844 The Skatalites “Guns of Navarrone” 1965

“The Skatalites’ sound was born in Kingston, Jamaica, where several of the original members graduated from the Alpha Boys School, a prestigious arts and trade academy, in the 1940s.” Drummer Lloyd Knibb converted the African rhythms of hand drums “onto a trap set, playing all three drum parts at the same time. He took the sound into the studio and with boogie-woogie melodies laid on top of the nyabinghi beats, ska was born. Suddenly the city’s top vocalists were clamoring to record over the ska beats. Knibb and company found themselves backing a who’s who of soon-to-be Jamaican legends” (Sengupta Stith, Austin American-Statesman, 16 April 2015). 

The Skatalites “Guns of Navarrone”

843 Sir Douglas Quintet “She’s About a Mover” 1965

“In the brazen spirit of the best garage rock, a music in which gumption and attitude mean more than craft and creativity, it represented a ruse by a band from San Antonio to grow long hair, wear ‘mod’ clothes, and pass itself off as the latest British sensation…The scheme succeeded, at least initially, despite the fact that two of the five were Chicanos (swarthier skinned than was typical of pastier British Invasion bands of the era), the singer’s yelp had a distinctively Texas twang, and the repetitive, telegraph-key insistence of the band’s signature Vox organ shared more with the accordion-laced two-step of the Tex-Mex cantina than with the buoyant guitar jangle of Liverpool’s Cavern Club” (Don McLeese, Popular Music and Society, October 2006).

Sir Douglas Quintet “She’s About a Mover”

842 Simon and Garfunkel “The Sound of Silence” 1965

At the Flamingo Club in London, 1964, “There wasn’t anyone around to entertain the large audience. Then suddenly we noticed a young kid with a guitar sitting on the floor. Curly Goss, the promoter, asked him his name. It was Paul…Paul Simon and he was American. Anyway, this unknown kid from New York was dragged onto the stage and started with ‘Church is Burning’, followed it with ‘Leaves That Are Green’ and then ‘The Sound of Silence’. Just then he waved to a tall fair-haired kid at the back of the club, asking him to join him and together they sang ‘Benedictus’. Everyone was flabbergasted. They’d knocked the audience out. We got into conversation and soon learnt to our disappointment that both were returning to New York the next day” (Robert Matthew-Walker, Simon and Garfunkel, 1984). The Sounds of Silence album is listed on the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. 

Simon and Garfunkel “The Sound of Silence”

841 The Shangri-Las “Out in the Streets” 1965

“George Morton was born in 1940 in Richmond, Virginia but grew up in Brooklyn, New York. When he was 14, his family moved to Hicksville, on Long Island, a decision taken by his parents, according to Morton, to keep him out of the trouble. Needless to say, he found a gang to run with on Long Island and at school formed a doo-wop group, the Marquees. By his early twenties, Morton was loafing around and his entry into the music industry came about by accident, through an acquaintance with Ellie Greenwich, who was married to Jeff Barry...A skeptical Barry then challenged him to bring him some of his work. In fact, Morton at that stage did not have a single song.” But he wrote a demo performed by session players, Billy Joel and the Shangri-Las, and became “a key architect of the ‘girl group’ sound.” When he left the music business, he “found a second unlikely career designing golf clubs” (The Times (London), 18 February 2013). 

The Shangri-Las “Out in the Streets”

840 The Shangri-Las “I Can Never Go Home Anymore” 1965

They “found a perfect niche, specializing in the doomed romanticism of American teenage life and unfolding a landscape filled with misunderstood adolescents, rebel boyfriends, disapproving parents, the foreboding threat of pregnancy and inevitably, tragic death.” Their hit, “I Can Never Go Home Anymore,” “saw the old teenage angst transmogrified into an almost tragic, sexual neuroticism” (The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 2006).  

The Shangri-Las “I Can Never Go Home Anymore”

839 The Seeds “Pushin’ Too Hard” 1965

“Hearing Pushin’ Too Hard by the Seeds for the first time while drifting under the streetlights of Lyons [Nebraska] on a warm night sent me, for two minutes and 30 seconds, onto another lane of existence…Sky Saxon, the troubled brain behind it, had a voice that sounded like a bratty little kid who just may be dangerous. The Seeds were part of the flower-power generation, but they brought a darkness and an edge to it…I moved on to other songs, other bands, and Sky Saxon and the Seeds moved on to where most such musicians eventually ended up—victims of the music biz, drugs, flighty fans, unscrupulous managers, or just time. After a couple more singles, and an uneven album or two, they disappeared, becoming just a footnote of an era” (Duke Erikson, The Sunday Times (London), 24 February 2008). 

The Seeds “Pushin’ Too Hard”

838 Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs “Wooly Bully” 1965

Tommy Walton was guitarist from Alabama who played for a sessions band called the Vikings. “We stayed with the popular stuff, we did some Beach Boys…we could do the Hollies…We ended up playing this gig with Sam the Sham at Jacksonville State University. We were sound checking and he was supposed to show up and he never showed. I mean, like we were freaking out. Everyone is pacing the floor and like twenty minutes before the gig he comes strutting in there. Sam came knocking and its just ‘Guys! Settle down! Look at this shit: it’s just three chords.’ So he showed us all his material in twenty minutes. He said, ‘Just watch me’ and we did! We were freaking out, but he came on and took all the money and left! I said, ‘Mmm, so that is how that works’” (A. J. Millard, Magic City Nights: Birmingham’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Years, 2017). 

Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs “Wooly Bully”

837 The Rolling Stones “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” 1965

“On the night of May 9, 1965, Keith awoke in a hotel room in Clearwater, Florida, with a riff running through his mind, and he quickly recorded it on a cassette tape.” Richards: “‘Satisfaction’ was the biggest hit we’ve ever had and it just came boing bang crash, and it was on tape before I felt it. People say they write songs, but in a way you’re more the medium. I feel like all the songs in the world are just floating around, it’s just a matter of, like, an antenna, or whatever you pick up. So many uncanny things have happened. A whole song just appears from nowhere in five minutes, the whole structure, and you haven’t worked at all” (Victor Bockris, Keith Richards: The Biography, 1998). Listed on the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.

The Rolling Stones “Satisfaction”

836 The Rolling Stones “The Last Time” 1965

“Brian Jones was increasingly disturbed about his own role within the group. In many ways the original instigator of the Rolling Stones, and their early leader, he resented Mick Jagger’s takeover as leader and symbol of the band…Although his resentment was beginning to make itself felt, thee was certainly no suggestion that he should leave the group. For one thing, his musicianship was simply too valuable. As performer on a range of instruments—guitar, dulcimer, mellotron, organ, harmonica—he was not expendable. Listening to the early singles, Jones’ contribution is obvious. In ‘The Last Time’, his guitar supplies both rhythmic impulse and harmonic fill-in” (Tim Dowley, The Rolling Stones, 1983). 

The Rolling Stones “The Last Time”

835 The Rolling Stones “Get Off of My Cloud” 1965

“How do you hold it together if you are right at the top of the mountain with the final say on everything and everyone and the mountain is made up of money and people’s lives? Mick Jagger does it by having a go at laying everyone’s game, and often doing it as well, if not better, than they do. Raised middle class, he go so good at a working-class art form that the upper classes ran to accept him as a snarling, sneering  primitive, only to find that he had better manners than they did” (Robert Greenfield, S.T.P.: A Journey Through America with the Rolling Stones, 2002).

The Rolling Stones “Get Off of My Cloud”

834 The Ron-Dels with Delbert McClinton (1940- ) “If You Really Want Me to, I’ll Go” 1965

“Another young Lubbock group, Delbert McClinton and the Ron-Dels, recorded ‘If You Really Want Me to I’ll Go.’ McClinton, who had cut his musical teeth on the Jacksboro Highway blues scene of Fort Worth, had established himself as a rising rockabilly-blues player and went on to sustain a lengthy musical career encompassing various styles” (Gary Hartman, et al, The Handbook of Texas Music, 2012).  

The Ron-Dels “If You Really Want Me to, I’ll Go”

833 Smokey Robinson (1940- ) and the Miracles “The Tracks of My Tears” 1965

"Musician contributor Jon Young remarked that [Robinson's] autobiography 'documents everything from family history and the early days of the Miracles to his extramarital affairs and, most striking, a graphic account of two years in thrall to cocaine in the mid-'80s.' When asked why he chose to provide such candid details about his drug addiction, Robinson responded to Young, 'I wrote it because it was God's will.…At the time I was saved, I was already dead. You are now speaking to Lazarus'" (Contemporary Black Biography, 2005). Listed on the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles “The Tracks of My Tears”

832 Smokey Robinson (1940- ) and the Miracles “Ooo Baby Baby” 1965

“Gordy founded Motown Records in 1959. Robinson, also respected for his business acumen, would serve as a founding executive at the label as well as a talent scout, in-house songwriter and producer. He would later write songs for Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, Mary Wells and Marvin Gaye. Gordy still calls him ‘the soul of Motown’” (Ma Christian, Jet, 2007). 

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles “Ooo Baby Baby”

831 Smokey Robinson (1940- ) and the Miracles “Going to a Go-Go” 1965

“At first the members of the Miracles—who were each paid five dollars per week by their agent, Berry Gordy—found the music business difficult. ‘For a while,’ Claudette Robinson related in Essence, ‘we lived basically in one bedroom. But we didn't stay in that house very long. Fortunately, the music started to happen’” (Contemporary Black Biography, 2005).

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles “Going to a Go-Go”

830 The Righteous Brothers “Unchained Melody” 1965

“In 1990 the movie Ghost came out, which featured our song ‘Unchained Melody.’ I told David Cohen we should call Mike Curb to see if we could get it re-released. Mike was the young ‘whiz-kid of the music business…He said there was a problem releasing ‘Unchained Melody’ again because of some leasing rights issue. However, Mike had an idea, ‘I’ll tell you what, go back in the studio and record it again.’ Bobby wasn’t really in ‘Unchained Melody’ shape, at least not to record it like the original with all those high notes—but, we went in the studio anyway and I worked with him and we got it…Artistically, a stupid idea; financially; a wonderful idea. The album when platinum” (Bill Medley and Mike Marino, The Time of My Life: A Righteous Brother’s Memoir, 2014).  

The Righteous Brothers “Unchained Melody”

829 Paul Revere (1938-2014) and the Raiders “Just Like Me” 1965

“The Raiders were Pacific north-westerners, formed in Portland in 1961. They evolved out of the Boise band, the Downbeats, named after a jazz magazine. The common misperception was that ‘Paul Revere’ was an alias, a convenient appropriation of a historical figure for showbiz purposes. Fortunately, the Raider founder, Idahoan-born Paul Revere Dick, when choosing between his memorable surnames, prudently selected the historical hook over the one susceptible to adolescent anatomy humor. Columbia signed the band on the strength  of their unique garage, pop-rock, and R&B sound, or, more simply put by lead singer mark Lindsay, their being ‘a bunch of white bread kids doing their best to sound black’” (George Plasketes, Popular Music & Society, Oct. 2015). 

Paul Revere (1938-2014) and the Raiders “Just Like Me”

828 Otis Redding (1941-1967) “Shake” 1965

“Like many early Motown and, indeed, ‘60s soul albums generally, Otis Blue did not feature a photograph of the singer on either front or back side of the sleeve, contemporary marketing logic being that the portrait of a black man might deter potential white American buyers…Released in September 1965, the LP quickly came to be regarded as his masterpiece and the artistic and commercial pinnacle of Southern soul” (Geoff Brown, Otis Redding: Try A Little Tenderness, 2001). 

Otis Redding “Shake”

827 Otis Redding (1941-1967) “Respect” 1965

“The crowds coming to see him were getting bigger and more enthusiastic; he could sense that his life was quickly changing. ‘I think he was more sophisticated and aware of who he was,’ Phil Walden said. ‘He was successful and he liked that lifestyle, being a star and having people like him. He was into being Otis Redding, and I think it reflects in his music. He was a real star finally, not something we tried to fabricate’” (Scott Freeman, Otis! The Otis Redding Story, 2001). 

Otis Redding “Respect”

826 Otis Redding (1941-1967) “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” 1965

“Considering its place and statue in soul music’s history, the surviving participants in the recording of Otis Blue make its creation sound much like a happy accident. Wayne Jackson’s view of Redding’s sessions was that ‘Otis came in the studio and started making songs, putting songs together out of the top of his head. They came together and whoever packaged them, I guess, put ‘em together. Otis never thought, I’ll do an album called Otis Blue. He was just cutting complete songs’” (Geoff Brown, Otis Redding: Try A Little Tenderness, 2001). Listed on the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.

Otis Redding “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”

825 The Proclaimers “He’ll Understand” 1965

A Welsh Christian group singing American southern gospel (www.1960schristianmusic.com).
“‘THE PROCLAIMERS’ are a group with a difference! As they travel from town to town singing at Youth Clubs, Hospitals, Café’s, Churches and chapels, their aim runs much deeper than to just entertain. While their presentation is of a high standard, the message behind each song conveys the sincerity of their faith as they unfold the story of God’s Love towards us and how He gave His Son a sacrifice for our sin. The City of Cardiff is the home of ‘THE PROCLAIMERS’ and although they come from different walks of life, they unite to spread the gospel in song” (Messages with a Lilt album notes, 1965). 

The Proclaimers “He’ll Understand”

824 Wilson Pickett (1941-2006) “In the Midnight Hour” 1965

“if Pickett wasn’t the first, he has a strong claim to being the greatest purveyor of Pentecostal-style vocal pyrotechnics on the pop scene, virtually everyone described the singer as ‘his own worst enemy’...Born in 1941 in a two-room sharecroppers’ shack in rural Alabama, Pickett was scarred by physical abuse and poverty...and he remained a difficult loner, subject to extreme mood swings and paranoid rages. Music provided some release, but playful pugnaciousness turned to brutal violence when he was drunk, which was often – and that was before the cocaine” (Elijah Wald, New Statesman, Apr. 2017). 

Wilson Pickett “In the Midnight Hour”

823 The Peacemakers “Satisfied” 1965

“whilst living in Frinton, Justyn Rees regularly found himself in the coffee bars of surrounding towns looking at the sad and lonely faces of local young people. It stirred in him the desire to communicate his faith in Jesus Christ, and before long he was playing his guitar to them and singing about the answer Jesus had provided to his problems. Having established himself as both guitarist and vocalist, Justyn was invited to form a guitar group to provide the music for a series of meetings being conducted in London by his father Tom Rees. So 'The Peacemakers' emerged as one of Britain's first Christian beat groups, and soon they were playing all over Britain and Europe, making records and broadcasting on TV and Radio” (Internet Archive, https://archive.org/stream/discogsimages). 

The Peacemakers “Satisfied”

822 Odetta (1930-2008) “Baby, I’m in the Mood for You” 1965 and “Water Boy” 1954

“Some people sing; Odetta testified. Martin Luther King Jr. called Odetta…‘the queen of American folk music.’ In a career spanning nearly 60 years, she wrapped her booming, classically trained contralto around traditional hymns, work songs and pop tunes. A solid, inspiring figure at 1960s civil rights events, Odetta brought art-song precision to the gospel and blues repertoire. If a line could be drawn from Mahalia Jackson to Janis Joplin, it would have to go through her. Born Odetta Holmes in Birmingham, Ala., and raised in Los Angeles, she sang in musical theater as a teenager, and in the early ‘50s helped form the vanguard of the folk-music movement. Bob Dylan said that her 1956 LP, Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues, was ‘the first thing that turned me on to folk singing.’ She returned the favor by recording an album of Dylan songs in 1965” (Richard Corliss, Time, 15 Dec. 2008). 

Odetta “Baby, I’m in the Mood for You”

Odetta “Water Boy”

821 Phil Ochs (1940-1976) “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore” 1965

“Some of you may have been lucky enough to frequent a Phil Ochs performance or caught a glimpse of him at demonstrations and rallies prior to his suicide in 1976. For those like me, who only encountered him through his albums, yes vinyl, or not at all, he was lauded as a musical spokesman of the 1960s. His song, ‘I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore’ was one of the anthems of the anti-Vietnam War Movement. He was a committed activist who never compromised. In 1964, Phil joined the Mississippi Caravan of Music to help break the back of Jim Crow. He went South to support the domestic warriors on the front lines and then used his songs to educate those who were unaware of southern racial injustice or were unable to make the journey” (Susan J. Erenrich and Jon F. Wergin, Grassroots Leadership and the Arts For Social Change, 2017).

Phil Ochs “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore”

820 Roger Miller (1936-1992) “King of the Road” 1965

“The Jimmy Dean show gave Roy Clark, Patsy Cline, and Roger Miller their first big breaks and introduced the world to many country music artists.”
Jimmy Dean: “First of all, I’d have to say that Roger Miller was the most spontaneously creative human being I’ve ever met. I mean just off the top of his head. There was a comedic side of him, but there was also a very serious side. I remember I interviewed him on a syndicated show that I had and I asked, ‘Who is roger Miller?’ And he said, ‘Well, he’s a composite of an awful lot of different people.’ And he was. He was a multifaceted human being. Did you hear about the award he presented me?...Well, we introduced ‘King of the Road’ on our television show, and shortly thereafter he sent us the Golden Doorknob Award. It has a little plaque below the golden doorknob that says, ‘To Jimmy Dean, for a million doors you opened for me’” (Lyle E. Style, Ain’t Got No Cigarettes: Memories of Music Legend Roger Miller, 2005).

Roger Miller “King of the Road”