Best Songs that Shaped Rock n Roll (Part Three)

The Twist: Chubby Checker is an American pop song written and originally released in early 1959 by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters as a B-side to “Teardrops on Your Letter”.

Ballard’s version was a moderate 1960 hit, peaking at number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Chubby Checker’s 1960 cover version of the song gave birth to the Twist dance craze. His single became a hit, reaching number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 19, 1960, where it stayed for one week, and setting a record as the only song to reach number 1 in two different chart runs when it resurfaced and topped the chart again for two weeks starting on January 13, 1962

Fame: David Bowie is a song recorded by David Bowie, initially released in 1975.

Written by Bowie, Carlos Alomar and John Lennon, it was a hit in North America, becoming Bowie’s first number 1 single in the Billboard Hot 100 and one of the most successful singles of the year, ranking at number 7 on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100. The single was less successful in Europe, reaching number 17 in the UK Singles Chart. With the Young Americans sessions mostly concluded by late 1974, the material was delayed while Bowie extricated himself from his contract with manager Tony Defries.

During this time, he was staying in New York City, where he met John Lennon. The pair jammed together, leading to a one-day session at Electric Lady Studios in January 1975. There, Carlos Alomar had developed a guitar riff for Bowie’s cover of “Footstompin'” by the Flairs, which Bowie thought was “a waste” to give to a cover. Lennon, who was in the studio with them, sang “aim” over the riff, which Bowie turned into “Fame” and he thereafter wrote the rest of the lyrics to the song.

Lennon’s voice is heard interjecting the falsetto “Fame” throughout the song.

Somebody to Love: Jefferson Airplane is a rock song that was written by Darby Slick. It was originally recorded by The Great Society, and later by Jefferson Airplane.

Rolling Stone magazine ranked Jefferson Airplane’s version No. 274 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Written by The Great Society guitarist Darby Slick after realizing his girlfriend had left him, and first performed by that band, which included his then-sister-in-law Grace Slick on vocals, the song made little impact outside of the club circuit in the Bay Area. The song was released in 1966 as a single with the B-side another Darby Slick composition titled “Free Advice” on the North Beach subsidiary of Autumn Records, and received minimal circulation outside of San Francisco.

San Francisco in the mid-’60s was the epicenter of free love, but Darby Slick saw a downside to this ethos, as it could lead to jealousy and disconnect. This song champions loyalty and monogamy, as the singer implores us to find that one true love that will nurture us and get us through the tough times. When Grace Slick departed to join Jefferson Airplane, she took this song with her, bringing it to the Surrealistic Pillow sessions, along with her own composition “White Rabbit”. Subsequently, the Airplane’s more ferocious rock and roll version became the band’s first and biggest success; the single by Jefferson Airplane scored at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Jefferson Airplane’s first hit song, “Somebody To Love” was also one of the first big hits to come out of the US West Coast counterculture scene. Over the next few years, musicians flocked to the San Francisco Bay Area to be part of this scene. The original version of this song that Grace Slick sang with The Great Society is more subdued. With Jefferson Airplane she sounds far more accusatory and menacing when she belts out lines like “Your mind is so full of red” and “Your friends, baby, they treat you like a guest.”

“Somebody to Love” was also a track on their influential album released in February 1967, Surrealistic Pillow. The lyrics are in the second person, with each two-line verse setting a scene of alienation and despair, and the chorus repeating the title of the song, with slight variations such as: “… / Don’t you need somebody to love? / Wouldn’t you love somebody to love? / …” Like the album on which it appeared, this song was instrumental in publicizing the existence of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture to the rest of the United States.

Stayin’ Alive: Bee Gees is a disco song by the Bee Gees from the Saturday Night Fever motion picture soundtrack.

The song was written by the Bee Gees members (Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb) and produced by the Bee Gees, Albhy Galuten, and Karl Richardson.

It was released on 13 December 1977 as the second single from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. It is one of their signature songs. In 2004, “Stayin’ Alive” was placed at number 189 on the list of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

In 2004, it ranked No. 9 on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema. In a UK television poll on ITV in December 2011 it was voted fifth in “The Nation’s Favourite Bee Gees Song”.

Upon release, “Stayin’ Alive” climbed the charts to hit the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 the week of 4 February 1978, remaining there for four weeks. In the process, it became one of the band’s most recognisable tunes, in part because of its place at the beginning of Saturday Night Fever. In the US, it would become the second of six consecutive number-one singles, tying the record with the Beatles for most consecutive number ones in the US at the time (a record broken by Whitney Houston who achieved seven consecutive number-ones).

Green Onions: Booker T. and the MGs is an instrumental composition recorded in 1962 by Booker T. & the M.G.’s. Described as “one of the most popular instrumental rock and soul songs ever” the tune is twelve-bar blues with a rippling Hammond B3 organ line by Booker T. Jones that he wrote when he was just 17.

The guitarist Steve Cropper used a Fender Telecaster on “Green Onions”, as he did on all of the M.G.’s instrumentals. The track was originally issued in May 1962 on the Volt label (a subsidiary of Stax Records) as the B-side of “Behave Yourself” on Volt 102; it was quickly reissued as the A-side of Stax 127, and it also appeared on the album Green Onions.

According to Cropper, the title is not a marijuana reference; rather, the track is named after the Green Badger’s cat, Green Onions, whose way of walking inspired the riff. Songfacts.com, however, ascribes the track’s title to Jones. When asked by Stax co-owner Jim Stewart why he had given the track this title, Songfacts reports, Jones replied, “Because that is the nastiest thing I can think of and it’s something you throw away.”[6] On a broadcast of the radio program Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! on June 24, 2013, Jones was asked about the title and said, “The bass player thought it was so funky, he wanted to call it ‘Funky Onions’, but they thought that was too low-class, so we used ‘Green Onions’ instead.”

Bye Bye Love: Everly Brothers is a popular song written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant and published in 1957.

It is best known in a debut recording by the Everly Brothers, issued by Cadence Records as catalog number 1315. The song reached number 2 on the US Billboard Pop charts and number 1 on the Cash Box Best Selling Record charts. The Everly Brothers’ version also enjoyed major success as a country song, reaching number 1 in the spring of 1957. The Everlys’ “Bye Bye Love” is ranked 210th on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”

The guitar intro to the song was not originally part of the song but was something that Don Everly had come up with that was just tacked on to the beginning. Chet Atkins was the lead guitar player on the session. Buddy Harmon was the drummer.

My Girl: The Temptations is a 1964 standard recorded by The Temptations for the Gordy (Motown) label which became a number one hit in 1965.

Written and produced by The Miracles members Smokey Robinson and Ronald White, the song became the Temptations’ first U.S. number-one single, and is today their signature song. Robinson’s inspiration for writing this song was his wife, Miracles member Claudette Rogers Robinson. The song was featured on the Temptations album The Temptations Sing Smokey.

Musically, the song is notable because the six ascending guitar notes in the opening riff over the C chord are a perfect example of a C major pentatonic scale, played exactly from octave to octave. Similarly, the analogous riff in the song that is played over the F chord is a perfect example of an F major pentatonic scale, also with notes ascending from octave to octave.

I Heard it Through the Grapevine: Marvin Gaye is a song written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong for Motown Records in 1966. The first recording of the song to be released was produced by Whitfield for Gladys Knight & the Pips and released as a single in September 1967; it went to number two in the Billboard chart.

The Miracles recorded the song first and included their version on their 1968 album, Special Occasion. The Marvin Gaye version was placed on his 1968 album In the Groove, where it gained the attention of radio disc jockeys, and Motown founder Berry Gordy finally agreed to its release as a single in October 1968, when it went to the top of the Billboard Pop Singles chart for seven weeks from December 1968 to January 1969 and became for a time the biggest hit single on the Motown label (Tamla).

The Gaye recording has since become an acclaimed soul classic, and in 2004, it was placed on the Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. On the commemorative fiftieth anniversary of the Billboard Hot 100 issue of Billboard magazine in June 2008, Marvin Gaye’s “Grapevine” was ranked sixty-fifth. It was also inducted to the Grammy Hall of Fame for “historical, artistic and significant” value.

In addition to being released several times by Motown artists, the song has been recorded by a range of musicians including Creedence Clearwater Revival, who made an eleven-minute interpretation for their 1970 album, Cosmo’s Factory; and has been used twice in television commercials – each time using session musicians recreating the style of the Marvin Gaye version: the 1985 Levi’s commercial, “Launderette”, featuring male model Nick Kamen, and the 1986 California raisins promotion with Buddy Miles as the singer for the clay animation group The California Raisins.

Dancing in the Street: Martha and the Vandellas is a song written by Marvin Gaye, William “Mickey” Stevenson and Ivy Jo Hunter. It first became popular in 1964 when recorded by Martha and the Vandellas whose version reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and peaked at No. 4 in the UK Singles Chart.

It is one of Motown’s signature songs and is the group’s premier signature song. A 1966 cover by the Mamas & the Papas was a minor hit on the Hot 100 reaching No. 73. In 1982, the rock group Van Halen took their cover of “Dancing in the Street” to No. 38 on the Hot 100 chart and No. 15 in Canada on the RPM chart.

A 1985 duet cover by David Bowie and Mick Jagger charted at No. 1 in the UK and reached No. 7 in the US. The song was also covered by The Kinks, Grateful Dead and Black Oak Arkansas.

We’re an American Band: Grand Funk Railroad became Grand Funk Railroad’s first #1 single] on 29 September 1973, Mark Farner’s 25th birthday.

Written by Don Brewer and produced by Todd Rundgren, its huge chart success broadened Grand Funk’s appeal. It was sung by Brewer rather than Farner, who usually took lead vocals.