Day #12 - 30 Day Music Meme -A song from Preteen Years

[shadowkat]

Day #12 of the 30 Day Music Meme- a song from your preteen years. I'm not sure if this is meant to be a song that I listened to a lot, or had been recorded back then. I listened to a lot of music back then, everything from Helen Reddy to ABBA to the Carpenters, to well...The Monkeeys. Also there were Disney Movie Soundtrack Records, Musical Recordings, and all of my parents, Folk, Jazz, Classical records.

But at that time, I remember being in love with The Monkeeys, who my Dad liked to call a poor man's Beatles. And my favorite was...Davy Jones. My best friend and I, at the time, were in love with him. And made a point of seeing his appearance on the Brady Bunch, where he sung our favorite song..

Here he is singing it on the television episode of the Monkeeys in which it premiered.

Watch on YouTube

The song was written by John Stewart for The Monkeeys. It premiered the year I was born in 1967. (So I'm going to have to find something else for that song category - aren't I? ) But I heard it on The Monkeeys, when it aired on Saturday morning in reruns, and sang it with my friends in 1974.

So it was from my preteen years, one way or another. Also it kind of shows, my memory of songs is very visual. I remember the song, because I saw it on a television show and had a crush on the singer.

Comments

[cactuswatcher]

I looked up Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" and Teresa Brewer's (not Eric Clapton's totally different) "Bell Bottom Blues" which I liked a lot back when, and decided all these years later they were things best left in my pre-teen years. ;o)

Here's Del Shannon's short "Runaway." Can't say I like the performance any more, but the base lyrics haven't lost all meaning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPdihUTYk90

[shadowkat]

I actually really like that song - it has a nice beat to it. I'll probably forget it in a few hours, but that's hardly the songs fault.

Daydream Believer? I can't remember more than the first few words, if that, and I listened to it multiple times this morning. I also can't remember the words to Amazing Grace. I'm pathetic I know.

Rock Around the Clock is kind of iconic - I heard it a lot as a kid with Happy Days, so remember it because of Happy Days and television reruns and old 1950s movies we'd watch after school at my friends house. My memory really is visual. If the song is associated with a film or television show or staged musical? I'll remember it.

Thanks for that one.

[cjlasky7]

One of the only music albums I recall my parents owning was the greatest hits of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Alpert and the TJB were an oddity, faux-Mexican instrumentalists with an L.A. studio gloss. A tune almost ubiquitous in our household during my childhood:

"A Taste of Honey"

https://youtu.be/NC38-qqiVgg

Enjoy the slightly salacious cover from the song's original LP.

I learned much later that Herb in not Latinx--he's actually Ukranian-Jewish(!). And the touring version of the TJB had exactly zero Mexican musicians. (I think Los Lobos would like to have a word with Herb...)

Mr. Alpert leveraged his original hit recordings on his own A&M records (cofounded with his buddy Jerry Moss) into a music empire he eventually sold to Polygram for $500 million.

Now that's a taste of honey.

[cactuswatcher]

You know I almost replied to her post about songs that make you happy the other day with "Tijuana Taxi." But I listened to it from the recordings on YouTube with my normal computer set up, and it just wasn't the same as back in the day with a decent stereo system with good speakers. It really took the enjoyment out of hearing how good the band really was (real Hispanics or not). Who needs meh when you want to be happy?

[shadowkat]

It's not a happy song, really - more wistful. It is a song. It's been sung by the Beatles, Striesand, and Sarah Vaughn, which is why it sounded familiar to me.

It's also one of those songs in which the instrumentation is better than the lyrics.

[shadowkat]

Okay, I've heard this before. It's very familiar. Movie? It feels like the theme of a movie or a television series - I'm thinking a 1950s Western. I'm going to go look it up.

Ah, found it - was the theme song for A Taste of Honey - the staged musical later turned into a film. Also its the instrumental to a song version that has been done by everyone from the Beatles to Barbara Streisand.

"A Taste of Honey" is a pop standard written by Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow. It was originally an instrumental track (or recurring theme) written for the 1960 Broadway version of the 1958 British play A Taste of Honey (which was also made into the film of the same name in 1961). Both the original and a later recording by Herb Alpert in 1965 earned the song four Grammy Awards. A vocal version of the song -- first recorded by Billy Dee Williams (and released in 1961 on the Prestige label), and then recorded very successfully by Lenny Welch in the summer of 1962 -- was also recorded by the Beatles for their first album in 1963. Barbra Streisand performed the song as part of her cabaret act during 1962, and recorded it in January 1963 for her debut album The Barbra Streisand Album on Columbia, which won a Grammy for Album of the Year (1963).

I figured it out - I heard it before but as a song - by Sarah Vaughn. I have the Best of Sarah Vaughn on my Apple Music.

https://youtu.be/lO4JhqnadRk

That's a really good one. Thank you.

[wendelah1]

Brings back memories, oh yes.

[atpo_onm]

Had to check on the release dates for a few of my initial picks, which turned out to be a good idea because they were all later than 1966, the year I turned 13. Then it came to me-- a band I was very fond of from the first time I heard them, and I remember getting my folks to buy the album for me.

This was the big hit from it, in 1962. This youtube version (there are many) has reasonably decent audio quality, and a few interesting images:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=414VaKKb9Hc

This one has some live versions, with the picture quality a reminder of how far we've come in 50+ years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kmsb0rXZrc

I still feel sorry for the bull, but it is a great tune, as were many Alpert and his band did.

ETA -- I had picked this tune before reading cjl's pick, which only shows that great minds... often like similar music ;-)

[shadowkat]

I think I've heard it before, also it sounds very similar to cjl's pick.

I also am beginning to think you're both instrumental enthusiasts, you appear to prefer the instrumental or orchestration to lyrics in music, or are more interested in the sound. Most of your picks are ones in which lyrics don't matter or don't exist.

Interesting, it does however explain a lot.

I can't remember many instrumentations unless they are movie, musical, dance or television scores. Hmmm. For me, most instrumentation is kind of like white noise? I used to use it to go to sleep. I still do on occasion. Yours and cjl's picks are examples of what I use to relax or go to sleep or even focus. What I'd play in the background.

Ah my father owned Herb Alpert albums (that's why it is familiar - he may still, I don't know), he loves classical music and big band and brass and Gregorian Chant. He actually preferred instrumental music to music with lyrics. When we saw the Mission - we got the score immediately, along with the score to Chariots of Fire. And he had a collection of the Big Band Sound of the 1950s and 40s when he was a kid, that his brothers would borrow. Also adored opera. My father loves the sound. And he loved Sinatra - because of how Sinatra sang it.

[atpo_onm]

I also am beginning to think you're both instrumental enthusiasts, you appear to prefer the instrumental or orchestration to lyrics in music, or are more interested in the sound.

There may be some degree of truth to that observation, although if you saw my music collection, you would not lack for vocal material being well represented. I enjoy lyrics, and the vocalist who sing them well, but I don't miss them if they aren't there. I spend much of my day listening to WRTI-FM, the Temple University (Philadelphia) classical and jazz NPR station, and the rest of the time with WXPN-FM, the U-Penn NPR adult album alternative station (what we called "progressive" radio in olden days).

If you like ambient music, you might wish to check out this site:

https://echoes.org/

Besides a list of broadcast stations carrying this very long-running program, they also have podcasts now, so that another venue.

If you have an interest in what was most commonly referred to as "space music", this is the show I usually fall asleep to after 1 AM Sunday.

http://www.starsend.org/

Anyway, as to lyrics, I prefer those that are more story-telling, as it were. While Dylan is an obvious example, I greatly prefer Paul Simon to Dylan, or a number of folk / country artists, or my all-time favorite female vocalist, Sandy Denny, who wrote some truly wonderful songs, with excellent lyrics to go with her instrumental chops.

An interesting quirk I know I have is that if the instrumental efforts are working for me, I tend to be more forgiving of so-so or merely interesting lyrical work. That does tend to support your conjecture above, I have to say.

Here's an example that quickly comes to mind. This is actually one of the few bands native to Lancaster that ever got to be known at least a little bit outside of the local area, with two albums being released nationally before the bandmembers finally went their separate ways.

The woman who plays that astonishing piano work in this and other tunes-- yes, it's a piano-driven band, not a guitar one! -- freely admits that their lyrics "tend to go around a bit". Yes, they do, but I totally love this group, and I don't care about the lyrics. They are very clever and talented in their own, very unique way, and that's what grabs me.

Suddenly Tammy - Hard Lesson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3_4ipEvE_I

Gotta say I'm really liking this music meme! :-)