Under The Boardwalk: Sixties Soul & AM Pop

Enjoy my tribute to the powerful sound of AM radio (1960-1975)! It's music I don't usually play on Mixcloud, because normally my journey starts around the mid-seventies.

At the beginning of the sixties, AM radio was by far the dominant format. Pop music, like the powerful sound of Motown, sounded best on small portable mono radios and in Europe this type of music was mainly played by pirate stations near the Dutch and British coast. Around the mid-seventies stereo hifi-equipment replaced the transistor radio and pirate stations disappeared one by one due to government decisions. FM radio stations were willing to play album tracks and longer songs in better sound quality. AM stations, dealing with an inferior sound quality, were more tightly programmed, singles-oriented and dj's played the sort of bubblegum pop that has since become synonymous with the era (1960-1975).

This mix also refers to the so called beach music of the late fifties, sixties and early seventies. This type of uplifting soul, like Under The Boardwalk by The Drifters, ruled the jukeboxes at the beaches of both Carolinas in the US. It has some similarities with northern soul in the UK, although beach music goes back to the doo wop of the fifties and has some rock ‘n’ roll traces as well. It vanished in the mid-seventies when disco music, played at large discotheques, became the most popular kind of dance music and wiped out (to quote the Surfaris) beach music at small venues.

One of the best interpreters of Jacques Brel is Scott Walker, who recently passed away. He discovered the French chansonnier in the record collection of a German Playboy bunny he’d met at the opening of a Playboy club in London. He once said that he forgot about the girl pretty soon, but the songs of Jacques Brel changed his life forever.

Tracklist:

The Supremes ‎– Nothing But Heartaches (1965)
Dee Clark ‎– Ride A Wild Horse (1975)
Johnny Johnson And The Bandwagon ‎– Sweet Inspiration (1970)
Christie ‎– Yellow River (1970)
Sam Cooke ‎– Cupid (1961)
The Drifters – Under The Boardwalk (1964)
Stelvio Cipriani – Le Cerbiatte (1972)
Sérgio Mendes & Brasil '77 ‎– Night And Day (1971)
Neil Diamond ‎– Cherry, Cherry (1966)
Bill Withers – Use Me (1972)
Syreeta ‎– Harmour Love (1975)
Jackie Trent ‎– It's All In The Way You Look At Life (1965)
Chairmen Of The Board ‎– Give Me Just A Little More Time (1970)
The 5th Dimension ‎– Wedding Bell Blues (1969)
Scott Walker – Mathilde (1967)
Spanky & Our Gang ‎– Lazy Day (1967)
Gene Pitney – I Must Be Seeing Things (1965)
The Sha La Das ‎– Just For A Minute (2018)
The Mighty Sparrow With Byron Lee And The Dragonaires – Only A Fool (1969)
Kenny Rankin ‎– Haven't We Met (1966)
Dusty Springfield – Summer Is Over (1964)