900 Eddie Floyd “Knock on Wood” 1966

“A founder member of the Detroit-based Falcons, Floyd was present on both their major hits, ‘You’re So Fine” and ‘I Found A Love’. He then recorded solo for Lupine in Detroit and Safice in Washington, DC, before moving to Memphis , in 1965 to join the Stax Records organization…During Floyd’s recording tenure at Stax, he enjoyed the use of the session bands Booker T. And The MGs and the Mar-Keys. He opened his account with ‘Things Get Better’, followed by the anthem-like ‘Knock On Wood’, one of soul’s enduring moments, and probably the oly time ‘lightning’ and ‘frightening’ have been coupled without sounding trite” (The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 2006). 

Eddie Floyd “Knock on Wood”

899 The Exceptions “Glory to God” (from Rock ‘n’ Roll Mass) 1966

The Exceptions were based in Chicago. Band member Peter Cetera “went on to become the lead vocalist and front-man for the 1970s band, ‘Chicago’” (www.1960schristianmusic.com).

“One of the most exciting developments of our time is in religious thought: the updating of worship, the involvement of the sacred with the secular. This record follows the revolutionary traditions of St. Ambrose in the 4th cen. And Martin Luther in the 16th cen. In utilizing a popular secular music style with official text of a Church (Roman Catholic) for worship. Although not intended at this time for use in the Roman Catholic liturgy, this music is offered as an example of what some young people find to be a meaningful expression of Worship” (album notes).   

The Exceptions “Glory to God”

898 The Electric Prunes “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)” 1966

“Mark Tulin was born in Philadelphia to Jewish parents, Rose and Leon, and later moved to LA. He and his brother, Kip, were encouraged to learn musical instruments. While studying at Taft high school in Woodland Hills, he joined the guitarist Ken Williams, the singer James Lowe and the drummer Michael Weakley in the Sanctions, who became Jim and the Lords. Like thousands of groups across suburban America, the band could not afford a rehearsal studio, so they practised in their parents’ garage. During one rehearsal, they were discovered by Barbara Harris, whose husband, an estate agent, was in the neighbourhood. Harris introduced the band to Dave Hassinger, an engineer at RCA records who became their manager. Signing to Reprise, the band changed their name to the punchline of a goofy joke ("What's purple and goes buzz-buzz?") and released a single, Ain’t It Hard (1966), which flopped. Reprise’s parent label, Warner Brothers, were nervous about releasing a follow-up, particularly one with such an odd title, but I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night) was released with little fanfare in 1966 and became a sleeper hit, rising to No 11 in the US and No 49 in the UK (Pat Long, The Guardian, 18 March 2011). 

The Electric Prunes “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)”

897 Bob Dylan “Just Like a Woman” 1966

“‘Just Like a Woman’ is the ultimate heartbreaker on the album (Blonde on Blonde), a tale of two ships that don’t just pass in the night; they hit each other at ramming speed and stagger on to their next destination much the worse for wear. It is the kind of breakup whereby the participants will live and learn from it, but they still might not ever be able to shake its lingering repercussions. It is important to note that the song is just as much about the spurned narrator as it is about the ‘Woman’ from the title, if only to provide a defense for it against the criticism from some corners that it is sexist. Were the song completely comprised of the narrator listing all the faults of his former lover, this criticism might have more merit, although it would just mean that the narrator is sexist, not that Dylan is. This is a song, not an op-ed piece” (Jim Beviglia, Counting Down Bob Dylan, 2013).

Bob Dylan “Just Like a Woman”

896 Bob Dylan “Visions of Johanna” 1966

“Being without the one you love can play funny tricks on you. The narrator in ‘Visions of Johanna’ describes the world around him as if viewed through a fun-house mirror, yet he manages striking clarity with his observations in the midst of this skewed reality. Ultimately, it’s of little consolation or consequence to him because Johanna is all that matters. Dylan’s songwriting gifts have never been so brazenly on display as on this staggering effort from Blonde on Blonde. It has perhaps a higher degree of difficulty than any of his songs, in that it must make you interested in the narrator’s wanderings without ever diverting focus from what’s most important: That he misses Johanna” (Jim Beviglia, Counting Down Bob Dylan, 2013).

Bob Dylan “Visions of Johanna”

895 Bob Dylan “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” 1966

“In his live shows from that era…Dylan was challenging his audience rightly to get on board or get out of the way. Even in these shows, however, it wasn’t like he was unleashing an hour’s worth of feedback on the audience. In fact, the No Direction Home documentary features footage of disgruntled fans at his 1966 British concerts complaining that the music was too commercial. These British fans had already been introduced to blues-based rock, so what Dylan was doing seemed to them more of a capitulation than a revolution. If anything, the alteration in the subject matter and lyrics from his acoustic period to his electric period was far more game-changing…Dylan’s words were leaps and bounds ahead of anything else that was being released at the time” (Jim Beviglia, Counting Down Bob Dylan, 2013).

Bob Dylan “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” 

894 Bob Dylan “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” 1966

“…determining Dylan’s motivation behind the song has always been a bit of a head-scratcher. There are two camps here: Those who see Dylan as advocating the use of drugs as a way to solve problems, and those who detect a streak of dark sarcasm in his use of the double meaning of the word ‘stoned’ to throw listeners off track. The songwriter himself has given mixed messages on the subject. He has vehemently denied in interviews that this or any of his other compositions were intended to be about drugs, nor has he ever advocated the use of drugs as a way of enhancing the listening experience. Yet, by all accounts, he insisted that he would have nobody playing on the session for the song who wasn’t stoned, which can account in part for the woozy yet wondrous recording” (Jim Beviglia, Counting Down Bob Dylan, 2013). 

Bob Dylan “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”

893 Donovan “Sunshine Superman”

Donovan: “The inspiration for the lyric came out of meeting my wife Linda in 1965. She had been in a relationship with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. When they split we got together, but it became apparent that Linda wasn’t ready for another ride around this extraordinary thing called fame. So we parted. But in the parting, she put me on the charts, because I immediately wrote ‘Sunshine Superman.’ It isn’t the sort of song that sounds like a broken heart. There seemed to be an intense feeling that we would meet again, and sure enough, we did” (Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, May 2007). 

Donovan “Sunshine Superman”

892 Donovan “Season of the Witch” 1966

Donovan: “My father brought me up in the socialist tradition. He read me poems of radical change. Poets in the 1700s addressed the great tragedy of the working man and how the industrial revolution was enslaving mankind. With my father, revolution was always in the air. He was a unionist, brought up in the factory world in Glasgow. He went to school barefoot in 1920 but taught himself about poetry and literature. So I was well primed when I was 16 and heard the radical songs of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and realized what was going on” (Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, May 2007). 

Donovan “Season of the Witch”

891 Donovan “Mellow Yellow” 1966

“Leonard Cohen said that a poet finds his theme when he’s a teenager and then never
leaves it. Has that been true for you?
Donovan: Absolutely. The theme is set and all other songs are variations of the theme. From a very early age, my theme was how to rediscover the Celtic magic of the troubadour sound that leads people into the inner world where all creativity comes from.
What techniques did you use to find that inner world as a songwriter?
Donovan: Reading Jack Kerouac and hearing the word ‘Zen’ and going on to Buddhism, then rediscovering the Eastern philosophies and the word ‘meditation,’ I realized that there was an actual technique for finding the inner world that we’d lost in the West” (Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, May 2007).

Donovan “Mellow Yellow”

890 The Spencer Davis Group “Gimme Some Loving” 1966

Steve Winwood, keyboard player: “I came from a musical family. My father, who worked at my great-uncle’s foundry, played the saxophone, clarinet, bass and drums, and he had four brothers who all played music. I started picking out tunes on the piano when I was five or six; when I was nine I got a guitar. I was in the church choir and when my voice broke I began trying to emulate these blues singers that I’d heard, Ray Charles, Bo Diddley. I suppose I missed out on the usual teenage growing up, but I gained so much. I'm eternally grateful for the freedom that my parents gave me. I think my father felt that if the music didn't work out he could always get me a job in the foundry” (Naomi West, The Daily Telegraph, London, 12 June 2010). 

The Spencer Davis Group “Gimme Some Loving”

889 The Crusaders “Praise We the Lord” 1966

“Not only were these Southern Californians one of the first on the scene with a ‘contemporary musical expression: The Beat’, they had one big advantage over other Christian beat outfits of the time (mostly UK bands), and that’s the support of a mainstream label. And boy does it ever show. This one’s got the heaviest garage sound for the era, ‘Praise We The Lord’ probably being the closest Christian music ever got to the raw punk energy of early Who (it’s actually a rip-off of The Yardbird’s tune ‘You’re A Better Man Than I’)” (www.theancientstar-song.com). 

The Crusaders “Praise We the Lord”

888 The Creation “Making Time” 1966

“Two British bands of the 1960s could have been described as the rock equivalent of a pop-art action painting. One, of course, was the Who. The other was often tapped as one of the bands most likely to succeed, but rock operas and stadium tours were not in the cards for the Creation. The group boasted a guitarist who did more than any other British musicians except Pete Townshend and Jeff Beck to pioneer feedback and distortion. It’s even been reported that he declined an invitation to join the Who as a second guitarist.” Said producer Shel Talmy, “Eddie Phillips deserves to be up there as one of the great rock ’n’ roll guitarists of our time, and he’s hardly ever mentioned. Jimmy Page stole the bowing bit of the guitar from Eddie. Eddie was phenomenal” (Richie Unterberger, Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll, 1998).

The Creation “Making Time”