So You Thought You Knew 60s Pop! Quiz

Answer: She loved Roy, but not Gene

Roy's main squeeze was 'fetching (him) water every time her daddy's down the line'. He swore that one day the company and daughter would both be his. Gene's character was a poor family guy. 'She smiled "Come on", and oh, how I fought her. But you'll never win with a child of sin.' Pitney made number eight in the UK, where he was more popular, but charted only moderately in the US and Australia. The A-side was 'In the Cold Light of Day', but many DJs preferred this catchy B-side and flipped it over. Orbison hit number one in Australia, and number 33 on US Cashbox Hot 100, with the exquisite 'Leah' as the flip.

These songs were relatively uncharacteristic upbeat outings from two masters of the heart-wrenching, slow-building dramatic ballad. Both were blessed with magnificent tenors and could also unleash wicked falsettos on cue when the music demanded it, though that was not their specialty. The Texas-born 'Big O's' legacy has proved more enduring with his solid rock roots, whereas the more eclectic Pitney's preppy New England background was closer to the Brill Building sound. Both were successful songwriters too, for themselves and others, and they still have legions of loyal fans despite the years since their demise (Orbison in 1988, Pitney 2006).

Answer: Marlena

'Marlena' was the B-side of the '63 hit 'Candy Girl', but reached US number 36 in its own right. Upon hearing Frankie Valli's gravity-defying falsetto on number one 'Walk Like a Man', one of three that year, some have been known to quip: 'Then why don't you sing like one?' The catchy 'Marlena' gained airplay in some regions of the US but not others.

'Carrie Anne' was a '67 hit for the Hollies (top ten UK, US); Mexican guitar duo Los Indios Tabajaros also made top ten in '63 with the 1903 standard 'Maria Elena', while Motown hitmakers the Four Tops scored a US number four hit with 'Bernadette' in '66.

Answer: Bloody

The 'bloody Red Baron', based on Charles Schultz's 'Peanuts' comic-strip fantasies of Charlie Brown's beloved beagle, made Cashbox Hot 100 number two in early '67, and was number one for five weeks in Australia. The offending word was bleeped out in some areas for radio play. Manfred Von Richtofen, who really was a Prussian baron and a redhead, and flew a red Fokker DRI biplane, was shot down in April 1918 after an official 80 'kills'.

A distant relative, Frieda, was married to English novelist D H Lawrence, causing the couple to seek refuge from British anti-German persecution in more remote parts of the world during and after the war, including Mexico and Australia. As an indirect result, Lawrence is regarded as one of the finest travel writers in the English language, on top of his towering literary reputation. "The Return of the Red Baron" and "Baby Let 's Wait" both were minor hits in Britain alone.

Answer: Robert Frost

'You read your Emily Dickinson and I my Robert Frost
And we note our place with bookmarkers that measure what we've lost.'

One of Paul Simon's most poignant and euphoric songs, from the 'Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme' album. It performed surprisingly well for such an introspective theme (US number 25), but sank without trace in Australia.

The strident folk-rock beat of 'I am a Rock', released in the same year, fared much better, peaking at US number three. It's not to be confused with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention's anarchic 'Help! I'm a Rock!' from their debut album 'Freak Out!', recorded at about the same time. That's a whole other story.

Answer: She wouldn't say

'She would never say where she came from' is the first line of this poetic tune, laced with the sweet recorder of Brian Jones, a softer side to the r&b-driven Stones sound. 'Lady Jane' and 'As Tears Go By' were similar foils, indicating the increasing originality and maturity of the Jagger-Richards songwriting team. To his credit, Jagger later pointed out he had nothing to do with the writing. According to Keith, he penned the lyrics based on a former girlfriend, Linda Keith, who had apparently absconded with Jimi Hendrix, and the melody came from Brian Jones, a significant influence on their music up to that time.

'Ruby Tuesday' was the B-side to 'Let's Spend the Night Together' (US number one early '67), but due to the latter's controversial lyrics for the time, 'Ruby' got a lot more radio airplay, especially on conservative Australian radio.

Answer: Everywhere he went

"We could ride the surf together while our love would grow
In my woodie I would take you (waxing crescendo, wait for it) ... everywhere I go.'

One of the most lyrically inspired couplets in pop music, like ... NOT! But to cut Brian some slack, it's the first song he ever wrote. Fortunately the sublime harmonies and haunting, plaintive, stripped down 12/8 arrangement make this summer-of-'63 top-ten ballad THE surf love anthem, and it's one good reason why they used to say 'When Brian sings, the sun comes out in California'. Too bad for his 'surfer girl' that according to pop music lore, he didn't actually go anywhere in his 'woodie' (if he even had one), just literally stayed 'in his room' for weeks on end, and she never got to ride the surf with him either, as he reportedly couldn't swim. So much for 'I Get Around'!

A 'woodie', for the surf-culture-challenged, was a wood-panelled wagon of various marques, sometimes home or custom built and popular with 60s So-Cal scene-makers.

Answer: Groovin'

This talented bunch, regarded as precursors of so-called 'blue-eyed soul', featured a double-edged lead-vocal attack in the persons of Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati. Cavaliere takes the lead on 1967's 'Groovin' ', their highest-charting outing (US number one for four weeks). It contains one of rock's noted 'mondegreens' (what they actually sang vs what people thought they sang). The final line of each chorus goes 'You and me endlessly', but some people heard 'You and me and Leslie', thus envisioning a menage-a-trois. A similar example from about the same time occurs in Jimi Hendrix's 'Purple Haze'. He sings 'S'cuse me while I kiss the sky'. Some people hear 'S'cuse me while I kiss this guy'. At times, Jimi's enunciation was as bad as his playing was good.

Why are they called 'mondegreens'? The most cogent theory is it derives from a traditional Scottish folk song: 'For they hae kill'd the Earl O'Moray and lay'd him on the green'. - Sing that one about the Earl of Moray and Lady Mondegreen again! There was a fine version recorded by traditional highland singer-guitarist Dick Gaughan with Five Hand Reel in the late 70s, but none of the vinyl releases of this groundbreaking Scottish folk-rock group ever made it onto CD as far as I know.

Answer: Tattooed on his chest

'And Janie is the girl that I'll be with tonight
But when she asks me which one I love the best
I open up my shirt and show her the Rosie on my chest.'
(Wait, there's more.)
'I kiss 'em and I love 'em 'coz to me they're all the same
I hug 'em and I squeeze 'em, they don't even know my name.'

God's gift to women. At least he doesn't refer to them as female canis familiarisses and long-handled garden tools like most modern swagger-merchants!
This iconic, widely covered '62 smash (number two US, number three UK, number one Australia), basically a 12-bar blues with an unusual inverted shuffle beat, became the signature tune of this golden-throated former frontman for the Belmonts. In the great 'doo-wopper's' own words: 'It sounds like a lot of fun but it's actually about goin' nowhere. In the 50s you didn't get that dark.' It was later adopted as a football club theme tune for England's Bolton Wanderers and also the West Sydney Wanderers in Australia.

Answer: Marmalade

'Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.'

The archetypal 'psychedelic' lyric line. There was a lot of fuss when the iconic 'Sgt Pepper's' album was released in '67 over the acronym LSD as a reference to Lysergic Acid Diethylamide with which both John and Paul had been experimenting at the time. 'Oh, it never occurred to us until someone pointed it out,' claimed Lennon. He said it was inspired by a picture his son Julian had drawn at kindergarten of his classmate Lucy and titled thus. Whatever you say, John!

Answer: Green Lantern

'Superman or Green Lantern ain't got nothin' on me!' sang this twee, talented Scot, flower-powering his way to the top of the charts in a landmark '66 folk-rock hit on both sides of the Atlantic (number one in US, number two in Britain). The longer album version features a crisp solo from pre-Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page, who was ubiquitous in the UK studios in those days, when not trading off licks with Jeff Beck in the Yardbirds.

If Superman and Green Lantern fought, who would win? Green Lantern of course. He would use his power ring to make kryptonite. Yes, but ... Superman would use his heat vision to destroy the ring before the Lantern had a chance! Yes but ... heat vision doesn't affect the ring. It's indestructible. Yes but ... Green Lantern's kryptonite would be synthetic. It would have to have actually come from the exploded planet Krypton to have any effect. Yes but ... (your turn)

Answer: Bing Crosby

Though his albums and Christmas compilations still sold in the millions and he continued to gain significant radio airplay and TV exposure, Bing Crosby did not have any significant charting hit singles in the 60s, despite vying at the time with Elvis Presley as the biggest-selling male vocalist in recording history, with upward of a billion units sold. 'White Christmas' still enjoyed moderate sales every December, though.

In '64 Louis Armstrong did what no one else could do. Ol' Satchmo knocked the Beatles off the top spot with his soundtrack recording of the theme for 'Hello Dolly'. Those Liverpudlian upstarts had hogged it for 14 weeks with three different songs. Later in the same year Dean Martin did it with 'Everybody Loves Somebody', number one in UK, USA and Australia. Frank Sinatra also did it on both sides of the pond, but twice, with 'Strangers in the Night' ('66) and again with daughter Nancy in 'Something Stupid' ('67). Both Martin and Sinatra charted consistently throughout the decade.

Answer: Getting drunk

'Well you went to the finest school all right, pretty lonely but you know you only used to get juiced in it.
Nobody ever taught you how to live out on the streets. Now you're gonna have to get used to it.'

In his first pop folk-rock hit (number two Billboard, number one Cashbox), the already acclaimed, feisty folksinger-songwriter vents his verbose vitriol on a society girl on the road to ruin, apparently through duplicity, pretense and substance abuse, in relentless verse after vivid verse. The style revolutionized pop lyrics. Sarcasm and cynicism met the love song head on. Contempt was cool. Songwriters like John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, P F Sloan, David Crosby, Ray Davies and others were paying careful attention. His albums were studied and analyzed, and his songs covered by many performers. He also demonstrated, excruciatingly at times, that you don't have to be able to sing as long as you've got something to say. I'm still not sure about that particular Pandora's Box, or how the theory applies to his wretched harmonica, but his legacy is profound.

Answer: O Sole Mio

At the beginning of the decade, the 'King', not long out of his army hiatus, issued a royal decree that he had no intention of abdicating his throne with this expressively crooned love ballad, displaying a suave new, more mature Elvis. The blue jeans and stovepipes had been traded in for white tuxedo and bow tie, with shorter hair neatly in place. But the soulful voice and killer looks, now fully made over as only Hollywood makes over, helped us to forgive all that.

How did it do? Suffice to say it was number one all over the world for weeks. Sales of this single are now tallied at 20 million, one of the biggest selling ever.

'Sole mio' means 'my sunshine', not 'only me' or 'all alone' as some English speakers have assumed. It's also Neapolitan, that is, from the Naples area, and nothing to do with Venetian gondoliers. This image was the result of a widely viewed British TV advertising campaign for a certain brand of ice-cream. The song had been previously anglicised in 1948 with Tony Martin's 'There's No Tomorrow'.

Answer: It was much easier to pronounce than the original title

The Japanese title was 'Ue o muite aruko' (loosely 'Look up to the sky as you walk'). Industry marketing execs wisely chose an alternative title easy to say and remember. No Japanese artist has managed to repeat Sakamoto's feat to this day. He continued as a popular vocalist in his native country until he died in a tragic major plane crash near Mt Fuji in 1985, the worst disaster in Japanese aviation history.

Another domestic hit, 'Ashita Ga Aru-sa' ('Tomorrow is another day'), remains a popular evergreen there.

Answer: The Exciters

Who needed Phil Spector's 'wall of sound' or Motown's Berry Gordy, where later in the decade the Supremes reigned supreme? This New York-based threesome, who according to the great Dusty Springfield, excited her to make the switch from folk-country to what was to become a stellar solo pop career, put down probably the most intense, assertive female vocals heard in pop up to that point, with the possible exception of Tina Turner. Lines like 'I know something about love' and 'If you want him, go out and get him' pretty much summed up their style.

'Tell Him', produced by the venerable Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the songwriting team behind several early Presley hits, reached Cashbox number four. They also recorded the first version of 'Do Wah Diddy', a smash hit for British blues-based outfit Manfred Mann the following year. At some stage a male, Herb Rooney, joined the backing vocals, so I'm not sure they qualify strictly as a girl group. He eventually became Reid's husband, and they reformed as a duo to perform together as the Exciters in the 70s.