Music from a half-century away

One of the more amazing things about entering late middle age is the notion of my brain as a time machine, accessing events that happened 50 years and more ago. I still have a crisp memory of sitting in my brother's room listening to a far-away radio station in Buffalo, N.Y., one night in what must have been 1961, listening to a catchy new song called "Calendar Girl." I became a fan of this Neil Sedaka fella not long after.

Every Tuesday night during my teenage years, I'd tune in Cousin Bruce Morrow at WABC in New York City to find out the weekly Top 20 (which was the Top 40 at one time and was later reduced further to the Top 14). I must not have been the only one, because those surveys are a prominent part of the musicradio77.com site devoted to memories of the biggest hit radio station of the era. Here are this week's memories:

50 years ago (1962)
1. The Twist - Chubby Checker (which had spent five weeks at #1 - again)
2. Peppermint Twist, Pt 1 - Joey Dee and the Starliters
3. I Know (You Don't Love Me No More) - Barbara George
4. The Lion Sleeps Tonight - The Tokens
5. Baby It's You - The Shirelles

45 Years Ago (1967)
1. I'm a Believer - The Monkees (which had spent five week at #1 - a pattern?)
2. Snoopy vs. the Red Baron - The Royal Guardsmen
3. Georgy Girl - The Seekers
4. Tell It Like it Is - Aaron Neville
5. Standing in the Shadows of Love - The Four Tops

40 Years Ago (1972)
1. American Pie - Don McLean (3 weeks #1)
2. Let's Stay Together - Al Green
3. Brand New Key - Melanie
4. Clean-Up Woman - Betty Wright
5. You Are Everything - The Stylistics

35 Years Ago (1977)
1. Car Wash - Rose Royce
2. You Don't Have to Be a Star (To Be In My Show) - Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr.
3. You Make Me Feel Like Dancing - Leo Sayer
4. Enjoy Yourself - The Jacksons
5. I Wish - Stevie Wonder

Yellow Balloon weather

Hot, sunny days like we've had this weekend inevitably bring my mind back to the summer of 1967, when Dad and Mom took us to Disneyland for the second time. (Unlike six years earlier, when Dad drove the whole way from New Jersey to Anaheim, Calif., including a wretched journey across the Mojave Desert, this time we stopped in Salt Lake City and flew the rest of the way.)

Somewhere in the middle of Nebraska (I want to say Kearney), we started hearing a wonderful little tune on the radio - "Yellow Balloon" by The Yellow Balloon. These 41 years later, it still give me an inner smile. I learned years later that The Yellow Balloon was formed by Don Grady, who played one of My Three Sons on television. It's an interesting factoid, but the main reason I like "Yellow Balloon" is because it sounds so much like the sixties.

I was deep into the Top 40 charts at the time, and I'd listen with pencil and paper poised for the weekly countdowns on WABC and WMCA in New York. When we returned to the East, I told my friends to listen for a song called "Yellow Balloon," because it was going to be a huge summer hit. But it never migrated to New York radio. Wait, maybe it was a "Long Shot" on WMCA, but the rest of the dour East Coast did not delight in the song the way I did.

Maybe that's another reason I moved to the Midwest when I turned 18 and never looked back.