the #1 hit records on the pop charts 1964

THIS IS THE FIFTH 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 “I Want To Hold Your Louie Louie” on my publication Tell It Like It Was on Medium on April 14, 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.

FEATURED ARTIST: In most years, an artist with three #1 records would walk away with Artist of the Year status, as the Supremes would have in any year of the ’60s except 1964. That year there was another group with seven chart-toppers, the Beatles. Had the Fab Four not achieved success in the States, then they would have been the Biggest Group in the World. To put their success in perspective — especially if you doubt that they were America’s top vocal group in the ’60s — their thirteen #1 records on the Cash Box Top 100 are more than the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons’ chart-toppers combined!

1964

January
McGraw-Hill published Marshall McLuhan’s book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.

February
The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, the most influential presentation of live pop music on television since Elvis Presley’s initial appearances on various shows in 1956.

March
Radio Caroline began broadcasting rock & roll and pop music from studios set up on board the ship MV Caroline, becoming the United Kingdom’s first pirate radio station in the UK.

April
Sidney Poitier became the first black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in Lilies of the Field.

May
The first major student demonstration against the Vietnam War took place in New York and San Francisco. 

June
Novelist Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters boarded their psychedelically hand-painted school bus Further with a huge supply of LSD and headed east to meet Timothy Lear and hopefully tune in and turn on America.

July
President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, officially abolishing racial segregation in the United States.

August
Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Johnson wide-ranging power to wage war without a declaration of war from Congress in Vietnam.

September
The Warren Commission Report was published stating that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963.

October
More than 3,000 student activists at the University of California, Berkeley, blocked a police car from taking a Congress of Racial Equality volunteer who had been arrested for not showing the police his identification, laying the foundation for the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.

November
Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater to remain President of the United States.

December
Comedian Lenny Bruce was sentenced to prison for obscenity.

With that as a backdrop, let’s look at the #1 records of 1964 . . .

1964

January 4

Bobby Vinton
There! I’ve Said It Again
Epic 5-9638
(1 week)

The first week of 1964 and the #1 record was Bobby Vinton’s cloying There! I’ve Said It Again, continuing the dominance of easy-listening from the previous year.

John: Poor Bobby. History designated him to be the calm before the storm, lulling the Cosmos to sleep. Admittedly, he was very good at it.

Neal: Bobby Vinton’s voice and style rub me the wrong way, so I may sound unduly harsh when commenting on his records.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (4 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: ✮

January 11–January 18

The Kingsmen
Louie Louie
Wand 143
(2 weeks)

The Kingsmen’s Louie Louie was/is the quintessential garage rock record. And not just garage, but garage rock sang by Jack Ely and recorded in such a (cheap) manner that the lyrics were indecipherable.

Everyone from the dumbest kid in class to local disc-jockeys was hearing something dirty in the song. Even though no one could say what the dirty lyrics were, the record was banned on some stations. Believe it or not, the FBI received enough letters of complaint from parents that they launched an investigation into the record to figure out what was going on!

And still, it made it to the top of the charts!

Lew: I remember the local radio station (KLIF-AM) printed the alleged lyrics to Louie Louie on the back of their Top Forty survey, and we all scoffed, knowing that the “real” lyrics were totally filthy. Years later, listening to the song on a decent hi-fi, I realized the KLIF lyrics were right, and singer Jack Ely was just slurring the words so badly that teenaged wishful thinking could run riot. Per Wikipedia, one of the reasons for the slurring was the fact that Ely’s teeth were in braces at the session.

Neal: It’s like some kind of unwritten understanding that every rock critic, record reviewer, and historian in the world pay fealty to this record and claim to like it. I thought I’d be the first to not.

John: Louie Louie is hardly my favorite garage band record, but it is the most epic and the music justifies the brouhaha that ensued. Nothing moves the world like a cultural artifact that convinces 12-year-old boys there’s a dirty joke hidden in it somewhere. This is true, even if they don’t all grow up to be rock critics.

Lew: Having been in a garage band in the ’60s, I am of course sick to death of this record, but I can’t deny its charms. Like the other unavoidable garage band classic of the era, Gloria, it conjures a party atmosphere through its sloppy abandon. It rocks. Also, anybody could play either song pretty much the first time they picked up a guitar.

Neal: Here are the lyrics as Richard Berry wrote them and released them as Louie Louie in 1957 (and the punctuation is mine). The singer seems to be talking to a man named Louie (or Louie-Louie), telling him of missing a girl while away at sea:

Louie Louie, me gotta go.
Louie Louie, me gotta go.
A fine little girl, she waits for me.
Me catch the ship across the sea.
I sail the ship all alone,
I never think I’ll make it home.

Louie Louie, me gotta go.
Louie Louie, me gotta go.
Three nights and days, me sailed the sea.
Me think of girl constantly.
On the ship, I dream she there.
I smell the rose in her hair.

Louie Louie, me gotta go.
Louie Louie, me gotta go.
Me see Jamaica moon above.
It won’t be long, me see me love.
Me take her in my arms and then
I tell her I’ll never leave again.

Louie Louie, me gotta go.
Louie Louie, me gotta go.
I said me gotta go . . .

A close listen to the lyrics as Jack Ely of the Kingsmen sang them on Louie Louie in 1963 reveal that they are essentially identical to those Berry sung six years earlier. There are a few differences in Ely’s interpretation:

• Ely sings “Loo-eye Loo-eye” instead of “Loo-wee Loo-wee.”
• Ely sings “we gotta go” in the choruses instead of “me gotta go.”
• Ely interjects “Oh no” and “Oh baby” a few times.

Otherwise, it’s the same song about missing a girl while away at sea.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: No
• 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: ✮ ✮

January 25–March 14

The Beatles
I Want To Hold Your Hand
Capitol 5112
(8 weeks)

Then came the Beatles. Their first #1 record in the US was issued by Capitol Records. The company who didn’t think we would buy records from an English group with the funny name and funnier hair and so passed on their earlier releases, which were picked up by Vee-Jay Records.

According to Joseph Murrells, I Want To Hold Your Hand sold 1,500,000 in the UK—a huge number there—and then sold 5,000,000 more in the US, a number of Presleyean proportions!

The invasion was afoot.

Lew: 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, February 9, 1964. Arguably the most significant hour in music history. How many kids watching The Ed Sullivan Show that night had their lives changed forever? Not me. I was 13 years old, living in the small town of Wadi Halfa, Sudan, where my father was doing salvage archeology in advance of the Aswan Dam.

If we’d even had a TV set, there wouldn’t have been anything to watch. We did, however, have the BBC Overseas Service (as it was then known), where we’d heard the Beatles a few times before they exploded in the US.

I was strictly Squaresville at the time, my music preferences inclined toward movie themes and easy listening, and the Beatles didn’t do much for me then. That would change once my hormones fully kicked in.

Once you’ve said what you have to say about the Beatles, there’s not a lot left to say about 1964.

Neal: Well, Lew, thank the Lord for the nighttime we don’t all agree or there’d be nothing left for anyone to read from this point on.

John: Amen to that! I was three when Beatlemania hit, but I experienced a highly personalized mini-version of it in the spring of 1978 when, in lieu of my senior prom, I took my mother to a movie. We saw Robert Zemeckis’s I Wanna Hold Your Hand, which is still the best thing he’s ever done (and nobody ever made my mother laugh harder than Wendy Jo Sperber). I bought the “Red” album the next week. It’s still my go-to Beatles album.

Neal: I didn’t go to my senior prom either, even though I was going steady with the prettiest girl in the area and could have shown her off to everybody. I hated high school that much. For a couple of decades after, I thought I was cool for not going. Now I wish Janet (who remains my friend) and I had gone.

Oh, well, there’s always the future.

John: And while we’re celebrating the cultural and historical significance of it all, I’d just like to mention that I Want To Hold Your Hand is a fabulous record, capable of representing all that was great about the early Beatles, who are still my favorite Beatles.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (7 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: Yes (February 3, 1964)
• Accumulated sales: 11,000,000
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: Yes
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes

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

March 21–March 28

The Beatles
She Loves You
Swan 4152
(2 weeks)

The Beatles’ second #1 record in the US was issued by tiny Swan Records, who took a chance on the English group with the funny name and even funnier hair after Vee-Jay gave up on them because they couldn’t sell Please Please Me or From Me to You to a US audience in 1963.

If the Beatles didn’t have a backlog of material (their previous singles and album meant sixteen unheard and therefore “new” tracks for the US market) and the Fab Four only invaded with I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You, they would have conquered us just as easily. Or is it that we would have surrendered just as willingly?

John: I think having a two-year backlog of first-rate material no one had heard was a huge advantage. It makes Elvis’s accomplishment in 1956 look all the more extraordinary because he had to come up with everything in the moment. Of course, he didn’t have to write his own songs, so maybe it balances out in the end.

In any case, the combination of I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You was like a left jab followed by a roundhouse right. You can hear why the Old Guard never quite got back up off the canvas.

Neal: For years it was assumed that Steve Sholes needed the five Sun tracks on Elvis’s first long-player because he didn’t have enough new material. We know now that Elvis had already recorded thirteen tracks for RCA Victor, enough for two singles and an album. He would cut thirty-three more sides along with four tracks for a soundtrack album in 1956 alone.

John: In our own time, that sort of productivity is typically spread over seven or eight years and called a career.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (2 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: 5,000,000
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes

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

April 4

The Beatles
Twist And Shout
Tollie 9001
(1 week)

The Beatles’ third #1 record in the US was issued on Tollie Records, a subsidiary of Vee-Jay Records, who couldn’t break the group in the States in 1963 but sold millions of their records in ’64.

Hell, the Fab Four might have conquered America just with this one! And they just took the Isley Brothers’ original version, dropped the background horns, and upped the intensity a wee bit. If you prefer rock & roll to rock, this may be the Beatles’ best side ever!

Twist And Shout was not issued as a single in the UK but was the title track to their first EP album in 1963, TWIST AND SHOUT. It topped the EP charts and stayed there for months, selling more than 600,000 copies.

John: Like Louie, Louie a perfect example of the approach white rockers would increasingly take towards R&B as the decade progressed: Play it louder.

Neal: Tollie did not seek immediate RIAA certification for an official Gold Record Award for Twist And Shout. This was rectified on July 24, 2104, when Capitol Records had it certified for 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: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes

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

April 11–May 9

The Beatles
Can’t Buy Me Love
Capitol 5150
(5 weeks)

The Beatles’ first “new” single of 1964 was relatively controlled (tame?) compared to what was already all over the radio and every turntable in the country. Still, Can’t Buy Me Love was irresistible and remains many a fan’s favorite Beatles record.

John: I like the way they turn “Cantbuyme” into one word and “lu-huve” into two. That kind of energy and innovation (one-upping the Beach Boys in the Chuck Berry-plus-harmony department) was why they had such a deep catalog after two years and why there were so many hidden gems even beyond what reached the charts, as Neal mentions. I have the same feelings about There’s A Place and It Won’t Be Long.

Neal: While the “yeahs” of She Loves You and the “ahhhs” of Twist And Shout are indelibly marked on this period, there were two lesser Beatles hits that are time travel records for me: Paul counting off “1, 2, 3, 4!” on I Saw Her Standing There and Ringo talking about Boys. These are, for me, as much a core part of Beatlemania as any of the massive-selling, chart-topping hits.

Lew: Just want to second John’s shoutout to It Won’t Be Long. What a great song.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (5 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: Yes (March 31, 1964)
• Accumulated sales: 6,000,000
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes

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

May 16

Louis Armstrong
Hello, Dolly!
(1 week)

In what was one of the unlikeliest moments in Top 40 history, America’s greatest musician, Louis Armstrong had his first #1 pop hit with Hello, Dolly!

John: Whenever some old fogey mentions that Armstrong was the first to “knock the Beatles off the top spot” or something along those lines—inevitably as a means of suggesting the older styles were inherently superior—I like to remind them that the last act to knock the Beatles out of the top spot were the Jackson 5, who did it twice (displacing both Let It Be and The Long And Winding Road in 1970), with records that have a lot more going for them than this one, which is entirely reliant on Armstrong’s abundant charm, not at all on his once-revolutionary musicianship.

Neal: For readers who only know Armstrong through his “Pops” Armstrong persona, in his youth he was arguably the single greatest creator in the history of American music. He is credited as being the first great jazz soloist.

Similarly, he is credited with introducing “scatting” to a mass audience. In other words, he helped invent both jazz music and jazz singing!

Like Elvis, where would we be without him? If there hadn’t been a Louis Armstrong, we might have needed dozens of talented, creative musicians to accomplish what Louis did by himself.

Lew: I love Louis, but I hate this song. To me, this is the ultimate Broadway schlock, full of cutesy internal rhyme and cornball orchestral moves. Louis was an interesting singer, but he was a brilliant, innovative, technically accomplished, and soulful trumpeter, and thanks to crap like this he ended up as more of a personality than a musician. I’m glad he finally got some good paychecks, but as far as I’m concerned he got them for the wrong thing.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (1 week)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: 2,000,000
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes (Early Influence)
• Grammy Award: Best Vocal Performance – Male 1964

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

May 23

The Beatles
Love Me Do
Tollie 9008
(1 week)

Such was the sweep of Beatlemania that their first single, a rather pleasant if somewhat plodding ditty that had been a Top 20 hit in the UK almost two years earlier, made it to the toppermost of the poppermost, just like Johnny told Paul, George, and Ringo it would!

John: I’d say it’s just proof they had it from the beginning.

Neal: John attributed the inspiration for his harmonica part on this record to Delbert McClinton’s harmonica part on Bruce Channel’s Hey! Baby (see March 10, 1962, entry).

Vee-Jay did not seek immediate RIAA certification for an official Gold Record Award for Love Me Do. This was rectified on July 24, 2104, when Capitol Records had it certified for a Gold Record Award for 500,000 sales and a 1xPlatinum Record Award for 1,000,000 sales.

• 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: Yes

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

May 30

Mary Wells
My Guy
Motown M-1056
(1 week)

And after giving John Paul George and Ringo five number ones, record buyers said, “Hey! Let’s throw a bone to that little record company in Detroit and give them their first chart-topper.”

Mary Wells was Motown’s first real star, placing a dozen sides in the R&B Top 10, four of which made the Top 10 on the pop charts. This was before most of us ever heard of the Supremes! She engaged Berry Gordy in a dispute over royalties . . . unsuccessfully.

John: And then Wells promptly left Motown, one of history’s great mistakes—on both sides . . . and our loss.

Neal: Yup. Wells left Motown in 1964 and signed with 20th-Century Fox, where she had one big R&B hit. Then she moved over to Atco, where she again scored one big R&B hit. After that, she moved around a bit but never found her groove again.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (2 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: ✮ ✮ ✮

June 6–June 20

The Dixie Cups
Chapel Of Love
Red Bird RB-10-001
(3 weeks)

More proof that the girl-group sound was alive and well during the British Invasion.

John: The girl-group sound never really went away. The white boy club that controls rock criticism just kept giving it other names (even “girl group” was applied retroactively). Sort of like the R&B charts in general, which, at least in Billboard, have been renamed more times than the country and pop charts combined.

Rosanna Arquette and her friends breaking into this song in Baby It’s You is one of the greatest moments in American film.

Neal: Just heard this record played in the background as we watched the final episode of the final season of Boston Legal, one of our favorite television series.

• 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: ✮ ✮ ✮

June 27

Peter & Gordon
A World Without Love
Capitol 5175
(1 week)

Paul McCartney wrote this song when he was a teenager and dating Jane Asher. In 1964, he gave the song to Jane’s brother, Peter Asher. He recorded it with this partner Gordon Waller. Subsequently, A World Without Love became the only song written by one of the Beatles to reach #1 in the US by an artist other than the Beatles. (This happened several times in the UK.)

John: I think this means the Beatles were clever enough to keep their best material out of other people’s hands until they had defined it. That’s in line with Paul’s old comment about his and John’s thinking: “Let’s write another swimming pool.” But this is a wonderful record all the same.

• 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: No

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

July 4

The Beach Boys
I Get Around
Capitol 5174
(1 week)

The Beach Boys had four Top 10 hits before I Get Around became their first chart-topper. The lyrics summed up the problems of being a young guy at the time: “I’m getting bugged driving up and down the same old strip, I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip!”

If you focus on the lyrics and the singing, this can sound like a rather simplistic record. In fact, its structure and production were among the most advanced and daring in rock & roll up to that point.

John: Perfect in every way. I remember hearing this on the radio when I was cruising through Dothan, Alabama, in my first car, a ’71 Maverick, thinking, “Yeah, this is me.” Of course, I was “cruising” towards a tire store to replace a bald one with a retread, but it was my car dammit. There’s no freedom like being able to drive yourself!

On what seems like a totally unrelated note, Brian Wilson has said that he fired his dad as their manager (or maybe kicked him out of the studio for the first time—the memory hazes) while they were recording this.

Neal: The first time I visited the used record stores in Sacramento in 1980, one shop had an extraordinary 45 on the wall behind the cash register. Side 1 had the label for and played the Beach Boys’ I Get Around (Capitol 5174), while Side 2 had the label for and played the Beatles’ I Feel Fine (Capitol 5327).

The asking price was an unbelievable $500—“unbelievable” as in I could have bought several “butcher covers” for that price at that time! Needless to say, I walked out of the store laughing at that price. Needless to say, now I wish I had bought the record.

Finally, fifty years later and I can rewrite the lyrics and sum up the problems of being an old guy today: “I’m getting bugged driving my golf cart up and down the same old strip, I gotta find a new place where the old farts used to be hip!”

Lew: I Get Around is a good song, but the real brilliance for me is on the flip-side. I’m going to indulge myself and quote from my novel Glimpses, where the protagonist really hears Don’t Worry Baby for the first time:

“Brian sings lead, which he didn’t do that often in the early days, and the longing in his voice is so raw and powerful I can’t believe I never heard it before. In the storyline of the song, it’s his girlfriend who tells him not to worry, that everything would be okay. Listen to the song and you can hear just how badly Brian wanted to be told those words by somebody. A girlfriend would do, but I know what he really wanted. He wanted to hear it from his father. He never would.”

One of the things you can never know is how much the flip-side contributes to the sales of the record as a whole. Don’t Worry Baby got a lot of airplay in Texas and I think it was a major factor in taking the single to the top.

John: Yes, to all Lew says about Don’t Worry Baby (though I love I Get Around just as much). The Beach Boys competed with Elvis and the Beatles as Kings of the B-side, and this is one of those real contenders for the greatest double-sided 45 ever released, as well as perhaps the first “concept single.”

Neal: Capitol did not seek immediate RIAA certification for an official Gold Record Award for I Get Around. This was rectified on February 22, 1982, when it received a Gold 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: ✮ ✮ ✮

July 11–July 18

The Four Seasons
Rag Doll
Philips 40211
(2 weeks)

Rag Doll was the Four Seasons’ fourth and final chart-topper for Vee-Jay Records. After this, their hits would for Philips Records. This was not in the mold of their earlier hits, being a stately recording that featured a subdued Frankie Valli vocal. 

John: And we really should tell the tale: The Seasons’ principal writer, Bob Gaudio, flush with the group’s success, was driving through one of the New York boroughs when one of the ubiquitous street urchins, a girl who looked no more than five or six, came up to clean his driver’s side mirror for a dime (or quarter). The smallest thing Gaudio had on him was a five (or ten or twenty) dollar bill.

He decided he couldn’t give her nothing, so he gave her the bill. Seeing her stunned expression in the rearview mirror as he drove away, he thought, “She looks just like a rag doll.” It tapped a lot of things, not least his class-consciousness, which was already a feature of his and the Four Seasons’ style.

Their excellent Dawn (Go Away) implored that the girl “think what your future would be with a poor boy like me.” It had spent three weeks at #3 earlier in the year, kept from the top spot by I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You.

Years later, when Jersey Boys book writer Marshall Brickman told Gaudio he had protested the Vietnam War, Gaudio said, “Yeah, well while you’re writing this show just remember my audience were the ones fighting it.”

Neal: Turning that around, we can argue that if Brickman’s audience hadn’t burned their draft cards, protested and demonstrated, gotten busted, gone to prison, and moved to Canada, Gaudio’s audience might still be getting drafted and still be fighting in Vietnam.

John: The draft, alas, was the only thing that went away. The wars go on.

Neal: The only way to end the endless wars may be to bring back the draft.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (2 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: Yes (August 24, 1964)
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes

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

July 25–August 8

The Beatles
A Hard Day’s Night
Capitol 5222
(3 weeks)

A Hard Day’s Night was the record that introduced the world to two things: the best rock & roll movie ever made (which is still true), and the chiming sound of the Rickenbacker 360-12, an electric 12-string guitar George Harrison used on several tracks in the movie. Without both, we wouldn’t have the Byrds and that would make the world a less wondrous place than it is.

John: The record I would play if somebody (Pete Townshend maybe) pulled out that old saw that the Beatles weren’t much of a rock & roll band.

Neal: Should one of us mention that A Hard Day’s Night was the movie-going event of the year, arguably of the decade?

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (2 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: Yes (August 25, 1964)
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes
• Grammy Award: Best Performance by a Vocal Group 1964

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

August 15

Dean Martin
Everybody Loves Somebody
Reprise 0281
(1 week)

In the ’50s, Dean Martin had scored four Top 10 hits for Capitol Records but by 1958 he was through as a hit-maker. Oddly, this was just when his career in Hollywood was taking off.

He signed with his buddy Frank Sinatra’s Reprise Records and scored two more Top 10 hits in 1964, Everybody Loves Somebody and The Door Is Still Open To My Heart. While he still sold a lot of records, he never came close to topping the Cash Box chart again.

Everybody Loves Somebody was the first single on Reprise Records to make it to #1 on Cash Box.

Lew: I love Dean Martin’s singing because it’s so effortless. He sounds like he couldn’t hit a bum note if his next drink depended on it. He was the same way as an actor. He never made a great movie, like fellow Rat Packer Sinatra did (From Here to Eternity), but he never gave the impression that that was his ambition.

John: Uh, oh. I’ve run into somebody who doesn’t think Rio Bravo and Some Came Running were as great as From Here To Eternity. I may have to re-think this relationship! I agree about Dean’s singing in general—maximum cool—though I’ve never been able to hear this one as better than pretty good.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (1 week)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: Yes (August 19, 1964)
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

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

August 22–August 29

The Supremes
Where Did Our Love Go
Motown M-1060
(2 weeks)

Here is where Where Did Our Love Go stands in the history of Florence Ballard, Diana Ross, and Mary Wilson:

• It was the Supremes’ ninth single for Motown Records.
• It was the Supremes’ fifth single to reach the Top 100.
• It was the Supremes’ second single to reach the Top 40.
• It was the Supremes’ first single to reach #1.

And it would not be the last for any of the above.

Lew: Based on an irresistible chord progression, with an irresistible chugging rhythm from the Funk Brothers rhythm section (James Jamerson on bass and Benny Benjamin on drums), this is one of the all-time greats from the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting and production team. This is a song that had to be faded out because there was just no way to stop it.

John: They were so great nobody dared to call them a girl group, even though that’s exactly what they were.

• 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: ✮ ✮ ✮

September 5–September 19

The Animals
The House Of The Rising Sun
MGM K-13264
(3 weeks)

The House Of The Rising Sun had been around for a while and was a favorite of the folk-singers in Greenwich Village, which is where Bob Dylan picked it up and recorded it for his first album in 1962. Very few people bought that album, as very few bought any albums by obscure folksingers, which is what Dylan was at the time.

Most of us rock and pop music fans heard it for the first time when AM radio stations started playing the Animals’ electric rock version in late summer ’64 during the ongoing British Invasion—and what a great way to be introduced to this great song!

Lew: The Animals supposedly got the arrangement of this traditional folk number from Bob Dylan’s first album. Dylan, in turn, stole the arrangement from fellow Greenwich Village folkie Dave Van Ronk. When Dylan heard the Animals version, he was allegedly inspired to go electric himself. Dave Marsh, among others, called this the first folk-rock hit.

John: I’d buy this as the first folk-rock hit if there was anything folk about it. (The song, yes, but not the record.) In Eric Burdon’s throat and Alan Price’s fingers, it’s a howling blues and not more than three or four actual blues singers and/or bands ever assembled could have matched it.

Neal: I never heard this as folk-rock of any kind, unless we consider blues as folk. Which it is, but of course, that’s not what folk-rock meant.

• 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: Yes

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

September 26–October 10

Roy Orbison
Oh, Pretty Woman
Monument 45-851
(3 weeks)

So ol’ Roy stops singing what he’s best at and starts singing that which has never been his suit and he comes up with a great record that sells as many copies as his previous two chart-toppers combined! Ain’t life grand?

John: Ol’ Roy was all of 28, but he already sounded like he had lived a thousand years, noticed everything, and forgotten nothing. And he sounded that way no matter what tempo he sang in. He wouldn’t see the Top 10 again until 1989 when You Got It climbed the charts in the wake of his sudden death at the age of 52. His heart gave out, something which, in the abstract, I wouldn’t have thought possible.

Neal: Ol’ Roy had a tough road to travel. His life would make a much more interesting (and sad) movie than Hank Williams or Johnny Cash. Why hasn’t anyone in Hollywood realized that?

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (3 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: Yes (October 30, 1964)
• Accumulated sales: 4,000,000
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: Yes
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes

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

October 17–October 24

Manfred Mann
Do Wah Diddy Diddy
Ascot AS-2157
(2 weeks)

If Paul Jones hadn’t been such a great bloody singer, this might have been a silly bloody novelty record.

John: Well, and English. In 1964 that helped. It should be said though, that, in addition to having a great voice, Jones was miraculously at ease with American street patter. He sounds like he could be strolling the streets of Newark or Memphis. This while Mick Jagger was still singing Black and Hillbilly English phonetically.

Lew: Oooh, snap! Good one, John.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (2 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: No
• Accumulated sales: 3,000,000
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: No

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

October 31

Gale Garnett
We’ll Sing In The Sunshine
RCA Victor 47-8388
(1 week)

Proof that the commercial take on folk music associated with the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul & Mary was alive and well during the British Invasion.

Lew: New Zealander Gale Garnett wrote this kind-of folk/kind-of country blend that turned the “ramblin’ man” cliché on its ear. Here was a woman setting the terms of the relationship, saying she wasn’t interested in falling in love, was happy to cohabit, but at the end of one year, she was going to hit the road.

Pretty heady stuff for 1964.

I just listened to this again a few days ago and remembered what an effect it had on me as a pubescent teen. It made the idea of a strong, independent woman really sexy. I’m wondering if it maybe gave a hefty subconscious push to the nascent women’s movement.

John: One of three 45s my sister left behind when my brother-in-law came home from Vietnam and she moved out for the last time. The others were a Little Richard that was too scratched to play and Ode To Billie Joe. I didn’t realize until a few years ago how much country it had in it—or how good it was. My sister had a knack for picking husky, mysterious-sounding female voices, I guess.

Neal: While tweaking this article, I had to type the title of this record a second time and made a typo, dropping one letter. It completely changed the meaning of this song: “We’ll Sin in the Sunshine.” And no doubt there’ll be a little sinning in the moonlight, too.

• 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
• Grammy Award: Best Folk Recording 1964

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

November 7

J. Frank Wilson & the Cavaliers
Last Kiss
Josie 45-923
(1 week)

Proof that the teen tragedy record was alive and well during the British Invasion.

Lew: This and Leader Of The Pack were pretty much the last hurrah of the teen tragedy song (a genre that included Teen Angel in 1960), which was made passé by the life-force of the British Invasion.

Last Kiss is a particularly corny entry in the sweepstakes, with all the references to God and Heaven. But still, when Wilson’s voice goes high for “Hold me darling for a little while,” I reach for the Kleenex.

It should be noted that this is a cover of the Wayne Cochran original from 1963 and that a Pearl Jam version (recorded at a 1998 soundcheck) also got heavy airplay in its day.

John: Strange that the death disc began to fade as “the Sixties” got darker. (I don’t like to call them teen tragedy. To a teenager, a hangnail is a tragedy, a pimple is a Holocaust.)

Neal: First, I agree that term teen tragedy doesn’t make it, but death disc sounds like a weapon from a Star Wars movie. Second, I had lots and lots of holocausts even before I was a teenager! Ask any kid what it’s like to be the first one in class with a face full of zits.

John: Well, you may be right, but you gotta get the word Death in there somewhere. Tragedy just doesn’t cover it. Teen Death Ballad?

• 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: ✮

November 14–November 21

The Supremes
Baby Love
Motown M-1066
(2 weeks)

The Supremes’ second #1 record is where Berry Gordy started selling Diana Ross’s sex-kittenish charm, as though he already foresaw a future for her as a solo star.

Lew: A near-perfect clone of Where Did Our Love Go?

John: I doubt anyone was better at hiding sales than Berry Gordy. That said, Where Did Our Love Go? upended the usual Motown expectations. The formula was that, once an act had a big hit, the company would keep repeating the formula until it stopped hitting. The Supremes never required more than tweaking because they never really stopped hitting.

Hence, they get a lot of “but their records all sound alike” comments from people who don’t recognize Diana Ross was a genius. She sold every tweak. Enough of them that no one would mistake their last few #1 records for their first few.

Me, I loved every minute of it!

Neal: Motown did not seek immediate RIAA certification for an official Gold Record Award for Baby Love. This was rectified on September 8, 1997, when it received a Gold Record Award for 500,000 sales.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (4 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: ✮ ✮ ✮

November 28

The Shangri-Las
Leader Of The Pack
Red Bird RB-10-014
(1 week)

Further proof that the girl-group sound was alive and well during the British Invasion.

John: Except this girl-group record turned the fundamental ethos on its head. A thousand times before, going all the way back to Maybe and Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow the singer had pledged her love or her doubts to the boy, to the dream of the boy, to the memory of the boy.

Now she has to pledge it to his corpse because her dad made her reject him! Only Mary Weiss could have sold this. I imagine only her voice could have inspired anybody to write it in the first place.

Anybody who thinks it’s camp, or that it ever could have worked as camp, isn’t listening.

• 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: No

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

December 5

The Zombies
She’s Not There
Parrot 45-9695
(1 week)

With this, their first single, the Zombies topped the Cash Box Top 100. A strong second single, Tell Her No, reached the Top 10 in 1965. Then they didn’t reach the Top 40 again until 1969 when Time Of The Season was their second #1 record. But by then, the Zombies no longer existed nor were they interested in reforming.

Lew: For my money, lead singer Colin Blunstone has the best voice in pop music, breathy, passionate, and wide-ranging. His 1972 solo album Ennismore, produced by fellow Zombies Rod Argent and Chris White, is a masterpiece. The Zombies oeuvre is none too shabby either, as evinced by this, their first hit.

The song bears a very slight resemblance to No One Told Me by John Lee Hooker, but it’s nothing like the thefts of the Yardbirds or Led Zeppelin.

John: I’m not quite as big a fan of Colin’s singing as Lew, and I’m puzzled as to why the Zombies’ admittedly fine music has built such a huge cult reputation at the expense of, say, Manfred Mann (who were at least as great, albeit in several renditions). But this is certainly a moody, evocative record that—in keeping with the greatest of all rock and roll traditions—sounded like nothing else around it.

• 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 12

Lorne Greene
Ringo
RCA Victor 47-8444
(1 week)

Proof that novelty records were alive and well during the British Invasion.

Lew: Spoken-word piece by Lorne Greene that successfully cashed in on his role as Ben Cartwright on the long-running western series Bonanza. The songwriters were probably thinking of historical outlaw Johnny Ringo when they came up with the title, though the plot of the song has nothing to do with the actual gunfighter. The song was written before Ringo Starr was a household name in the US, but probably got a boost because of the name association.

• 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: ✮

December 19

The Beatles
I Feel Fine
Capitol 5327
(1 week)

After one week at #1, I Feel Fine was bumped out of the top spot by the Supremes’ Come See About Me (below) but then returned to #1 on January 2, 1965, for four more weeks as the nation’s best-selling record for a total of five weeks at #1.

This was the first use of feedback on a rock record. I Feel Fine starts with a single, percussive feedback note produced by McCartney plucking the A-string on his bass, and Lennon’s guitar (which was leaning against McCartney’s bass amp) picking up feedback. 

Although it sounded very much like an electric guitar, Lennon actually played the riff on an acoustic Gibson model J-160E employing the guitar’s onboard pickup. Later, Lennon was very proud of this sonic experimentation. In one of his last interviews, he said: “I defy anybody to find a record—unless it’s some old blues record in 1922—that uses feedback that way.”

John: I have no technical expertise in either music or engineering so I’m not qualified to offer an opinion on whether this is the first use of “feedback,” which in laymen’s terms can get confused with other forms of distortion (such as that utilized by the Rock & Roll Trio’s Paul Burlison in the ’50s).

What I can say is this is a great record and Lennon’s superbly controlled vocal, plus the mounting intensity of the group’s rudimentary harmonies, is what makes the feedback something more than a novelty.

• Billboard Hot 100 #1: Yes (3 weeks)
• Million-seller: Yes
• RIAA Gold Record: Yes (December 31, 1964)
• Accumulated sales: Unknown
• 500 Songs That Shaped Rock: No
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Yes

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

December 26

The Supremes
Come See About Me
Motown M-1068
(1 week)

Yet another chart-topper for Motown and America’s favorite female vocal group. And more sex-kittenish vocals from Ms. Ross.

John: I never heard this level of desperation from a sex kitten.

Neal: Even kittens get desperate.

John: Cats, yes. Sex kittens, no.

Neal: John’s remark above led me to look up sex kitten, out of which came “What Is A Sex Kitten And Where Have They All Gone?”

• 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: ✮ ✮ ✮

The Beatles’ ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ was the biggest hit of 1964 on the Cash Box Top 100. Find the other big hits of the year here! Click To Tweet

FEATURED ARTIST: The photo at the top of this page is one of the most iconic in pop music history. It was taken by Robert Freeman on August 22, 1963, in the Palace Court Hotel in Bournemouth, England. Freeman explained: “They had to fit in the square format of the cover, so rather than have them all in a line, I put Ringo in the bottom right corner, since he was the last to join the group. He was also the shortest.”

It might be fair to say that the “Year of the Beatles” started in 1964 and lasted into 1970 when the group acrimoniously ended their magical partnership. While all four members went on to successful solo careers, nothing any one of them did came even remotely close to capturing the magic of the gestalt that was the Beatles. Of course, that’s just my opinion.

There have been several movies about the Beatles, none of which came even remotely close to capturing the magic of the gestalt that was the Beatles. But there is one that comes close to capturing aspects of the brouhaha and pandemonium surrounding the Beatles: Robert Zemeckis’s 1978 debut I Want to Hold Your Hand.

John Ross takes a loving look at the movie in “I Wanna Hold Your Hand Comes Back Around,” where de describes it as part physical comedy, part valentine to a by-gone age, part historical drama related to known facts but not ultimately bound by them, part loving satire, and part homage to good old American energy and ingenuity.

Year-end observations

Twenty-seven records reached #1 on the Cash Box Top 100 chart in 1964. Here is the breakdown of #1 records based on how many weeks they spent at the top of the chart:

8 weeks: 1
7 weeks: 0
6 weeks: 0
5 weeks: 1
4 weeks: 0
3 weeks: 4
2 weeks: 6
1 week: 15

And then came the Beatles, followed by a vast horde of British bands with unruly hair and strange taste in apparel. If you weren’t alive then and old enough to notice, American“taste” was so conservative that anything remotely different or truly stylish looked downright weird if not actually kinkily perverse. Hell, millions of guys wore dickies just like Howard Wolowitz, usually with socks to match!

The British Invasion (look it up) of 1964 undid 190 years of independence. First came I Want To Hold Your Hand followed by six more chart-toppers, giving the Beatles a combined stay of twenty-one weeks at #1 on the Top 100!

Other Brit beat groups that placed sides at the top of the Cash Box survey included Peter & Gordon, the Animals, Manfred Mann, and the Zombies. Many others reached the Top 10 many times.

Gold Record Awards

Of the twenty-seven records that reached #1, Joseph Murrells lists twenty-one of them as million-sellers. The artists, their management, and their record companies were perking up to the importance of the RIAA Gold Record Award and four companies sought certification for seven singles. This was a huge increase over the previous four years. Things would change now that the Beatles were receiving Gold Records on a regular basis. Henceforth, more companies would be seeking official certification for more records.

RIAA certification rate: 3%

Postscript

In a better world both You Really Got Me and All Day And All Of The Night would have been #1 records both here and in the UK. Of course, in a better world, Hillary Clinton would be President of the United States.