The Garden State Greats 

Saint Peters’ run in the NCAA Tournament revived all sorts of proclamations about New Jersey pride and Garden State grit. In response, here is a list of 21 songs that either bear some of that New Jersey attitude or at the very least have a strong Jersey connection. Missing in action: Whitney Houston, who could have been from Los Angeles or Miami for all the New Jersey she brought to her music, and Bon Jovi, because they’re Bon Jovi. 

Candy Girl – Four Seasons (1963)

The last holdouts of the urban doo-wop sound and briefly New Jersey’s answer to the Beatles. Three members were born and raised in the melting pot that was Newark and next-door Belleville. “Candy Girl” is a Frankie Valli vocal showcase.  

How Can I Be Sure – Young Rascals (1967)

Eddie Brigati of Garfield sings lead on this accordion-driven Paris on the Passaic ballad. 

My Boyfriend’s Back – Angels (1963)

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow – Shirelles (1960)

The Angels were from Belleville and Orange, the Shirelles from Passaic. “My Boyfriend’s Back” offers the immortal warning, “If I were you I’d take a permanent vacation.” 

Hasbrook Heights – Dionne Warwick (1972)

Written by Burt Bacharach whom, the internet says, briefly lived in Hasbrouck Heights. While the lyrics are complimentary, he awkwardly changed the name of the town to protect the innocent. Sung, of course, by an East Orange native. 

Pleasant Valley Sunday – Monkees (1967)

Like Burt Bacharach, Carole King and Gerry Goffin were commuting into Manhattan from New Jersey while they worked at the Brill Building. The Goffins lived on Pleasant Valley Way in West Orange, among “rows of house that are all the same/And on one seems to care.” 

Brandy – Looking Glass (1972)

Ariel – Dean Friedman (1977)

Lies – Knickerbockers (1965)

One-hit wonders from, respectively, New Brunswick, Paramus and Bergenfield. 

At Long Last Love – Frank Sinatra (1957)

Cole Porter acknowledges that New Jersey isn’t exactly the Garden of Eden as he asks the musical question, “Is it for all time or simply a lark/Is it Granada I see or only Asbury Park?” Sung, of course, by a Hoboken native. 

You Can’t Catch Me – Chuck Berry (1956)

America – Simon & Garfunkel (1971)

Racing a car with “hideaway wings” late one night on the Turnpike and with a state trooper bearing down, Chuck’s car takes flight: “Bye-bye New Jersey, I've become airborne.” The narrator in “America” stares out the window of a Greyhound Bus and counts the cars on the Turnpike. 

Jersey Girl – Tom Waits (1980)

Tweeter and the Monkey Man – Traveling Wilburies (1988)

The two best Bruce Springsteen songs not written by Bruce Springsteen. Bob Dylan’s “Tweeter” perpetuates the myth of New Jersey lawlessness: “In Jersey anything's legal as long as you don't get caught." 

4^th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) – Bruce Springsteen (1973)

Palisades Park – Freddy Cannon (1960)

The singer in “Sandy” has come to the realization that once you get to the boardwalk, there’s nowhere left except the ocean. “Palisades Park” was written by Chuck Barris; Springsteen used the song as the intro to concerts when he was touring the “Tunnel of Love” album. 

Slip Away – David Bowie (2002)

Somehow, Bowie successfully makes The Uncle Floyd Show a mournful metaphor for lost times. “Back in the late ’70s, everyone would rush home in the afternoon to catch the Uncle Floyd Show. He was on UHF Ch. 68 and the show looked like it was done out of his living room in New Jersey. I knew so many people of my age who just wouldn’t miss it. Two of the regulars on the show were Oogie and Bones Boy, ridiculous puppets made out of ping-pong balls or some such … I just loved that show." 

Song For My Father – Horace Silver (1964)

Rudy van Gelder converted a couple of rooms in his parent’s home in Hackensack into a recording studio before moving into a much grander space in Englewood Cliffs and oversaw the production of hundreds of jazz albums, including many by Miles, Monk and Coltrane, all those jazz dudes known today by one name. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker based “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” on the main riff of “Song For My Father.” 

The Nightfly – Donald Fagen (1982)

Fagen grew up in Kendall Park and found life in suburbia stifling enough that he escaped into a teenager bedroom fantasy as a tragic figure chain-smoking through the night while hosting a jazz and talk radio show. 

Day of the Locusts – Bob Dylan (1970)

When Princeton University gave Bob Dylan an honorary degree at an outdoors commencement ceremony, the seventeen-year cicadas were loud enough to drown out the speakers. He described the “locusts” – which sounds a lot more biblical than “cicadas” – as “singing for me.” 

White Castle Blues – Smithereens (1986)

Also included on the soundtrack of the New Jersey epic Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. “I think I'll get some crisp onion rings/To compliment 10 of those little square things.”

 

March 1974: Can it be that it was all so simple then? 

The early 70s were transitional years. Time moved forward, but culturally everyone still seemed stuck in a gear clearly marked “60s.” 

The National Book Award winner for 1974 was Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers (later adapted into the movie Who’ll Stop the Rain), a bleak travelogue about smuggling heroin that starts in Vietnam and ends with a firefight on a California mountaintop equipped with speakers and lights to accompany Ken Kesey-styled Acid Tests. 

In the 1974 film The Parallax View, a shadow-shrouded federal “commission” rules that a lone gunman was behind a Robert Kennedy-styled political assassination, leading reporter Warren Beatty to track down a connection between the shooting and the equally shadowy Parallax Corporation. (A strange movie, sort of The Manchurian Candidate meets Cannonball Run, merging serious themes with a “smash-everything-in-sight” barroom brawl and a police car chase that ends with a car crashing through the front window of a supermarket. All that’s missing is Jerry Reed). 

In real life, even with Vietnam more or less over, as well as the military draft, Richard Nixon’s re-election in 1972 was enough to get the revolutionary arm of the counterculture to declare itself alive and well, and begin blowing up banks and ROTC training buildings. 

Combine these 60s hangovers with the OPEC oil embargo, Watergate and the unresolvable resolution to Vietnam and amateur sociologists will tell you that America’s reaction was to “go back to simpler times” – AKA the 50s. 

And we got back with a vengeance. Grease opened on Broadway in 1972, American Graffiti in theatres in 1973 and Happy Days on television in January 1974. In July 1972, New York City’s WCBS-FM changed to an all-oldies format. John Lennon released an album of favorite 50s songs in early 1975, as did the Band. 

Re-entering the Billboard charts in March 1974 was Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock,” 21 years after it was number one for eight weeks. Powered by its inclusion in the soundtrack to American Graffiti and as the first theme song to Happy Days, it reached #39 in May. 

Bill Haley & the Comets

The inherent irony in the rush for happier days was what got conveniently ignored, mainly the dark side of American society in the 50s: segregation, gay repression, cold war tensions and fear of The Bomb, the Red Scare. Joe McCarthy might have been the real face of the 50s, not the sassy drive-in carhop on roller skates who takes your order for a cheeseburger and a Coke. 

It took a long time to run its course, but the 50s fascination finally hit the wall in the early 80s; that Sha-Na-Na had its own variety show that lasted four seasons gives you an idea of how unescapable all this was. 

Here are Billboard’s top ten records for March 1974: 

SEASONS IN THE SUN –•– Terry Jacks

BOOGIE DOWN –•– Eddie Kendricks

DARK LADY –•– Cher

SUNSHINE ON MY SHOULDERS –•– John Denver

THE WAY WE WERE –•– Barbra Streisand

MOCKINGBIRD –•– Carly Simon and James Taylor

JUNGLE BOOGIE –•– Kool and the Gang

SPIDERS & SNAKES –•– Jim Stafford

ROCK ON –•– David Essex

HOOKED ON A FEELING –•– Blue Swede 

“Seasons in the Sun” was a maudlin entry in the 70s genre of deathbed pop (“Yesterday When I Was Young,” “Reflections of My Life”). Terry Jacks was part of a strange run of studio vocalists who had multiple hits around this time, nearly all one-hit wonders and under different names. 

Jacks hit the top ten with “Seasons in the Sun” and in 1969 as part of the Poppy Family (Jacks and his wife) with “Which Way You Goin’ Billy?” Ron Dante was recruited to sing lead on the Archies’ "Sugar, Sugar," Billboard’s #1 record for 1969. Later that year he recorded an album under the group name the Cuff Links and had a second top ten hit with “Tracy.” But nobody comes close to Britain’s Tony Burrows, who sang lead with five groups that didn’t exist outside of the recording studio, four of the five hitting the Billboard Top Ten: Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)"; White Plains' "My Baby Loves Lovin'"; the Pipkins' "Gimme Dat Ding"; Brotherhood of Man’s “United We Stand” (all from 1970) and First Class' "Beach Baby" (1974).