Johnny Mathis 1958 – A Certain Smile
The late hour had always belonged to Johnny Mathis. I remember those nights, the kind where the streetlights outside my…
Oldies Songs
Bobby Pickett 1962 – Monster Mash
I was eight years old, huddled by a giant cathode-ray tube television, the volume turned low so my parents wouldn’t…
Grass Roots 1966 – Where Were You When I Needed You
It’s always the echo of a forgotten era that hooks you. Not the pristine, over-lit nostalgia of a re-mastered box…
Van Morrison 1967 – Brown Eyed Girl
There are some songs that resist all attempts at critical dissection, not through complexity, but through sheer, radiant familiarity. They…
Little Eva 1965 – Loco-motion
The early 1960s were a moment suspended between the raw grit of late-period rock and roll and the gleaming, sophisticated…
Jackie DeShannon 1965 – What The World Needs Now Is Love
The year is 1965. The air is thick with a strange brew of optimism and impending fracture. Pop music is…
Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs 1965 – Wooly Bully
I remember the first time I heard it—not as a blast of nostalgia on an oldies station, but as a…
Booker T & The MGs 1967 – Green Onions
I want you to imagine a humid afternoon in Memphis, 1962. It’s Sunday at the old movie theatre on McLemore…
Frankie Avalon 1959 – Venus
The radio dial, circa 1959, was a contested landscape. Rock and Roll, still raw and unpredictable, wrestled with the smooth,…
The Beach Boys 1963 – Little Saint Nick
The year is 1963. The air is cold, but the surf culture is still red-hot, a sonic wave rolling out…