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Midnight Music Confessions
Mind Body Soul
Songs that never quite made it
This summer marks the 54th year since I dove head-first into pop music. My friend Robert, who also got me started watching TV’s Hee-Haw (don’t blame him; I loved it, especially the music), made me tune our car radio to WSGN-Am 610 on our summer drives with my mother to the grocery store or to K-Mart, and from there I learned to love the Top 30 (why not 40, who’ll ever know), and all the songs below, and even more.
That summer, songs like Zager & Evans’ “In the Year 2525,” Desmond Dekker’s “The Israelites,” the Stones’ “Honky-Tonk Women,” and The Rugby’s “You, I” were big hits. Later, Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” would change the course of my life, though I wouldn’t understand that particular lane until I got to grad school and figured out how earthy it and I really are.
Big hits came and went in that summer of 1969 and into the fall, and each Friday afternoon, Robert and I would listen to the new Top 30 countdown as songs like Bobby Sherman’s “Little Woman” and Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” began their climb up those charts. Sometimes even a 13-year old person understands when a hit will be a hit, but what I liked to do especially was see if the assorted disc jockeys at WSGN could also correctly predict what was coming, the weekly “Pick Hit” that…