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Welcome! This is the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show and I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week on Chartcrush, we do a deep dive into a year in Pop music and culture and count down the top 10 songs according to our exclusive recap of the weekly Pop charts published at the time in Billboard, the music industry’s top trade mag. This week on Chartcrush it’s 1966, a great, transformative year in Rock, Soul and R&B and Pop.

Just check out some of these songs that hit #1. Simon & Garfunkel’s breakthrough “The Sound of Silence” was #1 the last week of 1965 and the first week of ’66, and then reclaimed the top spot from The Beatles for a week in late January. Lou Christie’s ultra-catchy Four Seasons-riffing “Lightning Strikes” for a week in February followed by Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”

Then the Spring brought The Young Rascals’ “Good Lovin’,” Percy Sledge’s Soul heartbreaker “When a Man Loves a Woman” and The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It, Black,” immediately followed in June by The Beatles, back at #1 with “Paperback Writer.” It’s run on top interrupted for a week by Nancy’s dad Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night.” And we’re only half-way through the year!

Summer kicked off with a pair of Garage Rock nuggets: Tommy James & The Shondells’ “Hanky Panky” and the three-chord stomper “Wild Thing” by The Troggs, avatars of England’s Troglodyte movement: kids forsaking civilization and reverting back to cave dwelling. New York’s Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City” appropriately topped the chart for three weeks in the dog days of August, and then it was back to school with Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” and The Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love.” The Supremes’ also soundtracked Thanksgiving ’66 with “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” and The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” was #1 while folks did their Holiday shopping in mid-December.

Wow, what a year, huh? But even more astonishing: none of those #1’s I just ran down were among the year’s top 10 hits we’ll be counting down this hour. Wait, what?! Yep, you heard me right. 1966 was such an explosive year in Pop, with literally dozens of era-defining hits that when you look at the charts, didn’t rank nearly as high as you’d think, and/or had surprisingly brief chart runs when they came out, yet they impacted pop culture for decades and still rack up tens of millions of plays on streaming platforms to this day.

Statistically, when you look at just songs that’ve cracked the top 10 and how long they stayed on the Hot100, top 10s in 1966 had an average total chart life of less than 12 weeks. That’s lower than any other year in chart history. As soon as records got traction, something else hit, and it was on to that: boom, bang zoom!

For comparison, in 2015, 12 weeks was the average for how long top 10 songs stayed… in the top 10! Average weeks on chart for top 10s in 2015: 35 weeks. Hard to imagine hits coming and going as fast as they came and went in 1966.

So if all those iconic #1s I just ran down aren’t in our countdown of 1966’s top 10 hits, what songs are? Surely they must be even better and more iconic, right? Well, after decades of nostalgia, recontextualization and reprioritization, our countdown (again, based solely on what was topping the charts at the time) might have a few surprises in store. But you can be the judge of that!

#10 The Mamas & The Papas – Monday Monday

At #10, one of the top acts in the second wave of Folk Rock, right on the heels of the first in ’65 when The Byrds’ jangly version of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” hit #1 in April prompting Bob Dylan himself to plug in and “go electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in July. And a series of big hits in the new genre in Summer and Fall: Sonny & Cher, The Turtles, Barry McGuire, and Dylan’s own “Like a Rolling Stone,” clocking in at an unheard-of-on-AM Top40-radio six-plus minutes.

But for ’66 there was a whole new crop, and one of the biggest was The Mamas & The Papas. Their biggest hit in ’66 kicking off the countdown at #10: “Monday Monday.”

Mamas & Papas: John Phillips, his wife Michelle, Lead Singer Denny Doherty and “Mama” Cass Elliott. “Monday, Monday,” at #10 as we count ’em down here on our 1966 edition of The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Not their first hit but their biggest, #1 for three weeks in May after their debut “California Dreamin’” had stalled out at #4 in March.

Phillips had already been a successful Folkie with his group The New Journeymen, and Denny and Cass had both been in The Mugwumps, but once The Byrds hit and Dylan shocked the Folk world by plugging in at Newport, they formed The Mamas & The Papas and moved out to L.A. You can hear their origin story in their own words in their #5 hit in 1967, “Creeque Alley.”

After “Monday Monday,” they hit the top 10 again at the end of June with “I Saw Her Again” and had a total six hits on the charts in ’66. Adding it all up makes them the #5 Hot100 act of ’66.

But Denny and Cass’s fellow ex-Mugwumps John Sebastian and Zal Yanovsky stayed in New York and the group they started, The Lovin’ Spoonful, did even better: five top 10’s in ’66: “Daydream,” “Summer in the City,” “Do You Believe in Magic” and two others, and they shake out as the #2 Hot100 artist of ’66, behind only The Beatles. Simon & Garfunkel also made the top 10 on that ranking at #7, with their string of five charting singles in ’66 starting with “The Sound of Silence.”

#9 The Four Tops – Reach Out I’ll Be There

Switching to Motown for our #9 hit. After five years of explosive growth, Berry Gordy, Jr.’s Detroit-based empire roared into ’66 with more top 10s than ever in a single year: 13. But no #1s ’til Fall when they scored three, all the work of star Songwriting/Production team Holland-Dozier-Holland, Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, best known for writing and producing The Supremes’ hits, and two of those three Motown chart toppers in the Fall of ’66 were The Supremes: “You Can’t Hurry Love” in September and “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” in November.

Sandwiched between in October though? H-D-H’s top Male act, #9 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1966’s biggest hits, The Four Tops’ “Reach Out I’ll Be There.”

Coming off their first #1 in ’65, “I Can’t Help Myself,” the Four Tops struck again with “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” #9 on our 1966 edition of The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Their next two singles were also big hits, “Standing in the Shadows of Love” and “Bernadette,” and they eclipsed The Temptations as Motown’s top-charting Male group in ’67. But Holland-Dozier-Holland split with Gordy and Motown in ’67, and the Temps surged back with a bold new sound their longtime Songwriter/Producer Norman Whitfield pioneered, Psychedelic Soul.

The Tops soldiered on with their new Producer, Frank Wilson who also took the reins with The Supremes, but they didn’t score any more big hits until they too split from Motown to sign with ABC/Dunhill and “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got)” produced by Steve Barri became a pre-Disco Top40 staple and peaked at #4 in 1973.

#8 Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels – Devil with a Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly

Now Motown wasn’t Detroit’s only musical export. The original “Twist” group, Hank Ballard & The Midniters were from the Motor City, as was Del Shannon, whose “Runaway” was one of the top hits of 1961. And after The Beatles hit, Detroit’s Garage Rock scene was unique for its Soul/R&B influences. Bob Seger, Ted Nugent and high-energy Proto-Punk bands The MC5 and Iggy & The Stooges, all products of that in the ’60s. And harder-edge Rolling Stone alternative Creem magazine started out in Detroit in ’69.

But the first Detroit Rockers to conquer the Hot100 post-Beatles were this next act at #8. Four Seasons mastermind Bob Crewe heard their demo, went to Detroit to see them open for the Dave Clark Five and signed them to his new label in ’65 hoping to cash in on the popularity of Wilson Pickett’s Soul Shouting R&B same as he had with Doo Wop in ’62 with the Four Seasons.

Crewe was the Arranger and Producer of their records and they made the top 10 in late ’65 with “Jenny Take a Ride,” but that was just the warm-up. The Young Rascals’ “Good Lovin’” and Pickett’s “Land of 1,000 Dances” hit in the Spring and Summer, and then this late in the year. #4 for four straight weeks November and December, Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels, their medley, “Devil with a Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly.”

Bruce Springsteen used “Devil with a Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly” as a concert finale, but Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels made it the #8 record of the year in 1966 by our ranking here on the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show.

Now there are two versions of Billboard’s year-end Hot100 chart for 1966, the one published at the end of ’66, and a revision for a research packet they did circa 1970 that uses a slightly more modern ranking methodology. They’re quite different, but don’t look for “Devil with a Blue Dress” near the top of either of those because it was a hit so late in the year, extending into early ’67, and Billboard only factors weeks within its “chart year,” which splits ranking points between years.

At Chartcrush though, we count every song’s entire chart run regardless of when it was a hit during the year, and rank it in whatever year it had the most of its chart action. No point splitting!

#7 The Monkees – Last Train to Clarksville

OK, on to #7. The Beatles turned a corner in 1966. After over two years of nearly constant touring and recording, two movies, endless publicity events, John Lennon’s observation to a London Evening Standard reporter in March of ’66 that The Fab Four were “more popular than Jesus,” when it was publicized Stateside in late July, sparked protests, record burnings, radio boycotts and even death threats.

Their 18-date North American stadium tour was in August at the height of that backlash. And there were other controversies too: statements critical of America and Americans, a thumbs up for Vietnam draft dodgers and the gruesome original “butcher cover” of Yesterday and Today, their U.S.-only album cobbled together with singles and songs omitted from American versions of other albums. So after the tour wrapped, the Fab Four retreated from public view and hunkered down for months in the studio to make their classic Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.

So in late Summer when NBC teased its new sitcom about a Rock group, modeled after the Beatles films A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, the kiddos ate it up. And as John, Paul, George and Ringo exited the limelight, Peter, Mike, Davy and Micky and their made-for-TV “Prefab Four” group stepped right in. The half-hour show debuted September 12: Monday nights at 7:30 Eastern right before I Dream of Jeannie, now in “living color,” like the rest of NBC’s primetime lineup for the first time ever, and just nine episodes in on November 5, their debut single hit #1. At #7? The Monkees’ “Last Train to Clarksville.”

TV group The Monkees’ first hit, “Last Train to Clarksville,” #1 for a week in November and #7 here on our 1966 edition of The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Their second was even bigger, “I’m a Believer:” seven weeks on top at the start of ’67.

The Monkees sang on their records (Micky Dolenz there on “Last Train to Clarksville”). Everything else, though? Legendary L.A. studio session group The Wrecking Crew, who played on hundreds of records in the ’60s, and not just ones by made-for-TV groups. The week after “Clarksville” topped the Hot100, The Monkees’ debut LP topped the album chart for the first of 13 weeks, which was just one shy of the record for Rock Bands atop the album chart set by The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night in ’64. By the way, their next set More of the Monkees shattered that record with 18 weeks in ’67.

#6 The Association – Cherish

So fun fact: between The Mamas & Papas “Monday Monday” in late May and this next hit at #6 in late September, none of the songs that hit #1 are in our top 10 countdown. The entire Summer!

Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” #1 for two weeks May into June: that shakes out at #25 on our ranking. The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer,” two weeks on top June into July, #28. The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It, Black,” also two weeks in July: #20. The Troggs’ “Wild Thing,” two weeks July into August: #19. The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City,” three weeks at #1 in August: that one just misses our top 10 at #11; The Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love,” two weeks in early September: #13 on our ’66 ranking. And three others.

So what’s going on there? Well it’s like I laid out in the intro: with so many great records coming out, songs just weren’t staying on the chart very long. Now we’d love to factor that in to our rankings, but to do that we’d need the underlying sales and airplay data the weekly charts were based on so we could weight the weeks throughout the year. Maybe then we’d have a couple Summer #1s in our countdown, or maybe not, but alas, all we can go by is the weekly chart positions, so a #1 in a hot sales week gets the same points as one in a less-hot week. No way to differentiate.

Having said all that, though, finally in the last week in September, a #1 that’s in our top 10! It’s another Southern California group, like the Mamas & Papas and Monkees, that coalesced out of a loose 13-member Folk collective called The Men at Hollywood’s Troubadour Club.

Along with other L.A. acts, they pioneered the new Soft Folk “Sunshine Pop” sound, but they got off to a shaky start when despite their clean-cut look, their first hit, “Along Comes Mary” earlier in ’66, landed on The Gavin Report‘s tip sheet of songs with drug references. “Mary,” slang for pot. Which all but killed its airplay along with The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High.” This one’s clean as a whistle, though. At #6 it’s The Association, “Cherish.”

“Cherish,” #1 for three weeks in late Summer and #6 on our countdown of the top 10 hits of 1966 here on this week’s Chartcrush. The Association scored an even bigger hit in ’67: the more upbeat “Windy,” which hit #1 for three weeks despite its numerous thinly-veiled drug references. That hit right after they were one of the top-billed acts at Monterrey Pop, the three-day festival that kicked off the Summer of Love in the Bay Area: first to take the stage Day 1.

#5 The Beatles – We Can Work It Out

Now despite the Beatles’ tumultuous second half of ’66 after John Lennon’s “bigger than Jesus” scandal, the first half of the year Beatlemania was still fully intact coming off Help!, their second movie and its album and singles. Rubber Soul dropped at the end of ’65 and as was their custom, a new single at the same time with songs not on the album. Well, both sides of that single made the top10, but the one that’s #5 on our countdown was the favorite on radio: #1 its fourth week on the Hot100 in early January, whereupon it battled Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” for the top spot all month. “We Can Work It Out.”

Beatles “We Can Work It Out” at #5 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown of 1966’s biggest hits. “Day Tripper,” the flip-side. That peaked at #5. Both songs feature both Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s vocals: typical on The Beatles’ first hits, but it was getting rare as they increasingly wrote independently. Want to know who really wrote a Lennon-McCartney song? Just listen to who’s singing it!

#4 ? & The Mysterians – 96 Tears

Now The Beatles and the British Invasion didn’t just inspire copycat made-for TV groups like The Monkees. American Teens in the tens of thousands in the mid-60s were picking up instruments, practicing with their buddies in their parents’ garages and having a go at stardom. Start-up labels looking to make a quick buck with the next “Louie Louie” snapped up these groups and put out their records, and they often got played on local radio right alongside the latest chart hits, so a young Band could be as big as The Beatles or Stones in their hometown even if they didn’t break through nationally.

But some did break through nationally. “Wooly Bully” by Texas’ Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs, the #7 song on our 1965 Chartcrush ranking (Billboard had it at #1 on the year!). But no left-field American Garage Rock combo was ever able to top the weekly Hot100 until Tommy James & The Shondells’ “Hanky Panky” in July, yet another Summer ’66 #1 not in our countdown! Then The Troggs’ “Wild Thing,” although they were British.

But then, right before The Monkees’ “Last Train to Clarksville,” this nugget by a Latino group out of Michigan, sung by their enigmatic dark-sunglass-wearing Frontman and propelled by an ultra-catchy Vox Continental organ riff. At #4, #1 for just one week but in the top 10 for nine, same as The Monkees, it’s Question Mark & The Mysterians’ “96 Tears.”

Why 96 tears? Well, Songwriter/Frontman Rudy Martinez, a.k.a. “Question Mark,” says that number, 96, has a deep philosophical meaning for him, but to date he hasn’t elaborated. Mysterians indeed! 1966, the pinnacle of American Garage Rock on the charts. The Outsiders’ “Time Won’t Let Me,” #5 in April; Paul Revere & Raiders’ “Kicks,” #4 in May; The Cyrkle’s “Red Rubber Ball” and Tommy James’ “Hanky Panky” in July; Sam the Sham again with their next hit “Lil’ Red Riding Hood” in August; The Count Five out of San Jose, California with their Yardbirds-inspired “Psychotic Reaction,” #5 in October, and beyond the top 10 and national charts, hundreds more.

#3 The Righteous Brothers – Soul and Inspiration

Heading back to Southern California for #3 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1966: the Duo who got to headline Producer Phil Spector’s crowning achievement with his “wall of sound,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” in ’65: heavy reverb, orchestration, backup choirs, et cetera. Spector spent tens of thousands of precious 1964 dollars getting that record just right, only to see the Duo bolt from him and his label first chance they got. And their new deal prohibited them from working with Spector, for which he sued and eventually won a massive settlement.

But in the meantime, they had to produce their follow-up themselves. Fortunately, they were paying attention, and they even had a soundalike song by the same writers who’d penned “Lovin’ Feelin'” for them, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. And the Spector-free result not only nails the wall of sound, it topped the chart a week longer than “Lovin’ Feelin’!” At #3, The Righteous Brothers, “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration.”

Righteous Brothers: Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield: “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration,” #3. As big a triumph as it was to replicate Phil Spector’s sound, the era’s most acclaimed Producer, “Soul and Inspiration” was The Brothers’ last top 10 hit before fading from the charts and splitting in ’68. But in 1974 they regrouped to put an exclamation point on the whole early ’70s Early Rock Nostalgia boom with their #3 hit, “Rock and Roll Heaven.” And in ’87, Bill Medley, this time without Bobby Hatfield, was back at #1 with his Duet with Jennifer Warnes on “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” from Dirty Dancing.

#2 The New Vaudeville Band – Winchester Cathedral

Well we’re down to the small numbers here on our 1966 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, and with all the enduring classics that charted in ’66, kinda shocking that the top two are songs that were all but forgotten by the end of the ’60s.

At #2, a throwback to the golden age of British Music Hall, the U.K.’s Vaudeville, 30-40 years in the rear-view by ’66. It’s a studio band hired by the Songwriter, Geoff Stephens, and Singer John Carter cupped his hands in front of the mic to make his vocal sound like late ’20s Crooner Rudy Vallée, famous for singing through a megaphone.

Like Mitch Ryder’s “Devil with a Blue Dress” we heard back at #8, its chart run spilled over into ’67, so its last several weeks were not factored and it doesn’t appear on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 at all, but counting its full chart run reveals it as the #2 song of 1966. It’s The New Vaudeville Band’s “Winchester Cathedral.”

New Vaudeville Band, “Winchester Cathedral,” the #2 song of 1966 here on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown; believe it or not, the 1967 Grammy winner for Best Rock Record, and Rock fans for years used that as a reason to ignore the Grammy Awards. But maybe they were on to something. Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow” and British Duo Peter & Gordon’s Music Hall throwback “Lady Godiva” were also in the top10 along with “Winchester Cathedral” in December. And further down on the charts in those weeks, even sillier stuff like “The Eggplant That Ate Chicago” by Dr. West’s Medicine Show & Junk Band.

And Paul McCartney for one was never the same after those hits; like his permission slip to open the nostalgia floodgates. “When I’m 64,” “Your Mother Should Know,” “Honey Pie,” just a few of the Beatle songs his bandmate John Lennon allegedly liked to dismiss as “Paul’s Granny music.” So maybe the Grammys got it right; “Winchester Cathedral” had legs.

#1 SSgt Barry Sadler – The Ballad of the Green Berets

The #1 song of ’66 though, not so much. U.S. troops in Vietnam more than doubled in ’66: nearly 400,000 by the end of the year, and polls showed that most Americans supported the war. But with protest escalating and most Folk and Pop acts who chimed in voicing antiwar sentiments, a record by a wounded Green Beret extolling the virtues of the cause and the bravery of the troops in combat was bound to be a hit.

But no one, hawk or dove, could’ve predicted how big a hit: #1 for five straight weeks in March while tens of thousands picketed at the White House as part of an International Day of Protest organized by The National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, precursor to MOBE. The #1 song of 1966 is Army Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets.”

Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler, “Ballad of the Green Berets.” The #1 song of 1966 and the top selling single of the year. Sadler wrote it recovering from his wounds as a Green Beret medic in Vietnam, and his pro-military, pro-Vietnam message: much different from what came later in the ’60s as protest escalated and public opinion turned. But it was also different from the military and patriotic music of the past; the muscular Male-chorus bravado of Mitch Miller’s 1955 “Yellow Rose of Texas,” say. His Folky clipped, understated vocal and acoustic guitar set a new template that endured for years, just not on the charts.

Bonus

Well there ya have ’em, the top 10 songs of 1966 according to our Chartcrush ranking. In ’67, for the first time, Billboard started adding bonus points to songs’ point totals in its year-end tabulations for weeks at #1 to better reflect the hockey stick effect with sales and airplay as you approach #1, and they continued to refine that formula over the next 25 years, but in ’66 it was still just a simple inverse-rank point system.

And of course, Billboard was only counting weeks within its chart year, not songs’ full chart runs as I’ve been pointing out. So five of the songs we just heard this hour in our countdown are not in Billboard’s top 10 for the year.

To review, New Vaudeville Band’s “Winchester Cathedral” and Mitch Ryder’s “Devil with a Blue Dress” were hits too late in the year to have their chart runs fully counted. Similarly, The Beatles’ “We Can Work It Out:” the first two weeks of its run in calendar 1965, not counted. And The Righteous Brothers’ “Soul and Inspiration” and The Mamas & Papas’ “Monday Monday,” each with three weeks at #1, get boosted into our top 10 adding in those bonus points that are a key part of our Chartcrush ranking method we use consistently for every year. But those five coming in to our top 10 displaces five from Billboard’s, so, just to be thorough, we’ll do a mini-countdown of those.

#69 Paul Revere & The Raiders – Kicks

Billboard’s #9 song was by a Band originally from Idaho, relocated to L.A., and by ’66, ensconced as regulars on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand TV spinoff Where the Action Is and fixtures of the Sunset Strip youth scene in Hollywood with their colonial era costumes in response to the British Invasion. It’s Paul Revere & The Raiders, with “Kicks.”

Nah, they’re not talking about a sneaker shortage; “Kicks” was mid-’60s Teen slang for getting high, and the song by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (same team who wrote The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” and it’s ’66 follow-up “Soul and Inspiration” we heard at #3) was an anti-drug song, first offered to The Animals, but snapped up by Paul Revere & The Raiders. It only peaked at #4, but 12 of its 14 weeks on the chart were in the top 40 so on the strength of that it made Billboard’s year-end top 10, which, again, was based on a simple inverse-rank point system. On our Chartcrush ranking, “Kicks” comes out #69.

#21 Frank Sinatra – Strangers in the Night

Billboard’s #8 song of ’66 as we continue our mini-countdown of Billboard‘s year-end top 10 songs missing from our Chartcrush Top Ten we counted down earlier: the final solo #1 by none other than Frank Sinatra, 26 years after his first chart hits singing with Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra before World War 2, “Strangers in the Night.”

Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night,” Billboard’s #8 song of 1966, #21 on our Chartcrush ranking we counted down the top 10 from earlier in the show. He hadn’t had a #1 single since “Learnin’ the Blues” in 1955 but with over 30 best-selling albums since then, Grammy and Oscar winner, host of the Oscars in 1962, he was still going strong at 50.

One night in ’68, CBS-TV exec Fred Silverman couldn’t shake that “doo-be-doobie-doo” scat thing Sinatra does at the end, and the next day in a development meeting for a new cartoon about a Teenage singing group that solves spooky mysteries, he changed the name of the dog in the show from “Too Much” to “Scooby-Doobie-Doo.”

#14 Nancy Sinatra – These Boots Are Made for Walkin’

Now Frank wasn’t the only Sinatra who was red hot in ’66. Daughter Nancy Sinatra scored Billboard’s #6 hit of the year, #1 for a week in late February, seven in the top 10 and #14 on our Chartcrush 1966 ranking, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'”

Before “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” Nancy Sinatra’s singing career was going nowhere despite her famous name, so Dad intervened and got Country Singer-Songwriter-Producer Lee Hazelwood to recast her as the Mod, platinum blonde, go-go booted Biker chick in “Boots.” Soldiers in Vietnam adopted it as their theme for their endless foot patrols after her “Boots tour” with the U.S.O. Then, later in ’66 she starred with Peter Fonda in Roger Corman’s outlaw biker flick, Wild Angels, and her makeover was complete.

#30 Jimmy Ruffin – What Becomes of the Brokenhearted

Next up in our mini-countdown of songs from Billboard‘s year-end top 10 nudged out of our Chartcrush Top Ten countdown for 1966 we heard earlier, the older brother of Temptations Lead Singer David Ruffin, who outsold everything that the Temps had out in ’66 with his very first charting single. #3 on the year in Billboard, it’s Jimmy Ruffin’s “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.”

Jimmy Ruffin, “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.” Billboard had it at #3 even though it only got to #7 on the weekly chart. But it racked up 17 total weeks in a year when the average for top 10’s was less than 12, and that simple inverse point ranking method: very generous to songs with long chart runs. It shakes out at #30 on our Chartcrush ranking for 1966.

#18 The Mamas & The Papas – California Dreamin’

And finally on our 1966 edition of Chartcrush, another 17 weeker that never hit #1, but Billboard has it as their #1 song of ’66! I mentioned it when we heard their second hit “Monday Monday” at #10. Here again, The Mamas & The Papas, their breakthrough, “California Dreamin’.”

Mamas & Papas, “California Dreamin’, Billboard’s #1 song of 1966 thanks to its 17 weeks on the chart. Again, longevity, much less decisive in our Chartcrush rankings so we have it at #18, but that’s not too bad for a song that peaked at #4!

And on that note, it’s gonna have to be a wrap for our action-packed 1966 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Hey, if you like what you heard and you want more, I hope you’ll visit our website, chartcrush.com for a written transcript of the show and a link to stream the podcast version online, plus hip extras like our full top 100 chart and interactive line graph of the actual chart runs of the top 10 songs. Which we do for every year, ’40s to the present, and it’s all on the website, again, chartcrush.com.

I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi and I want to thank you for listening, and be sure and tune in again next week, same station and time, for another year, and another edition of Chartcrush.

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