Two-Hit Wonders - 1960-64 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Walk Right In

All these "walking" songs actually charted but "Walk Right In" was the correct choice. "Walk Don't Run" was an instrumental by The Ventures that charted twice, first at Number Two in 1960 then an updated version peaked at Number Eight in 1964. "Walk Right Back" was a Number Seven hit for the Everly Brothers in 1961 while "Walk On By" has had several charting versions over the years, the biggest of which was a Number Six hit for Dionne Warwick in 1964.

The Rooftop Singers were led by Erik Darling. Darling had previously been a member of The Weavers from 1958 to 1962 as Pete Seeger's replacement. He was also a founding member of The Tarriers, another folk group who listed among their members the actor Alan Arkin. Coincidentally, that group was a two-hit wonder also: "Cindy, Oh Cindy", Number Nine in 1956 and their take on "The Banana Boat Song", Number Four in 1957. Darling was joined in the Rooftop Singers by an old friend, Bill Svanoe, and also by Lynn Taylor, formerly a jazz vocalist who had performed with Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich. Following those two top 40 hits, Taylor left the group citing family obligations in 1964. Whether her presence was that critical to the group's success or perhaps because of the usual fluctuations in the musical tastes of the public, the group never reached this level again and disbanded in 1967.

Answer: Tossin' and Turnin'

Bobby Lewis was born in Indianapolis in 1925 and was orphaned at an early age. He learned to play the piano at the age of six while in an orphanage, was adopted by a Detroit couple six years later then went out on his own at the age of fourteen working the carnival circuit. Later, he was a vocalist for an Indianapolis big band then gravitated to New York in the early 1950s working the clubs and theatres there.

He befriended a young singer/songwriter named Ritchie Adams who worked with Beltone Records. Adams thought he had a good song for Lewis and made arrangements for Lewis to record "Tossin' and Turnin".

The rest is history. It's not clear why Lewis never had any more hits. He recorded and toured for decades afterward and perhaps it's just serendipitous luck that the right song comes along at the right time for the right vocalist. I'm not sure where he resides or if he is musically active at the age of 87 but as of 2012, he's still among us.

Answer: Suspicion

The artist was Terry Stafford and the song was "Suspicion". On April 4, 1964, this was what the top of the Hot 100 looked like:

1. 'Can't Buy Me Love' - Beatles
2. 'Twist and Shout' - Beatles
3. 'She Loves You' - Beatles
4. 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' - Beatles
5. 'Please Please Me' - Beatles
6. 'Suspicion' - Terry Stafford
7. 'Hello Dolly' - Louis Armstrong

A week later, this is what happened. The top two remained the same but "Suspicion" was now Number Three pushing "She Loves You" down a notch. That was as high as Stafford's song would get and eventually it was Armstrong who would end the Beatles reign at Number One. Stafford would only have one more Hot 100 hit, the Number 25 "I'll Touch a Star" which peaked in June, 1964. It also had the Presley sound to it and it is curious why the hits stopped. Stafford continued to record for a few years but eventually turned to song writing and performing, largely in the Country and Western genre. One of his compositions turned into a Number One C&W hit for George Straight, "Amarillo By Morning". Stafford passed away in 1996 of liver failure, aged 54.

Answer: The Big Hurt

Miss Toni Fisher was a Los Angeles native born in 1931. Fisher had a "big" voice and was characterized as a modern torch singer. She had been a presence on the L.A. nightclub scene for several years when she hooked up with Wayne Shanklin as her manager. He was a published songwriter and among his compositions were "Jezebel", recorded by Frankie Laine, Jerry Wallace's "Primrose Lane" and "Chanson D'Amour", popularized by Art and Dotty Todd. He had recently started up a record company and became involved in the arrangement and production of music. Essentially, he became a "one stop shop" and Fisher relied on his expertise for the rest of her career.

Shanklin wrote "The Big Hurt" specifically for Fisher and in the production of the record, he experimented with an audio effect known as "phasing". This link gives you an idea of what phasing sounds like in this song - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVLnhqwg07w. The effect really became popular during the psychedelic era. "West of the Wall", her other hit, was also a Shanklin composition, inspired by the erection of the Berlin Wall and it dealt with the separation of lovers who now lived on either side of it. She continued to record for much of the 1960s, obviously without much success. Shanklin died suddenly of a heart attack in 1970 and it's probably no coincidence that Fisher seemed to disappear off the musical map around the same time. Obviously, the loss of her mentor was critical and at the age of 39, she was undoubtedly not that interested in starting over. Married with children, it seems that she devoted the rest of her days to family affairs. She died of a heart attack in 1999.

Answer: Blue Moon

"Blue Moon" turned out to be the 13th biggest hit of 1961. The other big Number Seven hit the group had was "Heartaches", a Number One song for Ted Weems in 1947. The other two releases that made weak appearances on the Hot 100 were Gershwin's "Summertime" and that very old standard "My Melancholy Baby".

Much as I like doo-wop music and the two songs the Marcels did that became hits, I can understand how the public could perceive these releases as dipping into the well once too often. Originally, the group was racially integrated but when they toured the Southern states, it was the white lads that felt the sting of racial prejudice most.

They left the group at the height of its success replaced by black members and it was that group that largely remained intact over the next three decades.

They never did have another charting hit but remained a popular touring act on the oldies circuit throughout that period. In 1995, the original group experienced a schism and the usual rounds of litigation ensued between two Marcel groups.

There is no official Marcel website so whether a group exists today in the new millennium is quite questionable.

Answer: Wooden Heart

Let's see. Elvis sang the song in "G.I. Blues", a movie released in November, 1960. It was released as a single in the U.K. shortly later and stormed to the top of that chart in March, 1961, where it lingered for six weeks. For some reason, RCA still has not released the song in the U.S. Finally, Dowell records his version, it enters the Hot 100 in June and reaches Number One in August. Eventually, Presley's original makes its way onto a 45 in November... as the B-side to "Blue Christmas"! Truly amazing mismanagement (unless there was something going on behind the scenes that has never been made public) but I don't think Dowell minded it much.

Dowell did sound like Presley a bit but singing wasn't his primary ambition. Rather, he fancied himself as a songwriter and with this huge success behind him, he felt certain that his record label would give him some flexibility to record his own material. There's no guarantee that his stuff was any good but due to contractual obligations with the Smash label, he was required to record only songs owned by the parent Mercury label. Dowell wasn't pleased but did as he was told. He had a blip on the Hot 100 with a Number 50 release then wrapped up his recording career with a quasi-novelty song, the Number 23 "Little Red Rented Rowboat". When his contract with Smash expired, he walked away from the recording business, founded a company that produced radio commercials and ultimately became the voice of many banks and financial institutions across the U.S.

Answer: The Brothers Four

Despite their paucity of hit singles, The Brothers Four have endured as a group for over 50 years with one member, Bob Flick, there for the duration. The group members were fraternity brothers at the University of Washington and formed their group in 1957.

Their amateur days came to an end in 1958 as a result of a practical joke. Another fraternity phoned them and pretending to be the manager of a local folk club, invited them for an audition. When they showed up, to their chagrin, the real manager took pity on them, listened to what they had to offer and signed them up.

They were contracted to play there for a year and their timing was most fortuitous. As that contract was expiring, The Kingston Trio hit the big time with "Tom Dooley" and folk acts became the latest rage. Ultimately, they moved to San Francisco, became regulars at the Hungry I and secured a record contract.

Although their polished and sophisticated acoustic brand of folk music was challenged by the more politicized, rough and "electric" elements of the genre in the mid-to-late 1960s and they lost the listenership of their more youthful fans, the parents and grandparents stuck by them over the years, buying their albums and attending their tours. And that, my friends, is how you survive for over 50 years in the music industry.

Answer: Dale and Grace

Only Dale and Grace sang the listed hits. The other artists also had just one Number One hit but they were also able to prolong their careers together with more than just one other Top 40 release.

Dale Houston was born in 1940 in Mississippi. In 1963, he was performing in a Louisiana bar when a local recording executive named Sam Montel caught his act and signed him up to write and record songs for his label. A short time later, Montel approached Houston about working with a young female singer who was also under contract with his label. Grace Broussard, born in Louisiana in 1939, had been working as a duo with her brother but he had decided to go solo and Montel was anxious to hook her up with another male vocalist. As the story goes, he arranged a meeting between the two at his home and while he was in another room, he overheard Houston playing "I'm Leaving it Up to You" on the piano. It had previously been released by an African-American duo named Don and Dewey but Montel thought a new arrangement with Dale and Grace would work and indeed it did. Following their next two releases, Grace was tired of touring and became homesick, Dale was just sick period and required hospitalization, and most importantly, they really didn't get along at all. They broke up the act, Grace resuming her partnership with her brother while Dale went back to his solo career. Both parties maintained some regional notoriety but neither would ever achieve success on the larger national stage again. As of 2012, Grace survives but Dale passed away of heart failure in 2007.

Answer: Matt Monro

All your other choices were British contemporaries of Monro and they probably had higher profiles than he did in Great Britain. On the other hand, as limited as Monro's success in North America was, he had exactly twice the number of Top 40 Billboard hits as the other three combined!

Monro was a suave lounge style singer in the Sinatra/Martino mold and many of his recordings were produced by George Martin who gained fame in the production of all those Beatle songs. It probably was through Martin's influence that Monro's last charting single in the U.K. in the 1960s was "Yesterday" which peaked at Number Eight in October of 1965, about the same time that The Beatles were topping the Billboard charts with their release. This is somewhat ironic in that The Beatles version did not chart in the U.K. until March of 1976, eleven years later when it also peaked at Number Eight. How did this happen? Apparently, other members of the group were not as keen on the song as McCartney, the composer, was. They thought the song was not quite the same as their other hits and it would betray the image they were carefully crafting. Since they had much more control over the release of their recorded output with their record company in Great Britain, they were able to stifle the release of the song there but not in the U.S. where Capitol records had much more autonomy over such matters. There are now over 2,500 different versions of "Yesterday" kicking around this universe and Monro has the unique distinction of being the first to cover that song. A short time later, he moved to the U.S.A. but it only served to decrease his exposure in the U.K. since he made no real professional inroads in America. Besides recording the theme for "From Russia With Love", he did the same for "Born Free" and "The Italian Job", recorded a few unremarkable albums, then returned to England in the early 1970s. He continued to record and tour there until his premature death in 1985 of liver cancer, aged 52.

Answer: If You Wanna Be Happy

Jimmy Soul began life as James McCleese in Wheldon, N.C. in 1942. Remarkably, he became a very popular local preacher at the age of seven and it was his avid congregation that dubbed him Jimmy Soul. As he grew older, he hit the road doing his preaching and singing Gospel music with a choir.

He more or less settled in the Norfolk, Va. area and was spotted by the manager of Gary U.S. Bonds, Frank Guida. Guida was also a songwriter and he had a couple of items that didn't suit Bonds' style. He was able to convince Soul to record them and bingo, he had those Number 22 and Number One hits. Both hits were calypso oriented and as such, were not exactly timely, that style having lost currency when Harry Belafonte stopped recording charting hits in 1957! Nevertheless, Soul and Guida churned out an album of this material and released a couple of more singles of similar ilk which, predictably, went nowhere.

It was not long after that when Soul became disenchanted with the music business and joined the U.S. Army, his vocation for the rest of his days.

He passed away in 1988 following a heart attack. He was just 45.