Weekend of White-bread Wistfulness: 60sGold Top 1000 Countdown

 

I finished streaming the 60s Gold Top 1000 Countdown yesterday, as I wasn’t able to listen to any of it on the weekend it was originally broadcast.  I wasn’t surprised by the white-bread flavor of overall results of listeners' tabulated votes.   One of the earliest 'tells' occurred at #970:  “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” by the Supremes.  Even disc jockeys Pat St. John and Dave Hoeffel remarked about this anomaly. 

On the other hand, the countdown offered a number of positive outcomes. I have no arguments against Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely” as the top performer. It’s a song that holds up amazingly well 62 years after it spent 20 weeks on Billboard's Hot 100, 8 of them in the top 10, peaking at #2.   And it was gratifying to have the Shirelles receive so much love.  The pioneering girl group was represented with 6 songs, including "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" at #24. 

On the other hand, there were a number of artists — women soul singers in particular — who were overlooked or under appreciated. 

Let’s start with Barbara Acklin.

I suspect the name will result in numerous cases of head-scratching puzzlement, as she was never a behind-the-scenes singer and songwriter.  Her resume includes working as a backup singer in the mid-1960s for Fontella Bass (1 song on the countdown), Etta James (1 song on the countdown; I'll get back to this oversight in a later post), and Koko Taylor, among others, at Chess Records in Chicago.

Acklin then worked  as a receptionist at Brunswick Records, also located in Chicago, where she impressed one of the producers with her demo recordings.  One of them, "Whispers (Gettin' Louder)", became a hit for Jackie Wilson in late 1966/early 1967, spending 12 weeks on the Hot 100 and peaking at #11.  (No, it did not make the top 1000.  In fact, Wilson made just one appearance on the countdown:  "Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher" at #857.)

She also co-wrote two early 1970s hit songs for the Chi-Lites:  "Have You Seen Her" and "Stoned Out of My Mind".

As for her own recording career, Acklin is best known for her sassy and soulful "Love Makes a Woman", which spent 12 weeks on the Hot 100 in the late summer and early fall of 1968.  It peaked at #15 for 2 weeks.   The song is certainly more worthy of a place on the Top 1000 than the annoying and instantly disposable #922:  "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead", by the Fifth Estate.  It spent 10 weeks on the Hot 100 during the summer of 1967, peaking at #11.  The group was one of many one-hit wonders that made an appearance on the countdown.

"Love Makes a Woman” debuted inauspiciously at #98 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending July 13, 1968. At the same time, the song had already reached #16 on Windsor/Detroit’s CKLW Top 30 and would later spend two weeks #6 in August. The song caught on there first before it went national. 

CKLW’s 50,000 watts of clear-channel power beamed across Lake Erie clear as a bell at night and could frequently be heard, static-free during the day in Warren PA where I grew up.   Due to its adventurous programming, especially by 1960s AM standards, it became my favorite station during my junior year in high school and remained so through most of my freshman year in Buffalo. Until I migrated to FM.

Anyway, have a listen for yourself.

According to Merriam-Webster, the first-known use of the adjective  'white-bread, as in being, typical of, or having qualities (such as blandness) associated with the white middle class, occurred in 1977.

Other coinages from the same year include:

• ear candy
• head rush
• headbanger
• karaoke
• megahit
• power chord
• punker

Related post:

Sirius/XM 60s Gold listeners give Barrett Strong's "Money" the short shrift. (2/1/2023)