(Editors Note: Jon Pennington continues his 100 most influential songs of the 1960s, highlights include early Beatles and Dylan as well as instrumental bands like the Ventures. the Tornados, Dick Dale and Booker T and the M.G.s… instrumentally speaking!)
Hey! Baby / Dream Girl(1962) [Single]
Bruce Springsteen paid tribute to Bruce Channel by quoting Hey! Baby toward the end of Dancing in the Dark, but the most well-known homage to Hey! Baby was when Lennon used the harmonica solo (played by Delbert McClinton) as the basis for Love Me Do. John Lennon loved Hey! Baby so much that he kept his own copy in a personal jukebox he carried with him when the Beatles went out on tour. I cannot do justice to the impact of this song without quoting the documentary John Lennon's Jukebox, which featured an interview with Bruce Channel and Delbert McClinton. The contrast between Channel's "aw shucks" humility and McClinton's more earthy, direct manner in describing how UK audiences went crazy for Bruce Channel is one of the highlights of the film:
Channel: We had a great time in England. It was a super time, and I was so glad to see the kids so enthused about the music. They loved it.
McClinton: They just went apeshit when he came out. I mean, nuts you know. I remember thinking, "Jesus, what is this?" Who in the hell was expecting that? I know he wasn't. He went there just like the bumpkin that he was. You know, "Howdy, I'm so proud to see y'all." And they hit him like a bunch of piranhas. These girls were running along side the bus screaming and hollering. And they kept doing this [makes hand motions]. And look, they had just taken a razor blade and cut Bruce's initials in their arms. It was just swollen and bloody, and they were so proud of it, you know. And that was a turning point for me. I had yet to see anything like that happen.
Channel: They weren't hollering for me. They were hollering to be a part of rock 'n' roll. And it made us feel good. It made us feel like we were somebody.
McClinton: I sure didn't go there expecting my whole musical sense to be picked up and shaken and changed as it was by getting to see a preview of that invasion.
Two years later, that "invasion" would finally reach American shores via the Ed Sullivan Show, but Bruce Channel and Delbert McClinton were already part of the advance reconnaissance expedition that knew it was coming all along.
Chart Position: US #1, UK #2
12 Ray Cathode
Time Beat / Waltz in Orbit(1962) [Single]
The web site gives this single a December 1962 release date, but back issues of Billboard magazine in Google Books list the release date as April 19, 1962. To be specific, Time Beat/Waltz in Orbit was the first 45 rpm release of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop under the pseudonym "Ray Cathode." Brits would be more familiar with the Radiophonic Workshop than I am, but if you're an American, you might have been exposed to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop as the composers to the theme song to Doctor Who.
The A-side, Time Beat, is based on an electronic time interval signal invented by Maddalena Faggandini for the BBC accompanied by a bossa nova-inflected easy listening backing. The B-side, Waltz in Orbit, is even more ahead of its time with a electronic musique concrete beat made to swing in waltz time with bongos and what I think might be a mandolin. Another reason BBC Radiophonic Workshop was ahead of its time is that it served as a forum for female electronic composers, such as Maddalena Faggandani, Daphne Oram, and Delia Derbyshire, when such forums were almost non-existent anywhere else at the time. (The only exception I can think of from the U.S. is Pauline Oliveros.)
Aside from Maddalena Faggandini's contribution, the other crucial element was producer Sir George Martin, who would meet the Beatles for the first time shortly after this was recorded. If Martin hadn't had previous experience with pulling off experiments like this, he might never had the skill or the patience to work so hard bringing the musical vision of the conventionally musically untrained Beatles to life. Better yet, if Martin hadn't done experiments like this, he certainly wouldn't have had the ability to accommodate John Lennon's more bizarre requests, such as emulating a 1,000 Buddhist monks chanting from the top a mountain (on Tomorrow Never Knows) or capturing the sounds of a circus so you could "hear the sawdust in the ring" (on Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite).
Chart Position: Did not chart in the US or UK.
13. Dick Dale
Miserlou / Eight Till Midnight(1962) [Single]
Anybody who's ever seen Pulp Fiction knows that nothing epitomizes surf rock guitar more than Miserlou. The song was revived again by the Black-Eyed Peas who sampled it on "Pump It," but the song's long-term influence can be traced to its incorporation of Middle Eastern textures into popular music, long before the advent of psychedelic music. In fact, when Jimi Hendrix said "You'll never hear surf music again" on Third Stone from the Sun, he did not intend to insult surf rock, but instead was paying tribute to Dale after learning that the man was recovering from cancer. Miserlou originated as a folk song written in the 1920s by Greeks who had fled to their homeland after emigrating from Turkey, but eventually would be embraced by Middle Eastern emigrants all over the world, who recorded versions in languages as varied as Arabic, Yiddish, and Serbian. Dick Dale learned the song on account of his Lebanese-American heritage, but in his version of the song, he uses so much reverb and lightning-fast fretwork that it even gives Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo on Eruption a run for its money.
Chart Position: Did not chart in the US or UK
14. The Tornados
Telstar / Jungle Fever(1962) [Single]
Telstar by the Tornados has a futuristic feel reminiscent of Ray Cathode's Time Beat/Waltz in Orbit 45, but it's distinguished by its optimistic Space Age mood generated by a melody played on a clavioline electronic keyboard. The B-side, Jungle Fever, is an even better and weirder example of electro-exotica with jaunty guitar strumming, bunga-bunga drumming, and electronically generated animal noises added to the clavioline already found on the A-side. What's even stranger is that this unusual single supervised by UK record producer Joe Meek (a man so eccentric he could out-crazy both Phil Spector and Brian Wilson) achieved enough mainstream success to put Telstar in the #1 slot on the American pop charts, the first British song ever to accomplish the feat. Joe Meek would have another Top Ten hit after the British Invasion for producing Have I the Right? for the Honeycombs (a one-hit wonder band notable for its female drummer), but sadly, Meek would be dead by 1967 after shooting his landlady and himself to death with a single-barreled shotgun.
Chart Position: US #1, UK #1
Green Onions / Behave Yourself(1962) [Single]
For some reason, 1962 must be the year of the instrumental. In addition to the Space Age eccentricities of Telstar and Waltz in Orbit, 1962 also saw the release of this amazing slab of raw soul-funk, Green Onions. The B-side is a decent mellow organ jazz track spiced up with some guitar twang, but it's the A-side that's revelatory. The song's influence on R&B, funk, and Belushi & Aykroyd's Blues Brothers is undeniable, but the song also exerted some less obvious influences on both The Who (who featured the song on the soundtrack to Quadrophenia) and The Velvet Underground (who based The Gift on an earlier instrumental called "Booker T."). Funksters love the raw, fuzzy organ tones, while the Velvet Underground found inspiration in its grungy, no-frills, minimalist groove.
16. The Ventures
The 2,000 Pound Bee (Part 1) / The 2,000 Pound Bee (Part 2)(1962) [Single]
The 2000 Pound Bee might not be the best instrumental released during 1962, but that's nothing to be ashamed of, when you've got competition like Miserlou and Green Onions. What makes The 2000 Pound Bee so influential is that it was the first 45 rpm single to feature fuzztone guitar distortion, two years before the Beatles, I Feel Fine and four years before the Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded its first singles. The basic structure of the A-side is one guitar with fuzztone distortion joined by another less distorted electric guitar playing surf rock riffs, while Part 2 on the B-side couples the fuzztone guitar with a drum pattern similar to the Ventures' biggest hit at the time, Walk Don't Run. If you ever see a movie or TV sitcom from the mid-1960s and the director wanted to have a quickie scene with the protagonists in some rock club a-go-go, the music on the soundtrack would sound like the A-side. Or if you ever saw a 1960s era Z-grade biker movie, the music on the soundtrack would sound like the B-side, but with motorcycle sound effects added. Some of the fuzztone may sound kitschy to modern ears, but Pete Townshend was a staunch Ventures fan who credited the band with inspiring much of his feedback-driven guitar work for the early Who.
Chart Position: US #91 (B-side), did not chart in the UK
Walk Right In / Cool Water(1962) [Single]
You might dismiss the A-side as milquetoast collegiate folk in the mold of the Kingston Trio, but Walk Right In played a pivotal role in kicking off a now largely forgotten musical trend of the pre-Beatles era: the jug band craze. Much like the UK skiffle craze that led to the rise of the Beatles, the US jug band craze convinced many youthful amateurs that they could make authentically rootsy music simply by banging on common household items. The Rooftop Singers were nowhere near as raucous as most jug bands, but they certainly made an inspired choice when they decided to do a cover version of Walk Right In, a country blues record originally recorded by Cannon's Jug Stompers in 1929. The song rocketed to #1 on the US pop charts in 1963, but its sound was considered so unclassifiable and fresh at the time that it hit Billboard's charts for easy listening, country music, and R&B that year too.
As Walk Right In peaked on the charts, record companies snapped to attention, hurriedly trying to reissue as many old 78 rpm jug band recordings from the 1920s and 1930s as they could find. Folk music labels quickly descended on beatnik coffeehouses to offer recording contracts to modern jug bands, such as the Jim Kweskin Jug Band (who signed with Vanguard) and the Even Dozen Jug Band (who signed with Elektra). Kweskin's jug band was more well-known at the time, but the Even Dozen Jug Band would later get credit for launching the career of Maria Muldaur (of "Midnight at the Oasis" fame), Joshua Rifkin (who helped kick off the Scott Joplin revival in the 1970s), and John Sebastian (of the Lovin' Spoonful). John Sebastian even alluded to his previous jug band career in the lyrics to Do You Believe in Magic? by urging his audience to sit down and listen "whether it's jug band music or rhythm and blues."
Finally, the ultimate influence of Walk Right In cannot be limited to folk and folk rock. The jug band craze set in motion by Walk Right In served as a launching pad for several amateur jug bands that would later evolve into psychedelic bands, including Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions (which got absorbed into the Grateful Dead), the Back Bay Chamber Pot Terriers (which featured Robby Krieger of the Doors), and the Lingsmen (which got absorbed into the 13th Floor Elevators). In addition, the distinctive guitar sound on Walk Right In was accomplished with two 12-string guitars, a sound that would prove influential to both the Byrds and Rubber Soul-era Beatles.
Chart Position: US #1, UK #10
18. Bob Dylan
Mixed Up Confusion / Corrina Corrina(1962) [Single]
Contrary to popular belief, Bob Dylan did not "go electric" for the first time in 1965, with the release of his Bringing It All Back Home LP and his controversial appearance at that year's Newport Folk Festival. Instead, Dylan's first electrified rock 'n' roll recording was his debut single for Columbia Records, 1962's Mixed Up Confusion, a yodeling, drawling rockabilly blues with Dylan's trademark harmonica playing fortified by a strong rock 'n' roll backbeat. Dylan was hailed as revolutionary for his electrified folk music in 1965, but he was merely returning to a style he had been working on three years earlier. The B-side, a cover version of the blues song Corrina Corrina, is less groundbreaking, but a lyric from the song ("I got a bird that whistles. I got a bird that sings.") inspired John Lennon to write And Your Bird Can Sing.
Chart Position: Did not chart in the US or UK
19. The Beatles
Please Please Me / Ask Me Why(1963) [Single]
The inclusion of this single is mandatory, because it's the one that kicked off Beatlemania in the United Kingdom. The Beatles' first single, Love Me Do, was released in October 1962, but it never got any higher than #17 on the UK charts, let alone anywhere else. George Martin originally insisted on having the Beatles record the Mitch Murray composition How Do You Do It?, but the Beatles insisted on playing one of their own songs. The title was inspired by the opening of the Bing Crosby song Please ("Please hear my pleas."), but the original version of this song was a ballad in the mold of Roy Orbison's Only the Lonely that George Martin considered too sluggish. Not wanting to lose control over their own songwriting, the Beatles decided to speed up the original draft of Please Please Me, creating the hit version we know today.
Eight days after releasing this 45 in the UK, the Beatles won the opportunity to make their national debut on the variety show, Thank Your Lucky Stars. An unusually severe snowstorm that day left most of England snowed in watching the telly, which exposed the Beatles, Please Please Me to an unexpectedly large national audience. Beatlemania, which had largely been confined to Liverpool, immediately exploded in the rest of the UK, and the world was never been the same since. The B-side, Ask Me Why, is an Everly Brothers-style cha-cha-cha with lyrics partly inspired by the Miracles, What's So Good About Goodbye, but it just doesn't have the impact of the A-side.
Chart Position: US #3, UK #2
20. The Kingsmen
Louie Louie / Haunted Castle(1963) [Single]
Louie Louie was originally written by African-American R&B singer, Richard Berry, after performing an arrangement of a Latin tune, El Loco Cha Cha, by Ricky Rillera & the Rhythm Rockers. Berry used El Loco Cha Cha as the basis for the rhythm, while the lyrics were inspired Chuck Berry's approximation of Jamaican patois on the song Havana Moon. Mr. Berry (Richard not Chuck, that is) would play Louie Louie to enthusiastic crowds while touring the West Coast, where the song became a staple in the repertoire of white R&B/surf combos in the Pacific Northwest.
The Wailers and Paul Revere & the Raiders both recorded versions of the song, but the most influential version was the one recorded by the Kingsmen, coincidentally recorded on the exact same day as the Raiders version. Most local bands played Louie Louie with a 1-2-3-4, 1-2, 1-2-3-4, 1-2 beat, but the Kingsmen decided to play it with a 1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2-3, 1-2 beat closer to Berry's original. Unfortunately, this change in time signature led to the lead singer, Jack Ely, going out of sync with the guitarist, who had been following an arrangement closer to the version recorded by the Wailers. Ely then attempts to correct his mistake by stopping himself mid-verse, which led drummer Lynn Easton to insert a drum fill to cover over Ely's pause. The result is so inspired that generations of garage bands now think that the Kingsmen's mistake is the way the song should be played.
Last but not least, Jack Ely's attempt to render Richard Berry's second-hand approximation of Chuck Berry's fake Jamaican patois is so slurry as to render the vocals undecipherable on first listen, a fact not helped by using "me" as the subject of a sentence more often than Tickle-Me Elmo. This led to speculation that Ely's garble was hiding obscene lyrics, a rumor that sparked off an FBI investigation that rendered the verdict "unintelligible at any speed." The Kingsmen's version of the song is now rightly heralded as a frat/garage rock classic and a precursor to punk rock, but what makes the song even more amazing is that the most famous white guy version of the song is infinitely more raw and implicitly more raunchy than original black guy version.
Chart Position: US #2, UK #26