Fantastic Oldies Game!

[Don62]

Didn't need videos to explain the songs dept.

Try Jerry Butler and "Only the Strong Survive." Sounds just like my dad (though it's a mom in the song). I get tears whenever I liste to that!

Speaking of Only, here are some great "only" songs:
-Only The Lonely, Roy Orbison
-Only Love Can Break A Heart, Gene Pitney
-I Only Want To Be With You, Dusty Springfeld.

 

[hammondo]

Don, Love your list!
A couple more great "only" songs:
Platters - Only You
Sam Cook - Only 16

 

[Don62]

Don, Love your list!
A couple more great "only" songs:
Platters - Only You
Sam Cook - Only 16

I like Sam Cooke.
I also love the Platters, who also scored with the wonderful Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and the gem My Prayer.

 

[hammondo]

I like Frank Sinatra the best. Right now on Turner Movie Classics he's singing That's Why tha Lady is a Tramp from Pal Joey. Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered is also from that movie. Sinatra had a hit on that, as did Doris Day.

My part 15 beautiful music station using OTS radio automation, plays one (sometimes two) of my 300 Sinatra songs every hour.

 

[AlexBrowne]

[Although we seem to be drifting away from the format of the Fantastic Oldies Games, and I don't want to split hairs, here goes....]

Although "The Lady Is A Tramp" and "My Funny Valentine" were included in the movie Pal Joey, they are really both from a different Rodgers and Hart Broadway musical, Babes In Arms; but I suppose anything goes in Hollywood: both songs were left out of the 1939 movie version of Babes In Arms, a blockbuster which starred Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.

 

[hammondo]

OK - we can STOP the drifiting!

Lady Madonna was a Beatles hit and Lady Willpower was a hit for Gary Puckett & the Union Gap of Woman Woman fame. Then there was Lady by Kenny Rogers and a different song, Lady by the Chicago group, Styx.

 

[AlexBrowne]

Gary Puckett And The Union Gap were really hung up on this issue of girl and womanhood: besides "Lady Willpower" and "Woman, Woman," they also gave us "Young Girl" and the one that tied them all together, "This Girl Is A Woman Now."

 

[hammondo]

Other girl and womanhood songs include;
Petula Clark - I Know a Place
Petula Clark - I Couldn't Live Without Your Love
Petula Clark - My Love
Petula Clark - Kiss Me Goodbye
DeCastro Sisters - Teach Me Tonight
Dusty Springfield - I Only Wanna Be With You
Dusty Springfield - Wishin' and Hopin'
Dusty Springfield - You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

PS Don't forget to play "Ode to Billie Jo" by Bobbie Gentry and "Desiree" by Neil Diamond, both of which mention "the third of June."

 

[AlexBrowne]

Mississippian Bobbie Gentry, whose "Ode To Billie Joe" was a #1 hit in 1967, had close connections with two well-known male singers: she did several duets with "Rhinestone Cowboy" Glen Campbell and was married for a while to Jim Stafford, who liked "Wildwood Weed" but not "Spiders & Snakes."

 

[hammondo]

"Wichita Lineman" and "By the Time I get to Phoenix" by Glen Campbell always score high in auditorium testing.

 

[AlexBrowne]

Glen Campbell celebrated several of those southern and western cities in his hit singles -- besides "Wichita Lineman" and "By The Time I Get To Phoenix," there were also "Galveston" in 1969, "Houston (I'm Comin' To See You)" in 1974, and "Country Boy (You Got Your Feet In L.A.)" in 1975.

 

[hammondo]

In the mid-60's Glen Yarborough from Milwaukee, WI was the lead singer of the Limelighters Group who went solo and scored on the Billboard Chart with "Baby The rain Must Fall." Other lesser hits by Glen include, "San Francisco Bay Blues" and "The Honey Wind Blows."

I can also remember the Limelighters Coca Cola commercial, "Things Go Better with Coke!"

 

[AlexBrowne]

Among the most famous Coca-Cola commercial campaigns was the one that used the jingle "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing (In Perfect Harmony)" and featured people holding hands, making a chain across a landscape; the jingle was turned into a full song and hit single for both The New Seekers and The Hillside Singers in 1971.

 

[hammondo]

Ah, the New Seekers were formed in 1969, and in 1970 hit the chart with "Look What They've Done to My Song" one of the first songs I played on a Lafayette, IN radio station.

 

[AlexBrowne]

The first few singles charted by The New Seekers, including "Look What They've Done To My Song Ma," were written by Melanie Safka, who was finding success of her own as a singer in the early 70s with such songs as "Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)" and "Brand New Key," the latter a #1 hit.

 

[hammondo]

Claude King charted with Wolverton Mountain in 1962. Reportedly, the story told in the lyrics (co-written with Merle Kilgore) is true.

The theme and the person, Clifton Clowers, were in Arkansas, and Wolverton Mountain is a place in Canada. Claude King recorded 49 other songs, but none of the others were as successful.

 

[AlexBrowne]

"Ain't No Mountain High Enough" was the first hit for one of the smoothest male-female duos in rock history, Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell; it was written by the husband-and-wife team Ashford & Simpson.

 

[hammondo]

The husband and wife team of Sonny and Cher began with "I Got You Babe in 1965. "When You Say Love" was their last hit together in 1972.

Cher's career began as a session singer (and probably gun loader) for Phil Spector.

 

[AlexBrowne]

Although Phil Spector is better known as a music writer and producer (and an alleged murderer), his first success was as a performer, a member of the trio The Teddy Bears, whose "To Know Him, Is To Love Him" was a #1 hit in 1958.

 

[hammondo]

Phil Spector wrote "To Know Him is to Love Him" when he was 17. Those words (supposedly) appear on his daddys tombstone.