Sounds Of The 60s Rewound Part 17 Quiz

Answer: The Brook Brothers

"Ain't Gonna Wash for a Week"was written by Gary Geld and Peter Udell. The first recording and first release was by Eddie Hodges.

The Brooks were actual brothers, Geoff and Ricky, and they took the song to number 13 in the UK in 1961.

Geoff and Ricky modelled themselves on the Everly Brothers and had several UK top 30s. However, that style became old hat very quickly and their last recording was in 1963.

Answer: Elvis Presley

Guessing who sang "(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame" might have required some choosing since there were several versions around at the same time in 1961. Del Shannon had a version, as did Ted Herold (in German)

Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, who together wrote more than 500 songs between 1958 and 1965, were behind the song. In June Shannon was first to release it. Presley released his version in August, and that is the one most people remember nowadays.

This version reached number four on the Hot 100 and was a chart-topper in the UK.

In February 2025, Gold Radio listed "Elvis Presley's 25 best songs ever, ranked" and put "Marie" at number six.

To digress, in order to bring quiz takers the very best in interesting information, I trawl numerous websites. I lost track of the number that confidently told me this song had "a Bo Diddley-style beat". It just goes to show the world wide web can be an incestuous place.

Answer: The Fortunes

The Fortunes took "Here It Comes Again" to number four in the UK and number 27 in the USA in 1965.

The Fortunes got together in 1960 in Birmingham, England. Schoolmates Rodney Bainbridge and Barry Pritchard formed The Strollers and were joined by Leigh Clark and Mick Tomlinson.

Answer: Johnny Mathis

If you have ever watched the movie "Play Misty For Me", you will have heard Clint Eastwood ask for it. The sound he wanted was Errol Garner's 1955 jazz instrumental.

Johnny Burke liked that so much he wrote lyrics for it.

In 1959 Johnny Mathis recorded it and took it to number 12 on the Hot 100 that year. So why is it in a quiz about 60s music?, I hear you ask. It's because it peaked at number 12 in the UK in February 1960.

Mathis had only one UK chart-topper, "When A Child Is Born" in 1976. That earned him the much-vaunted accolade of 'number one at Christmas'.

Answer: Cat Stevens

"Matthew & Son" was the second single from Cat Stevens and peaked at number two in the United Kingdom in 1967. It immediately sparked interest in Stevens, who was born Steven Georgiou in London in 1941.

Two years after the album "Matthew & Son" reached number seven in the charts, Stevens contracted tuberculosis and almost died. That was a life-changing experience: in 1977 he converted to Islam and stopped recording.

Ten years later, as Yusuf Islam, he returned to the business.
Stevens/Islam had a knack of writing catchy ones, but his songs also had social messages.

He also wrote "The First Cut Is The Deepest", which Rod Stewart took to the top of the UK charts. Sheryl Crow had a US number 14 with the song.

Answer: Michael Cox

John D. Loudermilk wrote "Angela Jones" and Johnny Ferguson had a US hit with it in 1960. That same year, Michael Cox took it to number seven in the UK.

(As for Loudermilk, he was a bit like Jack Reacher: 'no middle name'. The "D" did not stand for anything. His father was a real John D. Loudermilk Sr, though)

The song was about a schoolboy crush on a girl and Loudermilk later said it was about a real girl.

Answer: Brenda Lee

Brenda Lee was aged just 14 when she took "Sweet Nothin's" to under four in the USA and number four in the UK in March 1960.

Lee was nicknamed Little Miss Dynamite because of her height - four feet nine inches. She went on to become the first woman inducted into both the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame and Country Music Hall Of Fame.

Answer: Billy Stewart

"Summertime"originated in the 1930s in the musical "Porgy and Bess". DuBose Heyward wrote the words and George and Ira Gershwin the music.

The song has an estimated 2,000 covers. In 1966 Billy Stewart's version spent seven weeks in the US Top 40, peaking at number ten.

Among all of those covers, this was the first song The Beatles recorded after Ringo Starr joined. They recorded it in Hamburg in October 1960.

Answer: The Rolling Stones

"Paint It Black" was a chart-topper for The Rolling Stones on both sides of the Atlantic in 1966.

In rehearsal the version was much slower, but Bill Wyman, on organ, and Charlie Watts, on drums, gave it a quicker tempo.

Keith Richards later said: "What made 'Paint It Black' was Bill Wyman on the organ, because it didn't sound anything like the finished record until Bill said, 'You go like this.'"

This was the theme song for "Tour Of Duty", a 1987-1989 CBS television show about the Vietnam War.

Answer: Roy Orbison

Don Gibson wrote "Too Soon To Know" and had it as a "B" side to a single in 1957.

In 1966, Ray Orbison took it to number three in the UK and number 68 on the US Hit 100. Some radio stations banned the song for being too morbid because they thought it was about Orbison's wife, Claudette, who was killed in a motorcycle crash shortly before the release.

Actually, the song was recorded before Claudette's death.

If you feel like owning a physical copy, the record was listed on a popular internet auction site for $8.50 at the time this quiz was written.

(A rare recording of Orbison's 1956 debut single, "Ooby Dooby" sold for over $3,300.)

Answer: Small Faces

"All Or Nothing" was a 1966 UK number one for The Small Faces. It was written by their guitarist Steve Marriott and bass player Ronnie Lane. Marriott sang lead vocal.

Of the "classic" Small Faces lineup of Steve Marriott (vocals, guitar), Ronnie Lane (bass, vocals), Ian McLagan (keyboards, vocals), and Kenney Jones (drums), only Jones survived by the time of this quiz. Mariott died in a house fire; Lane died with multiple sclerosis and McLagan of a stroke.

Answer: Jim Reeves

There was a time when Jim Reeves was one of the biggest recording stars around. He had 51 top ten hits on the Billboard 100, and "Distant Drums" was a posthumous number one in the UK in 1966.

Reeves died in a plane crash in 1964. He left a recorded legacy of 444 songs, which were released on a CD set in Europe in the 1990s.

Indeed, Reeves was more popular in Europe and South Africa than he was in the USA.

Answer: The Everly Brothers

"Walk Right Back" was written by Sonny Curtis, part of Buddy Holly and The Crickets, while he was serving in the US Army. He showed one verse to Phil and Don Everly, who liked it.

But they only had one verse and sang it twice. It topped the UK charts and was a US number seven in 1961.

Other singers subsequently released the song with both its verses.

Incidentally there is a long list of songwriters who served in the army, and Sonny Curtis was not the only one to write while serving: Tom Paxton wrote "The Marvelous Toy" in the clerk typist school at Fort Dix, New Jersey. (It was not his first song, but as he has recounted, it was "the first that survived").

Answer: Julie Andrews & The Children Of The Sound Of Music

Richard Rogers wrote the the music and Oscar Hammerstein II the words for "The Lonely Goatherd".

It appeared in the 1965 movie "The Sound Of Music" and was sung by Maria and the Von Trapp family.

The song did not chart as a single, but the soundtrack album reached number one on the Billboard 200.

The song is famous for its yodelling parts. Yodelling was well known in Europe's central Alps as a way for farmers to pass messages across long distances. Other parts of the world have their own similar styles, some dating back thousands of years. In North America, there was a strong yodelling/county scene in the middle part of the 20th Century.

Answer: The Highwaymen

The origins of "Michael Row The Boat Ashore" date back centuries. The song is thought to pre-date the American Civil War, although the first written record was in 1863. It was said then have been sung by black slaves in the Georgia Sea Islands.

Pete Seeger, in The 'Incompleat Folksinger' noted that slaves brought from Africa spent their lives on these small islands, out of touch with mainland life. "The only transportation was small boats and strong arms to row them", he wrote. Crews from different plantations had their own rowing songs.

Sources vary as to who "Michael" was, but again there are letters mentioning the name in the song dating to 1862.

The Highwaymen were members of a folk group who met at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. In 1961 their arrangement of the song was a chart-topper in both the UK and USA.