The following non-sports guest post is offered purely for your entertainment.

In the years 1960-64 I was between the ages of five and ten. I really didn't start regularly listening to music on my transistor radio until I was ten, but songs from these years were still played a lot as 1965 dawned, so my first-hand recollections of one-hit wonders start with these years. If you are old enough to have experienced and enjoyed this music, it may have some sentimental value. If you are not so old but have enough curiosity to venture into this time-travel-ish experience, welcome. If this is of no interest to you, thassokay. With the bland same-ness of most music these days, how could anyone appreciate the incredible explosion of creative, diverse musical energy that was released in the decade of the sixties? This is less evident in the first half of the decade, but if you bear with this first installment you will see it in spades in the second one.

The subject is one-hit wonders, those artists whose claim to fame is meteoric but incredibly short. Their lone contributions, however small, rightly belong in the memory of the music of their era. Some of their songs, especially in the early to mid-60's, are quirky, silly, or even downright stupid. Usually they embodied some aspect of the era in which they emerged, something that triggered enough popularity to gain attention on the pop/rock music charts.

These happen to be some I enjoyed or thought worthy of comment for some reason or other. I offer them simply through YouTube links with comments of my own I hope you might find enlightening, amusing, or otherwise of value. An exhaustive list can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1960s_one-hit_wonders_in_the_Unite...

I plan on producing a series on this topic with articles dedicated to five-year periods.

Feel free to comment with links and comments of your own regarding any of your favorite one-hit wonders of the era that I passed over.

(I'm not sure if the links will copy and paste successfuly from Word. If not, i will immediately after posting come back and add them manually.)

Without further ado:

1960

Teen Angel, Mark Dinning

A common genre from the sixties, the teenager who lost their love in a tragic accident (see “The Leader of the Pack”)

Alley-Oop, The Hollywood Argyles

So bad it’s funny. Anybody who read “the funnies” in the old Sunday newspaper knows who Alley Oop is.

Mr. Custer, Larry Verne

So bad it’s funny. There was a penchant for such songs among the one-hit wonders of the sixties.

1961

Mother In Law, Ernie K. Doe

Some things are just timelessly true. (Just kidding, Mom)

A Little Bit of Soap, The Jarmels

Standard early ‘60’s fare.

1962

Apparently a bad year for one-hit wonders I like.

1963

Rhythm of the Rain, The Cascades

Just a nice song.

Sukyaki, Kyu Sakamoto

A real early sixties classic…in Japanese…by a Japanese crooner.

Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, Rolf Harris

My American suburban mates sang this Aussie-themed song all over the neighborhood, way before all that “shrimp on the barbie” stuff. You gotta listen all the way to the end to get why this was funny and popular.

Dominique, The Singing Nun

Thass right. A real nun. Singing, and making a hit record. It’s actually quite the kind of song that keeps running in your head for days.

1964

The Girl from Ipanema, Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz

You want bossa nova, you get in class and style with this one. The Brazilian genre that mixes jazz and samba  was big in the fifties and sixties.

Ringo, Lorne Green

Who’da thunk it?! The actor who played Ben Cartwright, paternal head of the Ponderosa ranch on the long-running hit TV show Bonanza, actually put out a hit song! More of a dramatic reading to music. But a good one.

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I hope you enjoyed the show. The stocking will be stuffed quite a bit fuller in the next installment.