If you enjoy music, you know that every season has a soundtrack. While it’s most apparent in the weeks before Christmas, other times of the year also have signature tunes. It’s true whether you’re singing hymns at church, or listening to radio stations that feature popular music.
A lot of the music heard before Christmas is more accurately described as “winter” music, celebrating cold weather and snow while never once mentioning the word “Christmas.” Nevertheless, as soon as the calendar turns to December 26, songs like “Jingle Bells,” “Sleigh Ride,” and “Frosty the Snowman” go back on into storage for another 11 months. That’s odd, because in most winters, the nastiest weather arrives in January and February.
Summer brings carefree beach tunes, while spring and autumn have seasonal selections as well.
For many people, myself included, popular songs from a particular year or handful of years have a way of taking you back in time. For many of those people, myself included, that time is often when they were teenagers or young adults.
I recently heard a station playing — in countdown format — the “Top 40” selections from the last week in January 1968, when I was in my final semester of high school.
I often listen to music from the 1960s and 1970s, and a little from the 1980s, but the selections from those years are usually scrambled. This Top 40 chart from only months before my graduation was uncanny. It brought back vivid memories of a time when music was a unifying factor for many teenagers. It certainly was among my circle of friends at a stage when we were all on the verge of major changes in our lives.
To quote “Same Old Lang Syne,” a 1980 Dan Fogelberg song heard primarily around New Year’s Eve, “Just for a moment I was back at school.” And if I wasn’t back at school, I was chillin’ with classmates I thought would be friends for life. Fifty-plus years later, I know that wasn’t to be. I’m in contact with only a few from that group, and if it wasn’t for social media, I might have lost contact with most of them.
But the music brought it all back.
Most of the tunes we enjoyed were on the pop music charts, but country stars made frequent appearances. One of those singers is represented at No. 35 on that week’s list, Oklahoma native Henson Cargill. His recording of “Skip a Rope” reached No. 1 on the country chart. It was a song with a message, asking listeners to pay attention to what children say while they are playing. It touched on, among other things, verbal spouse abuse, tax evasion, and racism, and ultimately laid blame for what the children said directly on their parents.
Pop hits with such serious messages weren’t abundant that week, although there were plenty of them during the turbulent 1960s. But “Who Will Answer” by Ed Ames was hanging on at No. 46 after falling from its peak at 19. I recommend searching the internet for the lyrics of both of those songs if you’re unfamiliar with them.
But as the Top 40 was being counted down, I remembered specific moments when certain songs were being played — sometimes on the radio and sometimes on the stereo.
“Bend Me, Shape Me” at No. 5 found me in the home of a friend after we had driven motorbikes in the New Mexico desert. Within a year, our parents had both moved to North Carolina, and we welcomed 1969 together by going to a movie. After that, we lost touch.
“Susan” by The Buckinghams, at No. 11, was memorable because I would tease my younger sister — who was in first grade — by singing a couple of lines from it. Her name is Susan.
Those of us “of a certain age” will remember that by 1968, the Beatles were approaching the twilight of their spectacular run. Their hit “Hello Goodbye” had dropped to No. 6 after being 1 two weeks earlier.
Speaking of goodbyes, “Cab Driver” by the Mills Brothers entered the Hot 100 that week at No. 92, and their song would later rise to No. 23 on the Top 40 and No. 3 on the Easy Listening chart. It would become the quartet’s last hit recording in a career that began in 1925.
at no. 13 was “Different Drum” by Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys. I recall that I first heard it one Saturday while on my first job, going door-to-door at the local university selling newspaper subscriptions. Four guys in a dorm room invited me to wait with them to eat pizza which was being delivered. I can’t remember if they bought a subscription or not.
“Love is Blue” by Paul Mauriat was No. 18, and I would later become more familiar with this song than I wanted. By the end of the semester, the handful of us in a music appreciation “zero-hour” enrichment class produced an arrangement of this song for the school’s string ensemble. They played our arrangement, plus a few others, at graduation.
The hits kept coming as the countdown proceeded, and each was so familiar. Aretha Franklin, The Fireballs, The Temptations, Beach Boys, Eric Burdon, The Small Faces, and others were included. It was an enjoyable walk down memory lane, one that also incorporated recollections of my parents asking me if I could actually understand the words some of them were singing.
Often, the answer was no, I couldn’t, but I knew I liked the beat and harmonies.
Memories of those years are never far away. Today, I hear those same recordings used as background music in grocery stores or on television commercials for trucks and insurance. They certainly know how to get my attention.
Gene Deason is editor emeritus of the Brownwood Bulletin. His column “TGIF” appears on Fridays. He may be contacted at tgifcolumn@yahoo.com.
