A SUMMER PLAYLIST

A couple of thoughts while commuting and listening to a playlist from the summer of ’67 (in alphabetic order, although the playlist is on shuffle).

All You Need Is Love - The Beatles

Not their best effort by a longshot, but even when they miss, they still get a piece of the bulls-eye, with a universal consciousness statement for that summer.

Cold Sweat - James Brown

I don’t know, was this as revolutionary to R&B as Sgt. Pepper was to pop? While the single fades out on Maceo Parker’s sax solo, the album version (called Cold Sweat, Parts 1 & 2) charges on for more than seven minutes, marking the birth of funk and a sampler’s paradise. JB quotes “Funky Broadway,” then goes through nearly his entire lexicon: “S’cuse me while I boogaloo,” “Sometimes I clown, back up and do the James Brown.” He calls out six times to “Give the drummer some,” then follows the drum solo with “Funky as you wanna be.” He tells drummer Clyde Stubblefield to “Double up on it” and the rhythm picks up. With the end in sight, he asks the band, “Can I count it down?” and he just, to paraphrase one of his earlier song titles, goes crazy. It’s his solo now, screaming, groaning and fading out with “I just can’t stop singing.” No doubt he needed to be hosed down afterwards, it’s that crazed. It was, as with Pepper, like nothing else. The brilliance of the long version was hidden away on Brown’s Cold Sweat album, a slapdash affair which sported one of Brown’s typically hideous covers and included versions of “Come Rain or Come Shine” and “I Loves You Porgy.”

Come On Down to My Boat - Every Mother’s Son

This one has to be on Bruce Springsteen’s jukebox, either at home or in his head. The fisherman’s daughter that everybody else ignores. Cutting the rope that keeps her tied to her father. Escaping in the singer’s “little red boat.” Someday they’ll look back and it will all seem funny.

Fakin’ It - Simon and Garfunkel

How many songs include little plays, with dialogue and sound effects, that move the story along? “Leader of the Pack” and “Living for the City” did it well. Here, the singer – who may have had one bong hit too many – makes the mistake of looking at himself critically in the mirror and sees a tailor scurrying about with a measuring tape and scissors in a cobblestoned and thatched-roof reverie. We’re suddenly thrust into an Irish Spring commercial to the accompaniment of recorders and pipes. Five months after Strawberry Fields Forever, the song bears its stamp with the striking guitar chords and drum pounding that open and close it.

Heroes and Villains - Beach Boys

Maybe Brian Wilson was right in canning “Smile.” It’s good, but aside from Good Vibrations, none of it is as good as this.

Ode to Billie Joe - Bobbie Gentry

Is the mystery what Billie Joe threw off the bridge, or why the singer’s family is so indifferent and insensitive around the kitchen table? By the last week of the summer, this was #3 on WWRL’s Soul 16.

Reflections - Diana Ross & The Supremes

Easy to be distracted by the electronic noises and the vaguely trippy lyrics, but it’s the bass groove that’s really the heart of this song.

Twelve Thirty - The Mamas & The Papas

While Scott McKenzie sang about the “gentle people” of San Francisco, The Mamas & The Papas invited you to Los Angeles, actually Laurel Canyon, where people “say good morning and really mean it,” not like that dingy, broken New York City. But when you get there, just steer clear from that creepy Manson guy who’s been hanging around lately.

A Whiter Shade of Pale - Procol Harum

I rooted for this to make #1. On WABC, it sat at #2, blocked by “Light My Fire.” Across the dial on WMCA, however, it went to #1 for the first two weeks of August. On the R&B station WWRL, it sailed it into the Soul 16 on its “When A Man Loves A Woman” organ and reached #3.

The rest of the playlist: A Girl Like You (Young Rascals); Baby I Love You (Aretha Franklin); Baby You’re A Rich Man (Beatles); C’mon Marianne (Four Seasons); Dandelion (Rolling Stones); Funky Broadway (Wilson Pickett); Groovin’ (Young Rascals); I Was Made to Love Her (Stevie Wonder); The Letter (Box Tops); Light My Fire (Doors); Little Bit O’ Soul (Music Explosion); My World Fell Down (Sagittarius); Pleasant Valley Sunday (Monkees); Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix); Society’s Child (Janis Ian); Somebody to Love (Jefferson Airplane); Soul Finger (Bar Kays); There Is A Mountain (Donovan);To Love Somebody (Bee Gees); We Love You (Rolling Stones); White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane); Windy (Association); Words (Monkees)