From yesterday’s girl group The Chordettes, topping the charts in 1954, we jump a decade to a pair of girl groups owning the #1 and #2 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964.
The week of Nov. 17 that year found The Supremes atop the chart with their classic ‘Baby Love,’ already featured on the blog. In the second slot that week, on its way to a #1 berth a couple of weeks later, was The Shangri-Las’ ‘Leader of the Pack.’
The week of Nov. 3, 1964, found The Supremes atop the Billboard Hot 100 with their classic ‘Baby Love.’ I posted that song way back at Song of the Day #339, early on in a Motown Weekends series.
At #2 was J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers’s ‘Last Kiss,’ a recording of a song originally released a few years earlier by the song’s writer, Wayne Cochran. While that version stalled out on the charts, this one did quite well.
English rock band Manfred Mann held the #1 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 the week of October 20, 1964, with ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy,’ a song I think I first heard when Bill Murray marches to it in Stripes.
‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’ started its life as ‘Do-Wah-Diddy,’ a 1963 release by the vocal group The Exciters. That version peaked at #78 before the white boys claimed it and took it to the top of the charts.
In the first week of October, 1964, Roy Orbison had his second (and final) #1 hit with the song most associated with him: ‘Oh, Pretty Woman.’
This was long before Van Halen has a Top 20 hit with the track in 1982, and even longer before Julia Roberts became a household name starring in a movie of the same name in 1990.
The week of September 12, 1964, was smack in the middle of a three-week run at #1 for one of the greatest folk rock songs of all time: The Animals’ ‘The House of the Rising Sun.’
This was just the second single for the young English band, and it would be their only #1 hit in both the U.S. and their native UK.
The song’s origin dates back so far nobody is really sure when it was written, though it bears similarities to folk songs from the 1600s. But The Animals’ version owes the most to Bob Dylan’s recording.
