Friday, January 5, 2001

McQ's Best Of 1967 Vol 7 - The Calm Before The Calm

1. Sunday Morning - The Velvet Underground
2. Suzanne - Leonard Cohen
3. Drifter's Escape - Bob Dylan
4. A House Is Not A Motel - Love
5. If I Were A Carpenter - Tim Hardin
6. Castles Made Of Sand - The Jimi Hendrix Experience
7. I'll Keep It With Mine - Nico
8. I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain - Tim Buckley
9. Wear Your Love Like Heaven - Donovan
10. Mathilde - Scott Walker
11. Chilling Of The Evening - Arlo Guthrie
12. Maybe The People Would Be The Times Between Clark And Hilldale - Love
13. A Child's Claim To Fame - Buffalo Springfield
14. Ode To Bille Joe - Bobbie Gentry
15. Darling Be Home Soon - The Lovin' Spoonful
16. Bold As Love - The Jimi Hendrix Experience
17. I'll Be Your Mirror - The Velvet Underground
18. So Long, Marianne - Leonard Cohen
19. Once I Was - Tim Buckley
20. Amsterdam - Scott Walker
21. As I Went Out One Morning - Bob Dylan
22. You Set The Scene - Love

Track List / Mix Write-up / Spotify /
McQ's Favorite Albums Of 1967
McQ's Favorite Songs Of 1967




About The Albums/Songs On This Mix:

Let's start with one of 1967's biggest and most surprising hits, country artist Bobbie Gentry's Ode To Billie Joe.

One of the first female country artists to write and produce her own material, Bobbie Gentry originally released Ode To Bille Joe as the B-side to her first self-recorded single, but its skelatally spare, grounded sound, and its mysterious Southern gothic narrative centered around a secret romance / lover's suicide and the relative indifference of a community quickly captured the public's attention in a year dominated by crazed psychedelic experimentation. 

The song would go on to be the number 3 charting track of 1967, win multiple Grammys, and launch Gentry into a very lucrative fourteen year career as recording artist, British television host, and Vegas entertainer before her retirement from the industry in 1981.

Darling Be Home Soon was one of the last hit singles for The Byrd's main American mid-sixties folk rock rivals The Lovin' Spoonful just before Canadian guitarist Zal Yanovsky, fearing deportation, named his supplier after being busted for drug possession in San Francisco, an action that  would inspire a counter-culture boycott of the band from which the initial line-up would never recover.

But prior to that moment, throughout 1965 and 1966, the Lovin' Spoonful were among America's biggest and most likable hit makers, and Darling Be Home soon, originally released on the soundtrack for the movie You're A Big Boy Now (for which principal songwriter John Sebastian had provided much of the music) but repackaged as a single in '67, perfectly encapsulates their sweet, upbeat, folksy, jug band charm.

Tim Hardin's If I Were A Carpenter had already been a top ten hit for Bobby Darin the year before when Hardin decide to include his own version of the song on his 1967 sophomore album Tim Hardin 2. One of the enduring folk songs of the sixties, the oregon native's composition would go on to be a top 100 hit three more times over the years in cover versions by The Four Tops, Johnny Cash and June Carter, and Bob Seger, and was also given a gender reversal spin by Joan Baez.


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