80, Hot 100)īillie Jo Spears’ version of the Tom T. ![]() No surprise, then, that Shadow swiped it for “Midnight in a Perfect World.” - ROSS SCARANOĩ2. Undergirded by haunting piano and bass work, the longest track on Axelrod’s second album as an artist - an esoteric tribute to the poet William Blake, just like his first album - eventually blossoms into a lush orchestral work, conjuring an expansive, inscrutable kingdom in just five-and-a-half minutes. David Axelrod, “The Human Abstract” (Did not chart)Ī spacious exemplar of jazz producer, arranger and composer David Axelrod’s singular sound, “The Human Abstract” will be especially familiar to fans of DJ Shadow, who sampled it twice on his 1996 instrumental rap classic Endtroducing…. In the Traffic version, the song title was a question (“Feelin’ Alright?”), but after Joe Cocker sang it, no one had to ask anymore. There’s Artie Butler’s groovy piano opening, those urgent backing vocals from no less than Merry Clayton and Brenda Holloway, and Cocker giving you his best raspy, throaty, gutsy performance. Traffic’s 1968 original is great, but what Joe Cocker did - what Joe Cocker seemed to do to virtually every cover he touched - is sublime. The FAME studio’s iconic rough-and-tumble sound lays the perfect groundwork for brash lyrics like “You may think I’m silly to love a man twice my age/ But I know from experience girls, sometimes it pays” - a convincing argument, then and now, shared via the brightest, sassiest soul. It’s pretty hard to go wrong with anything coming out of Muscle Shoals in the late 1960s, and soul great Candi Staton’s pragmatic breakout hit is no exception. Candi Staton, “I’d Rather Be an Old Man’s Sweetheart (Than a Young Man’s Fool)” (No. 32, Hot 100)Ĭuban percussionist Mongo Santamaría was enlisted to play congas on the Temptations’ “Cloud Nine” - one of the best of the string of Whitfield-Strong psychedelic soul firecrackers the group would record around the turn of the decade - so it was only right that his own band would get to take a crack at the song on his ’69 LP Stone Soul. Upping the tempo and layering the bass and percussion until the whirling groove kicks up a Tasmanian Devil level of dust, Santamaría’s take on the struggle anthem is even more intoxicating and unnerving than the original, with the two-word shout of the faux-ecstatic title proving the only lyrics necessary. It just needed the right decade: re-released in 1971, it hit the top 30. Immaculately recorded by longtime Chicago associate Jim Guercio (who cut his horn-rock teeth producing the Buckinghams and Blood, Sweat & Tears), “Questions” was brassy and optimistic, without a shred of psychedelia. 71, the latter was, at one point, the longest-running rock album in Top 200 history. “Questions” was the first single from the band’s debut album while the former initially scraped to No. But the production was pure pop, and the lyric - a flirtatious monologue - predicted the hippie slide down the Maslow Hierarchy. The title suggests persistent mysticism the structure implies proggy ambition. The San Fran siblings specialized in haunting harmonies with psychedelic flourishes - and with “Flower” being Wendy and Bonnie’s honest-to-God last name, what else could they have done with their lives in the late ’60s Bay Area? - JOE LYNCHĩ7. Kicking off in medias res with a wild organ solo hurtling toward the stratosphere, “Let Yourself Go Another Time” is an undeservedly obscure folk-pop gem from teenage sister duo Wendy & Bonnie. Wendy and Bonnie, “Let Yourself Go Another Time” (Did not chart) Not hard to see why: The flower power hits you right smack in the chest on this one, an irresistible soul-pop blast that asks “Can you dig it?” and very much refuses to take no for an answer. vocal quartet discovered by NFL legend Jim Brown - threw on some rapid-fire lyrics and a whole lot of even-quicker horns, and mowed all the way back to the top five. It hadn’t even been a year since Hugh Masekela’s sauntering jazz instrumental “Grass” had topped the Hot 100 when The Friends of Distinction - an L.A. Friends of Distinction, “Grazing in the Grass” (No. But this driving, droning fluke smash still feels like an AM broadcast from a distant world. ![]() Though they released a few LPs before splitting, Zager & Evans remained the ultimate one-hit wonder: only “2525” reached the chart. Audiences flipped for the verse-free jeremiad, and the Nebraskan duo released the tune on their own label before it got picked up by RCA. Rick Evans wrote “2525” in the mid-’60s, but shelved it until he and Denny Zager needed to pad a regular lounge gig. 1 song on Earth was a doomy folk-rocker about planetary death by technology. ![]() When Aldrin and Armstrong stepped onto the moon – the signature engineering achievement of the century - the No. Zager & Evans, “In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)” (No.
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