Category: Music

When I happen to hear a less frequently played record from the 60’s, I check to see where it peaked on the Billboard Hit chart. This one is from ’66, the ultimate year for Pop music. The opening bass notes seem to have been borrowed from “Blue Bayou”.

Surely this perfectly romantic, swoony delight must have been a #1 hit. Boys liked it, girls loved it, and their moms undoubtedly did too. And yet “Mr. Dieingly Sad” only reached #17! Why? The answer is that it faced some very tough competition.

https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/1966-10-05/

I suppose mothers may have been wary of the possibility their kids would go to the library to find out what “Kama-Sutra” on the record label meant. 😉

In an elementary school class we discussed this song.

The teacher encouraged questions about its possible meaning. Was it about growing up and leaving childhood behind? Much later, kids speculated that Puff was a reference to being high on marijuana.

The question I didn’t ask, for fear of sounding stupid was, what is ceiling wax? The question soon came to mind again, with this record.

This confused me for a long time, until eventually I saw something on TV that made me realize it was sealing, not ceiling, wax.

The Beatles famously spent time with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Pete Townshend was influenced by Meher Baba. Chick Corea gave credit to L. Ron Hubbard. John McLaughlin’s guiding light for a time was Sri Chinmoy. I’ve been listening to my old Mahavishnu Orchestra albums. Jazz Fusion meets Progressive Rock.

Everyone talks about Beethoven composing music after going deaf, but so did Smetana. Here’s an example, played without benefit of sheet music by the Smetana Quartet, no longer in existence.

One of the musical acts I became interested in, from listening to Boston’s WBCN in high school, was Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. This selection sounds something like Sérgio Mendes and Brazil ’66.