According to Dann Isbell's book, RANKING THE '60s, these are the 35 most successful vocal groups of the 1960’s.

A fascinating book called Ranking the '60s, by Dann Isbell, looks at nearly 7,000 records to come onto the national record charts during and limited to the the 1960's: 1960-1969. He applied a complex mathematical formula to each of the chart entries. The records were weighted based on their position on the charts. A #1 hit earned more points than say a #20 hit, let alone a #75 hit. The data was input across the board without bias and based on the results rankings were generated. For the purpose of this program we looked at the ranking of the top 35 groups on the list, including duets like Simon and Garfunkle.

Listeners will be surprised and sometimes miffed by who was on the Top-35 and who was not. It's important to remember that this list is based only on the 1960's. So, for example, if a group like Credence Clearwater Revival only appeared on the charts for the first time in the final year of the '60s, 1969, they did not amass enough records in that one year to receive a higher rank on the list. Groups that were around that had many minor hits and a few big ones were higher on the list. Peter, Paul & Mary, The Marvelettes, and Paul Revere & the Raiders all surpassed Credence because of the years they spent on the charts.

That said, it's a countdown show: #35 - Jay & the Americans; #1 - The Beatles. More favorites in between.

A few musicals, a dozen or so, have been life-changing, mind-blowing shows. Their impact is profound. This is my list. What's yours?

When you're in the theater and suddenly you say to yourself, "where am I?" you have just been transported to that magic place by the confluence of many theatrical elements that make the living stage sometimes breathtaking. I say sometimes, and perhaps even most of the time you may enjoy a show, but it's not life-changing.

On this Broadway Bound I offer my list of 12 musicals that have had a profound effect on me. The oldest is from 1969. The newest is from 2017.

This is my list and is incomplete due to to time constraints. But rest assured, these shows only rarely come along. Spoiler alert. Here they are:

1776
Cabaret
Les Miserables
La Cage aux Folles
Sunset Boulevard
A Chorus Line
Evita
Sweeney Todd
Chaplin
Come From Away
Billy Elliot
Hamilton

Love is life's most precious gift. These songs look at love from many angles.

This is not a show about songs with love in the title, although some do. These songs are about loving. Loving friends, family, lovers. Love is love. And here we span three decades to look into the heart of love.
Mothers and fathers, children, romantic partners, friends. These songs love them all. What the world needs now is love - (thanks Burt Bacharach and Hal David!).

Records are set on Broadway: Biggest, most, best, longest, shortest. They're "tops" in their class.

A look at the "record setters," that is, Broadway musicals through the years that set records in one way or another. Some records are for highest grossing musicals, or longest time to sit on your seats to watch the show, or the biggest financial losers, or the longest running shows ever. My two favs are for "highest ticket price" sold at the box office ($998), and the highest average ticket price ($506) for a Broadway show – this is a real surprise.

You'll probably know some of the records they've set but I guarantee you'll be surprised and stunned by others.

Enjoy the show!
Garrett Stack

Mad man, genius, irrational, wildly creative, cruel, respected, loved, despised: The art of Phil Spector is beyond legend.

The first “teen tycoon” died of the COVID-19 virus on January 16, 2021. His mark and influence in rock, pop and soul is immeasurable. His years as a record producer at his own label, Philles Records, is almost mythical. But it’s not a myth. For much of the 1960’s he created dozens of the best singles of all time. Using young artists, mostly black, his sound was unmistakable.

The artists are legends because of him. The Crystals, Darlene Love, The Ronettes, and The Righteous Brothers head his list of accomplishments that include several more. His work with Tina and Ike Turner, The Beatles, and singularly with John Lennon and George Harrison is known to record-nerds but not to most of the record buying public.

On this edition of American Jukebox® we separate Phil Spector the person, from Phil Spector the artist. We span more than a decade to get a full taste of his artistic mastery and how his genius makes us smile and move to this day.

Back to mono!

Our democracy was invaded by domestic terrorists on January 6, 2021. We witnessed in unbelievable, vivid detail just what they were up to and what they hoped to achieve. Like most Americans I was shaken to my core. This program is dedicated to Our American Story, imperfect though it is, we strive to form a more perfect union.

The music here tells our story in joyful and sometimes harsh ways.

At the beginning of the rock era independent record labels emerged as powerhouses of pop, rock, and R&B. Cameo-Parkway was among the biggest.

American Jukebox® 195: The Cameo-Parkway Story - In the history of recorded music there are many record labels that have had their time in the sun as leaders in the industry. This goes back for a hundred years to labels such as Edison and Victor and then Decca and Columbia. In the 1950’s, at the dawn of the rock era, a few new record labels took root and defined the times. They were small and independent but grew mighty and influential. The artists they signed provide the soundtrack of a generation - the Baby Boom generation.

One such label that shone brightly in the early years was Cameo Records, and then with its subsidiary, Parkway, as Cameo-Parkway. From 1957-1967 Cameo-Parkway’s product output was tremendous. With many many big hits and their fair share of mistakes, like not signing Barbra Streisand, Cameo-Parkway remains the sound of '60s teenagers learning all the new dances and defining their likes on the radio and jukeboxes. This is the story of Cameo-Parkway.

To celebrate 14 years of American Jukebox, host Garrett Stack selects his favorite 14 songs from the '60s, and 14 more from the the '70s.

I thought I'd look at the number 14 and and see what came to me. And there it was, 14 of my favorite songs from each of the two decades, 1960s and 1970s. From girl groups to folk singers, and disco hits to driving soul, here are my choices. Thanks for being with me on this wonderful journey through the American jukebox.

Garrett Stack

Based on extensive work by Record Research, Inc., the 30 most recorded pop Christmas songs are counted down.

If you're familiar with Joel Whitburn's Record Research, Inc., and their decades of analyzing pop, rock and soul Billboard chart performance, then you know this is the recognized authority. For this Top-30 Christmas Countdown, the team at Record Research took all the albums that have ever charted on the Christmas Charts through 2004, and they painstakingly looked at the titles on all those albums. By tracking the titles and the number of times they appeared, the list was compiled. In this program we do not include Christmas Carols, just secular songs on the list associated with the Christmas season.

You can probably guess many titles on the countdown. The artists that record them, however, are extremely varied. They range from classics like Perry Como to Euro-sound Boney M and all points between. And worth noting, the older the song the more times it is likely to have been recorded. Take a song like Santa Claus Is Coming To Town or Winter Wonderland, both written in the 1934, and you can see they have a better chance of being high on the list simply because they were around for 70 years, and recorded hundreds of times, when this list was made.

For the record, Silent Night is the most recorded Christmas song ever, if not the most recorded song of all in any genre, period. Considered a Christmas carol, however, it is not on this countdown. For that matter, neither is Joy To The World, O Holy Night or any other carols we love.

Get ready to count down the top-30 pop Christmas songs of all time, with three "countdown extras" (indicated by Xtra) included for the fun of it. Merry Christmas.

Garrett Stack

John Lennon, founder of the Beatles, was murdered Dec. 8, 1980 at age 40. His music is remembered with the Beatles and as a solo artist.

John Lennon started his first band in 1956 at age 16. The Quarrymen evolved in The Beatles. John Lennon and Paul McCartney recruited new members to round out the foursome. By 1963 the Beatles, as we commonly know them, were fully formed with John, Paul, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

John Lennon sang lead on 91 Beatles recordings and of two dozen were #1 records. This edition surveys John's work from the very early days of 1963 to 1982. From Please Please Me to (Just Like) Starting Over, 36 in all.

As theaters have had to close down since March 24, 2020 due to the COVID pandemic, concerts and other performances have gone virtual. Today we look two events: The 2020 Goodspeed Opera House Gala and The Doo Wop Project "Live in Your Living Room" concert. Both events staged the fall of 2020.

Ken Burns' Country Music series on PBS is the inspiration for this look at the great American music blended from all people.

In September of 2019, "Country Music," by the acclaimed film director Ken Burns, aired 8 episodes over a two-week period on PBS TV stations throughout the USA. Inspired by that incredible documentary that traced country music from its origins in the 1930's through six more decades, this edition of American Jukebox brings 35 representative pieces, many used in the documentary, to this program.

From the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers in the '30s to Hank Williams and Bob Wills in the '40s, on to the '50s, '60s and beyond with Johnny Cash, Lefty Frezelle, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Charley Pride, Dolly Parton, Willie and Waylon, and many others, your listeners will respond to this cross section of the Country genre that is coming up to its 100th birthday.

Listener response to this program has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

Broadway Bound #200 -- A regular 2-hour edition of the greatest Broadway music from yesterday and today -- Originally aired on WMNR on Jan. 4, 2014.

Big names, hundreds of recordings, here are the not off-the-top-of-your head choices.

When you say the biggest names in classic pop, rock and soul, immediately their biggest hits come to mind. We can rattle those hits off like we're saying the Pledge of Allegiance. On this edition of American Jukebox we bypass the big ones and take a deeper dive to the more obscure charted hits, and in some cases recordings that never charted or were ever released as singles.

The talent lineup includes the big draws from the '60s and '70s. Big names like Sam Cooke, Brenda Lee, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Dusty Springfield, Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Cher, Bruce Springsteen and Helen Reddy to name some.

Your listeners will find surprises and surely a few tracks they don't know at all, like Springsteen's Shenandoah and Dionne Warwick's Once You Hit the Road.

Enjoy the not obvious choices from our favorites.

Broadway songs guaranteed to make you smile.

There are lots of songs from the musical theater that just make you smile. They're clever, funny, tongue-in-cheek, or just infectious - in a good way. These 27 always get me to smile. From the oldest one on the list, 76 Trombones with Robert Preston, to the newest production of My Fair Lady where Norbert Leo Butz steals the show with Get Me To The Church On Time. Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera, as mother and daughter, come to realize they very much the same in The Apple Doesn't Fall while Karen Ziemba has found the cure for what ails her, Arthur In The Afternoon.
Classics like Honey Bun, Anything Goes, A Spoonful of Sugar, Bosom Buddies, and His Love Makes Me Beautiful tickle your funny bone every time.
Listen to these gems and get ready to smile.

Baby Boomers have lost hundreds of their music personalities. We remember them and their music here.

A staggering, long list of dead music legends from the early years of rock, pop and soul ('50s, '60s, and '70s), is the basis of this edition of American Jukebox. Of the hundreds we've lost, this program looks at 35 of them. From Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, who lived to 90 and 89 respectively, to tragic losses of young artists like Tammi Terrell (24), Jim Croce (30), Karen Carpenter (32), Florence Ballard (32), Sam Cooke (33) and Cass Elliot (34), their music lives on to endlessly thrill us.

2020 has been a year like none we have experienced in our lifetime. The international COVID-19 pandemic has made us look at death in stark reality. This just isn't the year for Halloween fun with monsters, ghosts and horror. Too much of that faces us daily. Instead, this edition of American Jukebox honors and remembers the dead who musically and personally have made our lives richer.

With reverence to all those who have passed, I'm Garrett Stack.

New York City was a mess in the 1980's. Broadway attendance plummeted. Some predicted the end of the American Musical. In spite of all that, a few blockbuster musicals emerged during that decade and saved the Great White Way just in time to make its historic turnaround in the 1990's.

Broadway Bound #264 -- Survivor: Broadway in the '80s

With Broadway attendance figures and revenues constantly setting records in the 21st century, it's hard to imagine that just 30 years ago we almost witnessed the end of this American art form. New York City's most important tourist destination is the Broadway Theater District, the blocks surrounding Times Square that house 40 Broadway Theaters and many more smaller venues. But in the 1980's parts of the city were riddled by crime, filth, and decadence. The Times Square area was among the worst.

42nd Street was home to pimps, prostitutes, panhandlers, peep shows and hustlers. Garbage tossed on the street, urine puddles on sidewalks, derelicts living in boxes and street crime was part of the vibe. Tourism to Broadway dropped. Families would not come. It seemed only the stalwart theater aficionados ventured to shows. Get in, see a show, get out. As a result producers were not funding new works to the degree they had. New shows, especially the more expensive musicals, were disappearing. Some predicted that the American Musical Theater had taken its last gasp.

Fortunately, that was not the case. In spite of all the obstacles many of Broadway's most enduring new musicals opened during the '80s. There were also the revivals. However, there were many musicals most people have never heard of that were nominated for Tony Awards. There simply were so few to choose from that the Tony Committee had to find something to fill the slots. Musicals with titles like Tintypes, Grind, Merlin, Quilters, Starmites, Romance/Romance and Big Deal were all Best Musical nominations during the decade.

But there were also brand new musicals that proved creativity in musical theater was alive and well. Here's a sampling of the best: 42nd Street, Nine, Cats, La Cage aux Folles, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, Sunday in the Park With George, Into the Woods, My One and Only, Big River and Dreamgirls. Audiences supported these shows and kept the lights burning.

On this edition of Broadwaty Bound we salute the '80s musicals that held down the fort for more than a decade providing reason for the Broadway Renaissance of the 1990's that continues to this day.

American Jukebox 316

Hold on before you think you know what I mean. In the biz, "classics" are designated well-known songs that never charted on Billboard's Hot-100. Big songs by big artists mostly off albums.

When considering performance on Billboard's Hot-100, the "BIG" chart, we recognize that thousands of songs we know and love, or don't, have "charted" through the decades. Billboard even has "Bubbling Under the Hot-100" with positions 101-130.

Joel Whitburn's Record Research, Inc. analyzes the charts and has been the international authority on American pop, rock, soul and country. In his books that include every title to ever chart on the Hot-100 or its variations since 1955, he also includes "Classic" recordings. That is, songs by major artists that never charted on the Hot-100 but are extremely popular and very well known. On this edition of American Jukebox we look at 33 such "classics."

The list includes recordings by The Beach Boys and The Beatles, Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline, Judy Collins and Linda Ronstadt, Bobby Dartin and Nat "King" Cole, Elvis Presley, Neil Sedaka, Cat Stevens, John Denver, Madonna, Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin and many more.

Incidentally, most of these songs were never pressed on 45's so they were not heard on jukeboxes decades ago. But word-of-mouth and savvy DJ's picked them off albums for us to appreciate and love. Appreciate and enjoy.