the #1 hit records on the pop charts 1962

Estimated reading time is 30 minutes.

THIS IS THE THIRD in a series of ten articles listing and addressing the #1 records of the year as they appeared on Cash Box magazine’s Top 100 chart from 1960 through 1969. It was originally published as “Big Girls Don’t Limbo Rock” on my publication Tell It Like It Was on Medium on February 16, 2019. The article below is identical to that one.

Please read “Introduction To The #1 Records On The Cash Box Pop Chart of the 1960s” before reading this article. It will explain the nature of this project, introduce you to the writers whose opinions follow, and will make everything easier to understand.

The opinions expressed below are those of John Ross, Lew Shiner, and me. John is the talent behind the Round Place In The Middle website where he opines about rock & roll, western movies, and detective novels. John is my favorite writer writing about rock & roll. He is currently working on his first novel.

Lew is one of the finest novelists in America. Since you’re reading his name here, start with his novel Glimpses, which combines time-travel with fantasy and the milieu of ’60s rock music. Follow that with Deserted Cities Of The Heart (time-travel and psychedelic mushrooms!) and then his latest, Outside The Gates Of Heaven, which also takes place in the ’60s.

If you want to skim through this article and skip around from record to record or comment to comment, that works and you’ll have fun. But this article will make more sense if you read it from beginning to end.

One of the first things you will notice is that each of the articles opens with a calendar of events that reflect the zeitgeist of the era. Hopefully, these will give you some background and some context in which the #1 records of that were made.

 

Chubby Checker may have had the most chart-topping hits in 1962, but the artist with the most weeks spent at #1 were the Four Seasons. Sherry and Big Girls Don’t Cry spent eleven weeks at the toppermost of the poppermost, far more than Checker’s six weeks. And whereas Chubby had seen his heyday (he would continue having Top 40 hits until 1964 but never came close to the top again), the Four Seasons were just kicking off a career that would see them reach the top of the charts more than ten years later!

1962

January
The Beatles auditioned for Decca Records and were turned down because, ahem, “Guitar groups are on the way out.”

February
The United States enacted an embargo prohibiting importing American goods into Cuba and Cuban goods into the United States.

March
Viking Press published Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

April
The first official Major League Baseball game was played in brand new Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles.

May
Marvel Comics published The Incredible Hulk #1 (cover dated July) by Stan Lee (writer) and Jack Kirby (artist), and Amazing Fantasy #15 (August cover date) that introduced Spider-Man by Stan Lee (writer) and Steve Ditko (artist).

June
Students for a Democratic Society completed the Port Huron Statement in Port Huron, Michigan.

July
The Rolling Stones performed for the first time at the Marquee Club in London, England, as the opening act for Long John Baldry.

August
Marilyn Monroe died from an intentional overdose of prescription drugs at her home in Los Angeles.

September
Houghton Mifflin published Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, planting the seeds of the modern environmentalist movement.

October
The first black student, James Meredith, registered at the University of Mississippi, escorted by Federal Marshals.

November
Richard M. Nixon lost the race for governor of California and promised, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” (Alas.)

December
After a trip to Vietnam, US Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield became the first American official to make a public comment questioning the war’s “progress.”

 

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1962

 

January 6–January 27

Chubby Checker
The Twist
Parkway P-811
(4 weeks)

The dance craze continues! Chubby Checker’s The Twist had been #1 for four weeks in 1960 (see September 10, 1960, entry). In the first weeks of 1962, the same record made its way back to the top of the charts for four more weeks, giving it eight weeks at the top! While The Twist wasn’t one of the biggest chart-toppers of 1960 or 1962, it was one of the biggest #1 records of the ’60s.

Refer to September-October, 1960.

Neal: In 1992, a documentary movie titled Twist was made about the dance-by-yourself phenomenon. It features interviews and film clips of:

Hank Ballard (twist, 1958)
Chubby Checker (twist, 1960)
Dee Dee Sharp (mashed potato, in 1961)
Joey Dee (peppermint twist, 1961)

It also includes American Bandstand regulars Joan Buck, Joe Fusco, Jimmy Peatross, and Carole Scadeferri who showed all us kids how to do all those steps. Also interviewed are Motown choreographer Cholly Atkins and Marvelettes lead singer Gladys Horton.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (4 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: 3,000,000
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: Yes
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯ ✯

 

February 3–March 3

Gene Chandler
Duke Of Earl
Vee-Jay VJ-416
(5 weeks)

Doo-wop continued to surprise, with Duke Of Earl spending five weeks at #1, making it one of the year’s biggest hits. This song had been recorded as a group record by the Dukays but Vee-Jay released it as a solo record credited to Gene Chandler, which was a pseudonym for Dukays member Eugene Dixon. Dixon continued recording as Chandler and had up-and-down success on the R&B charts into the early 1980s.

John: I would love to have been a fly on the wall when this was being recorded. I’m still looking for proof that this was arranged by space-men. I know such proof exists . . . because Duke Of Earl does.

Neal: And with this record, Frank Zappa fans can hear where many of the in-jokes on the early Mothers of Invention albums on Verve Records originated.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (3 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: Yes
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯ ✯

 

March 1–March 31

Bruce Channel
Hey! Baby
Smash S-1731
(4 weeks)

Bruce Channel’s Hey! Baby was originally released in 1961 on the tiny Le Cam Records. When it started getting attention, Smash Records leased it and promoted it nationally and it became a smash hit. Over the next few years, both Le Cam and Smash released records by Channel, none achieving any notable success, making Channel a one-hit-wonder.

Lew: The harmonica is by band member and fellow Texan Delbert McClinton, who would go on to solo fame with songs like Giving It Up For Your Love. John Lennon cited McClinton as a major influence on his harmonica playing, and rumors persist that McClinton gave him a few lessons in person during the Channel tour of the UK.

Neal: To a 21st-century listener, Hey! Baby probably sounds more country than rock & roll.

John: Few records are in the DNA of so many others. Hey-y-y-y-y Baby is familiar to Tom Petty fans from I Won’t Back Down, but my favorite is Bruce Springsteen changing it to Me-e-e-e-e Baby in Brilliant Disguise. Those are just two samples among many—and that’s before you get to all the places that harmonica went.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (3 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯ ✯

 

April 7

Chubby Checker
Slow Twistin’
Parkway P-835
(1 week)

Slow Twistin’ was the second dance craze record that made it to the top, although it was the first new one for the new year. Chubby is joined by label-mate Dee Dee Sharp, although she is not credited on the record’s label. This is surprising as Cameo-Parkway would have benefited from her name being associated with a hit-maker like Chubby Checker.

Cameo released Sharp’s first record, Mashed Potato Time, at the same time as Slow Twistin’ and it also reached #1 (see April 28, 1962, below).

John: Smokin’. One of the rock & roll era’s great duet vocals. I find it appropriate that the greatest knockoff of The Twist is by Chubby himself, narrowly besting Sam Cooke’s Twistin’ The Night Away and the Beatles’ version of the Isley Brothers’ Twist And Shout.

Lew: I barely remember this, but listening to it now, it is by far the best Chubby Checker record I’ve heard. Points for the double entendre telling us we’ll “last longer” if we slow down.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: No
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯ ✯

 

April 14

Elvis Presley
Good Luck Charm
RCA Victor 47-7992
(1 week)

Historically, rock historians have looked at this record as proof of Elvis having given up rock & roll for pop. That ignores the fact that this record is inconceivable without rock & roll—meaning it’s a rock & roll record if one that anal historians just don’t get (or just refuse to get).

Good Luck Charm is a great pop-rock record and if Elvis had wanted to spend a few years exploring all the places this sound and feel could take him, we would all consider ourselves blessed today.

This is one of my favorite Elvis singles. When I was 12-years-old and exploring the Legendary Aunt Judy Record Collection that she gave me, I probably played Good Luck Charm as often as I played Hound Dog and All Shook Up on my plastic 45 rpm-only record player (also part of the collection).

John: This isn’t one of my favorite Elvis records, but if you made as many #1 records as Elvis did, and this is the least of them, you were one unbelievable talent. Because it’s still pretty darn great.

RCA Victor did not seek immediate RIAA certification for an official Gold Record Award for Good Luck Charm. This was rectified on March 27, 1992, when it received a Gold Record Award for 500,000 sales and a 1xPlatinum Record Award for 1,000,000 sales.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (2 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯ ✯

 

April 21

Shelley Fabares
Johnny Angel
Colpix CP-621
(1 week)

Shelley Fabares was one of the stars of the popular Donna Reed Show on television. Making the slight-voiced young TV star a recording artist was simply a form of exploiting her fame as an actress. She also recorded duets with her Donna Reed co-star Paul Peterson and had a Top 40 hit with her follow-up single later in ’62, Johnny Loves Me. But for all practical purposes, she was a one-hit-wonder.

Shelley appeared in six movies in the mid-1960s, including three of Elvis’s lesser vehicles (Girl Happy, Spinout, and Clambake). She continued making movies through the end of the century.

In 1964, Shelley married Lou Adler, who founded Dunhill Records that same year, which was home to chart-topping artists Barry McGuire, The Mamas & The Papas, and Steppenwolf. In 1967, he sold Dunhill to ABC and then founded Ode Records, home to chart-topping artists Scott McKenzie and Carol King.

John: Shelley has cheerfully admitted she had nothing to do with this. It’s her voice, sufficiently disguised. In that sense, it might be the most influential record of the entire decade, because that’s how everybody does it now.

Neal: All I’m gonna say is I had a big crush on her as Mary Stone on The Donna Reed Show and this record only made the crush bigger. Of course, I was 10-years-old in 1962 and didn’t know that Emma Peel was just a few years down the road.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (2 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯

 

April 28

Dee Dee Sharp
Mashed Potato Time
Cameo C-212
(1 week)

Mashed Potato Time was the second dance craze record to reach #1 in 1962. In the song, Dee Dee Sharp magically turned the Tokens’ The Lion Sleeps Tonight from the previous year into a dance: “They got a dance was outta sight, doing the lion-sleeps-tonight.”

Sharp wasn’t some one-hit-wonder, scoring several more Top 10 dance hits over the next year: Gravy (For My Mashed Potatoes), Ride, and Do The Bird. Dee Dee also guested on label-mate Chubby Checker’s Slow Twistin’, which was #1 on April 7, 1962 (above). Supposedly, she turned down the opportunity to record The Loco-motion, which was a #1 hit for Little Eva on August 18-September 1, 1962 (below).

John: There might have been greater years for rock & roll, but there was no greater year for dance crazes. And the best is yet to come!

Neal: But, John, there were too many dance crazes in ’62: When you’re a kid with two white feet and are afraid of girls, mastering the twist took all the time and energy I had! Fifty years later and I can twist with the best of them but still can’t mash anything but lumpy potatoes and have to be very, very careful when boogity-boogity-shooping.

And poor Lew is still trying to figure out how to do the Lion Sleeps Tonight like Dee Dee Sharp wants him to.

John: I don’t even dance as much as you. But I sure like watching other people make fools of themselves—and I like it even better when they don’t!

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: No
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯

 

May 5–May 12

The Shirelles
Soldier Boy
Scepter 1228
(2 weeks)

Soldier Boy was the fifth Top 10 hit for the Shirelles and their second chart-topper. Like other girl groups of this time, their predicament illustrates the problems with the record business then: had they been with a bigger record company, they probably would have had a lot more exposure and probably would have sold a lot more records.

If they had been allowed to record songs like Soldier Boy and Will You Love Me Tomorrow. Of course, had they been with Columbia, the staff producers would have had them singing Tea For Two or backing Aretha Franklin on some execrable Broadway tunes.

John: Dedicated to all the troops standing by, circa 1962, waiting to find out which jungle or desert or swamp they would be sent to next. Some things never change.

Neal: In 1960, Elvis recorded Soldier Boy, but it was a different song. It was slower, bluesier, with a doo-wop feel, apparently meant to exploit his recent release from the Army. It was included on his ELVIS IS BACK album although it would have made an interesting single in 1960.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (3 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯

 

May 19

Mr. Acker Bilk
Stranger On The Shore
Atco 45-6217
(1 week)

Acker Bilk’s Stranger On The Shore stands as continued proof that people over the age of 30 were still buying lots of 45s because you know that 15-year-olds weren’t buying this! While he had a half-dozen Top 20 hits in his native UK, he never came close to the US Top 40 again, making him a one-hit-wonder.

Lew: It’s worth pointing out, for those who weren’t there, that back in the 1960s there was a huge demand for instrumentals on the radio. DJs used them to fill the slack time before the news at the top of the hour, as they could be faded out at any point in the record. That gave songs like Stranger On The Shore a leg up as far as the charts were concerned.

John: I think this was the first #1 record by a British artist in the rock and roll era if not ever. Does anyone know why they called him “Mr.”?

Neal: Well, sir, maybe he was called Mister because his record sales didn’t make enough money for Her Majesty to be a Sir.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (1 week)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: Yes
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯

 

May 26–June 23

Ray Charles
I Can’t Stop Loving You
ABC-Paramount 45-10330
(5 weeks)

In Ray Charles’s first year with ABC-Paramount, he recorded his usual rhythm & blues, rock & roll, and jazz, so by 1962 he wanted to do something new—country & western music. Released in April, MODERN SOUNDS IN COUNTRY & WESTERN MUSIC was an astonishing artistic achievement and an equally astonishing commercial success, selling hundreds of thousands of copies straight off. This was an unusual feat for both a black musician and for a country album at the time.

Pop singer Tab Hunter heard the album and went straight into the studio and cut a version of I Can’t Stop Loving You based squarely on Ray’s arrangement. Dot Records had Hunter’s single out in the stores in a matter of weeks.

ABC-Paramount pulled Ray’s version from the album and rush-released it to cut off any play that Hunter’s version might get on AM radio. It was a desperate gamble that paid off: I Can’t Stop Loving You debuted on the Cash Box Top 100 on May 12 and vaulted to the top of the chart two weeks later!

Lew: MODERN SOUNDS IN COUNTRY & WESTERN MUSIC is a landmark for many reasons, including its fusion of white and black musical styles, and also because it was a hit album before albums were really thought of as works of art.

The author of I Can’t Stop Loving You is the brilliant singer and songwriter Don Gibson, who also wrote Oh, Lonesome Me on the same day. If I had to choose between the Charles version and the Gibson version, you would just have to shoot me.

John: Yep, an epic. It’s its own movie. Gibson’s original is so good you can’t believe anyone could top it while it’s playing—or that anyone would even try. But if anyone could, Ray could. And he was never afraid to try anything.

I second Lew’s sentiments on the album. Only Ray and Elvis really believed they could be as big as America itself, and good luck trying to figure out who came closer.

Lew: Can somebody fact-check me on this? I have a vivid memory of Ray Charles in his later years displaying a framed photo of Ronnie Reagan on his piano when he played live. I can’t confirm this on the internet, which claimed he was a lifelong Democrat (in spite of playing apartheid South Africa and the 1984 Rep*blican National Convention). Even if it’s true (and I have a vivid memory of seeing him with that photo on TV), I still forgive him for the incredible music he made.

Neal: There’s not a lot on the Internet about Ray and his politics: He supported Martin Luther King Jr but was apparently quite friendly with Reagan. Go figure.

John: Boy, have people jumped through hoops over the decades trying to distance Ray Charles from his own life. He not only played South Africa, he told the UN to “kiss the far end” when they asked him to apologize. He played for Nixon in the ’70s and Reagan in the ’80s.

He also refused to play segregated shows in the south in the early ’60s, when it counted. He was his own man. One does not need the internet or biographies to confirm this. Just listen to the music.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (5 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: Yes (July 19, 1962)
• Accumulated sales: 2,000,000
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes
• Grammy Award: Best Rhythm & Blues Recording 1962

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯ ✯

 

June 30–July 7

David Rose & Orchestra
The Stripper
MGM K-13064
(2 weeks)

Did someone really write this or did it evolve organically in thousands of bars with thousands of bands backing thousands of women who took off whatever article of clothing each state allowed them to take off?

David Rose was an accomplished songwriter for twenty years prior to scoring with The Stripper. Perhaps his best-known composition is Holiday For Strings, which was written in 1942 and found fame as the theme song for The Red Skelton Show from 1951 through 1971.

As a recording artist, he had a handful of modest hits in the ’50s but after The Stripper never reached the Top 100 again and so he was a one-hit-wonder.

John: Does this count as a dance craze?

Neal: John, I had to preview The Stripper on YouTube to establish a link for this entry. I swear I wasn’t fifteen seconds into this record and I was taking off my clothes! I don’t know if it counts as a dance but it may count as crazed.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (1 week)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯

 

July 14–August 4

Bobby Vinton
Roses Are Red (My Love)
Epic 5-9509
(4 weeks)

There is a good story behind this record: Bobby Vinton had signed with Epic Records as an easy-listening bandleader in 1960. Two years later nothing had happened and company executives wanted to drop him. Vinton argued that his contract called for him to record and release two more songs.

While the execs discussed his future, Vinton found Roses Are Red (My Love) in a pile of rejected demos! He then persuaded the company to record him as a singer, which they did. The story then goes that Bobby bought a thousand copies of his own record and had them hand-delivered to disc-jockeys around the country—accompanied by a bouquet of roses.

The rest is, as they say, history (and this story might make a nice movie).

John: Bobby kind of got cheated. He was a perfect example of someone who would have been just as successful in an earlier time when Tin Pan Alley ruled. Only he would have gotten better material.

Neal: I should point out that while Vinton is cavalierly dismissed these days by guys like John, Lew, and me, he was a major Top 40 star in the ’60s and early ’70s. He had three chart-toppers along with six Top 10 hits and twenty more that made the Top 40!

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (4 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: Yes (August 13, 1962)
• Accumulated sales: 2,000,000
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯

 

August 11

Neil Sedaka
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
RCA Victor 47-8046
(1 week)

Three things: First, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do is, like, the quintessence of everything good that early ’60s (white) rock & roll-based pop music could be in two minutes and twenty seconds. Second, how do you not like Neil Sedaka? Third, you’d have to not like pop music to not like Neil, right?

John: Sedaka, on the other hand, benefited from rock & roll even as he helped define the pop side of it. He didn’t show what he could do with an old-fashioned ballad until the ’70s when he slowed Breakin’ Up Is Hard To Do down and took it to the Top 10 again.

Lew: The song is catchy, no doubt, but something in Sedaka’s voice always rubbed me the wrong way. Too slick, too artificial, too Broadway, too something.

Neal: Sedaka had a long career full of ups and downs, starting with being a part of a group called the Linc-tones who changed their name to the Tokens after Sedaka left. He then formed a songwriting team with Howie Greenfield, who supplied several artists with hits in the ’60s. Until you can check out Neil’s story on his website, here’s a neat story I adapted from Wikipedia:

“In 1958, Connie Francis began searching for a new hit after to follow up ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’ She was introduced to Sedaka and Greenfield, who played every ballad they had written for her. While the two played the last of their songs, Francis began writing in her diary. After they finished, Francis told them they wrote beautiful ballads but that they were too intellectual for the young generation.

“Greenfield suggested that they play a song they had written for the Shepherd Sisters but Sedaka protested that Francis would be insulted by such a puerile song. Greenfield reminded him that Francis had not accepted their other suggestions and they had nothing to lose. After Sedaka played Stupid Cupid, Francis told them they had just played her new hit. Francis’ rendition of the song was a Top 20 in the US but topped charts in the UK.

“While Francis was writing in her diary, Sedaka asked her if he could read what she had written. Francis said no. This inspired Sedaka to write The Diary, which became his first hit later that year.”

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (2 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯

 

August 18–September 1

Little Eva
The Loco-motion
Dimension 1000
(3 weeks)

The Loco-motion was yet another dance craze record (the third) that reached #1, this time by the songwriters’ babysitter! Husband and wife team Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote this song for Dee Dee Sharp. They had their nanny Eva Boyd sing the demo for Dee Dee.

For some weird reason, she turned it down and Goffin and King then had the demo released on their own Dimension Records. Along the way, Eva Boyd the babysitter became Little Eva the recording artist.

John: And, appropriately, the greatest dance craze record appears in the greatest dance craze year. She soon tried to create another with Let’s Turkey Trot. It did not go as well.

Lew: I’m fascinated by train songs, and I count this as one of them. What an irresistible rhythm this song has—more powerful than a locomotive!

Neal: While Little Eva is usually written off as a one-hit-wonder, such was not the case. She followed her first hit with a fine R&B-pop hit, Keep Your Hands Off Of My Baby, which made it to #15 in late ’62 (and which was performed by the Beatles before their rise to the toppermost of the poppermost). Then came the rather silly Let’s Turkey Trot, which reached #21. That was it for Eva’s career but she was not a one-hit-wonder.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (1 week)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: Yes
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯

 

September 8–October 13

The Four Seasons
Sherry
Vee-Jay VJ-456
(6 weeks)

The Four Seasons’ Sherry was #1 for six weeks, the longest stay at the top on Cash Box for 1962. Four weeks after it left the top spot, they were right back at #1 with Big Girls Don’t Cry for five more weeks! The four guys from New Jersey were the biggest Italian pop music sensation since Dion & the Belmonts!

No, wait . . . they were the biggest Italian pop music sensation since Dean Martin!!

Hell’s Belles, they were the biggest Italian pop music sensation since Frank Sinatra!!!

John: Since they spent eleven out of fourteen weeks at #1 with their breakout hits (following an even longer road than usual to “overnight” success), it’s probably fair to say the Seasons were the biggest sensation between Elvis and the Beatles. I can’t think of anyone else who smashed out that hard.

If you turn it up loud and let your mind drift back in time, you can still feel the balconies shaking from New York to Newark to Philly when they played it live. You can still feel it even if you were 2 years old and living in Florida at the time.

Neal: Well, if we don’t count the ten singles they released for six record companies under four different names in the previous seven years, then, yes, we can consider their first two Vee-Jay singles to be them “smashing out.” And, as you point out—which I’m not certain has been pointed out very often before—the biggest thing between Elvis the Pelvis and the Mop Tops!

Lew: A lot of credit has to go to the various studio drummers who played on their records. That was Buddy Saltzman starting in 1964, but I don’t know who played on Sherry. Whoever it is, they had a similar driving sound. I suspect producer Bob Crewe, who knew from drummers, is responsible. Credit Crewe also for the fact that these records still sound great today.

John: I’ll just add that anybody who missed the Four Seasons’ bio Jersey Boys on Broadway missed a lot. The movie didn’t do it credit.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (5 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯ ✯

 

October 20–November 3

Bobby (Boris) Pickett & the Crypt-kickers
The Monster Mash
Garpax 44167
(3 weeks)

In the song, the singer/narrator (Bobby Pickett) is supposed to be Dr. Frankenstein but is imitating the speaking voice of actor Boris Karloff, who played the mute monster—not the doctor—in the 1931 movie Frankenstein. But who cares, right?

The song was titled to take advantage of the latest dance craze, Dee Dee Sharp’s Mashed Potato Time, which had been #1 on April 28, 1962 (above). Had Pickett thought of this song a few months earlier, it might have been titled The Monster Twist, which just ain’t the same, right?

Pickett came back with a novelty hit for the 1962 Christmas season, Monsters’ Holiday. Despite it’s being a rather pale imitation of the original, it reached the Top 30.

For some reason, The Monster Mash returned to the Top 10 in 1973. Despite this, most people consider this Pickett to be a one-hit-wonder.

While most novelty hits go as fast as they come, The Monster Mash remains popular almost sixty years later and is heard all over the country every Halloween. Play it today and kids born while Obama was President (sigh) will recognize it immediately and start singing along with it!

John: Is this the only Halloween standard? If so, no holiday ever had a better one.

Neal: I suppose The Monster Mash may be the only song that can be considered a Halloween standard. Nothing else comes to mind. If Pickett retained the composition and publishing rights to this song, he must get a helluva royalty check every year.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (2 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯

 

November 10–December 8

The Four Seasons
Big Girls Don’t Cry
Vee-Jay VJ-465
(5 weeks)

The Four Seasons’ second single for Vee-Jay, Big Girls Don’t Cry, was their second chart-topper in 1962. They would score a third #1 record with Walk Like A Man in 1963 before moving to Philips Records. Historically, tiny Vee-Jay Records lost both the Four Seasons and an upstart guitar group from England with the ridiculous name of the Beatles in the same year.

John: Combined with Sherry this created what I sometimes refer to on my blog as “the shock of the new” (a sound not heard before). Unlike the ’50s, this was no longer occurring every day, though it was still occurring a lot more than it does now.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (5 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: Yes
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯ ✯

 

December 15

Elvis Presley
Return To Sender
RCA Victor 47-8100
(1 week)

By the end of 1962, Elvis had made eight movies and recorded the soundtracks for each since he returned from the Army in March 1960. They all made a lot of money but had taken their toll: he knew he wasn’t going to be making any serious movies and was too bored to fight with anyone about silly, uninspired movies with silly, uninspired soundtracks. Quality control was going downhill fast, even in his regular studio recording sessions.

Return To Sender had been written for him by Winfield Scott and Otis Blackwell, the latter had written many hits for many artists, including Don’t Be Cruel and All Shook Up for Elvis. This record was proof that Elvis was up to the occasion any time he was inspired by a song as good as Return To Sender.

Lew: As a friend of mine likes to point out, this song contains a near-anachronism. When the King sings, “No such number, no such zone,” the reference is to the two-digit numbers the US Post Office used to use to simplify mail delivery in big cities. The very next year, those zone numbers would be appended to the three-digit numbers of a sectional center facility (where mail was sorted) to create the new ZIP Codes.

John: Is this E’s last #1 until In The Ghetto and Suspicious Minds in 1969? If so, it was a good one to ride out on. One of his miracles of ease.

Neal: RCA Victor did not seek immediate RIAA certification for an official Gold Record Award for Return To Sender. This was rectified on March 27, 1992, when it received a Gold Record Award for 500,000 sales and a 1xPlatinum Record Award for 1,000,000 sales.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: No
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: 2,000,000
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯ ✯

 

December 22

Chubby Checker
Limbo Rock
Parkway P-849
(1 week)

Limbo Rock was the fourth dance craze record to hit the top in 1962. Unlike the loco-motion, the limbo was a popular dance, one still attempted at parties and weddings to this day. It had originally been recorded as an instrumental by the Champs and had gotten to #33 in August 1962. Lyrics were added and Chubby took it to the top!

In 1970, I saw Chubby in a venue in Kingston, Pennsylvania, that normally hosted bands that played The Stripper and the ladies referred to in that song’s title (see June 30, 1962, above). Chubby wasn’t chubby no more: he was lean and sexy, looking like—are you ready?—a black Elvis.

And he did the limbo rock like he was a skinny teenager. Fun show, even without the women taking off whatever article of clothing the Keystone State allowed them to take off.

John: My personal favorite of his actual dances. I was only so-so at the Twist and the Pony, but I could limbo pretty good there for a while. If I hadn’t taken a growth spurt when I was about eight, I coulda’ been a contendah!

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: No
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯
Neal: ✯

 

December 29

The Tornados
Telstar
London 45-9561
(1 week)

Telstar 1, after which the song was written, was a communication satellite that was launched on July 10, 1962, and successfully relayed the first television pictures, telephone calls, and telegraph images through space. Although no longer functional, Telstar 1 still orbits the Earth.

In some respects, Telstar can be argued to be the first real “sixties record”: a record with special effects named after the first man-made satellites orbiting this planet. Telstar remained at #1 for the first two weeks of the new year (January 5–January 12, 1963), giving it a total of three weeks at the top.

Telstar was the first record by a British rock-pop group to top the US charts. The next time this happened would be I Want To Hold Your Hand in 1964. Despite what you read anywhere else, Telstar and the Tornadoes have nothing to do with the much-ballyhooed British Invasion of 1964.

The Tornados never scored again on the US charts, but they had another Top 10 hit in the UK with Globetrotter in 1963, which featured a similarly spacey sound and feel (and a theme that calls to mind Jimmy Clanton’s Venus In Blue Jeans).

The group spelled their name “Tornados” but London in the US misspelled it as “Tornadoes” on the single (which, of course, is the correct spelling of the plural version of the word “tornado”).

Lew: That eerie science-fictiony (sic) sound was once again the Clavioline, an early synthesizer, which we heard last year on Del Shannon’s Runaway. The song was written and produced by the legendary Joe Meek, who worked with some amazing artists.

John: And the producer of this record went on to kill someone and then himself? No way!

Hey, Neal, please tell me you played this one on acid! I assume the reason NASA didn’t make it their official anthem was they didn’t want their rockets to crash and burn. Bureaucrats are always chicken!

Neal: Hey, John, I never heard Telstar on acid. We didn’t play too many 45s while tripping and no one I knew owned a copy of the album until record collectors were invented several years later. 

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (3 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: 5,000,000
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

But do you like it?
John: ✯ ✯ ✯
Lew: ✯ ✯ ✯
Neal: ✯ ✯

 

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FEATURED IMAGE: Before the Twist, there was only one dance craze record to make it to the top of the charts during the early stage of the rock & roll era and that was the Stroll introduced by the Diamonds in early 1958. Then came Chubby Checker and the Twist in 1960 followed by the Pony in 1961, also by Checker. The floodgates were opened in 1962 when The Twist returned to the #1 position and was followed by the Slow Twist, the Mashed Potato, the Loco-motion, the Monster Mash, and the Limbo. In the Year of the Dance Craze, Chubby Checker was the King of the Dance Craze!

Year-end observations

Twenty records reached #1 on the Cash Box Top 100 chart in 1962. Here is the breakdown of #1 records based on how many weeks they spent at the top of the chart:

6 weeks: 1
5 weeks: 3
4 weeks: 3
3 weeks: 2
2 weeks: 2
1 week:   9

By the time the first weeks of 1962 rolled around, the twist as a mere dance fad in 1960 had become an international phenomenon. It was the era of the “jet-setters,” when “people of leisure” (a euphemism for rich folk) could take a commercial jet airliner and hop from continent to continent to attend parties, premieres, events, happenings, or affairs, turning the planet into their playground.

It was hip to be young, or at least act like you were young. Consequently, everyone was doing the twist, including DC politicians, Hollywood celebrities, even European royalty! Given this, it was only natural that Chubby Checker’s 18-month-old hit record come out of the mothballs and make its way to the top of the charts for the second time!

No record had ever retired from Top 40 and then come back like a new record. If anything, The Twist was a bigger hit the second time around!

Four other dance record reached #1, making 1962 the Year of the Dance Craze Record. If we weren’t twisting, we were mashing potatoes or we were limboing (“How low can you go?”) or just trying to figure out how to do the lo-co-mo-tion.

At the same time, other things of more import over the long run were a-brewing: the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan all released their first records for a major record company.

Gold Record Awards

Of the twenty records that reached #1, Joseph Murrells lists twenty of them as million-sellers. Yet the artists, their management, and their record companies thought so little of the RIAA Gold Record Award that only two companies sought “official” certification: ABC-Paramount for Ray Charles’s I Can’t Stop Loving You and, five years later, Atco for Mr. Acker Bilk Stranger On The Shore.

RIAA certification rate: 1%

 

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