the best songs ever

[Eric the Green]

The copyright enforcers haven't found this one yet, but I'll find a live version too in case they do. Oh yeah! The flip side of She Loves You is another great one.





https://youtu.be/fekFnW3R4cE

https://youtu.be/wanRCB0Pwfk

https://youtu.be/o5efCO1EH5o

[Eric the Green]

Dusty Springfield was a great girl singer who came over to America with the Beatles invasion. Vocalists like her do a lot to shape and communicate a song, even though I don't think she was a songwriter. But she played instruments and had a unique style called blue-eyed soul that is well described in the wiki article. I chose 3 of her songs for my top 300, but my favorite was the oldie that was her first hit in Jan-Feb 1964, I Only Want to Be With You.





My two other "Academy Award-winning" picks by Dusty Springfield were from or covers of movie soundtracks:
The Look of Love (1967)
Windmills of Your Mind (1969)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dusty_Springfield

[Eric the Green]

"The perfect musical." I thoroughly agree. My Fair Lady. The film version from 1964 won 8 Academy Awards. My favorite song from the movie "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" was actually sung by Marni Nixon and acted by Audrey Hepburn, who also did her own version. I post the movie version.





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Fair_Lady_(film)

The stage version was sung by Julie Andrews and recorded in 1956. I plan to post it when we get there.

Get Me to the Church on Time

(should I post more??)

[gabrielle]

Is this the time when you said the culture was "dead?"  Before LSD?

[Eric the Green]

Too dead for dreamin! But, the best songs also get better, in the long view, as we go backwards (I also said that).

But kinda sad!





late 1963, Since I Fell for You, Lenny Welch.

[Eric the Green]

John Coltrane was very influential, including on psychedelic rock. I'm not well-informed on his music. From what I do know, I think he was brilliant, but I don't care for his harsh sax sound, and jazz usually strikes me as too superficial and "casual" in its attitude, and I prefer a more passionate and aspiring attitude. Maybe his most famous album (and one of his last ones) was A Love Supreme, which came out in 1964
https://youtu.be/clC6cgoh1sU

The tracks "Pursuance" and "Psalm" seem to have some good moments. Track 7 swings well.

http://www.biography.com/people/john-col...sic-career

Jazz, show tunes, and later, modern classical, contribute more to "the best songs ever" in the years before the last Awakening began in 1964, than afterward. But these genres didn't end. Perhaps others have picks from these genres, and I encourage postings in the appropriate threads if you know of any. I hope this thread continues to be mainly chronologically backwards, as my postings will be.

Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk are among the jazz artists from the 1T/early 2T era that I like (or at least, sorta like).

Another response to gabrielle's comment: 1964 music had such creative and uplifting energy that, at least that year and maybe 1963 were not "dead" years in pop culture, and there's of course many great musical works stretching back for at least 3 centuries before 1964. But for sure, culture is the most alive during awakenings, not only in the artistic works created, but the suffusion of spiritual and inspired feeling among the people. LSD was certainly among the catalysts for that phenomenon in our recent Awakening.

Of course, Bob Dylan wrote Mr. Tambourine Man in Feb 1964, the Summer Solstice of the saeculum, and it is definitely psychedelic (though not the result of LSD).

Gabrielle posted a work by Herbie Hancock earlier (that is, later!)

[Eric the Green]

Released in Jan.1964 according to wikipedia. Great early Motown sound hit! Very tempting....





with scenes from the saecular Summer Solstice era!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_Yo...ngs_You_Do

[Eric the Green]

According to wikipedia, "Sally Go Round the Roses" was a hit first in San Francisco, because it was a precursor of the San Francisco sound, although the Jaynetts were from New York. Grace Slick later recorded it. I can understand that. It's the instrumental arrangement (for which the arranger received $3) that makes this a hauntingly-beautiful sound. Pre-psychedelic, as it were. It was also a formative influence on Laura Nyro. It was a hit in Fall 1963. So far, it's the only best song ever pick (of mine) from that season (except for songs that were recorded then and released later).





This version extends the instrumental parts, and also doesn't subsume them beneath the vocal track, like some of this era's videos do.

Another video: https://youtu.be/iYDgQ-tljxI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Go_%..._the_Roses

comment on this video:
vegaslover777 1 year ago
This song was way way ahead of its time. Nuff said.

comments on another video of this song:
Robert Anderson 5 months ago
one of the best songs ever. slow, jazzy, with a rock beat.

Dogbite Williams 3 weeks ago
And hauntingly mysterious. Quite unique.

Great Society/Grace Slick version https://youtu.be/2NSy4i-5Qxw
Pentangle version, from Basket of Light and Light Flight https://youtu.be/FgrXmEbgFzo
Tim Buckley version https://youtu.be/tME1oi6yFbc

[Eric the Green]

Well there WAS another cool romantic, highly regarded one which (unlike "Sally"), didn't make my top 400 list, but maybe should be included. It was apparently recorded in Oct 1962 and released in Sept 1963, reaching number 1 the week before JFK's assassination, and winning the grammy award.





It was a cover of a big hit from the 1930s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Purple_(song)

And yes, the rock band Deep Purple was named after this song.

[Eric the Green]

A Hard Day's Night, again!





They took the movie off, originally posted on p.27, but the song is heard in this preview that's still on (I don't know for how long).

[Eric the Green]

This comparative Autumn lull in the winds of the saecular Summer Solstice came between the greatest music explosion ever as the first year of the Awakening arrived, and the summer season before it (mid Spring to mid-Summer 1963) which was also full of great songs. It was the height of the surfing craze, and at the same time the climax of the folk music revival, and the breakthrough arrival of the Motown Sound. Add to that, two of my favorite and most popular country songs.

The climactic song of the folk revival was written by Bob Dylan in April 1962, and released on his album Freewheelin' in May 1963. Next month Peter Paul and Mary (whose manager was also Dylan's) recorded the definitive version of "Blowin' in the Wind"-- just as Governor Wallace stood in the school house door, thus prompting JFK to go on TV and propose the civil rights bill in his greatest speech. And it reached #2 in August, just before the March (or "walk") on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his greatest speech, called "I Have a Dream," and where Peter Paul & Mary sang the song. Quite a confluence of events.

This song asks all the greatest questions of our time. Even the poetic lines about the dove and about not being able to see the sky were written just as Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring inaugurated the environmental movement. And the line about how many deaths does it take would resonate through the movement to stop the War in Vietnam.





How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ’n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ’n’ how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ’n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ’n’ how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ’n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ’n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

Copyright © 1962 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1990 by Special Rider Music
http://bobdylan.com/songs/blowin-wind/

Some people say the meaning of the title is ambiguous. But Bob Dylan had already explained (apparently inspired by Woody Guthrie's book) that people can get the word about what needs to change if they are open to see it flying around them like papers blowing around in the wind on the streets. "It ain’t in no book or movie or TV show or discussion group. Man, it’s in the wind – and it’s blowing in the wind. Too many of these hip people are telling me where the answer is but oh I won’t believe that. I still say it’s in the wind and just like a restless piece of paper it’s got to come down some ...But the only trouble is that no one picks up the answer when it comes down so not too many people get to see and know . . . and then it flies away. I still say that some of the biggest criminals are those that turn their heads away when they see wrong and know it’s wrong."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowin%27_in_the_Wind

And he sang something similar just months later, that the times are changin,' and two years later, that something's happening here but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones. The next year I could feel it, and I said to myself "something's in the air." Four years after that in 1970, the group Thunderclap Newman sang "There's something in the air, because the Revolution's here, and you know that it's right" in the movie The Magic Christian. It's what it feels like when any great Revolution comes. And Pope John Paul II, when Bob Dylan performed his song for him, remarked that the idea goes back to Jesus, who said the holy spirit blows like the wind. And Dylan described his song as a "spiritual," its melody partly based on an anti-slavery spiritual from the 1830s. The melody also resembles the other civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome."




https://youtu.be/RTZoJ01FpD8

"Something in the Air" was a number one hit for The Who's Pete Townshend's other band Thunderclap Newman in 1969. Townshend created the band to showcase songs written by former The Who chauffeur, also a drummer/singer/guitarist/songwriter, John "Speedy" Keen.

[Eric the Green]

The breakthrough hit for Martha and the Vandellas and the Motown Sound, in July and August 1963, was written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland. Has high blood pressure got a hold on me, or is this the way love's supposed to be? It's like a Heat Wave!





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_Wave_...llas_song)

[gabrielle]

(08-15-2016, 02:31 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: John Coltrane was very influential, including on psychedelic rock. I'm not well-informed on his music. From what I do know, I think he was brilliant, but I don't care for his harsh sax sound, and jazz usually strikes me as too superficial and "casual" in its attitude, and I prefer a more passionate and aspiring attitude. 

Really, Eric?    

Here, let me improve your thread for you:

1963:





1957:





And from the aforementioned "Love Supreme":

[Eric the Green]

I do think he belongs here, so thanks gabe.

Of course, Coltrane was a major influence on saxophone and flute player Jim Pepper (Sgt. Pepper?), who wrote, sang and played on my favorite song of the sixties. You all know which one that is, I take it?
https://youtu.be/lAMKL2KKumo

[Eric the Green]

One of the best surf instrumentals was "The Lonely Surfer" by Jack Nitzche, who was a session musician and composer. It was a big West Coast hit, at least, in August and September 1963.





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Nitzsche

[Eric the Green]

I knew about this song well enough just from hearing it on other peoples' radios in Summer 1963 that I thought of it as a favorite, for its guitar riff as well as for the melody and singing. It's one of several country-rock crossover hits that I consider best songs ever. I knew it first as "I Wanna Go Home" but it's called "Detroit City." It was a big award-winning hit for Bobby Bare.





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_City_(song)

Later in 1966, I liked a similar song by the Beach Boys, a folk song called Sloop John B, also known as "I Wanna Go Home."

[Eric the Green]

One more by Bobby Dylan; it is next to Mr. Tambourine as my favorite. An epic, surrealistic, prophetic protest song he wrote in 1962 but released in May 1963 on the Freewheeling album along with Blowin' in the Wind. He wrote it just before the Cuban Missile Crisis, warning of a wave that could drown the whole world. It still applies. We still have a lot to learn about being human, don't we? Live version:





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hard_Rai...Gonna_Fall

I've also compared it to the song in my siggie:

[Eric the Green]

At the peak of the surfing craze in Spring 1963, two of the best surf songs ever came out. The other greatest surf instrumental besides The Lonely Surfer was a huge cult favorite. A big hit in 1963, and again in 1966. Based on the ubiquitous R&B progression (1-1-4-1-5-4-1), it is still a masterpiece. Wipe Out!





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wipe_Out_(instrumental)

backed with Surfer Joe

I was less impressed by "Pipeline" and "Walk Don't Run" than these and the one below, but they were good biggies too.

[Eric the Green]

Everybody's Gone Surfing, Surfin' USA.





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfin%27_U.S.A._(song)

[Eric the Green]

The kiwi jumped way behind for a great one, but I'm going to fall into a Ring of Fire. Johnny Cash recorded this other great country-rock crossover hit from Spring 1963. There seems to be wide agreement with me about this choice. It is full of sexual innuendo, but it's not intentional. But it burns, burns, burns.





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire_(song)