By 1955, Little Richard Penniman had spent four unproductive years recording for RCA Victor and Peacock Records. On the advice of R&B singer Lloyd Price, best known for songs like “Stagger Lee,” Richard sent a demo of two songs to Art Rupe, owner of Specialty Records.

The songs, “Baby” and “All Night Long,” did not sound like the outrageous Little Richard of rock and roll legend. Instead, the Little Richard of 1955 was a blues singer in the mold of B.B. King and Ray Charles. Though Rupe had his doubts, Specialty A&R man Robert “Bumps” Blackwell liked what he heard and Richard was signed to record a handful of blues and R&B tracks in New Orleans at Cosimo Matassa’s studio.

Though backed by Fats Domino’s band, which included saxophonists Lee Allen and Alvin “Red” Tyler, guitarist Frank Fields and drummer Earl Palmer, Little Richard turned out eight unimpressive sides, including “Lonesome and Blue” and “Kansas City,” by midway into his second day.

During the musicians’ lunch break at a local haunt, the Dew Drop Inn, Richard took over the bandstand and pounded out a song he’d played live for years: “Tutti Frutti.” But his lyrics were unlike the version so well known today: "Tutti Frutti, good booty / If it don’t fit, don’t force it / You can grease it, make it easy."

Richard told Marc Myers how lyrics like “Tutti Frutti, good booty” became “Tutti Frutti, all rooty” (hipster slang for “all right”).

I used to go up on stage in clubs to sing boogie-woogie blues but I'd forget the words. So I made up dirty ones to fill out the songs [laughs]. I was doing then what the rap groups do today. When I recorded "Tutti Frutti" for Specialty, we cleaned up the words [laughs]. We had to. No radio station was going to put those original words on the air.

The song, Richard told David Dalton, had its roots in Macon, Georgia, where Richard worked at the Greyhound bus station.

I was washing dishes at the time. I couldn’t talk back to my boss man. He would bring all these pots back for me to wash, and one day I said, “I’ve got to do something to stop this man bringing back all these pots for me to wash,” and one day I said, “A wop bop alu bop a wop bam boom, take ‘em out!” and that’s what I meant at the time.

When “Bumps” Blackwell heard the ribald song, he thought it could be a hit but realized the lyrics would have to be changed. With only the remainder of the day left, Blackwell asked Dorothy LaBostrie, an aspiring local songwriter, to come up with sanitized lyrics. Glenn C. Altschuler writes that Richard resisted, too embarrassed to sing the song to a woman. LaBostrie, in turn, was also uncomfortable.

With time running out, Blackwell asked Little Richard “if he had a grudge against making money” and reminded LaBostrie that she was twenty-one, had several kids, and needed the income. A few hours later, the lyrics had been changed to “I got a gal named Sue / She knows just what to do / She rocks me to the east / She rocks me to the west / She’s the gal I love best.”

By the time LaBostrie finished the new lyrics, only fifteen minutes of studio time remained, but Richard pounded out “Tutti Frutti” in three takes. 

While a sax-packed band pulsated with energy, Little Richard embellished the words of “Tutti Frutti” with screams, squeals, rasps, or sirens, in effect exhorting listeners to get loose and go crazy. The only performer Blackwell knew “who would beat the piano so hard he’d break an eighty-gauge piano string,” Richard accompanied himself for what turned out to be two and a half minutes that made rock ‘n’ roll history. 

Robert Palmer describes Richard’s vocal style, which came to define rock and roll.

Even Little Richard’s most elaborate melismas find him hitting each note squarely on the head, and his innovative use of percussive vocal phrasing displayed an extraordinary affinity for drum patterns. If modern jazz, or bebop, began with rhythmic onomatopoeia such as “oop-bop-she-bam,” rock & roll can be said to have begun with the urgent “wop-boppa-lu-bop” that introduces Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti.” Popular music hasn’t been the same since.

Incredibly, writes Altschuler, Art Rupe of Specialty Records didn’t like “Tutti Frutti."

He expected Little Richard to produce the “big band sound expressed in a churchy way,” characteristic of mid-‘50s black rock ‘n’ rollers. With little enthusiasm, Rupe finally agreed to distribute “Tutti Frutti.” Little Richard was also convinced that the song would not be a hit, even with sanitized lyrics.

They miscalculated. Little Richard became an exception to the “rule” that whites would not accept a black shouter. Within weeks, “Tutti Frutti” reached number 2 on the R&B charts. Despite almost no radio airplay, the song also climbed to number 18 on the pop charts.

When the Zombies arrived at London’s Abbey Road studios in August 1967, their creativity was high but their successes were in the past. The British Invasion band had had two innovative hits, 1964’s “She’s Not There,” followed the next year by “Tell Her No.” Keyboardist Rod Argent and bassist Chris White wrote the band’s songs; the group was rounded out by singer Colin Blunstone, guitarist Paul Atkinson and Hugh Grundy on drums.

The singles to follow were a disappointment. Argent told Dorian Lynskey that after signing with CBS Records in 1967, a change was needed.

Our producer (Ken Jones) did a very good job on “She's Not There,” but we felt he mixed some of the balls out of the subsequent singles. Chris and I desperately wanted to produce an album ourselves before we finished so we went to CBS and asked for a small amount of money. I remember being given £1,000, which wasn't very much.

The Zombies arrived on the heels of the Beatles, who had just finished recording Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. For the pioneering LP, the Beatles had demanded more tracks than the studio’s 4-track machines could deliver. So engineers Geoff Emerick and Peter Vince slaved together 4-track machines; when the Zombies arrived, the engineers were busily disconnecting the recorders.

Robin Platts writes that Paul Atkinson was shocked to see the engineers unplugging the patch cables.

We said, “Wait a minute, what are you doing? Plug those back in again.” And they said, “No, no, please. We’ve had six months of this. It’s been driving us crazy. We want to unplug all this stuff and get back to recording normally.”

I think they had six or eight four-track machines lined up against the wall of the control room, all connected by patch cords. So we made them plug them back in again and we used the same technique. So we benefited directly from Sgt. Pepper.

The group was now able to record overdubs, a luxury they’d never enjoyed. The band also took advantage of the instruments left behind by the Beatles, particularly the Mellotron, a keyboard that could mimic violins, cellos, horns and other instruments. Used by the Beatles on "Strawberry Fields Forever," Argent played it for the first time at Abbey Road. On a tight budget, the group was able to avoid hiring an orchestra thanks to the Mellotron’s versatility.

The result was 1968’s Odessey and Oracle, a groundbreaking album whose title was unintentionally misspelled by the cover artist, Terry Quirk. Its highlight: “Time of the Season." The track was written by Argent, who told Lynskey how one of its classic lines came about.

“Time of the Season” was the last thing to be written. I remember thinking it sounded very commercial. One of my favorite records was George Gershwin's “Summertime”; we used to do a version of it when we started out. The words in the verse - "What's your name? Who's your daddy? Is he rich like me?" - were an affectionate nod in that direction.

Though Odessey and Oracle received great reviews, it sold so poorly in the UK that it wasn’t released in America. But Al Kooper, late of Blood Sweat & Tears, was starting a stint as an A&R rep for Columbia Records in 1968. On a trip to England, Kooper picked up a copy of the LP and championed it for release in the States. Columbia took a shot, releasing “Time of the Season” as a single on subsidiary Date Records in April 1968. By then the Zombies had disbanded; Rod Argent and Chris White had formed a new band, Argent.

To everyone’s surprise except Kooper's, “Time of the Season” became a smash in 1969, reaching #3 on the Billboard charts. Kooper’s recollection may help explain the title of his book, “Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards.”

A buncha Zombies crossed the ocean to take photos and get gold records. No one at CBS thanked me for this; I received no gold record or cash recompense. But the Zombies, who knew what really happened, made sure to come to my office and thank me profusely. That was worth it all to me at that time.

Few songs are so strongly identified with soul singer Otis Redding as “Try a Little Tenderness.” Though everyone from Three Dog Night and Tom Jones to Michael Bublé and Chris Brown have attempted to put their own stamp on it, no one has been able to improve on Redding’s definitive performance.

But “Try a Little Tenderness” did not originate with Otis. The song was first recorded in 1932, nine years before Redding was born, by the Ray Noble Orchestra with vocalist Val Rosing.

Written by American lyricist Harry M. Woods, who wrote "When the Red, Red Robin (Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along)" and British composers Jimmy Campbell and Reg Connelly, whose best known work is “Show Me The Way To Go Home,” “Try a Little Tenderness” became a standard of the Swing Era, with stars like Bing Crosby waxing popular versions. The journey from crooner Crosby’s smooth take to Redding’s blistering track was a gradual one.

Aretha Franklin recorded the song in 1962, which was heard by Redding’s idol Sam Cooke, who incorporated “Try a Little Tenderness” into his live performances as part of a medley with “For Sentimental Reasons” and “You Send Me.”

At the suggestion of his manager, Phil Walden, Redding recorded “Try a Little Tenderness” in 1966 with the Stax Records house band, Booker T. and the MGs (Booker T. Jones on organ, Steve Cropper on guitar, Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass and drummer Al Jackson, Jr.). Joining the session were arranger Issac Hayes and the horn section of the Mar-Keys.

Rob Bowman writes that production of the classic was helped by a happy accident.

The arrangement was atypical of Stax, rhythm and blues, and pop. Issac Hayes was responsible for much of it, including the three-part, contrapuntal horn line in the intro (inspired by the strings on Sam Cooke’s "A Change Is Gonna Come”) and the cymbal break in the climax (which Hayes later reused on “Theme From Shaft”). The idea of having Al Jackson lay out during the first verse and then come in on the second verse of the song simply tapping quarter-beats on the rim of the snare came about accidentally when the drummer idly tapped along while Redding was running down the tune. Jackson suggested that he actually hold off from using his full kit until two-thirds of the way through the song.

“Al came up with the idea of breaking up the rhythm,” recalls Booker T. “And Otis just took that and ran with it. He really got excited once he found out what Al was going to do on the drums. He realized how he could finish the song. That he could start it like a ballad and finish it full of emotion.”

Recorded in three takes, the track would reach #25 on the Billboard charts. Matthew Greenwald describes how Redding builds the excitement of “Try a Little Tenderness” to a crescendo.

Starting with a down-tempo, soulful melody, the song moves through several melodic changes before culminating into a power and fury that is capped by an absolutely intense modulation on the choruses. It's precisely here that Redding turns to interpreting the song to commanding it. It's positively spellbinding.

The song’s ending, writes Bethlehem Shoals, helped make “Try a Little Tenderness” the highlight of Redding’s live performances.

In Redding's hands, "Try A Little Tenderness" became a celebration, not only of romance, but of honesty and self-discovery. Redding, who isn’t even talking about his woman but gets just as caught up as if he were, makes the song about discovery, not problem-solving. For the narrator, “Tenderness” is an occasion to tear the house of self down.

Or, as it turned out, just to tear the house down. "Try A Little Tenderness" joined "I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)" as Redding's live show-stoppers. The two songs could not have been more different, but they shared the same smoldering, meandering pace, with a grand finale that was both inevitable and open-ended.

In 1965, during the height of the British Invasion, Roy Head and the Traits scored a huge hit with “Treat Her Right.” An electrifying blue-eyed soul singer with dance moves inspired by Joe Tex and Jackie Wilson, Head co-wrote the song with band member Gene Kurtz. Head told Margaret Moser that the song came out of performances at sock hops and dance halls across Texas.

The song was a mistake. I wanted to do "Ooh Poo Pah Doo" by Jessie Hill, and the guitarist played the wrong riffs. So I made up a song about talking to a cow. "If you squeeze her real gentle, she'll give you some cream." It was risqué, but in a hillbilly way. The dance floor packed up…

Gene came to me one night and said, "Why don't we make this song about a woman instead of a cow?" We went over to Gold Star Studios on Broad Street in Houston and did it on the first take, I think. Session cost about $500 to $600.

The band—Johnny Clark on lead guitar, Frank Miller on rhythm guitar, drummer Gerry Gibson, trumpeter Dickie Martin, Doug Shertz on tenor sax and bass man Kurtz—recorded “Treat Her Right” on June 6, 1965. The song, which reached #2 on the charts, was released on Don Robey’s Back Beat Records, a recently-integrated soul label. Rick Kennedy and Randy McNutt write that “Treat Her Right” broke big after Head attended a convention of black disc jockeys against Robey’s advice. Head said Robey believed that if the DJs didn’t know Head was white, there was a better chance they’d play his record.

Don Robey wouldn’t let me do any TV, so nobody knew I was white. The people at the convention weren’t going to let me sing. Then (Robey’s musical director) Joe Scott said, “Oh, put the boy on!”…

They had to push me onto the stage. But then they started playing “Treat Her Right,” and I started doing my flip flops and dancing, and the crowd went nuts. The record became an instant hit because all the DJs heard it.

Head told Mal Thursday (at 32:40) the secret of the song’s success.

We just inked a little old song that had a little catchy rhythmic pattern to it. The whole making of that song was that everybody could play it. It was not real hard, it was pretty simple, it was pretty repetitious.

The song’s ending, Head says, was inspired by a late-night TV ad for Ajax laundry detergent.

Remember the commercial “Stronger Than Dirt”? That’s where we got the tag.

By 1965, soul shouter Otis Redding’s career was at a crossroads. Rumored to be unhappy with Stax Records, Redding established Jotis Records with managers Alan and Phil Walden and producer Joe Galkin (the “J” in Jotis). With Jotis, Redding hoped to break and produce new talent.

That year, Redding discovered Arthur Conley, a singer who sounded remarkably like Otis. Redding became Conley’s mentor; the second release on Jotis was Conley’s “I’m a Lonely Stranger,” which Otis produced.

Though the song met with little success (and Jotis soon folded), Redding believed in Conley’s talent. In January 1967 Redding brought Conley to legendary producer Rick Hall’s Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama for his next sessions. Hall told Randy Poe how Conley came to record at Fame.

“Phil Walden was and is my bosom buddy,” says Rick Hall. “He’s one of us Southern rock & roll boys who have a lot in common.” Long before Otis Redding passed away, Walden and Hall had worked out a handshake deal that would serve them both well. “Phil said to me, ‘Look, anything that you can find that don’t have management that you produce, I’d appreciate you sending them to us. And in turn, anyone that I manage that needs a producer, I’ll send them to you.’ To give you an example, Phil sent me Arthur Conley.”

“We brought Arthur Conley to Rick Hall and put him on Fame Records,” says Alan Walden. “I believe he did four sides there—two singles. Rick decided that he didn’t want to continue doing Arthur himself. But Otis believed in Arthur Conley, and he said, ‘I’ll take Arthur Conley and go to Fame Studios with my road band and produce him myself.’ So Otis and Arthur Conley and I went to the studio with Otis’s band. Jimmy Johnson was the engineer. We recorded ‘Sweet Soul Music’—which, of course, became a million-seller.”

Redding and Conley co-wrote “Sweet Soul Music” based on “Yeah Man,” a little-known tune by Otis’ idol, Sam Cooke. Careful listeners will also note that the opening horn intro sounds very similar to Elmer Bernstein’s score for “The Magnificent Seven,” more popularly known as the Marlboro cigarette theme.

But what makes the track memorable are the name-checks of the great soul artists of the era. Stewart Mason writes that the song “cheerleads for Stax/Volt Records and the Muscle Shoals sound.”

So what makes this song different?...

It's the sense of a scene celebrating itself, for no other reason than they know that they're doing good work, music that will last for years, and they want to take a moment (or two minutes and 20 seconds) to give themselves a pat on the back. If any group of musicians deserved a little burst of self-approbation, it's these guys.

The song celebrates "Going to a Go-Go" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, "Love Is a Hurtin' Thing" by Lou Rawls, "Hold On, I'm Comin' " by Sam and Dave, "Mustang Sally" by Wilson Pickett and Redding’s own "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song).” James Brown is crowned “King of them all.”

The funky sound of “Sweet Soul Music” was no accident. The Fame rhythm section, later immortalized by Lynyrd Skynyrd in “Sweet Home Alabama” as “the Swampers,” would become one of the hottest house bands in recording history. By 1967, the band would include drummer Roger Hawkins, gutarist Jimmy Johnson, keyboard player Barry Beckett, and Albert “Junior” Lowe on bass.

“Sweet Soul Music” would rise to #2 on the Billboard charts in 1967. Though Conley never enjoyed comparable success again, the song remains a reminder of a golden age in soul music.

The hard rocking sound of “Short Shorts” by the Royal Teens burst through transistor radios in 1958, an alternative to the doo wop sound then so popular. The New Jersey group really were teenagers; some barely teens at that.

When they recorded “Short Shorts,” saxophonist Billy Crandall was 14 years old, writer and pianist Bob Gaudio was 15, 16-year-old Billy Dalton played guitar and drummer Tom Austin was the oldest at 17.

Signed to the small independent Power Records, the group found little success with their first two singles. At New York’s Bell Sound studios to cut two more songs, the band’s producer decided to use some unused time to record an instrumental often used during the band’s stage act.

The Royal Teens site tells how the lyrics for the jam were written one afternoon in 1957.

Gaudio and Austin were driving up Washington Avenue in Bergenfield, New Jersey in Tom Austin's red and white 1957 Ford Fairlane 500, trying to figure out what to call the latest song they had written…

Just then, two girls came strutting out of Luhmann's (the local teenage sweet shop) wearing cutoff jeans that were cut so short they were almost illegal. Gaudio and Austin both looked at each other and instantly knew that their new song would forever be called "SHORT SHORTS."

Most memorable, perhaps, is the song’s opening. Austin provided the wolf whistle, which Dalton mimicked on guitar. Crandall contributed, “Man, dig those crazy chicks!” Diana Lee, a young singer who happened to be in the studio, was assigned a few lines. The result would become a #3 hit.

Bruce Eder describes what made the track so catchy.

The record, often perceived as one of the dumbest of novelty tunes, is actually better than most people remember it, and has everything a great rock & roll song needs to transcend its simplicity — the sax part is thick with places for the soloist to have fun, there's a hot guitar break, and the beat is relentless and intoxicating, especially as punctuated by the honking sax, a song you can laugh at, dance to, and play variations on for five minutes or more.

Bob Gaudio would go on to join and write many of the hits of the Four Seasons. Despite Al Kooper (of Blues Project and Blood Sweat & Tears fame) joining the band in 1959, the Royal Teens never again achieved the chart success of “Short Shorts.” But the band did get a jump start in the 1980s from the song’s use in a series of Nair commercials; today “Short Shorts” is featured in Jersey Boys, the Broadway show based on the career of Gaudio and the Four Seasons.

Johnny Otis earned the title “Godfather of Rhythm and Blues” through decades of work as record producer, bandleader, DJ, talent scout, label owner and TV host. But most know Otis for his 1958 Top Ten hit, “Willie and the Hand Jive.”

Otis was born Ioannis Alexandres Veliotes to Greek-American parents in Vallejo, California. His father owned a grocery in the black section of town and Johnny's love of the community’s culture and music led him to live as a black man. He wrote, “As a kid I decided that if our society dictated that one had to be black or white, I would be black.”

Taking the blacker-sounding name “Otis,” the young musician found that with his dark Greek complexion and hipster persona, he was accepted into the black community. Otis told J.J. Perry that he blended easily with black musicians.

I was just another musician in that pool. And we played music, there wasn't anything special about that. They accepted me as black, and there were plenty of black players who were much whiter looking than myself—Willie Smith, Earl Warren. 

I didn't try to pass, it was just a foregone conclusion that “he's black,” nobody questioned that. Because it was against the law, why would we do that?

Otis got his start during the Big Band era of the 1940s, playing drums with swing orchestras. As the big bands' popularity diminished, Otis scaled down his orchestra and helped pioneer what would become rhythm and blues. He had an eye for talent, discovering future R&B greats Etta James, Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard and Little Willie John.

As The Johnny Otis Show, Otis toured with a troupe of performers that was a forerunner of the rock and roll and soul revues of the 1960s. History of Rock describes their wild performances.

Otis' stage shows were something else. They would open with him doing a solo on the drums and vibes that would last ten minutes before the rest of the band would come on stage. There were always female vocalists (Little Esther, Willie Mae Thornton, and Marie Adams) that could really shout the blues. They would then be followed by a male vocalist (Mel Walker) who was smooth with the ballads. The show climaxed with a vocal group (the Robins) followed by a number or two by the Otis band with Otis frantically switching back and forth from the drums and vibes.

Otis’ most memorable song was inspired by rock pioneer Bo Diddley, whose “Bo Diddley beat” has been the core of countless hits; Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away,” Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ “Mickey’s Monkey” and “Marie’s the Name” by Elvis Presley are just a few.

In creating the sound of “Hand Jive,” Otis took various elements: the sounds of a chain gang he heard while touring in the early 1950s; the Diddley beat—three strokes/rest/two strokes; and the infectious handclaps of the 1952 song “Hambone,” recorded by Red Saunders and the Hambone Kids (and later hilariously adapted by kids' show host Sandy Becker).

The roots of “Hand Jive” go back even further, writes David Cranstoun Welch.

The Hand Jive… involved an intricate pattern of handclaps on various parts of the body which follow and imitate the percussion instruments. Fundamentally, it was a more refined version of the schoolyard game of Pat-a-cake.

The Hand Jive involved thigh slapping, cross-wrist slapping, fist pounding, elbow touching and a move known as the hitch hike. The Hand Jive had its roots in much earlier forms of African American musical expression like the Juba Dance or the “hambone,” both known by the earlier term of “Pattin' Juba,” which itself derives from the African “Giouba.”

George Lipsitz writes that the lyrics of “Willie and the Hand Jive” came to Otis not from Africa, but from England.

While scouting British rock ‘n’ roll shows in anticipation of a Johnny Otis tour in England, (promoter) Hal Zeiger noticed that the theaters there did not allow dancing in the aisles. Teenagers at rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll shows stood at their seats and let their hands do the “dancing,” waving them in synchronized motions not too dissimilar from the “eephing” and “hambone” clapping and patting that accompanied the Bo Diddley Beat on street corners throughout the United States. Johnny wrote a song about a “cat named way-out Willie” who did the “hand jive.”

At live shows, Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy would demonstrate the movements of the hand jive. With fists closed, they would place one hand over the other and “clap” them together to the beat of the song. Then, after reversing hands, they would extend the fingers of their hands and roll their arms like a football official signaling a penalty for illegal motion.

With the scorching guitar of Jimmy Nolen, Earl Palmer’s relentless drumming and Otis’ vocals, “Willie and the Hand Jive” became a 1958 dance craze and a huge crossover hit for Johnny Otis.

When composer Irving Berlin wrote “White Christmas” in 1941, he insisted that the superstar of the day, crooner Bing Crosby, be the first to record it. Crosby’s version, recorded for Decca on May 29, 1942, became the best-selling record of all time. But is it the best version of the song of wishing to be home for the holidays?

Facts of how and where Berlin wrote the song are murky, with accounts that he may have written it at one of his homes in New York or Beverly Hills; one account has the song composed poolside at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.

Though written in 1940, the song made its first appearance in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn. As troops left home in the shadow of World War II, the song’s tale of longing to be home for Christmas became more poignant… and ensured its success.

Second Hand Songs lists more than a hundred cover versions of “White Christmas,” from country (Chet Atkins) to gospel (Mahalia Jackson) to rock (Elvis Presley) to modern R&B (Babyface). Even Twisted Sister recorded the song. But for many, the Drifters’ 1954 version remains the gold standard.

The Drifters of the early 1950s was a group that had scored hits on the rhythm & blues charts like “Money Honey” and “Honey Love.” Built around high tenor Clyde McPhatter, who had just left Billy Ward and the Dominoes, the group included Bill Pinkney, brothers Andrew and Gerhart Thrasher and Willie Ferbie.

McPhatter was a revolutionary figure, fusing his gospel style with the R&B of the era to create the template for soul music. But McPhatter, singing falsetto, shared lead vocal duties on "White Christmas" with bass man Bill Pinkney, resulting in a unique and memorable sound. But it would be years before the song would even be heard by most of America... white America.

In the early 1950s, racism prevented black groups like the Drifters from getting airplay on radio stations with white audiences. When “White Christmas” was released, it reached number 2 on Billboard’s R&B chart, but only made number 80 on the pop charts. The song was rarely heard until used in the 1990 film Home Alone, lip-synched by a young Macauley Culkin, who sings into a comb as he applies his father’s after shave.

The song’s appearance in that hit movie (and subsequently in The Santa Clause) made the Drifters’ version a staple on rock, pop and country stations every Christmas season. It even became a popular Internet cartoon by animator Joshua Held. Ironically, the song’s release signaled the end to the first chapter of the Drifters’ story.

Clyde McPhatter was drafted into the Army soon after the song's release and thanks to its success, Atlantic Records decided to make McPhatter a solo act. McPhatter followed with two big hits, "A Lover's Question" and “Lover Please,” but his success was soon eclipsed by the soul singers he had inspired. McPhatter died in 1972.

What happened to Bill Pinkney and the other Drifters is part of rock history. In 1958, Drifters’ manager George Treadwell fired the entire group at the Apollo theater, replacing them overnight with the members of the Crowns. These “new” Drifters – Ben E. King, Charlie Thomas, Doc Green and Elsbeary Hobbs – and their successors went on to become one of the most popular singing groups in history, recording iconic hits like “There Goes my Baby,” “Save the Last Dance for Me,” “Under the Boardwalk,” and “Up on the Roof.”

The last of the original Drifters, Bill Pinkney, continued to record and perform with his group until his death in 2007.

Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty abhorred the recording industry. His first success as a member of Stealers Wheel, 1972’s “Stuck in the Middle with You,” was a parody of Bob Dylan’s style that poked fun at an industry cocktail party.

Rafferty’s opinion was reinforced by royalties that disappeared and an onerous management contract that took three years to unravel after Stealers Wheel dissolved.

Unable to release any new material until his legal issues were resolved, Rafferty returned to Scotland, where he continued to write. Rafferty told Martin Chilton that the legal wrangling inspired what would become his signature song.

Everybody was suing each other, so I spent a lot of time on the overnight train from Glasgow to London for meetings with lawyers. I knew a guy who lived in a little flat off Baker Street. We'd sit and chat or play guitar there through the night.

“Baker Street” reached number two on the Billboard charts in 1978. The resolution of Rafferty’s legal troubles is reflected in the song’s final verse: “When you wake up it's a new morning/The sun is shining, it's a new morning/You're going, you're going home.”

“Baker Street” was co-produced by Hugh Murphy and Rafferty for the solo album City to City. Perhaps most memorable is its melancholy saxophone solo, which Rafferty has called “a bit of magic.” The solo has been credited with an uptick in saxophone sales and a renewed use of the instrument in pop music.

Rafferty told Colin Irwin that he’d written the line but wasn’t sure what instrument should play it.

When I wrote the song I saw that bit as an instrumental part but I didn’t know what. We tried electric guitar but it sounded weak, and we tried other things and I think it was Hugh Murphy’s suggestion that we tried saxophone. We phoned Pete Zorn to do it, but he said his lip had gone and he couldn’t do it, but he gave us the names of five or six other people.

We hadn’t heard of any of them, but one of the names was Raphael Ravenscroft so Hugh said with a name like that we’ll try him! So he turned up with this real beat up old saxophone; it was falling apart with the keys falling off and gaffer tape everywhere, but because Raph plays really, really hard it was just the right sound for the track. And the rest is history.

Despite Rafferty’s second ride to the top with “Baker Street” and other great tunes like "Get It Right Next Time" and "Right Down the Line," he continued to shun the star system, rarely touring or granting interviews. Rafferty told Chilton that he hated the celebrity that came with success.

Bob Dylan once said that fame was a curse. I think that, from an early stage in my career, I was aware there were many, many pitfalls of so-called celebrity. Once you have entered into that world you can no longer be the observer in life and I have always valued that highly. You become the observed.

With their 1963 hit “Surfin’ USA,” the Beach Boys made surfing more than just a Southern California sport; it represented a break from the staid 1950s for baby boomers coming of age.

Jim Miller writes that though the Beach Boys were not the first to celebrate catching a wave, they did seize upon something unique.

In surfing, the Beach Boys had hit upon a potent image. Leisure, mobility and privacy—it was the suburban myth transported to the Pacific Ocean, but rendered heroic. There had been “surf bands” (such as Dick Dale’s) in California before the Beach Boys, but these bands played a homogeneous brand of instrumental rock, crossed with rhythm & blues. The Beach Boys, with their neatly trimmed harmonies, were projecting a world view…

While the blanched vocals harked back to the Four Preps, the guitars had the crude drive of a high school band. Coming in the midst of teen idols, Brill Building pop and seductive girl groups, the first Beach Boys hits managed to sound raunchy and vital, yet clean, somehow safe.

Keith Badman cites a radio interview in which Brian Wilson reveals his inspiration for the Beach Boys’ first Top Ten hit was a 1958 Chuck Berry tune.

I was going with a girl called Judy Bowles, and her brother Jimmy was a surfer. He knew all the [surfing] spots. I started humming the melody to “Sweet Little Sixteen” and I got fascinated with the fact of doing it, and I thought to myself  “God! What about trying to put surf lyrics to ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’s’ melody?” The concept was about “They are doing this in this city, and they’re doing that in that city.” So I said to Jimmy, “Hey, Jimmy, I want to do a song mentioning all the surf spots.” So he gave me a list.

Bowles’ list was extensive; no less than 16 surf locations were included in the song, from the famous (San Diego’s Swami’s Beach and Hawaii’s Waimea Bay) to in-spots like Haggerty’s in California. Australia’s Narrabeen even made the cut.

The Beach Boys went into Hollywood’s Western Recorders in January 1963 to cut “Surfin’ USA” with Mike Love performing lead vocals. Peter Ames Carlin writes that during the sessions, Brian introduced a recording technique that would become a Beach Boys trademark.

(H)e figured out that double-tracking the vocals—recording them twice, the singers matching their previous performance as closely as possible, and then superimposing the tapes into one track—would give the harmonies a fullness and brightness that made them leap out of the speakers…

(V)ocal double-tracking would become a Beach Boys trademark. So too would his vocal arrangements, elaborate structures of melody and counterpoint that washed across the tracks.

Released in March 1963,"Surfin' USA" failed to credit Chuck Berry as co-writer; while the lyrics were different, the rhythm and melody were unmistakably borrowed from “Sweet Little Sixteen.”

Chess Records’ ARC Music, Berry’s publisher, noticed the similarities. Marshall Chess told Bruce Pegg that he threatened to sue.

It was total infringement. Had Brian Wilson’s lawyers come to Chuck and said “We’re doing this with our lyrics; let’s got 50/50 on the copyright,” it probably wouldn’t have happened. But Brian Wilson tried to steal the song, so it became a copyright infringement. 

The Beach Boys’ publisher settled the case out of court. Brian's father Murry Wilson, the band's manager, turned the full copyright over to Berry without telling Brian.

Berry made “Sweet Little Sixteen” a universal teen anthem by referencing cities across the nation. The Beach Boys did the same (“If everybody had an ocean across the USA…”). The rapid-fire list of surfing spots made its listeners, even the land-locked, believe they were part of the surfer set.