Classic rock, pop, and soul songs from the '60s, '70s, and '80s
Classic rock, pop, and soul songs from the '60s, '70s, and '80s
Today’s classic song of the day is “Taxi” by Harry Chapin. Released in March of 1972, this is the song that launched and defined Mr. Chapin’s career. An extremely long song for a single, it peaked at #23 on the Billboard Hot 100. I’m a sucker for story songs, and “Taxi” is one hell of a story song. In just…
Today’s classic song of the day is “Mr. Bojangles.” The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band released this song as a single in September of 1970 and it rose to #9 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100. “Mr. Bojangles” was written and originally recorded by Jerry Jeff Walker. The song was inspired by and somewhat documents a…
Today’s classic song of the day is “Stoney End,” written by the incredibly talented Laura Nyro and performed by the equally incredibly talented Barbra Streisand. Released in 1971, the single hit #6 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and #2 on the Adult Contemporary chart. It’s a terrific song, as were just about all of Laura Nyro’s songs, and Babs did…
Today’s classic dance song of the day is “Save the Last Dance for Me” by the Drifters. Released in August of 1960, it spent three weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was written by the legendary songwriting team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman and produced by the equally (if not more so) legendary Jerry Leiber and…
Today’s classic sad song of the day is “San Francisco Mabel Joy,” by Mickey Newbury. Like “Tecumseh Valley,” yesterday’s classic song of the day, “San Francisco Mabel Joy” is a folk song that tells a story—a sad story, indeed. “San Francisco Mabel Joy” really isn’t about the character in the title, although she’s in the song. No, this one is…
Today’s classic sad song of the day is “Tecumseh Valley,” a real tear-jerker written by Townes Van Zandt and best remembered as performed by Nanci Griffith. Townes wrote this one in 1968 and first released it on his For the Sake of the Song album. It was always a staple of his live sets but didn’t get widespread airplay at…
This week we’re featuring particularly sad songs, and today’s classic sad song of the day is “Hasten Down the Wind” by Warren Zevon, later covered by Linda Ronstadt. It’s hard to believe this song is close to fifty years old or that Warren’s been gone twenty years now. “Hasten Down the Wind” tells the story, in the third person, of…
Continuing our look at girl singers of the ’60s, we come to one of my favorite singers singing one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite songwriting teams. We’re talking about “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” a song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and sung by the divine Dionne Warwick. While “Do You…
Last week we took a look at the Girl Group sound of the early 1960s, but that sound wasn’t limited to girl groups. There were plenty of solo girl singers who put out records that mirrored that Girl Group sound, and we’re going to listen to some of them this week. Let’s start with a singer named Ellie Greenwich. Music…