About This Time 60 Years Ago… It’s The Hits Of May-ish 1964!

The Hottest Hit On The Planet:

“My Guy”
by Mary Wells

I blame Whoopi Goldberg.

**“*Really?* OK. Sure. Take your best shot, Music Boy.”**

Sister Act came out before I ever had the chance to take even the shallowest dive into 60s soul, or even 60s pop, or even any 60s music that wasn’t included on the two compilations my parents had in the car (three, if you count The Beatles’ “Blue” and “Red” separately.)*

And so, no matter how many times I hear the original version, I can’t get past it. I can’t hear it as anything other than a hymn. I can’t hear it as anything other than “My God.”

(I have a similar problem with “I Will Follow Him.”

I didn’t even like Sister Act that much.

{What you say?}

And I can’t stop thinking this. Even when I’m listening to Mary Wells’ certainly secular source material, as she cheekily purrs about how ”no muscle bound man could take my hand from my guy”

Almost certainly not a lyric that has ever been featured in a hymn. Neither, for that matter, is “as a matter of opinion, I think he’s tops!”

{Tell me more!}

“My Guy” was written by Smokey Robinson.

He had the bizarre idea of turning Mary Wells – a girl from Detroit – into the female Harry Belafonte.

Although Smokey never – to my knowledge – successfully convinced Mary to sing about a beautiful bunch of ripe bananas, there is a bit of a slinky calypso groove to some of her other hits. Particularly the sultry story song “You Beat Me To The Punch” (it’s a 9.)

And, “The One Who Really Loves You”, which went so far as to include bongos, and made Detroit sound as though it was located somewhere south of Miami.

Having said that, the primary attraction of “The One Who Really Loves You” is hearing Mary quipping about all other petty girls who love you (it’s a 7.)

But Mary’s biggest hit – “My Guy” – had another, influence, one not related to Harry Belafonte.

{What you say??}

Motown’s house band, The Funk Brothers, were tired from working hard all day.

And in a hurry to get home for dinner, they decided – instead of going through the frustrating effort of coming up with their own intro for “My Guy” – to simply play “Canadian Sunset” instead.

{What you say????}

“Canadian Sunset” was a bit of a jazz classic by pianist Eddie Haywood.

Or perhaps an example of what exotica sounds like when your geographic inspiration is not especially exotic.

It was transformed into the moody murmur at the beginning of “My Guy”, before returning sporadically throughout the rest of the song. It’s pretty much the primary hook of “My Guy”. Eddie should have gotten a song writing credit for it really, but they didn’t seem to worry about that sort of thing so much back then.

{Tell me more!!!!}

The Funk Brothers – although nobody called them that back then, at least partially because Berry Gordy didn’t like the word “funk” – assumed that nobody would notice such a blatant swipe because the song was so silly it couldn’t possibly be a hit. I guess they were half right. The Funk Brothers may have been genius musicians, but they didn’t really understand how pop music worked.

{What you say????????}

A line like “I’m stickin’ to my guy like a stamp to a letter, like the birds of a feather, we stick together” may be dumb, and rhyming “word of honour” with “and I’m gonna” may be even dumber, but when performed by Mary in a voice that switches from cheeky to boastful to just a little bit saucy (that bit at the end where she starts impersonating Mae West) it’s exactly the right kind of dumb.

Mary attacks that dumbness with relish! The Funk Brothers may have been tired and dreaming of nothing more than to go home, but Mary sounds as though she was having a ball!

{Tell me more!!!!!!!!!!!!}

As a matter of opinion, I think ‘My Guy” is tops, and it’s an 8!

*The other compilation included “Leader Of The Pack”, “Stop! In The Name Of Love”, “Rag Doll” and the 60’s dodgiest song: “Young Girl” by Gary Puckett and The Union Gap.

Meanwhile, in Beatles Land:

“A Hard Day’s Night”
and
“Can’t Buy Me Love”
by The Beatles

“A World Without Love”
by Peter & Gordon

So, what were The Beatles up to?

So, so much! The Beatles were so, so busy! Let’s have a look at their calendar:

In February 1964 they’d played The Ed Sullivan Show in America.

By March 2^nd they were back in Ol’ Blighty and making a movie! Things were happening so fast that they hadn’t joined Equity, the actor’s union, until mere minutes before they began shooting!

Things were happening so fast that they hadn’t even come up with a title for the film yet. They had to wait for Ringo to say the words “hard day’s night”, seemingly just in passing, seemingly just talking nonsense. But everyone thought it was hilarious, and so they ran with it.

Ringo was far better at coming up with song and movie titles than he was at coming up with songs.

It was John who would have to come up with the song that would be the title track for the soundtrack of the movie. Required to write a song about something other than girls – or at least not only about girls – John rhymes “working like a dog” with “sleeping like a log” – which as a kid, I thought was absolutely hilarious – and basically makes being a rock’n’roll star sound like a tough slog.

But “A Hard Day’s Night” is not solely about what a tough life it is being a rock’n’roll star. It’s also about…

… coming home to you
… and the things that you do
… and how they make John feel alright.

Particularly when he’s FEELING YOU AND HOLDING YOU TIGHT!

…TIGHT!!! YEAH!!!

The Beatles plough into “A Hard Day’s Night” with gusto, showing off their unstoppable creativity by inventing a whole new chord that nobody had ever played before, and nobody has been able to figure out how to play since.

“A Hard Day’s Night” is a 10.

The Beatles already written and recorded “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “And I Love Her” and a bunch of other songs that would end up on the Hard Day’s Night soundtrack; “Can’t Buy Me Love” being particularly important in Beatles’ mythology for being the first indication of the band’s presumed Marxist or anti-materialist leanings.

The Beatles didn’t have Marxist or anti-materialist leanings, of course.

Paul McCartney was once famously heard to say “John and I literally used to sit down and say, ‘Now, let’s write a swimming pool.’ ”

And the song was written in a 5-star hotel in Paris, not the sort of setting likely to inspire a revolutionary treatise against staying in 5-star hotels in Paris.

“Can’t Buy Me Love” is the kind of joyous racket that can only come from not having to worry or care about money anymore. “Can’t Buy Me Love” is so joyous, so electrifying, such a full-on racket, that the band has to stop to take a breath:

(“I DON’T CARE TOO…” *stop*… “MUCH FOR MONEY!!!”) every so often…

… before barreling on once more.

“Can’t Buy Me Love” is a 10.

Both songs, it’s worth pointing out, feature Paul and John giving a great big “YEAH-lp” just before George plonks out a guitar solo. It must have been so thrilling for George to get such an enthusiastic introduction.

But George was a serious guy, and nine times out of ten, his face never broke from his trademark stoic demeanor.

Amid all of this, John somehow found the time to get his book – In His Own Write – published, and for the whole band to pose with wax dummies of themselves at Madame Tussauds. The Paul and the George aren’t bad.

But the John and Ringo are terrible!

By May the filming and the album were all finished. And so The Beatles took off on a well-earned holiday. John and George went to Hawaii and Tahiti. Paul and Ringo went to the Virgin Islands. Was this the first sign that The Beatles were breaking off into their own factions? The revolutionary hippies on one side, and the dorky lads on the other?

Another reason for having a holiday was to prepare themselves for their next trick… for in June, The Beatles set off on a world tour!

Which is how they’d spend the bulk of the rest of the year! Busy lads!

Oh, and they had time to write “A World Without Love” for Peter & Gordon!

Okay, Paul had written it years before, but he still had to polish it off and give it to his girlfriend’s brother – and former child-actor – Peter.

You may assume that Peter is the one who looks like John but with Burt Bacharach’s humungous jaw. A brother of a Beatle’s girlfriend would have to look at least reasonably cool, right?

But no, that’s Gordon. Peter is the one that looks like a proto-Austin Powers.

Mike Myers has never mentioned Peter as being an influence, but the resemblance is uncanny.

“A World Without Love” is a Beatles song without any of the electricity of a Beatles song and it’s a 4.

Meanwhile, in Liverpool Land:

“Needles And Pins”
by The Searchers

The Beatles weren’t the only band in Liverpool. The Searchers were a Liverpool band. Not only that, but they were a Hamburg band:

Meaning that – like The Beatles – they spent most of their dues-paying nights playing in Hamburg, roughening up their sound by playing to drunken sailors and other assorted toughs.

Compared to The Beatles though, The Searchers didn’t roughen up their sound up much. The Searchers list of hits is short but impressive; made slightly less impressive by the fact that they hardly wrote a single one of them.

The Searchers mostly recorded covers.

They covered The Drifter’s “Sweets For My Sweet,” an intentionally annoying song, which John Lennon apparently described as the best record to have come out of Liverpool. John is also alleged to have described their harmonies as, and I quote, “f-cking ridiculous”, which feels closer to the truth.

They covered Brenda Lee’s “Sweet Nothin’s”. They covered “Love Potion No. 9.” And they covered two songs written by Jackie DeShannon, before she had a hit with “What The World Needs Now”, long before she wrote “Put A Little Love In Your Heart” and long, long before she wrote “Bette Davis Eyes.”

This was one of them.

Jackie had a lot of help from a pre-Sonny & Cher Sonny Bono and Phil Spector’s assistant, “The Lonely Surfer”-himself, Jack Nitzsche. “Needles & Pins” didn’t come out of Liverpool, it came straight from the bowels of The Brill Building! Here’s Jackie’s original!

Jackie’s version wasn’t much of a hit, but she seems like a hoot! Maybe that was the problem.

Jackie sounds as though she’s having way too much fun to be singing what was essentially a revenge-fantasy song.

It’s easy to miss the revenge-fantasy elements of “Needles & Pins”, since the song – The Searchers version of the song anyway – sounds so darn nice. So reasonable. So level-headed. This is another way The Searchers were different from The Beatles. You couldn’t imagine The Searchers punctuating their songs with a “WOOO!!! YEAH!!!!!”

Except possibly for the drummer. He looks as though he’s dying to throw in a couple of “WOO!!!!! YEAH!!!!!”s!

But yes, “Needles & Pins” is a revenge-fantasy song. I never realized this before. I always assumed the “needles and pins” were something akin to butterflies in The Searchers’ stomachs. But no. Very much no. The “needles and pins” are torture instruments.

The Searchers are in pain. The girl with the face he loved is causing them pain. For one thing, she’s dating another man. The Searchers seem to get some sort of schadenfreuden satisfaction from the fact that “she’s worse to him than me.” The Searchers sensibly decide to leave her alone at this point, secure in the knowledge that eventually she’ll want them back, at which point she’ll experience the torture of “needles and pins.”

So: Not the nice song you probably thought it was!

“Needles and Pins” is a 7.

Meanwhile, In Dusty Land:

“I Only Wanna Be With You”
by Dusty Springfield

Legend has it that Dusty was in America when she heard “Tell Him” by The Exciters on the radio. It was at that moment that she decided what she wanted to do with her life! She wanted to sing feisty up-tempo soul-pop numbers at the top of her voice!

That’s totally understandable. “Tell Him” is a great record (it’s an 8.)

Even if the tone with which The Exciter girls deliver their message sounds less like a declaration of love and more like they are giving the guy a good dressing-down (and not in a sexy way). By the end of “Tell Him” all I can think is, “wow, she sure told him a thing or two!”

Here’s the Scopitone video!

Prior to hearing “Tell Him”, Dusty had been in a folk-pop duo with her brother, Tom*, called The Springfields, despite their name not being Springfield. It was O’Brien.

Before that she had been in a group called The Lana Sisters, despite not being a Lana. That was fine. None of the other members of The Lana Sisters were related to each other anyway.

Just for the record, Dusty’s name was Mary.

Even during The Springfields era, Dusty already had great big hair. In this footage for their UK hit “Island Of Dreams” she has a great big country-cotton-ball perched on top of her head. She already looked as though she were wearing a wig. All she had to do to go pop was to switch one wig-looking hair style with another. And to shake her hips a bit more.

Well, that wasn’t all she needed to do. She also needed a hit.

Fortunately, Mike Hawker, previously the writer of the similarly perky “Walking Back To Happiness” by the similarly huge-haired Helen Shapiro (it’s a 7), had written a song about how much he loved his new wife.

So when Dusty’s producer called up asking for “a guaranteed hit”, Mike and his wife banged out a demo on a biscuit tin lid, and bam! Dusty was gifted with not only a guaranteed hit, but quite possibly the catchiest song in the history of the entire world!

You can tell that “I Only Wanna Be With You” was written by a newlywed. Was written during the honeymoon period whilst they were still giddy with excitement.

The melody sounds like crashing wedding bells! Like sprinkles of confetti!! The orchestra wells up and Dusty falls into your open arms… the record buyers of 1964 didn’t stand a chance.

It’s crazy but it’s true:

“I Only Wanna Be With You” is a 10.

*Tom presumedly never heard “Tell Him” by The Exciters since he’d continue to work in the folk-pop world, writing and producing records for The Seekers:

What a crazy time to have been alive!

To hear these and other60s hits, tune into DJ Professor Dan’s Twitch stream on Wednesday nights Melbourne time…which is about lunch time London time, and breakfast time New York time!