another fight, another day—at least while her best interests were at stake. ‘Forget my best interest,’ she said. ‘What would you do?’ I grinned. ‘I’d nail the bastard.’ ‘So we will,’ she replied” (Simon Goddard, The Guardian (London), 4/2/2018). 

Petula Clark “Downtown”

707 The Dave Clark Five “Bits and Pieces” 1964

“Where the Beatles took their cue from 1950’s white rockers (with a healthy dose of the 1930’s Tin Pan Alley songs favored by both McCartney and John Lennon), the DC5 initially looked more towards black groups and singers such as Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett—largely because of the bluesy, soul-influenced style of Smith’s singing. The importance of the organ and occasional saxophone also underline this influence” (John Clark, Notes, March 2015).

The Dave Clark Five “Bits and Pieces”

706 Solomon Burke (1940-2010) “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” 1964

“Burke was equally legendary for his entrepreneurial ability—at one point during an engagement at New York’s Apollo he set up a popcorn stand outside the theatre—and his highly theatrical performances, at which, in the manner of James Brown, he would be crowned on stage…’Everybody Needs Somebody to Love’…was a staple of many British R&B groups’ live performances” (The Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular Music, 2001)

Solomon Burke “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”

705 Chuck Berry (1926-2017) “You Never Can Tell” 1964

The scandal and jail time of the previous years “devastated Berry. He had fallen out with his family, and was left with a strong distrust for the legal system as well as for the media that had hounded him. Once jovial and relaxed, he was now bitter and mistrustful. Yet in the end the scandal ruined neither his family life nor his career. Soon after his release…he began touring and recording again. While in prison, he had written a spate of new songs, some of which became hits in 1964 and 1965. Among these were … ‘You Never Can Tell’” (Contemporary Musicians, 2002).

Chuck Berry “You Never Can Tell”

704 Chuck Berry (1926-2017) “No Particular Place to Go” 1964

“I would often have to sing aloud while arranging these songs and sometimes I would look around and find an audience of two or three guys listening to my practicing. Once, while improvising in the gang shower where I was granted the privilege to practice, I looked up and saw the Birdman of Alcatraz standing watching me strum. I’d seen him in the corridor walking to and fro but had never exchanged words with him. I said, ‘Hi, Birdman,’ addressing him as I’d heard other do. He just smiled, then turned and walked away” (Chuck Berry: The Autobiography, 1987).

Chuck Berry “No Particular Place to Go”

703 The Beau Brummels “Laugh, Laugh” 1964

“The Beau Brummels made their earliest recordings in San Francisco in 1964 with Sylvester Stewart (later Sly of Sly and the Family Stone) producing. They were the first American band to meet the challenge of the early English invasion, and particularly the challenge posed by the Beatles, with an American version of the English rock sound. Their mid-1960’s recordings, with their jangling, deftly layered guitar parts, melodious songs and chiming vocal harmonies, set the stage for the folk-rock style that flowered in the next few years” (Robert Palmer, The New York Times, 4/3/1983).

The Beau Brummels “Laugh, Laugh”

702 The Beatles “Eight Days a Week” 1964

“Contrasting the Beatles For Sale sessions with the burst of creativity that yielded the all-original A Hard Day’s Night, it is difficult not to regard the group’s revival of its Liverpool and Hamburg repertory of covers as a sign of fatigue.” (Allan Kozinn, The Beatles, 1995).

The Beatles “Eight Days a Week”

701 The Beatles “A Hard Day’s Night” 1964

“During all the shouting and screaming and boasting of their record-breaking tours in Britain and America, the Beatles were crouching somewhere inside the giant piece of machinery which was transporting them round and round the world. They’d retreated inside it in 1963, forced by all the pressures, and remained there, hermetically sealed, as if on a desert island, from all life and reality” (Hunter Davies, The Beatles, 1996).

The Beatles “A Hard Day’s Night”

700 The Beatles “Can’t Buy Me Love” 1964

“Elvis Presley’s press conferences were all deferential: he even called reporters sir and ma’am. The Beatles were not that way. Asked to sing, they refused. Pressed by a reporter who said there was doubt that they could sing, Lennon said drily, ‘we need money first’. Asked why their music excited teenagers, McCartney deadpanned, ‘we don’t know, really’, to which Lennon added, ‘if we did we’d form another group and be managers’” (Allan Kozinn, The Beatles, 1995). 

The Beatles “Can’t Buy Me Love”

699 The Beatles “I Feel Fine” 1964

“by late 1963, ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah’…had become a cliché. By the October 1964 recording of the bridge of ‘I Feel Fine,’ the Beatles’ shouts and endlessly repeated syllables and phrases were for the most part toned down into joyful yet Apollonian ‘ooh’s in sustained backing vocals. The Beatles had begun to seek other means of expressing excitement, involving both instrumental and vocal techniques. In ‘I Feel Fine,’ powerful joy is celebrated both in the opening, in which Lennon creates feedback in his own guitar from the open A on McCartney’s bass, and in the rhythmically emphasized three-part choral declamations ‘I’m so glad’ and ‘she’s so glad’” (Walter Everett, The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men through Rubber Soul, 2001). 

The Beatles “I Feel Fine”

698 The Beach Boys “All Summer Long” 1964

“by 1964, the Beach Boys were firmly entrenched as one of the most successful American pop groups. The band had come a long way from Brian Wilson and Al Jardine’s original dream. ‘when the Beach Boys started, I wanted us to be a folk group,’ Jardine said. ‘As it turns out, the group has become America’s balladeers regarding music; the folk myths, the experience of this country’” (Charles Granata, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, 2003). 

The Beach Boys “All Summer Long”

697 The Beach Boys “I Get Around” 1964

Mike Love “picked up on the morbid frustration of Brian’s basic lyrics, on which Brian bluntly divulged ‘getting bugged’ driving up and down the same old streets while pining for exotic places in which to spend the ‘real good bread’ he was earning” (Timothy White, The Nearest Faraway Place, 1994). 

The Beach Boys “I Get Around”

696 The Beach Boys “Don’t Worry Baby” 1964

Brian Wilson was “floored by the songs Phil Spector was making…he noticed how the young producer was beginning to use the recording studio as an instrument unto itself. It was the sound that did it for Brian (Peter Carlin, Catch a Wave, 2006). After hearing Phil Spector’s record of the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” Brian Wilson told his girlfriend, Marilyn, “I can’t do that. Not that great. Not ever.” She replied, “Don’t worry, baby. You will.” He “learned every note, every sound, the pulse of every groove” of the record, then collaborated with lyricist Roger Christian and “wrote a lush ballad whose title and chorus came directly from Marilyn’s comforting words, ‘Don’t Worry, Baby’” (Brian Wilson, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, 1991). 

The Beach Boys “Don’t Worry Baby”