People who are unfamiliar with Zappa will dismiss this as silly and unimportant. And he probably wanted just that. Zappa was a true musical and social visionary. He was an avid anti-government, anti-bureaucratic, anti-poseur proponent who railed against the “plastic people” in society and politics.

The song is a manifesto against conformity and materialistic culture, with Frank Zappa finally asking, “Go home/and check yourself/you think we’re singing ’bout someone else?”.

He was an accomplished and extremely talented musician and creator/composer. He surrounded himself with truly elite musicians. His later serious jazz talent is worth seeking out if you’re so inclined.

(This article contains verbiage from Francois Couture)

Hits: 135

“Up on the Roof” is a song written by husband and wife Gerry Goffin and Carole King, when she was 20 years old, and most popularly recorded in 1962 by The Drifters. This is the demo recording by Carole with Gerry singing:

Appropriately enough, the song was born among the rat-race noise of a crowded city street. “Carole came up with the melody in the car – an a cappella melody,” Goffin told Ken Emerson. “I said, ‘How about a place to be alone?’ She says, ‘My secret place.’ So the song was originally called ‘My Secret Place.’ I said, ‘No, that’s no good. How about ‘Up on the Roof’? It was imaginary – maybe something that I copped out of West Side Story.” Gerry Goffin would cite “Up on the Roof” as his all-time favorite of the lyrics he’d written. Goffin kept King’s suggested focus of a haven, modifying it with his enthusiasm for the movie musical West Side Story which contained several striking scenes set on the rooftops of Upper West Side highrises.

Here’s a live version of Carole performing it in 1972:

Little Eva also released her version in 1962:

In April 2010, The Drifters’ “Up on the Roof” was named number 114 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. It is one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

Hits: 47

The Hollies are best known for their pioneering and distinctive three-part vocal harmony style. The Hollies became one of the leading British groups of the 1960s (231 weeks on the UK singles charts during the 1960s, the 9th highest of any artist of the decade) and into the mid 1970s.

The Hollies originated as a duo formed by Allan Clarke and Graham Nash, who were best friends from primary school and began performing together during the skiffle craze of the late 1950s. Eventually Clarke and Nash became a vocal and guitar duo modeled on American duo the Everly Brothers under the names “Ricky and Dane Young”. Under this name, they teamed up with a local band, the Fourtones until 1962 when Clarke and Nash quit and joined another Manchester band, the Deltas. The Deltas first called themselves “The Hollies” for a December 1962 gig at the Oasis Club in Manchester. It has been suggested that bassist Eric Haydock named the group in relation to a Christmas holly garland, though in a 2009 interview Graham Nash said that the group decided just prior to a performance to call themselves “The Hollies” because of their admiration for Buddy Holly.

Over the next three years The Hollies became known for doing cover versions while starting to write and perform a substantial amount of original material, written by the group’s songwriting team of Clarke, Nash, and lead guitarist Tony Hicks. Around this time they were introduced to a 16 year-old fellow Manchester kid named Graham Gouldman, who played in several local bands but became known more for his songwriting skills. He signed a management agreement with Harvey Lisberg in 1965, and while working by day in a men’s outfitters shop and playing by night with his semi-professional band, he wrote a string of hit songs, many of them million sellers. Between 1965 and 1967 alone he wrote “For Your Love”, “Heart Full of Soul” and “Evil Hearted You” for the Yardbirds, “Look Through Any Window” (with Charles Silverman) and “Bus Stop” for the Hollies, “Listen People”, “No Milk Today” and “East West” for Herman’s Hermits, “Pamela, Pamela” for Wayne Fontana, “Behind the Door” for St. Louis Union (covered by Cher), and “Tallyman” for Jeff Beck. He also went on to form the band 10cc, best known for their hit “I’m Not In Love.”

In a 1976 interview Graham Gouldman said the idea for the song “Bus Stop” had come while he was riding home from work on a bus. The opening lines were written by his father, playwright Hyme Gouldman who was a talented and creative writer who often helped his son with song ideas. Graham had the idea for bus stop setting, and his dad came up with the first line: “Bus stop, wet day, she’s there, I say, ‘please share my umbrella.'” From that starting point, he was able to finish the song. Graham Gouldman continued with the rest of the song in his bedroom, apart from the middle-eight, which he finished while riding to work on the bus the next day.

Thirty years later he elaborated on the song’s beginnings:

‘Bus Stop’, I had the title and I came home one day and he said ‘I’ve started something on that Bus Stop idea you had, and I’m going to play it for you. He’d written ‘Bus stop, wet day, she’s there, I say please share my umbrella’ and it’s like when you get a really great part of a lyric or, I also had this nice riff as well, and when you have such a great start to a song it’s kind of like the rest is easy. It’s like finding your way onto a road and when you get onto the right route, you just follow it.

Herman’s Hermits also recorded this song in 1966. They got first crack at many of Gouldman’s songs because their manager was married to his sister.

Peter Noone, the Herman’s Hermits frontman, explained:

“Bus Stop” went to The Hollies before us, because Graham Gouldman didn’t think it was the kind of song that we would like. Then when we heard it, it was like, Are you kidding me? We want that. Luckily John Paul Jones (pre Led Zeppelin) heard it when we were trying to figure it out and he said ‘Nah, I’ve got it,’ and he re-invented the song. That’s John Paul Jones who turned that into a hit record, nobody else. It is not a hit song. If you listen to the Hollies demo version of it, it’s just not good. He reorganized the song and made it what it is: serious art work.”

The Hollies were one of the last of the major British Invasion groups to have significant chart success in the United States. From 1966 until after they signed to Epic in 1967, the band had their most concentrated success in the US, including four Top 15 songs (“Bus Stop”, “Stop Stop Stop”, “On a Carousel”, and “Carrie Anne”). The move to Epic followed by Graham Nash’s departure ended this streak; after that, the Hollies had a few more huge hits: “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” (No.7, 1969), “Long Cool Woman” (No.2, 1972), and “The Air That I Breathe” (No.6, 1974).

In 2010, the Hollies were included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The band members inducted were Allan Clarke, Graham Nash, Tony Hicks, Eric Haydock, Bobby Elliott, Bernie Calvert, and Terry Sylvester. They were also inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in the US in 2006.

Hits: 99

“Strange Fruit” is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it in 1939. Written by teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem and published in 1937, it protested American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Such lynchings had reached a peak in the South at the turn of the century, but continued there and in other regions of the United States. The lyrics are an extended metaphor linking a tree’s fruit with lynching victims.

Barney Josephson, the founder of Cafe Society in Greenwich Village, New York’s first integrated nightclub, heard the song and introduced it to Billie Holiday. Other reports say that Robert Gordon, who was directing Billie Holiday’s show at Cafe Society, heard the song at Madison Square Garden and introduced it to her.

Holiday first performed the song at Cafe Society in 1939. She said that singing it made her fearful of retaliation but, because its imagery reminded her of her father, she continued to sing the piece, making it a regular part of her live performances.

Because of the power of the song, Josephson drew up some rules: Holiday would close with it; the waiters would stop all service in advance; the room would be in darkness except for a spotlight on Holiday’s face; and there would be no encore. During the musical introduction, Holiday stood with her eyes closed, as if she were evoking a prayer.

Holiday approached her recording label, Columbia, about the song, but the company feared reaction by record retailers in the South, as well as negative reaction from affiliates of its co-owned radio network, CBS. When Holiday’s producer John Hammond also refused to record it, she turned to her friend Milt Gabler, whose Commodore label produced alternative jazz. Holiday sang “Strange Fruit” for him a cappella, and moved him to tears.

Columbia gave Holiday a one-session release from her contract so she could record it; Frankie Newton’s eight-piece Cafe Society Band was used for the session. Because Gabler worried the song was too short, he asked pianist Sonny White to improvise an introduction. On the recording, Holiday starts singing after 70 seconds.

In 1978, Holiday’s version of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It was also included in the list of Songs of the Century, by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. Lyricist E. Y. Harburg referred to the song as a “historical document.”

Hits: 85

“Hurt So Bad” was written by Teddy Randazzo, Bobby Weinstein, and Bobby Hart. When DCP Records head Don Costa asked for another hit for Little Anthony, Hart, Randazzo and Weinstein went to a conference room between sets and came up with “Hurt So Bad,” a song about a man who feels intense pain when he sees his former love. Bobby Hart went on to tremendous songwriting success with Tommy Boyce, coming up with many hit songs for The Monkees. Hart considers “Hurt So Bad” his crowning achievement as a songwriter, although he knows that he’ll always be remembered for his hits with The Monkees.

In 1957, a doo-wop group known as the Chesters existed with members Clarence Collins, Tracy Lord, Nathaniel Rodgers, and Ronald Ross. Anthony Gourdine, a former member of the Duponts, joined as lead vocalist and Ernest Wright took over from Ross. Changing their name to the Imperials, they signed with End Records in 1958. Their first single was “Tears on My Pillow”, which was an instant hit. (While playing this song, D.J. Alan Freed, who also popularized the term “Rock and Roll”, came up with the name “Little Anthony” which the group adopted).

Throughout their careers the members of the Imperials, as well as their record label, changed frequently. Anthony Gourdine twice tried a solo carerr, with minimal success, and a group of revolving members using the name are still performing. Imperials founder Collins, now retired, has been replaced by Johnny Britt and original members Wright and Gourdine round out the group. When the group is not touring, Gourdine does stage plays and currently also has a one-man show, which he is currently doing to support his recently released biography, and to celebrate his 55-plus years as a performer.

“Hurt So Bad”, a powerful, dramatic ballad recording, has become one of The Imperials’ best-known songs, and has inspired numerous cover versions. Linda Ronstadt had a Top 10 hit with her cover version in 1980, as did The Lettermen who took the song to number twelve in September 1969.

Little Anthony and the Imperials received the Rhythm and Blues Foundation’s Pioneer Award in 1993. They were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Long Island Music Hall of Fame on October 15, 2006. On January 14, 2009, it was announced that Little Anthony and the Imperials had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to Anthony, Wright, Collins, and Strain, original Imperials member Nathaniel “Nate” Rogers was also present to be honored. Deceased original Imperials member Tracey Lord was inducted posthumously; his sons accepted his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction on his behalf. Sammy Strain is one of the few artists in popular music history who is a double Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, having been inducted with the O’Jays in 2005 and the Imperials in 2009. In 2018, Little Anthony and the Imperials were inducted into the National Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in Detroit.

Hits: 62

“We’re an American Band” became Grand Funk Railroad’s first #1 single. It was sung by Brewer rather than Farner, who usually took lead vocals. It is the 99th song on VH1’s 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs.

Brewer’s lyrics are somewhat autobiographical, detailing the band’s recent tour and their energetic live performances. In the song, the band mentions traveling through Little Rock, Arkansas, as well as stopping to party with four groupies that sneak into their hotel in Omaha, Nebraska. The lyrics also mention “sweet sweet Connie”, which is a reference to legendary groupie Connie Hamzy.

Grand Funk was touring with the British group Humble Pie in early 1973. After one performance, the two groups were drinking in a bar when they began arguing over the merits of British versus American rock. Grand Funk drummer Don Brewer stood up and after bragging about American rock heroes such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley, proudly announced, “We’re an American band!”. Thus inspired, he wrote the song the next morning; by late 1973, it was the top-selling song in the world. A video was also made, showing the band playing the song as well as engaging in activities such as basketball, dirtbike riding, and watersports.

The original single was released on gold transparent vinyl.

In celebration of America’s Independence Day, here’s a live version from 1974!

Hits: 88

Mike Brewer and Tom Shipley began their careers as solo folk artists on the coffee house circuit in the early 1960s.  Both native mid-westerns (Oklahoman and Ohioan respectively), they first met in 1964 at the Blind Owl coffee house in Kent, Ohio.  It would be three more years before they would team up, and during those three years the two crossed paths at clubs on the folk circuit, and each tried their hand in other musical collaborations that didn’t pan out.

In 1965 Michael Brewer migrated to Los Angeles following the emerging west coast music scene. Around this time, Tom Shipley arrived in L.A. and looked up his acquaintance from the folk circuit.  Tom rented a house around the corner from Michael’s house, and soon they began writing songs together. Brewer eventually accepted a job as a staff songwriter at Good Sam Records, a publishing offshoot of the newly formed A&M Records. When Shipley was subsequently hired as staff writer for A&M in 1967, their partnership began as a songwriting collaboration.

A&M Records soon recognized that Michael & Tom’s demo recordings exhibited a unique sound and style of their own, so they green lighted them to record an album, Down In L.A.  A&M brought in the best musicians in the L.A. to play on the album.  But even with a soon to be released debut album and mutual friends who were starting to make it big in bands, such as The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and The Association, Michael and Tom so disliked their life in L.A. that they decided to move back to the Midwest as soon as the record was recorded.

Tom described their decision to settle in Missouri as one of fortunate circumstance:

There was a music scene built up in Kansas City, and Michael and I used to come during Christmas and it was great. There would be clouds in the sky — you don’t see clouds in LA, just the haze. We really didn’t care for L.A. very much. We had just had enough, and figured there had to be a better way to make music, without living there.  So we left California, and ended up coming back to the heartland. We ended up in Kansas City and started a management/production company with some friends.

After settling in Kansas City, they released four albums in the space of four years: Weeds, Tarkio, Shake Off The Demon, and Rural Space. It was on the third album Tarkio (from a regular gig they played in Tarkio, Missouri) that they released the song One Toke Over the Line, which they wrote as a joke while preparing backstage for a performance.

The incident that sparked this song happened at the Vanguard in Kansas City, Missouri. The band was playing the show because, in seeking to escape the LA music scene, they started a tour of their Midwest homelands. Shipley reports that he was given a block of hash and told to take two hits. He ignored the advice and instead took three. Shipley recounts in The Vinyl Dialogues:

I go out of the dressing room -- I’m also a banjo player, but I didn’t have one, so I was playing my guitar -- and Michael (Brewer) came in and I said, ‘Jesus, Michael, I’m one toke over the line.’ And to be perfect honest, I don’t remember if Michael was with me when I took that hit or not. I remember it as ‘not’; I think Michael remembers it as ‘yes.’ And he started to sing to what I was playing, and I chimed in and boom, we had the line.

Brewer also remembers the occasion:

I just cracked up,” he said. “I thought it was hysterical. And right on the spot, we just started singing, ‘One toke over the line, sweet Jesus,’ and that was about it; then we went onstage.

It took Brewer & Shipley on quite a roller coaster ride that year.  Just as it was peaking on the charts, the Vice President of the United States, Spiro Agnew labeled Brewer & Shipley subversive to America’s youth and then strong-armed the FCC to pull “One Toke Over The Line” from the airwaves.  They made President Nixon’s infamous “Enemies List,” a badge of honor which they continue to wear proudly today.

In the early 70’s not everyone knew what the word “toke” meant and additionally many misinterpreted their iconic song because of the “sweet Jesus” lyrics. This probably accounted for several country artists recording “One Toke” in 1972 and was definitely responsible for “One Toke Over The Line” being covered on the Lawrence Welk Show by the wholesome-looking couple Gail Farrell and Dick Dale (not the surf guitar legend), who clearly had NO clue what a toke was.

At the conclusion of the performance of the song, Welk remarked, without any hint of irony, “There you’ve heard a modern spiritual by Gail and Dale.” This caused Michael Brewer to comment:

“The Vice President of the United States, Spiro Agnew, named us personally as a subversive to American youth, but at exactly the same time Lawrence Welk performed the crazy thing and introduced it as a gospel song. That shows how absurd it really is. Of course, we got more publicity than we could have paid for.”

Because of their broad appeal, they became a favored support act for major tours, and shared the stage with a diverse list of artists, including: Elton John, The Eagles, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Bonnie Raitt, Electric Light Orchestra, Blood Sweat & Tears, James Taylor, Stephen Stills, The Beach Boys, Loggins & Messina, Linda Ronstadt, John Sebastian, and The Ozark Mountain Daredevils among others.

As of late 2019 they were still performing. At present, Michael Brewer lives outside of Branson, Missouri. Tom Shipley lives in Rolla, Missouri, where he is part of the staff of Missouri University of Science & Technology. He is semi-retired as manager of video productions and continues to work on special video productions for the university. Michael Brewer was inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame on December 1, 2018. He joins contemporaries such as, Hoyt Axton, Leon Russell, Jimmy Webb, B.J. Thomas, Tom Paxton, J.J. Cale, Elvin Bishop, and Vince Gill. The Hall also has some legendary members like Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Merle Haggard, Patti Page, Gene Autry, Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys.

Hits: 107

This was written by Jimmy Webb, who also wrote Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Galveston.” He was driving along the Kansas-Oklahoma border when he saw a lonesome telephone lineman working atop a telephone pole. Webb drove past a seemingly endless line of telephone poles, each looking exactly the same as the last. Then, in the distance, he noticed the silhouette of a solitary lineman atop a pole. He described it as “the picture of loneliness”. Webb then “put himself atop that pole and put that phone in his hand” as he considered what the lineman was saying into the receiver. Glen Campbell added in a statement to the Dallas Observer that Webb wrote the song about his first love affair with a woman who married someone else.

Jimmy Webb explained how he puts himself into the shoes of the subjects of this songs:

I’ve never worked with high-tension wires or anything like that. My characters were all ordinary guys. They were all blue-collar guys who did ordinary jobs. As Billy Joel likes to say, which is pretty accurate, he said, ‘They’re ordinary people thinking extraordinary thoughts.’ I always appreciated that comment, because I thought it was very close to what I was doing or what I was trying to do. And they came from ordinary towns. They came from places like Galveston and Wichita and places like that.

In late 1967 Jimmy was just about the hottest songwriter in L.A., based on two consecutive monster hits: The Fifth Dimension’s “Up, Up And Away,” and Glen Campbell’s “By The Time I Get To Phoenix.” “Phoenix” had been on the charts for six months, although Jimmy and Glen still hadn’t met.

“For all we know, ‘Phoenix’ could have been a one-off thing,” Jimmy told me recently. “Glen might never have recorded another song of mine.” They finally met at a jingle session. Soon after that date, the phone rang. It was Glen, calling from the studio. “He said, ‘Can you write me a song about a town?’” Jimmy recalls. “And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know … let me work on it.’ And he said, ‘Well, just something geographical.’

“He and (producer) Al DeLory were obviously looking for a follow-up to ‘Phoenix.’ And I remember writing ‘Wichita Lineman’ that afternoon. That was a song I absolutely wrote for Glen.”

It was the first time he had written a song expressly for another artist. But had he conceived any part of “Wichita” before that call?

Not really,” Jimmy says. “I mean I had a lot of ‘prairie gothic’ images in my head. And I was writing about the common man, the blue-collar hero who gets caught up in the tides of war, as in ‘Galveston,’ or the guy who’s driving back to Oklahoma because he can’t afford a plane ticket (‘Phoenix’). So it was a character that I worked with in my head. And I had seen a lot of panoramas of highways and guys up on telephone wires … I didn’t want to write another song about a town, but something that would be in the ballpark for him.

So even though it was written specifically for Glen, he still wanted it to be a ‘character’ song?

Well, I didn’t want it to be about a rich guy!” he laughs. “I wanted it to be about an ordinary fellow. Billy Joel came pretty close one time when he said ‘Wichita Lineman’ is ‘a simple song about an ordinary man thinking extraordinary thoughts.’ That got to me; it actually brought tears to my eyes. I had never really told anybody how close to the truth that was.

What I was really trying to say was, you can see someone working in construction or working in a field, a migrant worker or a truck driver, and you may think you know what’s going on inside him, but you don’t. You can’t assume that just because someone’s in a menial job that they don’t have dreams … or extraordinary concepts going around in their head, like ‘I need you more than want you; and I want you for all time.’ You can’t assume that a man isn’t a poet. And that’s really what the song is about.

Like many of his fans, Campbell’s reaction to the song was immediate and tender. “When I heard it I cried, it made me cry because I was homesick.” The lyrics describe a lineman who is also pining for home and imagines he can hear his absent lover “singing in the wire”.

“I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time,” he tells her. “And the Wichita Lineman, is still on the line.”

Webb, while proud of the song, has always insisted it was unfinished, and says he initially considered that famous couplet “the biggest, awfulest, dumbest, most obvious false rhyme in history”. Over the years, Webb made his peace with the line – realising his discomfort over the rhyme had blinded him to the words’ raw power.

Had I known what I was doing, I wouldn’t have written that line. I would have found a way to make it rhyme. It was only years later that I became aware of what a songwriter was even supposed to do. I was really just a kid who was kind of writing from the hip and the heart.

The phrase “singing in the wire” can refer to the sonic vibration commonly induced by wind blowing across small wires and conductors, making these lines whistle or whine like an aeolian harp. It could also, or even simultaneously, refer to the sounds that a lineman might hear when attaching a telephone earpiece to a long stretch of raw telephone or telegraph line, i.e., without typical line equalization and filtering. In the recording, a notable feature of the orchestral arrangement is the effort of the violins and keyboards to mimic these ethereal sounds and Morse code, and the lyric “I can hear you through the whine” further alludes to them.

Before he became a solo star, Campbell was a prominent session musician. On this track, he employed many of the people he used to play alongside on studio dates. Campbell played guitar along with Al Casey and James Burton; Carol Kaye was on bass, Jim Gordon on drums, and Al DeLory played piano. According to Carol Kaye, these session players would add a lot of notes to make more out of the parts that were written, and she created most of the intro on this track. “Wichita Lineman” is one of her favorites of the hundreds of songs she played on. “We knew that this tune was special,” said bassist Carol Kaye, who added the descending six-note intro. “When he started singing, the hair stood up on my arms and I went, ‘Woah, this is deep’.”

On paper, it’s just two verses, each one composed of two rhymed couplets. The record is a three-minute wonder: Intro. First Verse. Staccato telegraph-like musical device. Second verse. No chorus. Guitar solo. Repeat last two lines of second verse (“and I need you more than want you …”). Fade. There is no B section, much less a C section. Producer Al DeLory wrote an evocative orchestral arrangement in which the strings mimicked the sighing of the telephone wires. To get around the problem of the unfinished third verse, Campbell picked up Kaye’s DanElectro six-string bass guitar and improvised the song’s famous solo.

Why did such an unlikely song become a standard? There are many reasons, but here’s one: the loneliness of that solitary prairie figure is not just present in the lyric, it’s built into the musical structure. Although the song is nominally in the key of F, after the tonic chord is stated in the intro it is never heard again in its pure form, with the root in the bass. The melody travels through a series of haunting changes that are considerably more sophisticated than the Top 40 radio norms of that era. The song never does get “home” again to the tonic – not in either verse, nor in the fade-out. This gorgeous musical setting suggests subliminally what the lyric suggests poetically: the lonely journeyman, who remains suspended atop that telephone pole, against that desolate prairie landscape, yearning for home.

In 2010, Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” ranked “Wichita Lineman” at number 195. It has been referred to as “the first existential country song”. British music journalist Stuart Maconie called it “the greatest pop song ever composed”; and the BBC referred to it as “one of those rare songs that seems somehow to exist in a world of its own – not just timeless but ultimately outside of modern music”.

TheBuddha wrote an excellent background article on Glen and his life here.

Hits: 69

“Unchain My Heart” was written by Bobby Sharp and recorded first in 1961 by Ray Charles and later by many others. Sharp, a drug addict at the time, sold the song to Teddy Powell for $50. Powell demanded half the songwriting credit. Sharp later successfully fought for the rights to his song. In 1987, he was also able to renew the copyright for his publishing company, B. Sharp Music. The song was a hit for Charles when released. Accompanied by his backup singers the Raelettes, Charles sang about wanting to be free from a woman “who won’t let (him) go”. His band included longtime saxophonist David “Fathead” Newman.

Hits: 35