A Sentimental Journey In Song Online Quiz | Something in Common

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Our maudlin meanderings begin at a high school on graduation day. Bobby Vinton records these words in his high school sweetheart's yearbook at the beginning of his 1962, number one hit song "Roses Are Red": "Roses are red, my love. Violets are Blue. Sugar is sweet, my love. But not at sweet as you." But the scene shifts. There is a letter... On what tragic twist does the sentimentality of this song turn?

Answer: His sweetheart has written a letter saying she's married someone else.

Alas for the love that was not to be! In the song Bobby Vinton explains:

"Then I went far away and you found someone new.
I read your letter dear, and I wrote back to you."

A touching verse introduces the final repetition of the bittersweet refrain:

Is that your little girl?
She looks a lot like you.
Someday some boy will write
in her book, too:
Roses are red...

Bobby Vinton began his career as a singer for his high school band. Apparently, Epic records signed the young singer after hearing a recording of one of his high school performances. Bobby Vinton's "Roses are Red" became his first number one song in 1962. In 1963 Vinton had two number ones with "There I Said It Again" and "Blue Velvet".

Bobby Vinton's success was all the more remarkable because of his being a backward-looking artist in a forward-looking time. Vinton's initial aspiration had been to revive big band music. The Insipid Song Writers Association applauds his determination. At a time that teens were becoming jaded and rebellious, Bobby Vinton's tender ballads and conventional musical arrangements, which echoed the best of 50s pop music, made a brave stand against sociopolitical relevancy and creativity. It was emblematic of the times that Bobby Vinton 's "There I've Said It Again" had the distinction being the song displaced from its number one position by the Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand".

2. Our sentimental journey takes a mournful turn as we find ourselves at a stock car race. There has been an appalling crash. A young man whispers with his dying breath, "Tell Laura I love her, tell Laura I need her. Tell Laura not to cry. My love for her will never die." What response did Ray Peterson's "Tell Laura I Love Her" receive in Great Britain in 1960?

Answer: Declaring the so called "death disc" to be "too vulgar and tasteless for English sensibilities", Decca records destroyed 25,000 of the singles.

Despite Decca's concern regarding "English sensibilities", "Tell Laura I Love Her" did become a number one hit in Britain, but for Ricky Valance who later recorded and released it rather than for Ray Peterson. The song chronicled a young man, Tommy, who entered and died in a stockcar race attempting to earn the $1000 prize in order to buy a ring for "Laura". In the original (but unrecorded) version of the song, Tommy entered a rodeo where a bull gored him and he died. According to songwriter Joe Barry, ""I wrote it originally with Tommy entering a rodeo instead of a stock car race, and getting gored to death by a Brahma bull. My publisher, Arnold Shaw, suggested that not many people would relate to that, so ..."

Ray Peterson began his singing career in a treatment facility for childhood polio victims performing for fellow patients. His other releases included "The Wonder of You" (over a decade before Elvis' version) and "Corina, Corina".

3. Our travels bring us to yet another scene of teenage travail. A particularly cruel event is about to separate a star-crossed duo. In the song "Sealed With A Kiss", Brian Hyland sings eloquent encouragement to his beloved, promising to write every day and seal the letter with a kiss. What awful occurrence is about to tear his beloved from his arms?

Answer: Summer vacation

I can remember when three months was an eternity. I recall (and solemnly affirm that I am telling the truth) when my girlfriend tried to avoid a trip to Hawaii so that we would not be apart for two weeks. In 1959 the Tempos recorded "See You September", a song which attempted to capture the angst of a young man seeing his sweetheart off at a train station, afraid he might lose her "to a summer love". By 1962, Brian Hyland was ready to more eloquently express the poignancy of young love forcibly parted when he sang:

"I'll see you in the sunlight
I'll hear your voice everywhere
I'll run to tenderly hold you
But darling you won't be there"

Brian Hyland's first success came at age 16 with the novelty song ""Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini". "Sealed With A Kiss" was number 35 on the Billboard 100 for 1962.

4. In 1961, composer Dimitri Tiomkin and lyricist Ned Washington took us to a town where "the young have problems, many problems". The song became a 1962 hit for singer, Gene Pitney, who lamented: "How can we keep love alive? How can anything survive, When these little minds tear you in two?" No, it isn't very pretty what a town like this can do. Which of the following was the town of this song?

Answer: A town without pity

Written as the title song for the movie "Town Without Pity", the song of the same name became a top 20 hit for Gene Pitney in 1962. The movie actually concerned a German woman raped by four American Soldiers. Pitney later recorded "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", which was also a movie - a movie that did not happen to include the song by the same name but a movie that did have a plot corresponding to the song by the same name. Tucked away for use in a future Uglybird quiz is that the fact that the first Mick Jagger - Keith Richards song to reach the top 40 in the United States, "That Girl Belongs to Yesterday", was sung by... I bet you can guess.

A Connecticut native, Gene Pitney left an electronics school to pursue his budding musical career. His success as a songwriter in the late 1950s and the 1960s perhaps exceeded his vocal accomplishments. Ricky Nelson's "Hello Mary Lou" and the Crystal's "He's A Rebel" were both penned by Pitney.

5. We move now to an unknown location to witness a relationship's first kiss. About which girl did Johnny Mathis sing? " I kissed you once and then I felt so wonderful, so very wonderful Let's do it over again."

Answer: Gina

Yet another 1962 song, Gina reached #6 on the Billboard charts. Although a Texas native, Johnny Mathis spent much of his early life in San Francisco where he ultimately attended San Francisco State College. His college record was recorded at a track meet rather than on a vinyl disc.

In 1954 he set a school record in the high jump that was only two inches lower than the world record at the time. In 1956 Johnny Mathis faced a fateful choice: attend the Olympic trials or respond to a request for an audition at Columbia Records in New York City.

His father persuaded him to attend the audition. (http://www.johnnymathis.com/bio.htm.) Johnny Mathis went on to record a series of delightfully mawkish songs including "Chances Are", "Wonderful, Wonderful", "It's Not For Me To Say", "What Will My Mary Say", and of course, "Misty".

6. We've traveled to a nightclub in 1964. On stage a middle-aged crooner sings, "If I had it in my power, I'd arrange for every girl to have you charms. Then every minute, every hour, Every boy would find what I found in your arms. Which of the following singers had a 1964 hit with the song from which the above lyrics are a part? (Hint: The crooner looks just a bit inebriated.)

Answer: Dean Martin

"Everybody Loves Somebody" became Dean Martin's trademark song. Martin, who began his career in partnership with Jerry Lewis, became a close associate of Frank Sinatra and a member of Frank's reconstituted "rat pack". (The original "rat pack" of the 1950s included Frank Sinatra but revolved around Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and took the name ""The Rat Pack of Holmby Hills".) Sammy Davis Jr. and Joey Bishop were also members of the rat pack. Martin's persona included an affected inebriation.

7. We've come to the California coast in the summer of 1963. A desolated surfer boy sits despondently next to his woodie. "Little surfer, little one, made my heart come all undone. Do you love me, do you ______" he sings softly. For whose unrequited love does this Beach Boy yearn?

Answer: Surfer girl

In the early 60s, could any group claim to have "made it" until they had their first successful slow dance song? After five up-tempo singles involving surfing and fast cars, "Surfer Girl" established the fact that Brian Wilson and the boys could do "mushy". The song includes an offer that must have seemed irresistible to any true California girl of the early 1960s,

"We could ride the surf together
While our love would grow.
In my Woodie I would take you everywhere I go."

Over the years there have been a number of personnel changes in the Beach Boys. One of the most notable ones occurred in 1965 when Glen Campbell toured with the Beach Boys taking Brian Wilson's place.

8. In 1964, long before "Butterfly Kisses" would refresh the tears of a generation, there was another wedding - a wedding of such monumental pathos, of such indescribable tragedy that is a marvel that almost no one seems to have heard of the song that described it (even though the song reached #9 on the billboard charts). In the church a young man sings, "Here she comes in her wedding gown lookin' like a queen. She has been my only love since she was thirteen. I've been dreaming of this day and how proud I'd be When she came walkin' down the aisle and held out her hand to me." "Wait!" You say. This doesn't sound too bad. But the song's next verse plunges the knife into the sympathetic breast of the listener. "I'll be waiting to kiss the bride when her name is new. Standing oh, so close to her silently saying 'I do'. I'll be holding back my tears till she's gone away; 'cause she'll belong to someone else when the organ starts to play." Which of the following songs records the misery of this unfortunate man?

Answer: White On White

South African born Danny Williams (a.k.a. "the other Williams) recorded "White On White" in 1964. In 1961 Danny Williams drove the sentimental blockbuster "Moon River" to #1 in the UK charts. However, it was Andy Williams not Danny Williams who sang "Moon River" at the 1962 Oscar Awards, and from that time on it was the American Andy William's theme song. Perhaps "White On White" is a metaphor for that 1962 Oscar Ceremony. And yes "Moon River" won that Oscar. (I think Paul Harvey should hear about this one!)

9. Our sentimental journey takes a serious turn. In 1975, Janis Ian recorded a song that poignantly, and perhaps too accurately, expressed the experience of many a young woman in high school. In a sense, this song is far too real and serious to be placed in the company of the other songs in this quiz. Janis Ian sang, "I learned the truth at seventeen, That love was meant for beauty queens And high school girls with clear-skinned smiles Who married young and then retired." What was the name of Janis Ian's song?

Answer: At Seventeen

In the late sixties few stations were ready to play a song written by a 15 year old about an interracial love affair. However, certain FM stations such as KSAN in San Francisco were trying to lure young listeners away from the Top 40 dreariness on the AM stations. They were termed "underground" stations and KSAN was willing to play Janis Ian's "Society's Child" (about an interracial teen love affair) and play Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company's "Down On Me" and even play tracks from albums of songs which had not been released as singles! Perhaps the success of such stations contributed to the acceptance of broader themes and more substantive lyrics even on Top 40 radio, so that by 1975 Janis Ian's "At Seventeen" could be the #3 billboard "hit" of the year. The song concludes,

"We all play the game and when we dare to cheat ourselves at solitaire.
Inventing lovers on the phone, repenting other lives unknown
That call and say, "Come dance with me," and murmur vague obscenities
At ugly duckling girls like me at seventeen."

10. Our journey concludes in Southern California with a clean-cut sister brother duo who recorded a song that was both sentimental and positive, a song that went to # 2 on the Billboard charts, a song that began as a bank commercial. In the song a just married woman exults, "Before the rising sun we fly So many roads to choose We start out walking And learn to run" With which of the following songs are we concluding our sentimental journey?

Answer: We've Only Just Begun

Richard Carpenter was the musical prodigy of the Carpenter family and part of the reason for the family moving to Southern California, where it was hoped Richard's musical opportunities would be greater than in Connecticut. Karen joined the high school band only to avoid PE, but quickly found out that she had both a liking of and talent for percussion. Only later did she discover the vocal talents that formed the basis of the duo's success. Karen Carpenter's battle with and eventual death from anorexia nervosa is well known and was chronicled in a 1989 for TV movie.

Richard Carpenter noticed "We've Only Just Begun" in the background of a bank commercial and recognized the voice of one of the song's writers. Reversing the usual process, the song for a commercial became a popular hit song for Richard and Karen. Richard Carpenter has said, "Taking everything into consideration, song, lyric, arrangement, orchestration and vocal performance, this is probably our best single. If I had to pick a favorite out of all our songs, this is it." Mine too. (http://www.vex.net/~paulmac/carpenter/lyrics/weve_only_just_begun.html)

Source: Author uglybird

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor Bruyere before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

A Sentimental Journey In Song Trivia Quiz

Abandon your cynicism and bring your disposable mucous recovery devices (Kleenex). Let the Insipid Song Lovers Association transport you to those maudlin songs of yesteryear - a time of kiss sealed letters, pitiless towns and horizens that were new.

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