Hum Along With Me - Instrumentals from 1961 Quiz

Answer: Ferrante & Teicher

Arthur Ferrante, born in NYC in 1921, and Louis Teicher, born in Wilkes-Barre, PA. in 1924, were child piano prodigies who met each other while attending the Julliard School of Music in the 1930s. Becoming fast friends, they started playing duets even then. Upon graduation, they both became members of the faculty at Julliard before setting off on their own in 1947 performing in venues ranging from concert halls to nightclubs.

Starting in 1960, they became the leading purveyors of adult oriented, easy listening music, mostly from Broadway, the movies and contemporary music that they could adapt into their style. They would only have five Top 40 songs in their lengthy career, four of which cracked the Top 10. In 1960, "Theme From The Apartment" climbed to Number Ten while their biggest hit ever, "Exodus", reached Number Two and was ranked as the 4th biggest hit of 1961 according to Billboard statistics. "Tonight", from "West Side Story" peaked at Number Eight, also in 1961, while "Midnight Cowboy" stalled at Number Ten in early 1970.

Their achievements on Billboard's album chart was another story and from 1961 to 1972, a total of 31 albums made appearances. Much like Frank Sinatra during this same period, I surmise that their target audience of older listeners didn't buy 45's when they could afford to buy the LP the hit single was on.

It appears that changing musical tastes, or perhaps just changes in musical style period, rendered Ferrante and Teicher's niche passé. They carried on, mostly concert tours, until 1989 when they retired to Southern Florida still best friends and still playing together to their own amusement! Teicher passed away in September 2008, Ferrante 11 months later.

Answer: Bert Kaempfert

"Wonderland By Night" was a beautiful piece of music written and arranged by Bert Kaempfert and recorded by the Orchestra he led for over two decades. The superlative trumpet playing, which anchored the piece, was performed by Vienna born Charly Tabor who was a fixture in his band for several years. The record topped the Hot 100 for three of its 17 week run on the chart and it was deemed to be the 5th biggest hit of 1961 based on its Billboard chart performance.

For some, Kaempfert is best remembered for introducing The Beatles to vinyl. In his role as a producer for Polydor Records in Germany, he had signed a young British singer named Tony Sheridan and needed a backing band for the recording sessions he had arranged for the lad. He signed The Beatles for the task after listening to them in audition while they were doing their famous Hamburg stint. During the recording session of June 21, 1961, several tracks were recorded but only two of them became marginal hits... but not until The Beatles themselves struck stardom. "My Bonnie" was originally labelled as being recorded by Tony Sheridan and the Beat Boys. It became a Number 26 Hot 100 hit in March 1964, but the label then read The Beatles with Tony Sheridan. Meanwhile, "Ain't She Sweet" was always labeled as The Beatles with Tony Sheridan but it also didn't chart until July 1964 when it peaked at Number 19.

Maybe something of more importance occurred much earlier in October 1961, in Liverpool. A young man wandered into Brian Epstein's record store wanting to buy "My Bonnie" by that "local group". Epstein had never heard of it but intrigued that young locals had a recording extant went to the trouble of getting a copy and then later pursuing a meeting with them. The rest, as they say, is history.

Meanwhile, back to Kaempfert! He continued to write, record and produce music prodigiously but it met a lukewarm reception in North America at best, although one of his creations, "Moon Over Naples", became a huge hit for Al Martino when lyrics were added and became "Blue Spanish Eyes". His output was very popular in Europe and Asia, however. He died suddenly following a heart attack at his home in Majorca in 1980, aged 56.

Answer: Lawrence Welk

"Calcutta" was, by far, Lawrence Welk's biggest hit in his almost 30 year recording career. Featuring a harpsichord played by Frank Scott as its primary instrument, unusual for the rock era certainly, it forged to the top of the Hot 100 Billboard chart for a pair of weeks in February 1961 and ended the year ranked Number Nine. Welk would have no other top 10 hits during the rock era but he did have four recordings achieve that status in the pre-rock era. He did have several songs enter the Hot 100 charts in the 1950s and 1960s, but many of his recordings were in competition with other instrumental bands whose renditions proved to be more popular. Although it only peaked at Number 48, perhaps his next most recognizable recording was "Baby Elephant Walk" featured in the 1962 movie "Hatari" starring John Wayne.

Welk was born in 1903 in a primarily German speaking area of N. Dakota and left school at the age of ten to work the family farm. Fascinated by music at an early age, he pressured his father to buy him an accordion with the promise that he would continue to work on the farm for free until he was 21. All money he would make through performing until then would also go to the family coffers. As anticipated, he became a professional musician when he came of age and by 1930 was leading the most popular band in Yankton S.D., then Omaha, and starting in 1940, had a ten year gig with a Chicago hotel playing "sweet dance music" with his big band. After the war, most big bands couldn't afford to stay together but Welk seized the opportunity to work in a new medium - TV. It was a brilliant gamble that made him a multi-millionaire! Teenagers and young adults considered his music old fashioned and his program as hopelessly "square" but his target audience of older folks who thought "modern" music was an abomination, stuck with him for years... and years! His program remained on ABC from 1955 to 1971 and when cancelled, he decided to go it alone through syndication. He carried on until 1982 to even larger ratings when he finally decided to retire. He passed at the age of 89 in 1992 but his band carried on playing regularly at a venue in Branson, Missouri. The Oklahoma Education Television Authority (OETA) still produces the show in syndication to approximately 280 public TV stations and it still commands healthy ratings!

Answer: Jorgen Ingmann/U.S.-The Shadows/U.K.

"Apache" was conceived by an English musician named Jerry Lordan, inspired by a 1954 movie of the same name. Early in 1960, Cliff Richard's back-up group, The Shadows, were touring with Lordan and one evening he played the melody on a ukulele. All parties agreed that The Shadows should record the song which they did that summer. By August, it topped the British charts and remained there for five weeks, the group's break-through hit, and they would go on to have a lengthy and much decorated career in Britain.

Meanwhile, a Danish jazz/pop guitarist named Jorgen Ingmann Pedersen recorded his version. Slightly quicker paced and a little "twangier", it was otherwise pretty much the same song with a few minor adjustments. It's uncertain to me whether his cover was even released in the U.K. since it never charted if it was, but it did make its debut in North America in January 1961 where it made Number One in Canada and Number Two on Billboard's Hot 100 in April. In year end rankings, it finished Number 26. He only had one more charting release in America that peaked at Number 54, never had charting success in the U.K., but did have some nominal hits in his homeland and in Germany. What he did between 1965 and his death in 2005 is a mystery.

To me, an even bigger mystery is why The Shadows never breached the Hot 100 chart in America. I assume it had to be a marketing decision by their management in consort with their record label but I just don't know. The only plausible explanation I can suggest would be that they chose not to compete with the success and popularity of The Ventures in the U.S. who, essentially, played the same style of music. Still...? If you know, pass it on, please!

Answer: The String-A-Longs

In the early days of 1961, there were two versions of "Wheels" competing for chart honors ultimately won by the String-a-Longs with their Number Three recording. It was a guitar driven melody while the other version by Billy Vaughn featured his trademark double alto saxes. It could climb no higher than Number 28 on the Hot 100. I helped Vaughn's version get there... it was the first 45 I ever purchased! I guess it was a regional thing since I never heard of the String-a-Longs version until sometime in the 1980s. In the U.K., Vaughn's recording didn't chart, the String-a-Longs version stalling at Number Eight. In terms of ranking position for 1961, it wound up Number 35.

The String-a-Longs were based in Plainview, Texas and the few records they released were under the aegis of Norman Petty who guided Buddy Holly and the Crickets when they first started out. Sadly, the String-a-Longs didn't achieve the same level of success. Their two follow up records were marginally popular peaking at 35 and 42 on the Hot 100, also in 1961, but any future releases never charted at all and by 1964, the group broke up. Insult upon injury, their label, Warwick records, filed for bankruptcy right after "Wheels". The band didn't make a dime from the record although the composers did get royalties for their work.

On the other hand, Billy Vaughn had a nice career, particularly with albums, from the mid-1950s to the end of the 1960s. Thirty six of his albums cracked the Billboard Album's chart, many of them reaching top 20 status including one Number One LP, "Theme From a Summer Place" in 1960. He had one other big single hit with a Bert Kaempfert composition, "A Swingin' Safari", which rose to Number 13 in 1962.

Answer: Mar-Keys

The Number Three hit "Last Night", which ranked as the 39th biggest Billboard hit of 1961, was the only big hit the Mar-Keys would have. Many instrumental groups of the era would suffer the same "one and done" fate but while most of the others would scuff around for a few years then fold, bigger things were in store for the Mar-Keys and a spin-off group they engendered.

The original Mar-Keys were a largely all-white group consisting of Smoochy Smith, an original Sun records session man, on piano, Steve Cropper on guitar, "Packy" Axton on Sax, Duck Dunn manning bass guitar and drummer Howard Grimes (the only black representative at first). By 1962, the group essentially became two groups. One became a studio group which was the "house" band for Stax records and backed up the many hits recorded by the likes of Otis Redding, Carla Thomas and Wilson Pickett. The other group cut records and toured in their support. Ultimately, the Mar-Keys became the studio band and the other, led by Booker T. Washington with Cropper and Dunn joining him, gained fame as Booker T and the MGs. They would go on to have an illustrious career and the leading soul based instrumental band of the 1960s.

Answer: Floyd Cramer

Prior to 1955, Country Music was oriented toward the hillbilly or honky tonk style stemming from traditional Appalachian music as exemplified by Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family and Hank Williams. But beginning in the mid-1950s things started to change. Influenced by the vocal stylings of Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Don Gibson, Marty Robbins and many others of similar ilk, the new "Nashville" sound was smooth and slick. Backing them up musically were such stalwarts as guitarist Chet Atkins and pianist Floyd Cramer.

Floyd Cramer was a particularly dynamic presence in hundreds of recordings made by the likes of Presley, the Everly Brothers, The Browns, Roy Orbison, Brenda Lee and countless others. He perfected the "slip note" by which he purposely struck an off note and slid into the adjacent correct note seamlessly. Listen to any of his songs on YouTube to understand the concept. Despite his demand in studio as a session man, he was able to do some recording of his own and he had three consecutive Top 10 hits starting in late 1960 with the Number Two "Last Date", a million selling disc that held that Number Two position for four weeks. He followed that up with our quiz answer, "On the Rebound", which reached Number Four and ranked at Number 48 for the year, and then the Number Eight "San Antonio Rose", a cover of Bob Wills 1938 hit. Like many other recording artists who were instrumentalists, he also had significant success creating albums covering other hits in his own style. He carried on with his session work until his passing at the age of 64 from lung cancer on Christmas eve, 1997.

Answer: Sandy Nelson

As a drummer, there wasn't much demand for solo instrumental songs featuring that particular instrument but Sandy Nelson made it work for him with a couple of hits.

Born in 1938 in Santa Monica, California, he was schoolmates with Jan Berry and Dean Torrance (Jan & Dean of rock fame) and was able to find action as a drummer for several big hits such as "Alley Oop" and "To Know Him Is to Love Him". He had his first big solo hit in 1959 with "Teen Beat" which reached Number Four on the Hot 100. "Let There Be Drums" was his second Top 10 hit, peaking at Number Seven and eliciting enough chart action to rank as the 48th biggest hit of Billboard's year end synopsis. Subsequent recordings yielded diminishing returns but despite having his right foot and part of his leg amputated following a motorbike accident in 1963, he continued to record albums into the early 1970s. Now 80 as this is being written, he still performs at outings near his home in Boulder City, Nevada.

Answer: Bob Moore and His Orchestra

"Mexico" was a Number Seven hit for Bob Moore and his Orchestra in 1961 and the record performed sufficiently to wind up as Billboard's 65th ranked hit for the year. Basically, the catchy motif of the song, based on a mariachi styled trumpet, foretold the impending success Herb Alpert would have the following year with his Tijuana Brass sound.

Bob Moore's name may not be that recognizable today and maybe it never was in his prime as a Nashville session musician starting in the mid-1950s. As a Nashville native though, he first got into the game as a 15-year-old with a Grand Ole Opry musical group in 1947. It's been documented that during his lengthy career as a session musician playing mostly bass, he had performed in over 17,000 sessions, a truly remarkable number! He played on many Presley sessions starting in 1958, played on virtually all of Patsy Clines recordings from 1960 until her unfortunate demise in 1963 and as music director of Monuments records, a label he helped form, wrote most of the musical arrangements for Roy Orbison's hits in the early 1960s. Now 86 years of age as this is being written, he lives in retirement in Nashville.

Answer: Arthur Lyman Group

Arthur Lyman, not to be confused with Frankie Lymon, the lead singer of The Teenagers back in the 1950s, was born in 1932 in Oahu, Hawaii. His father loved big band music, particularly Benny Goodman when vibraphonist Lionel Hampton played with him, and he encouraged his son to play along to Goodman records on a toy marimba. By the time he was 14 years of age, he was proficient enough to play the vibraphone professionally with a jazz band in a nightclub by night while attending school by day. He got his big break seven years later when Martin Denny heard him play and offered him a seat in his band. Denny was an experienced leader, had traveled much of the world and collected a variety of native instruments in various Latin countries that he used in his act. He was just starting to develop the "exotic" sounds in his music that would later make his fame and Lyman was lapping it all up!

After three years learning at the feet of the master, Lyman left and formed his own group incorporating the same techniques in his music... unusual instruments, exotic sounds and rhythms and vocally, bird calls that enhanced the image. Denny broke the charting barrier first with his Number Four hit "Quiet Village" in 1959 but Lyman followed suit a couple of years later with his rendition of the popular Latin number, "Yellow Bird", that coincidentally also peaked at Number Four and ended the year in position 68 of the biggest hits of 1961.

Neither Denny nor Lyman achieved much later success with their single releases but both had somewhat greater, though limited, impact with their LPs. Essentially, those albums, found under "Exotica" in record stores, were a passing musical fad that largely petered out by the mid-1960s. When Lyman left Denny's band in 1957, hard feelings remained between the two for decades before they came together for a reunion in 1990 after which they remained close for the balance of their lives. Denny continued to tour world wide well into the 1980s before passing away in 2005, aged 93. Lyman remained in Hawaii and for the rest of days led bands that played in the finest lounges, bars and nightclubs in Honolulu. He died of throat cancer in 2002, aged 70.