Throwing back to the week of December 14, 1965, we find The Byrds holding on to the top spot of the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ At #2, a week before ascending to #1, were English rockers The Dave Clark Five with ‘Over and Over.’
This song was written and first recorded by Robert James Byrd, known professionally as Bobby Day, in 1958. The song reached #41 for Day as the B-side to his #2 hit ‘Rockin’ Robin.’
There wasn’t a lot of movement atop the Billboard chart in the waning weeks of 1955. The top six songs the week of December 13, 1955, were all repeats.
At #7 that week was a track by Frank Sinatra that had been kicking around the top ten for a few weeks: ‘Love and Marriage.’ Written by Jimmy Van Heusen, the song was performed by Sinatra in a televised musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, in which Sinatra starred alongside Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint.
The week of December 7, 1985, found Phoenix-based band Mr. Mister having a moment. ‘Broken Wings,’ the first single from their sophomore album Welcome to the Real World, reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks.
The album’s next single, ‘Kyrie,’ would have its own two-week stint atop the chart the following March. And third single ‘Is It Love’ would reach the top ten in the summer of 1986. That trio of songs is pretty much the extent of most people’s knowledge of the quartet.
Throwing back to the week of December 6, 1975, we find German disco trio Silver Convention atop the Billboard Hot 100 with their biggest hit, ‘Fly, Robin, Fly.’
This song held the #1 spot for three weeks, and was both preceded and followed by KC & the Sunshine Band’s ‘That’s the Way (I Like It).’ It was a good time to be a disco fan.
Topping the Billboard Hot 100 the week of Nov. 30, 1965, was The Byrds’ folk rock reimagining of Pete Seeger’s ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ Seeger took almost the entirety of the lyric from the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes. He did add the “turn turn turn” part, and for that claimed 5% of the royalties.
He earned another 50% for writing the musical arrangement, and donated the remaining 45% to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, a group “dedicated to ending the occupation of the Palestinian territories and achieving a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.” Pete Seeger was a woke king.
Meet Me In Montauk 