Starting With The Beatles:
1964 was when the group that epitomized the 60s managed what no one had done before – put five singles in the Top Ten charts. They had so many releases that decade it was unbelievable and record after record just keep vanishing off the shop shelves. Etched into public memory are the evergreen songs - Hard Day’s Night, Yesterday, Can’t Buy Me Love, All You Need Is Love. Thirty singles released in that period and a few albums and all of them hits. It really was the decade when music history was made.
Motown Magic:
In America, the sound was Motown and it went beyond Detroit to the whole nation. The hits were many – from Stop In The Name Of Love to My Guy, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough and Bernadette. From Janis Joplin to the Rolling Stones – Motown had an influence across the music world.
Surf Music:
Surf music was said to have descended directly from the harmony groups that sang rhythm and blues during the latter part of the fifties. Some examples of some sixties songs would be The Beach Boys in ’63 with Surfer Girl as well as Don’t Worry Baby in the following year.
Surf rock was generally found to be instrumental in nature along with a saxophone or an electric guitar which played the main melody. Some of the examples of beach music includes Jan and Dean’s Surf City, The Surfais’ Surfer Joe, Little Pattie’s Stompie-Wompie Surfer Boy as well as the Beach Boys Fun, Fun, Fun.
And More:
Then of course there were so many hits, too many to put down but some of the more memorable ones are: Fifth Dimension’s Aquarius, Tommy Roe’s Dizzy, Elvis Presley’s Good Luck Charm and Are You Lonesome Tonight, Neil Sedaka’s Breaking Up Is Hard To Do and Ray Charles with his inimitable Georgia On My Mind. There were more – Pretty Woman by Ray Orbison, The Archies and Sugar, Sugar, John Carter’s Winchester Cathedral and Jimmy Dean’s Big Bad John. All these of course are just the tip of the iceberg that was the huge music legacy of the sixties. |
