Started from the Bottom: Week of 2/29/1964
Sixty years ago, there was Beatlemania - even on the bottom of the Billboard Hot 100
Like most music enthusiasts, I love the Billboard charts - and like most music writers, I am constantly trying to think of different ways to look at and talk about pop music. In that spirit, I present a regular free feature called Started from the Bottom, where I take a look at a random Hot 100 chart's lowest 10 entries. Are they classic hits on the way down? Future favorites just starting their run? Forgotten fun that never reached the highest heights? Come and take a look with me!
Hot 100 date: February 29, 1964
At the top: I wouldn't normally do two charts from the same decade so close to another, but this was hard to resist: Looking for charts that fell on Leap Day, the most interesting by far is the one from 1964, when The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You" hold the top two spots of the Hot 100. It's the fifth of seven weeks at the top for "Hold Your Hand"; "She Loves You" will follow it for another two weeks, and "Can't Buy Me Love" will follow that for another five. Another three Beatles singles will hit No. 1 before year's end, as will Peter & Gordon's "A World Without Love," a song John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote but never recorded. On this Hot 100, there are three Beatles hits in the Top 10 and another two in the Hot 100 (including one of those songs where they're backing up Tony Sheridan). On April 4 of this year, the entire Top 5 will be Beatles singles.
There are other musical stories going on - Motown's hitting a real hot streak with acts like The Supremes in 1964 - but this is peak Beatlemania, and I'd be crazy not to see what's going on at the other end of the charts.
The Beatles/Fats connection ran deep.
- Fats Domino, "Lazy Lady" (chart debut)
From the other side of the Hot 100 comes, coincidentally, a major influence on The Fab Four: Fats Domino, who'd not scored a Top 10 single since "Walking in New Orleans" in 1960. "Lazy Lady," a fine enough tune with a great horn riff propelling the band, got as high as No. 86 - and only a few more of his singles would dent the bottom of the charts, including a 1968 cover of "Lady Madonna" (a song Paul McCartney sought to emulate Domino's influential playing) that hit No. 100.
Rock 'n' roll hairstyles would only get longer, and weirder.
- The Swans, "The Boy with the Beatle Hair" (chart debut)
How big were The Beatles at this point? Songs roughly about The Beatles were making the Hot 100. Can you imagine if people were writing songs about trying to get tickets to the Eras Tour or watching the "Thriller" video? (Wait, is that what "Doin' It in a Haunted House" is about??) The Swans, a teen duo from Philadelphia, only released a few singles, and this one is the most notable, even if it sounds more like the theme to Family Affair than John, Paul, George and Ringo.
I almost admire the hustle to just re-do what worked before.
- Booker T. & The MG's, "Mo-Onions" (current peak position)
After what seemed like a fluke hit - the No. 3 instrumental "Green Onions" - Booker T. & The MG's tried a few singles later to...just invert the chord progression and give it another go. Unsurprisingly, this would only go one slot higher before tumbling off the chart; it would be a tragedy if this wasn't one of the greatest instrumental ensembles in history, not only due for more hits in the late '60s ("Hang 'Em High," "Time is Tight") but also a great interpretation of - you guessed it - The Beatles on 1970's McLemore Avenue, a set of Abbey Road covers Stax-style.
It's interesting to notice the labels in on the newer pop sounds at the time, like Cameo-Parkway and Vee-Jay. Your RCAs and Columbias weren't quite back in the mix just yet, although Elvis was still cutting tracks (usually for bad movies) and Bob Dylan was already a Columbia signee.
- Dee Dee Sharp, "Willyam, Willyam" (debut/peak position)
For a short while, Dee Dee Sharp was kind of like the Darlene Love of the Cameo-Parkway label group, scoring a brace of Top 10s in 1962-1963 (including "Mashed Potato Time," "Slow Twistin'" and "Ride!"). "Willyam, Willyam" was one of her last Hot 100 entries - a beautifully dramatic love song with some pretty sinister lyrics! (Sharp would later record for Philadelphia International Records and associated labels, having married PIR co-founder Kenny Gamble.)
You may recall this song was later covered by Cher for the film Mermaids.
- Betty Everett, "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)" (chart debut)
A genuine non-Beatle hit in the wings! Written by Rudy Clark (who also penned The Young Rascals' "Good Lovin'" and future George Harrison hit "Got My Mind Set on You") and first recorded to little fanfare by Merry Clayton (the killer female voice on The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter"), Everett's terrific rendition of this pop gem would reach No. 6 in the spring of '64 - a coup for the Vee-Jay label, which was also one of the surprisingly many U.S. labels licensing Beatles material from EMI. (EMI's U.S. label Capitol was initially not too interested in the quartet, but that would change.)
I'd love to met the people who bought this in 1964. Obsessives? Parents making a mistake at the record shop?
- Donna Lynn, "My Boyfriend Got a Beatle Haircut" (current peak position)
Another Beatle novelty song! Now, let's first discuss the timing on this. The first Beatles LP for American audiences (Vee-Jay's Introducing...The Beatles!) was put on hold just before its summer 1963 release. (It ended up coming out in 1964.) EMI then started licensing things to the Swan label - notably "She Loves You" - but none caught on in America. It was until "I Want to Hold Your Hand" that U.S. programmers realized there was something big on the horizon, and it was rush-released by Capitol right after Christmas '63. That's two months before this chart date, which is only weeks after they're on The Ed Sullivan Show in the States. Talk about striking while the iron is hot!
Then again, Donna Lynn (who also scored another quirky hit for Capitol that year called "Java Jones") was no stranger to such tunes: the year before, with the same writer-producer duo (Jack Wolf and "Bugs" Bower), she cut "Oh I'm in Love (with George Maharis)," a very specific ode to the Route 66 star and singer.
One of The Caravelles, a girl named Lois Wilkinson, later performed under the name Lois Lane - clearly a less litigious time, then.
- The Caravelles, "Have You Ever Been Lonely (Have You Ever Been Blue)" (peak position)
Not quite the British Invasion: this U.K. duo only months before had scored a major hit when their "You Don't Have to Be a Baby to Cry" reached No. 3 on the Hot 100. (It was still in the Top 40 into this calendar year.) By contrast, the airy harmonies of "Have You Ever Been Lonely" didn't get any higher than here, and that was the last they were seen on the charts.
Stevie enjoyed the kind of musical autonomy Motown would not give its next underage hitmakers, The Jackson 5.
- Little Stevie Wonder, "Castles in the Sand" (chart debut)
Say you knew him when! Little Stevie Wonder's third chart appearance - following the sensational No. 1 "Fingertips (Part 2)" and a minor follow-up, "Workout Stevie, Workout" - was the last time the then-14-year-old wunderkind was credited with that adjective. (The parent album, Stevie At the Beach, was full of similar seaside standards like "Ebb Tide," "Red Sails in the Sunset" and "Beyond the Sea.") "Castles in the Beach" only peaked at No. 52, and his voice surely hadn't landed on that golden timbre quite yet - but he was only a year away from co-writing and releasing the Top 5 barn-burner "Uptight (Everything's Alright)," which propelled him not only into the upper echelon of Motown's roster, but soon enough, one of the finest of the century.
"I Can't Stand It" was written by a doo-wop/blues musician named Smokey McAlister; the B-side was a cover of "Blueberry Hill," well known in its rendition by Fats Domino.
- Soul Sisters, "I Can't Stand It" (chart debut)
This duo only issued one album's worth of material on Sue Records - and this track would just miss the Top 40 in the spring of '64 - but it's really good. The call-and-response chorus and killer R&B backing track makes this exactly the kind of stuff that should be on the charts alongside The Beatles, who were no doubt influenced by some of the best Black acts of the prior decade or so.
Dick and DeeDee previously scored hits in 1961 ("The Mountain's High," No. 2) and 1963 ("Young and in Love," No. 17). They'd have one more Top 20 later in 1964 with "Thou Shalt Not Steal."
- Dick and DeeDee, "All My Trials" (previously peaked at No. 89)
This bottom 10 closes out with a middle-of-the-road rendition of an obscure folk song/spiritual, more famously sung by the likes of Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Ray Stevens, and - I swear, I'm not making this up - a U.K. Top 40 version by Paul McCartney. Beatlemania really is something else, huh?