Popular '63

Probably the first year I definitely remember listening to & responding to pop music (namely of course The Beatles) and of course the year they were also introduced into most peoples lives. As regards the years number ones – did someone say ‘Merseybeat’ ?

Oh bugger, I forgot that you’re allowed to tick as many as you like and I can’t go back and add any more. Let the record stand, then, that I would have given 6 or more to the first and second Pacemakers ones and the second and third Beatles ones. Otherwise there are an awful lot of 5s here.

Oh, and a pedant writes: the Billy J Kramer one was “Bad TO Me.”

Marcello @ 4: Ah, Ruby and the Romantics! Was that really as late as ’63? I seem to remember it being a couple of years earlier, part of my formative experience (ie listening to Radio Luxembourg just because my big sister did. Anyway, I liked Our Day Will Come at the time.

That American chart wasn’t entirely a different world; many of those records made the British chart too, or at least got significant airplay on Luxy. And of those that didn’t, well, the US is a foreign country after all. Interesting what a high proportion of the British list is home-grown product.

Of course, Diamonds was the first drum’n’bass number one…

There’s not one in the year that I really care about – I wouldn’t have given more than 7 to anything there, and could only find three that I am pretty sure would have got over 5 from me. Can’t be many years like that. Nothing I like remotely as much as Surf City or He’s So Fine in the US list (a 9 and a 9 or 10 there).

I cast my votes on this earlier today, but decided to wait until now to post my comments, as I had been the first person not to vote for all three Beatles songs, and I wanted to see how that would go down.

A pretty poor year for UK No1s, I would have to say, and it appears the voting bears that out with only the Beatles and Elvis gaining pass marks from more than 50% of the voters. (I’m surprised the Brian Poole and the Tremeloes track isn’t more popular – it was always one of my favourites)

The US No1 s list is undeniably more impressive, with the exception of the three which were later covered by assorted Osmond clan members. “Surf City”, “Fingerprints”, and “My Boyfriend’s Back” are all way in front of just about everything from the UK list (possible exception – “She Loves You”).

Even the surprising foreign language US No1s (“Sukiyaki” and “Dominique”) both had memorable tunes, although I couldn’t sing along with either!

Keep up the good work!

DJ Punctum,

I wholly agree with you regarding DC5, it is a far better version, their first hit IIRC, but I’d still give Brian Poole more than a five!

No love for Ifield I see 🙁

No, it’s not meant to – it’s because I inserted it chronologically to sit between the end of 63 and the beginning of 64!

I’ve had to vote for a few of these on the basis of the title, so I gave support to “I Like It!”

I’m surprised that “You’ll Never Walk Alone” isn’t higher in the poll, esp. after hearing the documentary on it a while back on R2.

BAH – must fix – think it was easy. i blame the poll plugin. probably.

if i fix it soon, tom you have to promise to tag up all these polls so that we can present them in a page of their own 😀

Just noticed 1963 was a bit of a sausage-fest at the top wasn’t it?

Notes and ratings for the #1s of 1963. As I mentioned on my corresponding comment for 1961, I’m doing this for every year in sequence.

These comments are re-posts from the forum on which my ongoing thread on this is posted – if any of the remarks appear not to make much sense, that’s probably why…

1963

CLIFF RICHARD – “Bachelor Boy”
This was #1 as a double A-side with the insipid ‘The Next Time’ – for the first time I have departed from the list of songs reviewed over at ‘Popular’. Unlike that one, the simple, catchy ‘Bachelor Boy’ came to be one of Cliff’s signature songs and indeed to define the man himself, though he couldn’t have known it back when he recorded this! 6

THE SHADOWS – “Dance On!”
It’s strange to imagine it now, but I guess this kind of thing must have been the ‘dance music’ of its day. It’s not the most striking of the Shadows’ #1s, but the bass guitar rhythm has its appeal 5

JET HARRIS AND TONY MEEHAN – “Diamonds”
At least at first, this interlude follows on nicely from the previous track, given that Jet and Tony are both former shadows (bass guitarist and drummer, respectively). It’s also notable as the first hit to feature Jimmy Page, who provided rhythm guitar on the studio recording. Unfortunately, despite these assets I find it hard to recommend the track itself, which sounds rather incoherent to me 4

FRANK IFIELD – “The Wayward Wind”
Before I talk about Frank Ifield’s third #1, I have to take an aside to talk about charts. The list of #1s I have used for this project is based upon the Record Retailer chart, which was used by Guinness Hit Singles and subsequently by the Official Charts Company whose chart archives I am using to identify top 5 singles. Unfortunately, the Record Retailer chart has a few foibles, not least of which is the fact that the Beatles’ “Please Please Me” is recorded as a #1 hit at this time by all of the other charts published at that time aside from the Record Retailer chart that is now canonical, in which – in perhaps one of the two most infamous 1-2’s of all time – it stalled at #2 behind “The Wayward Wind”. For the record, “Please Please Me” is, for me, perhaps the strongest of the Beatles’ early singles and would have scored 9.
As for “The Wayward Wind” – even as the hits of these early 60s years go, this is a country cover that is very difficult to place into context looking back. It sounds as though it should derive from a film soundtrack but that’s not, in fact, the case. Ifield’s trademark yodelling is much less prominent here than on the 1962 #1s, and indeed it is perhaps the most accessible of his four to the modern listener without making a lasting impression 5

CLIFF RICHARD AND THE SHADOWS – “Summer Holiday”
This, on the other hand, has remained relevant up until the present day – though the destinations change through the years (as we’ll see time and again as this project progresses), the underlying sentiments do not. Everybody dreams of a summer holiday, particularly as the winter drags on 7

THE SHADOWS – “Foot Tapper”
It may be a last hurrah – it’ll be a while before we see another instrumental #1 – but it’s certainly a pleasurable one. It’s not especially original and it won’t blow your mind – there’s an element of ‘does what it says on the tin’ here – but this simple guitar-and-drums instrumental hits the right notes for me 7

GERRY AND THE PACEMAKERS – “How Do You Do It?”
With my note three songs earlier in mind – officially, at least, this is the turning point. The first Merseybeat chart-topper, and from here on in (a brief retro interlude aside) the top of the charts wouldn’t be the same again. I don’t think there’s another year in pop history in which the shape of the singles charts changed so abruptly: over the course of just a few months, the music of English beat groups went from occasional interloper to become indisputably the dominant sound. “How Do You Do It?” isn’t the most striking example of the genre, indeed its most remarkable feature is how genre-typical it is, but I guess listening to it with the benefit of hindsight and experience is unlikely to do it any favours 5

THE BEATLES – “From Me To You”
So here we have it – the Beatles’ third release is their first ‘canonical’ #1 (and, as I’ve discovered, the accepted right answer to said question in a pub quiz). In the context of their later releases it’s rather pedestrian, fitting in with the trends of the time (in the harmonica melody, for instance), but it’s not hard to see how it turned heads at the time 7

GERRY AND THE PACEMAKERS – “I Like It”
One-track and up-front, this stomping tune makes it hard for me to resist the pun despite its lack of depth 8

FRANK IFIELD – “I’m Confessin”
Dull cover of a 1930s jazz standard. Ifield’s other 3 number ones all have something about them that makes them worth a listen, even if purely for the sake of edification, but this one’s a skipper 2

ELVIS PRESLEY – “(You’re The) Devil In Disguise”
Even Elvis seems to trying to get in on the Beat sound with this song – and mostly succeeding. This is classic pop rock with a straightforward, effective quiet-loud dynamic 7

THE SEARCHERS – “Sweets For My Sweet”
While I had of course heard quite a few of these songs at various times in my life before embarking on this project (some, of course, were completely new to me), I didn’t grow up with any of them. Sixties music, when I was young, was defined by a single short compilation cassette that I think came from a petrol station – and the standout song on that cassette for young me was “Sweets For My Sweet”. I hadn’t listened to it for a long time before this, so it seems quite odd to revisit it in this context. But, I think it stands up well on the whole. If anything, the main vocals are the weakest part of the song; time hasn’t done them any favours – but I still love the “woo-oo-ooh” backing and that jangly guitar bridge 8

BILLY J KRAMER AND THE DAKOTAS – “Bad To Me”
Aside from the beat, the other aspect of the Merseybeat sound that sets it apart from more recent pop-rock adaptations is how prominent the vocals are in most of these songs. In this particular instance, that is very unfortunate. The lyrics are terribly corny and the vocals grate, particularly when Billy sings the titular words 3

THE BEATLES – “She Loves You”
More than any song discussed so far, this project has given me a new perspective on “She Loves You”. While I was aware of it earlier than any other song bar the aforementioned “Sweets For My Sweet” (I have a dim memory of my primary school music teacher, Mr Storey, playing it in a lesson), I’d never rethought it and, with only the “She loves you, yeah yeah yeah” refrain of the chorus in mind, thought of it as little more than a simple sing-along song reflective of how undeveloped pop was in the early 60s. As the saying goes, context is everything, and revisiting “She Loves You” here brings out just how much innovation went into it. The instrumentation, the harmonies and the lyrics (the latter, in particular, may sound odd in retrospect, but less so in an era where pop lyrics were almost exclusively on the “boy meets girl / boy loses girl” theme) were like little that went before and much that came after. I realise I’m not sticking my neck out too far by labelling this my #1 of the year (of the canonical set, anyway – see my note on “The Wayward Wind” above) 8

BRIAN POOLE AND THE TREMELOES – “Do You Love Me?”
Of the series of six chart toppers that form the closing segment of this most notable of years, “Do You Love Me” is an exception in but one key respect: Brian Poole & The Tremeloes hailed from London, rather than Liverpool. Other than that, the sound is clearly of its time. Together with the insistent rhythm and excitable vocals, the lyrics identify this as a ‘floorfiller’ of its day. I had to look up “mashed potato” (which also shows up in “Let’s Dance”, a much-covered 1962 hit originally by Chris Montez) – apparently it’s a variation on the twist 7

GERRY AND THE PACEMAKERS – “You’ll Never Walk Alone”
What I said about 1962’s first #1, “The Young Ones”, goes 10 times as much here: “You’ll Never Walk Alone” is by now inextricably linked with Liverpool FC and with the football tragedies of the 1980s, and we’ll revisit it in that context later on. I was, however –given the Merseyside origins of the group, its being a cover of a Carousel showtune, and its sounding nothing like either of G&TP’s other chart-toppers – surprised to read that Liverpool fans’ adoption of the song occurred subsequently to its release. It’s a capital-letters Big Ballad, a lighter-waver from before lighter-waving was invented 4

THE BEATLES – “I Want To Hold Your Hand”
By now the Beatles were well established as UK superstars, but with this they also achieved their first US #1 – the start of the “British invasion”. It’s difficult to say much that hasn’t been said many times before about “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, a perfectly-crafted pop song 7

Other hits worth a mention

The Crystals – “Da Doo Ron Ron” – If I hadn’t already been including this section I would have had to add it just for this. Way ahead of its time, this early Phil Spector production is an exhilarating listen from start to finish that still sounds great today. Looking back over the hits of ’63, it could perhaps be said that this song (together with the Crystals’ other hits and those of the Ronettes, particular “Be My Baby”) have had at least as much influence on pop over the intervening 50+ years. It only reached #5, but had it been a chart-topper it would undoubtedly have been awarded the first 10 score of the project.

Freddie & The Dreamers – “I’m Telling You Now” – F&TD are unfortunate among the celebrated Merseybeat groups in never having a canonical #1. This is the closest they came, reaching #2 behind Billy J Kramer. Like that song, “I’m Telling You Now” suffers from slightly grating vocals in places but aside from that this is a neat, catchy tune.

Johnny Kidd & The Pirates – “I’ll Never Get Over You” – Had I gone back one more year and started in 1960, I am almost certain that my choice for #1 of the year would have been Johnny Kidd & The Pirates’ only chart-topper, “Shakin’ All Over”. Like Brian Poole and co, the band moved away from rock ‘n’ roll and adopted a Merseybeat-aping sound for this #4 hit.

Heinz – “Just Like Eddie” – An interesting fusion of rumbling proto-hard rock guitar and early 60’s pop melody, this tribute to Eddie Cochran is – IMO undeservedly – one of Joe Meek’s less celebrated productions.

Surfaris – “Wipe Out” – Perhaps understandably given the relative popularity of the pursuit in the two nations, surf rock took a while to cross the Atlantic. The Beach Boys’ first UK hit, “Surfin’ USA” only reached #34 in the UK but was a #3 hit in the US. The sole surf-related UK top 5 hit in ’63 was this frenetic instrumental. Of all the instrumental hits of this and the preceding year, “Wipe Out” has perhaps made the most lasting impression.