Spencer Davis Group – "Gimme Some Lovin' " (1966)

Better take it easy

’Cause the place is on fire

The Spencer Davis Group – guitarist Spencer Davis, vocalist and keyboard player Steve Winwood, Steve’s older brother Muff (who played the bass), and drummer Pete York – originally called themselves the Rhythm and Blues Quartette, which is a truly horrible name for a rock band.

The Spencer Davis Group

Steve Winwood, not Spencer Davis, was the group’s star member.  So why was the band named the Spencer Davis Group?  According to Muff Winwood, 

[Record producer Chris] Blackwell wanted to call us the Vipers or the Crawling Snakes or some outlandish thing.  Spencer was the only one who enjoyed doing interviews, so I pointed out that if we called it the Spencer Davis Group, the rest of us could stay in bed and let him do them. 

Steve Winwood was only 14 when the band formed.  He left the Spencer Davis Group went he was 18 to form Traffic.  

But before Steve left, the group recorded two truly great rock singles: “I’m a Man” (not to be confused with the Bo Diddley song of the same name, which was covered by the Yardbirds in 1965) and today’s featured song, “Gimme Some Lovin’.”

From the February 25, 1967 issue of Billboard

“Gimme Some Lovin’,” which climbed all the way to #7 on the Billboard “Hot 100,” is propelled by Steve Winwood’s Hammond B-3 organ part.  It was released in October 1966, when Winwood was only 18.

Here’s “Gimme Some Lovin’,” which 2 or 3 lines has chosen as the best song of February 1967.  It may be 50 years old, but it’s still a stick of dynamite:



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Byrds – "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" (1967)

If you make the charts

The girls will tear you apart

I was never a big fan of the Byrds, but I have to give credit where credit is due: “Eight Miles High” is as good a record as was recorded in the sixties – it’s like nothing else I’ve ever heard.

The Byrds

“So You Want to Be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star” isn’t as mind-blowing as “Eight Miles High,” but it packs a lot into just two minutes.  The lyrics are remarkably intelligent, and the arrangement is perfect. 

The song was written by Chris Hillman and Jim McGuinn (who later changed his named to Roger after becoming involved with a spiritual movement called Subud).

Hillman came up with the song’s bass guitar line during a Hugh Masakela recording session.  Masakela (a South African trumpet player whose biggest hit was “Grazing in the Grass”) returned the favor and contributed a very interesting trumpet part to “So You Want to Be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star.”

Hugh Masakela and the Byrds' David Crosby

The audio of screaming fans that you hear about a minute into the song was recorded at an August 1965 concert in England.

A lot of people have covered “So You Want to Be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star.”  Patti Smith’s cover is probably the most famous one.  (About all I can say about it is that it’s better than the Black Oak Arkansas cover.)

The oddest cover version of “So You Want to Be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star” was the very earliest one – the instrumental recording of the song that was released on the Royal Guardsmen’s The Return of the Red Baron album the same year that the Byrds’ version reached #29 on the Billboard “Hot 100.”  

Why in the world would you do an instrumental version of “So You Want to Be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star”?  It’s like doing an instrumental version of a Bob Dylan song, or the Gettysburg Address.

The song did not chart in the UK.  (I have only one thing to say about that to my British readers: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?)

Here’s “So You Want to Be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star”:

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Young Rascals – "I've Been Lonely Too Long" (1967)

So funny I just have to laugh,

All my troubles been torn in half

The Young Rascals originally called themselves the Rascals.  But they changed their name at the insistence of the Harmonica Rascals, a defunct harmonica ensemble that had been popular in the thirties and forties.

The Harmonica Rascals had broken up in 1955 after the group’s leader, Borrah Minevitch, died of a heart attack.  So it’s not clear why they cared whether the band that recorded today’s featured song called themselves the Young Rascals or just the Rascals.

Johnny Puleo and the Harmonica Gang

The star of the Harmonica Rascals was Johnny Puleo, a dwarf who stood only 4 feet 6 inches tall.  After Minevitch’s death, Puleo formed his own group and called it the Harmonica Gang.

I remember seeing a harmonica band that included a dwarf perform in my home town when I was maybe ten years old.  It may have been the Harmonica Gang, or it may have been a cheap imitation group.  (I’m betting that I saw the original group because I have to think it’s not likely that there were two different American harmonica bands that featured dwarf harmonica virtuosi.)

Click here to watch Johnny Puleo and the Harmonica Gang performing on the Hollywood Palace TV show in 1965.

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I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the Young Rascals because the Rogues – my wildly popular 8th-grade band – covered “Good Lovin’,” their first big hit.

“Good Lovin’” was followed by “I’ve Been Lonely Too Long,” “Groovin’,” “A Girl Like You,” “How Can I Be Sure,” “A Beautiful Morning,” and “People Got to Be Free.” 

The Young Rascals

All of those singles were top 20 hits, and three of them made it all the way to #1.  (The last two of those records were released after the Young Rascals had changed their name to the Rascals.)

Let’s face it, boys and girls – the Young Rascals/Rascals were pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.

Click here to listen to “I’ve Been Lonely Too Long,” which was comfortably ensconced in the Billboard “Hot 100” fifty years ago today.

Click here to buy that record from Amazon.

5th Dimension – "Go Where You Wanna Go" (1967)

You gotta go where you wanna go

Do what you wanna do

With whomever you wanna do it with

That third line doesn’t exactly roll trippingly off the tongue, but I think its message is pretty darn clear.

Did you know that the Mamas & the Papas had three songs in the Billboard “Hot 100” in February 1967?

The Mamas & the Papas

The last appearance of “Words of Love” in the “Hot 100” was in the February 18, 1967 issue of Billboard.  (It had peaked at #5 the month before.)

“Dedicated to the One I Love” entered the “Hot 100” the very next week.  (It would climb all the way to #2.)

The Mamas & the Papas’ version of “Go Where You Wanna Go”– which was written by Papa John Phillips and released on the If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears album in 1966 – never made the “Hot 100.”

The 5th Dimension

But the 5th Dimension’s cover of that song – which was that group’s first single – was sitting pretty at #16 the last week of February.   

Take one more look at the lines from “Go Where You Wanna Go” quoted above.  Note that the third line begins “with whomever,” which is grammatically correct, but sounds a bit stiff.

In the Mamas & the Papas version of the song, the line is “with whoever” — not “whomever” – which is presumably how John Phillips wrote it.  

Mackenzie and John Phillips

Given that Phillips reportedly raped his daughter Mackenzie when she was 18 and later had a 10-year consensual sexual relationship with her, it’s not surprising that he doesn’t give a damn about correct grammar.

Here’s a video of the 5th Dimension lip-synching to their cover of “Go Where You Wanna Go” on Casey Kasem's "Shebang" television show:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Harpers Bizarre – "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" (1967)

Slow down

You move too fast

The Queensboro Bridge – also known as the 59th Street Bridge – connects the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Queens.  It’s one of the 22 bridges and tunnels that carry vehicles from one side of the East River to the other.  

The Queensboro Bridge opened in 1909

When I was in high school, I was part of a team that competed in a local academic quiz show that was broadcast on a local radio station.  One of the questions we were asked in our first match was “What two boroughs does the Brooklyn Bridge connect?”  Obviously, one of the boroughs was Brooklyn.  But none of us had ever been to New York City, so we had no idea what the other borough was.  (The other team was so clueless that they guessed Manhattan and Queens.)

The bridge passes over Roosevelt Island

In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway use the Queensboro bridge to get from Long Island to Manhattan.  “The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge,” Nick says, “is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”

The view of Manhattan from the bridge

A famous scene from Woody Allen’s 1979 movie, Manhattan, features Allen and Diane Keaton sitting on a bench under the Queensboro Bridge:

Keaton and Allen chatting under the bridge

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“The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” was originally released on Simon and Garfunkel’s third album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.  (Like Vampire Weekend, Simon and Garfunkel don’t give a f*ck about an Oxford comma.)

The drummer on that recording was Joe Morello, the brilliant jazz drummer who was a member of the legendary Dave Brubeck Quartet.  (Morello judged a high-school jazz band competition that my high school’s jazz band entered, and then gave a clinic and performed.  I didn’t have a clue who Joe Morello and Dave Brubeck were at the time.) 

You may be more familiar with the Harpers Bizarre cover of the song, which entered the Billboard “Hot 100” fifty years ago this month, eventually climbing all the way to the #13 spot.  Leon Russell arranged their recording of the song, which featured a Beach Boys-esque a cappella section and a short bridge by a woodwind quartet.  The song is pretty thin gruel, and benefitted greatly from Russell's arrangement. 

Randy Newman was a member of the Tikis, which is what Harpers Bizarre called themselves before they recorded “Feelin’ Groovy.”  The group eventually recorded six Newman songs.

In 1969, Harpers Bizarre boarded a TWA flight in Los Angeles that was supposed to fly to San Francisco.  But an AWOL Marine hijacked the plane and ordered the crew to fly to New York City.  The 707 wasn’t carrying enough fuel to make it that far, and when it landed in Denver to fill up, the passengers were allowed to disembark.  After getting to JFK Airport, the hijacker decided he wanted to go to Rome.  TWA accommodated, stopping in Shannon, Ireland to refuel once more.  

When the hijacker, who was armed with a rifle, was asked by a newspaper reporter why he did it, he said, “I don’t know.”

Here’s “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)”:

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Donovan – "Epistle to Dippy" (1967)

Look on yonder misty mountain

See the young monk m-e-d—

—itating rhododendron forest

“Epistle to Dippy” is a musical open letter to an old school friend of Donovan’s who was in the British Army in Malaysia at the time.  

One website says the song has “a strong pacifist message.”  (You could have fooled me.)  Another  website says that “Dippy” contacted Donovan when he heard the song, and Donovan bought his friend out of the army.  

I have no idea whether it was possible to buy someone out of UK military service in 1967.  (I am from Missouri, and you know what that means.)

Donovan

What I do know is that Donovan had to have been high when he wrote the lyrics to “Epistle to Dippy.”

There are a lot of sixties songs with lyrics that sound like the songwriter was high when he wrote them.  But Donovan stands out from the rest of the sixties crowd because EVERY Donovan songs sounds like he was high when he wrote it.  (And not just a little high.)

The song probably makes perfect sense to Dippy.  For the rest of the world, it's impenetrable.

The three verses of “Epistle to Dippy” share one odd little metrical trick: the second and third lines of all those verses break after the first syllable of a multisyllabic word.

In the lyrics quoted at the beginning of this post, Donovan holds the first syllable of “meditating” for several beats before completing that word.

The second line of the second verse ends with Donovan holding the first syllable of “suspicious”:

Doing us paperback reader

Made the teacher s-u-s—

—picious about insanity

Fingers always touching girl

And the second line of the third verse ends with the singer holding the first syllable of “speculating”:

Rebel against society

Such a tiny s-p-e-c—

—ulating whether to be hip or

Skip along quite merrily

The sleeve for the “Epistle to Dippy” 45

It’s a poetic technique I’ve never encountered before.  There’s probably a name for it, but I don’t know what that name is and I’m too busy to go looking for it.  (It’s February, which means I’m in the middle of “28 Songs in 28 Days,”which means I have no time to waste looking for needles in Internet rabbit holes.)

 I have no memory of hearing “Epistle to Dippy” on AM radio, and it doesn’t strike me as the kind of song that would get a lot of play on top-forty stations.

But “Epistle to Dippy” made it to #19 on the Billboard “Hot 100,” so I’m obviously full of sh*t.  (Like there was still any doubt about that.)

By the way . . . the lead guitarist on this record is Jimmy Page.  Before joining the Yardbirds, Page was an extremely busy session guitarist who played on Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks, and Who records, not to mention “As Tears Go By” (Marianne Faithful) and “Downtown” (Petula Clark).

Here’s “Epistle to Dippy”:

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Johnny Rivers – "Baby I Need Your Loving" (1967)

Although you're never near

Your voice I often hear

“Memphis,” which was Johnny Rivers’ first record to make the charts, peaked at #2 in 1964.  

The story goes that Rivers decided to record “Memphis” after Elvis Presley played him a test pressing of his recording of the song, which he had not released.  Rivers loved the song so much that he recorded a similar arrangement of the song.  

According to a book by one of Elvis’s employees, Rivers was “on Elvis’s sh*t list” after that.

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Johnny Rivers – who was born John Henry Ramistella in New York City in 1942 – had a remarkable string of hit singles in the mid-1960s.  

His family moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when Rivers was quite young.  While he was still in junior high, he joined a local band that was led by Dick Holler, who later wrote “Abraham, Martin, and John” and “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron.”  Rivers then formed his own band, cutting his first record when he only 14.

Johnny Rivers then

When he was 16, he met famed disc jockey Alan Freed, who helped him get a second recording contract and who advised him to change his name.  The Mississippi River flowed through Baton Rouge, so John Henry Ramistella became Johnny Rivers.

Rivers followed up “Memphis” with “Maybellene,” a cover of another Chuck Berry song.  Next came “Mountain of Love,” “Seventh Son,” “Secret Agent Man,” “Poor Side of Town,” “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “The Tracks of My Tears,” and “Summer Rain.”

Altogether, Rivers had seven top ten hits between 1964 and 1967, including a #1, a #2, and two #3s – not too shabby.

He had one more big hit – “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” – in 1972.

Johnny Rivers now

Many of those hits were covers.  Rivers also covered “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “Fire and Rain,” “Sea Cruise,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Six Days on the Road,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” and “Help Me, Rhonda.”  (That’s a very eclectic group of songs – Chuck Berry, Motown, folk, country, and the Beach Boys.)

Several of Rivers’ covers outsold the originals.  For example, the Four Tops’ version of “Baby I Need Your Loving” made it to #11 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in 1964, but the Johnny Rivers cover that we are featuring today climbed all the way to #3 in early 1967.

Rivers was a pro – his vocals are just about flawless.  He didn't take a lot of chances musically, but he rarely disappointed you.

Here’s the Johnny Rivers cover of “Baby I Need Your Loving,” which features drummer Hal Blaine of “Wrecking Crew” fame and backup singer Darlene Love:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: