Beginning the week of August 8, 1963, and continuing for the proceeding 68 weeks, only one American artist hit #1 on the UK singles chart. The man was Roy Orbison, who accomplished the feat twice – first with “It’s Over” in June 1964 and then with “Oh, Pretty Woman” in October 1964.
The late great Roy Orbison was born on April 23, 1936. Here is a small sampling of some of his best work.
In the UK Iggy Pop has had one top ten single – “Real Wild Child (Wild One).” It’s a cover of a 1958 single by Australian rocker Johnny O’Keefe. O’Keefe’s version didn’t chart in the US or the UK; however, a remake done by Jerry Allison, one of Buddy Holly’s Crickets, reached #68 in the US.
Pop’s version appears on his album Blah Blah Blah. It didn’t crack the US pop chart, though it did reach #27 on the Album Rock chart.
Today Tunes du Jour celebrates Iggy’s 67th birthday.
I don’t smoke the marijuana; I get high on music.
Here is your 420 soundtrack – twenty hits:
In August of 1979 the band Chic had their second #1 pop and r&b hit with “Good Times.” Later that year they played at New York’s Bonds nightclub on a bill with The Clash and Blondie. When they launched into “Good Times,” a handful of audience members jumped on stage and started freestyling rhymes over the song’s instrumental break.
Later that year those audience members, under the name The Sugarhill Gang, released “Rapper’s Delight.” Built around the bass line from “Good Times,” “Rapper’s Delight” became the first rap record to make the pop top 40. The rules around “sampling” had not yet been established, so Chic threatened legal action over the rap trio’s use of the bass line, created by Chic’s bassist, Bernard Edwards. The Sugarhill Gang’s record label settled with Chic, and Edwards and his bandmate Nile Rodgers received a writing credit on “Rapper’s Delight.”
Friday is dance day at Tunes du Jour, and today’s dance playlist kicks off with Chic’s “Good Times,” in memory of Bernard Edwards, who died on April 18, 1996.
I’m still making my list of the top 100 albums of all-time (see here and here). In its most recent iteration, Liz Phair’s Exile In Guyville is nestled at #35, between Pet Shop Boys’ Very and Prince and the Revolution’s 1999.
The Phair album, a song-by-song response to the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street, was a critical favorite upon its release in 1993. Both Spin and the Village Voice listed the album at #1 on their year-end lists, while Rolling Stone gave it 5, Pitchfork gave it a 9.6 and Entertainment Weekly gave it an A.
You needn’t know the Stones’ album to enjoy Guyville. Today’s playlist, in honor of Liz Phair’s 47th birthday, consists of a few songs from her landmark album plus a few other favorites from her follow-up releases.
At Italy’s Sanremo Festival in 1965, Pino Donaggio and Jody Miller performed a new song Donaggio co-wrote entitled “Io che non vivo (senza te).” In the audience was singer Dusty Springfield, who liked the song and wanted to record an English-language version.
Springfield told her friend Vicki Wickham about the song. Wickham, producer of the TV show Ready Steady Go!, told her friend Simon Napier-Bell, manager of The Yardbirds, while they were dining out. Though neither was known as a songwriter, they took a stab at writing new lyrics after that dinner, first at Wickham’s home and continuing in a taxi on the way to a club. They had no idea what the Italian lyrics were about. The composition they worked on started with the title “I Don’t Love You,” which became “You Don’t Love Me,” then “You Don’t Have to Love Me,” and, finally, “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me.”
In the new lyrics, the singer’s partner appears to have fallen out of love with the singer. She still loves him/her and is willing to accept the lack of reciprocity of that feeling, provided the other person stays with her – “You don’t have to say you love me, just be close at hand.”
Springfield went into the studio the next day to record the new words. Unhappy with the acoustics in the recording booth, she went into a stairway to do a take. In total it was reported she did 47 takes before settling on one she liked.
“You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” became Dusty Springfield’s first and only #1 hit in the UK, where she had thirteen top tens. In the US the record hit #4. Rolling Stone included it on their list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Today Tunes du Jour celebrates the birthday of the late, great Dusty Springfield.
The kids know a place where no planes go. Where no ships go. Where no spaceships nor subs go. Where no cars go.
“No Cars Go,” “Intervention” and “Keep the Car Running” are my three favorite Arcade Fire songs.
Today Tunes du Jour celebrates the birthday of Arcade Fire’s Win Butler, who turns 34.
In the earlier 1970s, Al Green ruled over the r&b and pop charts. “Tired of Being Alone” hit #11 pop/#7 r&b in 1971. This was followed by the classic “Let’s Stay Together” (#1 pop for one week), the first of seven top ten pop singles from 1972 thru 1974. His performance on the r&b chart was even stronger. “Let’s Stay Together” remained on top of that chart for nine weeks. Over the next six years Green placed thirteen more singles in the r&b top ten, including five #1s.
On the album side, he had a handful of gold releases, the last of which was 1973’s Livin’ For You. That album spawned the single “Let’s Get Married” (#32 pop/#3 r&b). Despite what one may infer from its title, “Let’s Get Married” is not a very romantic proposal. His reasoning for suggesting marriage to his girlfriend is that he’s “tired of playing around – a girl in every town.” He sings “let’s get married. Might as well,” adding during the record’s fade-out “Found out I don’t love nobody anyway.”
One woman Green didn’t propose to was his girlfriend at that time, Mary Woodson White. In October of 1974, four months after “Let’s Get Married” peaked on the charts, White, distraught that Green wouldn’t marry her (she was already married, btw), poured a pan of boiling grits on the singer while he was in the shower. She then took his gun and killed herself. Green suffered severe burns on his back, stomach and arms from the incident.
Citing this as a sign that he needed to change his ways, Green became an ordained pastor in 1976 and three years later moved from secular to gospel music.
Today the great Al Green turns 68 years old.
Today’s dance party kicks off with Lisa Stansfield’s “All Around the World,” a 1989 record that was a big hit all around the world, going to #1 in the U.K., Canada, Holland, Spain, Norway, Austria, and Belgium. It topped the U.S. Dance chart and R&B chart and reached #3 on the pop chart.
Lisa Stansfield turns 48 today. Her new album is entitled Seven.
In 1937, a white, Jewish high school teacher from The Bronx named Abel Meeropol published a poem entitled “Bitter Fruit” in a publication called The New York Teacher. The poem’s inspiration was a photo Meeropol saw in a civil rights magazine of two black men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, hanging from a tree after being lynched in Indiana in 1930. The men in Lawrence Beitler’s photograph were the “bitter fruits” the tree bears.
Meeropol set his poem to music. The song was performed by Meeropol and his wife at various union gatherings. Later, a black singer named Laura Duncan performed the tune at Madison Square Garden.
Now known as “Strange Fruit,” the song made it to Billie Holiday, who performed it regularly at her Café Society show starting in 1939. She wanted to record the tune, but her record company, Columbia Records, fearing the reaction they would get from Southern record distributors and radio, refused. They allowed Holiday to record the song as a one-off for Commodore Records.
Holiday’s 1939 rendition of “Strange Fruit” would go on to become her biggest-selling record.
In her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, Holiday suggests that she composed the song with Meeropol and two other men. This has been disproven. When confronted about the falsehood contained in Lady Sings the Blues, Holiday responded “I ain’t never read that book.”
Billie Holiday was born on this day 99 years ago. Here is a small sampling of her work.
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