Focus -- "Hocus Pocus" (1971)

Yodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodo

     yodeadodoyodeadodoyo-bab-baaaaa

Yodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodo

     yodeadodoyodeadodoyo-bab-baaaaa

Ahhhhhh-aaahhhh-aaaaaa-aaaaAAA!

Ohhhhhh-ooohhh-oooooo-oooOOO!

I'm just a man -- flesh and blood -- and I have made some mistakes in my life.  Buying the "Moving Waves" album by Focus was certainly one of them.  

I remember hearing "Hocus Pocus" on the radio a couple of times and being absolutely fascinated by it.  I can imagine myself sitting at a stop sign in Joplin, Missouri, in 1971, slack-jawed and drooling as "Hocus Pocus" exploded out of my radio's speakers.  I thought it was the greatest effing record I had ever heard.

Friday was payday at all the summer jobs I had in Joplin when I was in college, and I would take my paycheck, head to the bank, and then head to whichever discount store (Katz? Walmart?) had the best price on record albums and buy one.  

The problem was that I would buy an album each Friday whether there was one I really wanted or not.  (It was like when our twin daughters were newborns -- it was hell.  And their older brother was just three years older than they were.  So whenever we could line up a babysitter for a Sunday afternoon, you'd best believe we were going to the movies -- whether there was anything good playing or not.  We saw some really lousy movies as a result, but my baby mama -- a/k/a "my wife" -- never complained.)

So one Friday, I walked into the store, a big wad of Benjamins burning a hole in my pocket, and grabbed "Moving Waves" by Focus (they were Dutch), based on the strength of "Hocus Pocus."  

I probably listened to that track a dozen times or so.   I'm not sure I ever made it all the way through the rest of the album, which was almost entirely instrumental.  That's not too surprising when you consider that side two consisted of something called "Eruption" − a 23-minute long adaptation of what is generally considered to be the second opera ever written, Jacopo Peri's Euridice (1600).

By the way, the "words" quoted above aren't something I just made up.  That's the way one of the popular Internet song-lyrics sites renders the opening lines of "Hocus Pocus," which did  crack the Billboard top 10.

Until tonight, I thought that Focus did the theme for the "Miami Vice" TV show.  But that music was performed by Jan Hammer, a Czech who once played keyboards for John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra.  (Wow -- I wasn't even close to being right on that one, was I?  Like I said above, just a man -- flesh and blood . . .)

Nike chose to use "Hocus Pocus" in a brilliant TV commercial that was widely aired during the recent World Cup.  (The music starts about 45 seconds in.)

Without further ado, here's "Hocus Pocus" by Focus:

And here's a video of a competitive tap-dancing group performing to "Hocus Pocus" in a competition.  I can't think of a worse choice for tap-dancing -- it's excruciatingly bad:

Click below to buy "Hocus Pocus" from Amazon:

XTC – "1000 Umbrellas" (1986)

One thousand umbrellas

Upturned couldn't catch

All the rain that drained out 

Of my head when you said

We were over and over 

I cried 'til I floated 

Downstream to a town 

They call Misery

(Oh, oh, Misery)

I know that many of you are eager to know whether the 2 or 3 lines team survived the storms that brought Montgomery County, Maryland, to its knees this past Sunday afternoon.

In case you haven't heard, our area was spanked with torrential rain and winds gusting up to 90 miles per hour at about 4 pm on Sunday.  The storm moved fast – it took less than an hour for the skies to blacken, the rain and winds to move in and then move out, and the skies to turn sunny again.  But that was more than enough to rip our fragile infrastructure a new one.

Over 300,000 people in MoCo lost electricity as a result of the storm.  About half that many were still without power 48 hours later.  Amazingly, the stoplights on a number of major commuting routes are still inoperable.

But the good news is that 2 or 3 lines offices lost power for only a few minutes – although we were without cable TV and internet service for several hours this morning, which was extremely trying.

It could have been worse – that could have been our minivan:

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One very important question remains unanswered: how did the storm affect my regular Sunday bike ride?

Unfortunately, other important tasks and duties prevented me from starting my ride until about 300p, so I found myself squarely in harm's way at 345p or so, when I looked up and noticed the sky was very, very, VERY dark.  

(Another person who lives in my house and has the same last name as I do suggested that I should have left much earlier, that we had gotten e-mails from the county government hours earlier warning us that the storms were rapidly approaching, that it was my own fault I didn't start and finish my ride earlier, yada yada yada.)

I was pickin' 'em up and layin' 'em down on my 24-speed Gary Fisher "Utopia" and less than a mile from my home, sweet home, when a sideways gust of wind almost blew me right off my ride. Then the skies opened up and I was drenched within the 10 seconds or so it took me to find shelter – in this case, the nearest front porch big enough for my bike and I to hide under.  (The owner of the house eventually came to the door and invited me in, but I demurred – given that I was very wet and fairly smelly as well.)

By 500p, the rain had stopped and the sun was out.  I went back to finish my ride, but the paved hiker-biker trail to Lake Needwood was impassible – it was covered with tree limbs and assorted storm-tossed debris.

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I was not optimistic about the condition of that trail when I left for my ride this morning. But lo and behold, someone had gone to "Chain Saws 'R' Us" and cleared the trail of the big stuff.  There were a lot of leaves and small branches and pebbles on the trail, but that kind of stuff isn't enough to stop a hardcore biker like myself.

Imagine my surprise when, as I was returning home, I came upon a diligent county worker driving a tractor equipped with a really big-ass leafblower along the trail, so that there was nary a stick, leaf or cigarette butt left on it the rest of the way.

Needwood trail immaculate thanks
 to big-ass mechanized leafblower

Once he was done with the leafblower, I assume he went back and power-washed any remaining dirt off the trail until it was as clean as my kitchen floor – maybe even as clean as my mother's kitchen floor.

Sorry about all you folks who are still without air conditioning, TV, etc., but it doesn't really help to complain.  Just be happy that I had a wonderful bike ride along an immaculately cleaned trail to a beautiful little lake this morning – it will do you good to think about someone other than yourself for a change!

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I considered but ultimately rejected these songs for this post:

1.  "Stormy" by the Classics IV (not a bad choice, but not very exciting);

2.  "Purple Rain" by Prince (I saw no hint of anything purple during our storm);

3.  "Fire and Rain" by James Taylor (no hint of fire either);

4.  "Summer Breeze" by Seals and Croft ("breeze" isn't really the right word for 90-mph wind gusts);

5.  "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" by B.J. Thomas (the raindrops weren't exactly falling, and they didn't keep falling very long);

6.  "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles (yes, it did, but that wasn't the main event);

7.  "Rock You Like a Hurricane" by the Scorpions (captures the feel of the event, but sort of a poopy song);

8.  "Blowin' in the Wind" by Bob Dylan (and covered by every girl in college who owned a guitar -- no thank you);

9.  "Texas Flood" by Stevie Ray Vaughan (geography is way off);

10.  "Texas Tornado" by Doug Sahm (ditto);

11.  "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC (shouldn't it be "lightning-struck"?);

12.  "Riders on the Storm" by the Doors (close, but there was only one rider – and I've already blogged about a Doors song);

13.  "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" by Creedence Clearwater Revival (I've already blogged about a CCR song, too).

So I chose XTC's "1000 Umbrellas" – which is from a very interesting and very quirky album, "Skylarking," the title of which was inspired by the Shelley poem, "To a Skylark."  

The Skylarking album was released in 1986

My favorite song on the CD is "Season Cycle" – the singer (a limey) pronounces "umbilical" with the accent on the third syllable ("um-bil-LIE-cal"):

Darling, don't you ever stop to wonder
About the clouds, about the hail and thunder
About the baby and its umbilical
Who's pushing the pedal on the season cycle?

Click here to listen to "1000 Umbrellas.'

Click below to buy "1000 Umbrellas" from Amazon:

Three Dog Night -- "One" (1969)

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do

Two can be as bad as one

It's the loneliest number since the number one

"One" was Three Dog Night's first big hit.  I vividly remember hearing it on the radio while sitting in a Central Missouri State University dorm room during Missouri Boys' State in the summer of 1969.  

I'm not writing about it because it's a perfect little 3-minute AM-radio song ("PL3MAMRS") – although it is – but because I hope I can chase down an old rumor I've wondered about for years.

I heard that the committee that planned the 1969 junior-senior prom at Parkwood was having trouble deciding which of two bands to hire to play at the dance.  The band that was eventually chosen was a local favorite, the Pink Peach Mob (one of whose members, Steve Gaines, later joined Lynyrd Skynyrd and was killed in the 1977 crash of that band's airplane).

The story goes that the other band was Three Dog Night, an up-and-coming California group that would have cost a lot more money to book than the local guys.  Later, of course, Three Dog Night hit it very big, and everyone who went to the dance missed out on being able to bore their friends, co-workers, children, and grandchildren with the story of how a hugely successful band – they had eleven top-10 hits (including three number ones) – had played at their high school prom.

Maybe Three Dog Night was a candidate to play at the 1968 prom, not the 1969 one as I've always heard – looking at the band's recording history, 1968 would work a lot better.  

Surely some of my Joplin readers know whether this is a true story or just an urban legend.  Please -- post a comment and help me clear this up once and for all.

By the way, I see that Three Dog Night played at the Downstream Casino this past July 4 – so they did make it to Joplin, just 42 or so years late.  

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"One" was written by Harry Nilsson, a very good but very odd singer-songwriter.  If you don't believe me, click here and give a listen to his song, "You're Breakin' My Heart":

You're breakin' my heart

You're tearin' it apart

So f*ck you!

Nilsson's biggest hits were "Everybody's Talkin' " (the theme song to the movie "Midnight Cowboy"), "Me and My Arrow," and "Without You," which was a #1 hit in 1971.  But my two favorite Nilsson songs – both from the 1972 Nilsson Schmilsson album – were "Jump Into the Fire" (which was featured during the scene in "Goodfellas" when Ray Liotta is driving all over town with a bunch of guns in his trunk while a helicopter appears to be following him) and "Coconut" (which was featured in the closing credits of "Reservoir Dogs"):

You put de lime in the coconut, you drink 'em both together

Put de lime in the coconut, then you'll feel better 

Click here to watch a truly bizarre video of "Coconut" from a 1971 BBC television special.

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Nilsson released "One" as a single a year before Three Dog Night did.  Click here to listen to his version of the song, which went nowhere – it's a lovely recording, but no chance it was going to get played on the radio in 1968.  

Click here to listen to the Three Dog Night version of "One."

Click on the link below if you'd like to buy the recording from Amazon:

Leon Russell and the Shelter People – "Stranger in a Strange Land" (1971)

How many days
Has it been since I was born?

How many days 'til I die?

I recently wrote about how a number of my high-school friends and I spent much of our youth drinking 3.2% beer at Nina's Green Parrot in Galena, Kansas.  Just click here if you need to refresh your memory, or if you didn't read that post in the first place.

Let's pretend it's late on a Saturday night, and Nina's has closed for the evening.  We've grabbed a tall boy for the road, carefully backed out of our angled parking place (making a U-turn in Galena is a sure way to get ticketed), and found our way back to Route 66 for the return drive to Joplin.  So what now?

It's time to turn on the ol' Zenith and watch Mazeppa, of course!

Dr. Mazeppa Pompazoidi's Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting show – featuring Gailard Sartain (a/k/a Dr. Mazeppa Pompazoidi) – aired on Tulsa television from 1970 to 1973.

Gailard Sartain (a/k/a/"Mazeppa")

The show began after midnight on Saturday nights – after the local news at 10:00 PM and after the late movie.  The "film festival" part of the show was usually an obscure old horror movie.  But the reason we watched were the extended skits and live commercials that Sartain and his sidekicks (the best known of whom was Gary Busey) did during breaks in the movie.

Click here to watch the show's opening (and closing) credit sequence.

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I rarely made it to the closing credits, which usually ran about 2:30 AM.  By that time, I had "fallen asleep" (i.e., passed out) in the recliner in my parents' living room.  

Eventually, I would awaken (thanks to a painfully full bladder), half-blind from the combination of the bright lights I had left on and my failure to remove my contact lenses before "falling asleep."  The Mazeppa show would be long gone, and all that was playing on the TV was a screen full of snow and static.

Tulsa native Gailard Sartain – whose name appeared in the show's credits as "G. Ailard S. Artain" – went on to fame and fortune after his stint as Mazeppa.

Sartain on "Hee Haw"

He is best-remembered as a regular on "Hee Haw" for almost 20 years.  But he also appeared in a number of major motion pictures – including The Buddy Holly Story (he portrayed the Big Bopper, while his Mazeppa pal Gary Busey was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of the title character), Mississippi Burning  (a drama about the 1964 murder of three civil-rights workers that starred Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe), Robert Altman's Nashville, and the neo-noir film The Grifters (where he had a memorable sex scene with Annette Bening).  I also remember him as a regular on The Cher Show in the mid-1970's.  

Last and almost certainly least, he played Jim Varney's sidekick, Chuck, in the "Ernest P. Worrell" movies and television series.  (KnowhutImean?)

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I first stumbled across "Mazeppa" while visiting relatives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  (That was before my parents got cable.)  

I will never forget a skit titled "The Severed Hand" that was the highlight of the first Mazeppa episode I ever saw.  It started with a short film about a persistent door-to-door salesman, whose hand was severed when he tried to hold a female customer's door open as he continued to pitch her whatever he was selling and the woman (played by a show regular known as Judy Judy) finally just slammed the door shut on him.  

The severed hand fell into a wastebasket, but (with the help of some crude special effects) soon thereafter crawled out and started following the woman around the house.  After a couple of minutes, the hand caught up to the fleeing woman, pounced on her, and grabbed her by the throat – as the screen faded to black and the words "To be continued" appeared.

Sartain and Judy Judy were sitting together on the Mazeppa set when the film ended, pretending to speculate as to what would happen in the next installment of the film.  Sartain reached out toward Judy, supposedly to brush off a small piece of food or some other debris that she was not aware was on her face, but she jerked her head back and slapped his hand away.  He kept reaching for her face until she became so upset that she bit off his entire index finger and spit it out on to the table they were sitting at.  (The camera moved in quickly for a nice, tight close-up of the severed digit – if memory serves, it was the index finger.) 

 After a moment, you realized that Sartain had been reaching for her face with the same fake hand that had been used in the movie – but until that realization dawned on you, you really thought she had really bitten off his real finger.

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Sartain and Busey (who went by the name Teddy Jack Eddy on the show) did a number of memorable skits.  Click here to watch one featuring Sartain as an overbearing high-school coach who is punishing a wise-ass student for his failure to suit up for gym class.

Busey graduated from Nathan Hale HS in Tulsa in 1962, a year before Sartain graduated from Will Rogers HS.  Busey always has been a piece of work.  I once met an old Miami Vice stuntman who had worked as a stuntman on one of Busey's movies, and he reported that Busey was just as crazy as everyone said.  (The stuntman was pretty crazy himself, so that was really saying something.)  This was after Busey's near-fatal and helmet-less motorcycle accident in 1988, which fractured his skull but didn't slow him down much.

Gary Busey as Teddy Jack Eddy

Sartain and his fellow cast members did all the show's commercials live.  Seven-Up was a sponsor, as was the Der Wienerschnitzel fast-food chain and a local store called Rebel Jeans.  Mazeppa used a tag line for the Rebel Jeans spots that parodied the Mattel Toys slogan of that era:  "You can tell they're Ruh-BELL – they're SWELL!" 

I remember that Sartain frequently picked on Bokchito, a tiny town in southern Oklahoma that I used to drive through on my trips to and from college.  For example, while doing a Rebel Jeans commercial, he would pretend to be a truck driver who was delivering a trailer full of tire irons to Bokchito for the annual "Hippie-Hardhat Friendship Festival" there.

When I was an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission in the late 1970s, we had a summer intern from the University of Tulsa's law school.  His father had been one of the news anchors at the station where Sartain and Busey had worked as camera operators before Mazeppa went on the air.  According to this student, the two of them were constantly begging station management to give them a show of their own.  

The two were notorious for their practical jokes.  Once, as the floor manager was counting down the last few seconds of a commercial break before the news anchors would be back on the air, Sartain and/or Busey threw a live snake on to the anchor desk.

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Where did the name "Mazeppa" come from?  I actually researched that at the Rice University library when I was a student there. 

It turned out that Ivan Stepanovych Mazeppa was a 17th-century Ukrainian nobleman and Cossack general who allied with Sweden and Poland in a war against Russia in hopes of winning independence for the Ukraine.  (The Russians won.) 

Byron, Pushkin, and Victor Hugo all wrote long poems about Mazeppa, while Tchaikovsky composed an opera titled Mazeppa and Liszt wrote a symphonic work named for him.

Tchaikovsky's "Mazeppa"

In Byron's poem, Mazeppa is punished for becoming involved with a Polish count's wife by being tied naked to a horse that was sent galloping across the Polish plains – an ordeal that almost killed him.

According to Sartain, he learned about Mazeppa when he found an old newspaper with an article about a 19th-century dancer who had herself bound to a horse that she rode across the stage in honor of Mazeppa.  As for "Pompazoidi," he just made that up.

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Near the end of the Mazeppa TV show's run, the cast travelled to Joplin to put on a live show at Memorial Hall.  I'm not sure how many people in Joplin had cable TV in those days, but I'm pretty sure very few people in Joplin watched the show – except for we happy few, we band of brothers (and sisters) who were returning from a night of beer drinking in Kansas.  

As I recall, about a dozen paying customers showed up for the performance.  Sartain was bitter – he insulted Joplin and everything Joplin-related over and over, complaining that he hadn't taken in enough from ticket sales to even pay the Will Rogers Turnpike tolls back to Tulsa.  (He even passed the hat – I recall that some wisenheimer contributed a comb.)  

For many years, I had a small poster advertising that Joplin show.  (Sartain is a cartoonist of the R. Crumb school, and he may have personally drawn that poster.)  I need to do some serious exploring at my parents' house this weekend to see if I can locate that bad boy.

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Click here to go to the "Tulsa TV Memories" webpage about the Mazeppa show – there's a lot of stuff here.

And click here to go to the official Mazeppa website.  It offers four DVDs full of Mazeppa's skits – I have the first three, but haven't watched much of them.  (I'm a little afraid of being disappointed.)  

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Leon Russell (real name: Claude Russell Bridges) was also an Oklahoma native, and like Sartain he attended Will Rogers HS in Tulsa.  

Russell once appeared on Mazeppa, but there seems to be no recording of that episode, so his performance is lost forever.  (Who knows?  Maybe he performed this very song.)

And before he became an actor, Gary Busey played drums on some of Russell's records (under the "Teddy Jack Eddy" pseudonym that he later used on Mazeppa).  Since the rules are that each post on this blog starts off with lines from a song I like, a Leon Russell song seemed like a good choice for this one.

Leon Russell

Russell has had a long and storied career as a session musician, songwriter, and solo artist.  He's performed with everyone – Eric Clapton, Elton John, George Harrison, Glen Campbell, Willie Nelson, Joe Cocker, and Bob Dylan, among others.  

I particularly like his two rather obscure albums with Marc Benno.  They called themselves the Asylum Choir, and you'll be hearing more about one of their songs someday soon.  

I could go on and on about Russell and this song, but it's late and I have many posts to do before I leave for my 40th high school reunion.  So if you want to know more, just enter "Leon Russell" into Google and knock yourself out.

Click here to listen to "Stranger in a Strange Land."

Click on the link below here if you'd like to buy the song from Amazon:

Association -- "Along Comes Mary" (1966)

And when the morning
Of the warning's passed 

The gassed and flaccid kids
Are flung across the stars

The psychodramas
And the traumas gone

The songs are left unsung
And hung upon the scars

They don't write lyrics like that any more, do they?  

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I'm looking at the KQYX "Pepsi Sing-a-Long Survey" for May 26, 1966 (the week I turned 14).  

KQYX was the top 40 station in my hometown – Joplin, Missouri – when I was a teenager.  KQYX's frequency was 1560, so its weekly surveys featured the "Top 15" and the "Plus 60," plus five "KQYX climbers" and a "Pick Hit of the Week" – altogether, 81 songs.

A KQYX "Pepsi Sing-a-Long Survey"

One of my nerdier hobbies as a kid was listening to faraway AM radio stations.  It's called "DX'ing" – "DX" is ham-radio shorthand for a distant station.  (I still remember most of the clear-channel AM stations that I could reliably pick up – 700 was Cincinnati, 750 was Atlanta, 760 Detroit, 780 Chicago, 820 Dallas, etc., etc., etc.)

Some of the guys who were in the AM DX'ing club I joined for a few years also collected printed radio station top-record lists and traded them, so I have dozens of such lists from large and small radio stations around the country.

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I think it's amazing how many great songs – and what a diverse group of great songs – are on this KQYX survey.  (I've provided links to Youtube videos for some of these songs.)

"When a Man Loves a Woman" (Percy Sledge) was #1 that week – not a personal favorite of mine, but a well-known classic.

The Supremes held down to the #2 spot with "Love Is (Like an Itching in My Heart") – not one of their biggest hits, but classic Motown.

#3 was Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35." ("Everybody must get stoned" – I'm a little surprised that one got airplay in Joplin).

#4 was "Monday, Monday" by the Mamas and Papas – a wonderful song and a perfectly conceived and executed recording.

#5 was "Groovy Kind of Love," by the Mindbenders ("When I'm feelin' blue/All I have to do is /Take a look at you/Then I'm not so blue" – a classic "British Invasion" song).

#6 – "It's a Man's World"/James Brown.

#9 – "Green Grass"/Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

#10 – "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Any More"/Walker Brothers.

#11 – "How Does That Grab Ya, Darlin' ?"/Nancy Sinatra.  (All of Nancy's songs were pretty much the same song – you smart-aleck tomcat, you!)

#12 – "I Am a Rock"/Simon and Garfunkel.

#15 – "Sweet Talkin' Guy"/Chiffons.

#17 – "Sloop John B"/Beach Boys.

#18 – "Paint It Black"/Rolling Stones.

#20 – "Did You (Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind)"/Lovin' Spoonful.

#21 – "Good Lovin' "/Young Rascals.  (I believe this was one of the songs the band I was in with Jack Davidson, Joe Davis, Bruce Hodson, and Jim Matthews played a year or so later at the South Junior High 9th-grade coronation.  I remember listening to this 45 over and over and over.)

#26 – "Eight Miles High"/Byrds.  (I was never a big Byrds fan, but this is an astonishingly original song – everything about it is distinctive and unique.  To me, one of the top 10 AM-radio songs of all time.)

#27 – "Red Rubber Ball"/Cyrkle.  (Written by Paul Simon.)

#34 – "Message to Michael"/Dionne Warwick (one of her many classic Burt Bacharach/Hal David-penned hits).

#35 – "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me"/Dusty Springfield.  (The greatest female top-40 voice ever?)

#36 – "Kicks"/Paul Revere and the Raiders.  (We know all about them, don't we?)

#47 – "Bang, Bang"/Cher.

#53 – "Somebody Help Me"/Spencer Davis Group.  (Steve Winwood before there was Traffic.)

#54 – "Road Runner"/Jr. Walker and the All-Stars.  (Classic Memphis soul – perhaps not as good as "Shotgun," but solid.)

#58 – "Hold On, I'm Comin' "/Sam and Dave.  (More classic Memphis soul.)

#60 – "Shapes of Things"/Yardbirds.  (Jimmy Page before there was Led Zeppelin.)

#70 – "Louie Louie"/Kingsmen.  (Once of the most incompetent hit singles ever recorded – often imitated, but never exceeded.)

#72 – "Cool Jerk"/Capitols. 

#74 – "Li'l Red Riding Hood"/Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs.

And last but not least, we come to today's featured record – one of the "climbers" that week.  "Along Came Mary" was the first successful single from the Association – not its biggest hit (they had two #1 singles and a #2 in 1966 and 1967), but its best song by far, IMHO.

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I wonder how many of the songs on the current Billboard pop chart will be remembered 44 years from today.  One thing no one can argue with, my friends, is that we had great music when we were growing up.  I'm sure May 26, 1966 was a pretty typical week – I bet I could pick any five weeks from 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, or 1970 at random and that the list of current hit songs from at least four out of the five would compare very favorably to this week's list. 

Take another look at the listing above – Supremes, Bob Dylan, Mamas and Papas,  Simon and Garfunkel, Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, Byrds, Yardbirds . . . and I left off the songs by Stevie Wonder, Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits, Roy Orbison, the Animals, The Four Tops, etc.

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There are a few top-tier artists of that era who were missing from the list that week, however – most notably a band from Liverpool that wasn't bad.  

Why were the Beatles MIA the week of May 26, 1966?  The Beatles had a #1, #2, and #3 in 1966 – not exactly a bad year for them – but two of those had risen and then fallen off the charts by the time May 26 rolled around, and their best single of the year ("Yellow Submarine"/"Eleanor Rigby") wasn't released until August.)

But the rest of the list is so strong, you hardly miss them – that's saying something, isn't it?

Click here to see a video of the Association performing "Along Comes Mary" on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

Click here to buy "Along Comes Mary" from Amazon.