Forgotten Hits

THE TOP 50 SONGS FROM THE SUMMER OF '69

Ahh, yes ... The Summer of '69 ... I remember it well. (Well, sort of ... as the summer drew to a close, I would turn 16 ... but there sure was some GREAT music coming out of our radios way back then!)

We all know what Canadian Rocker Bryan Adams was doing that summer ... that was the year he got his first real six-string ... he told ME that he bought it at the five-and-time ... and, as I recall, he played it till his fingers bled ... yes, it was the Summer of '69.

That means Bryan would turn TEN later that year ... so he got a much earlier start on playing music than I did!!! (Personally, I got MY first six-string in 1967 ... inspired by seeing how much fun The Monkees were having every week, I knew that this was something that I wanted to do, too. Notice that I didn't say my first "real" six-string ... the one I bought in '67 was one of those cheap, Japanese jobbers where the strings sat about six feet off the fret board ... lol ... couldn't play it worth a damn which, in hindsight, I realize was only PARTLY my fault ... but I didn't care ... I was makin' music!!! lol)

Things would improve from there and, by February of '68, I'd taken a few guitar lessons ... (let me tell you, I played a MEAN "Rockin' In The Rye"!!!) ... and, later that year, I bought MY first real six-string ... a Gibson ES-335 ... Cherry Red ... a BEAUTIFUL guitar. By then I'd already started writing my own songs and was well on my way to obscurity!!!

But TODAY's feature isn't about MY music ... or even Bryan Adams' music ... it's ALL about the Top 50 Biggest Songs From The Summer of '69 ... as compiled by Randy Price and Jack Levin exclusively for our Forgotten Hits Newsletter.

Just like we did when we saluted "The Summer Of Love" a couple of years ago ... by compiling a list of The 50 Biggest Songs Of The Summer of 1967 ... "The Summer Of Love" ... we've put together a list of The 50 Biggest Songs Of The Summer of '69. (By the way, you can find that special Summer Of Love Countdown posted elsewhere on this very same Forgotten Hits Website.)

And, just like we did a couple of years ago when we assembled THAT feature, we went to our "Go To" Chart Guys, Randy Price and Jack Levin, whom we asked to compile this information for our Forgotten Hits Readers.

And both of these guys did exactly what we asked them to ... come up with a chart based on the statistics of June, July and August ONLY of 1969 that shows the National and the Local rankings of The 50 Most Popular Songs of that Summer.

As expected, there are lots of similarities ... in fact, 39 of The Top 50 Titles are common to BOTH charts, leaving only a discrepancy of eleven songs on either chart that might be considered "surprises". Randy's National Chart is based on the information he collected from all three major national trades at the time: Billboard Magazine, Cash Box Magazine and Record World Magazine ... in effect, the SUPER Charts that we have been talking about these past few years. Jack's Chicagoland Chart comes from information compiled from the two big Top 40 AM Giants here in Chicago at the time, WLS and WCFL ... no small feat, I might add, because in 1969 WCFL was no longer publishing and distributing their charts in the record stores like they had in '66 and '67 ... instead, much like WLS would do a few years later, they would send a poster to be mounted in the record department of the major stores where you would go to buy your singles. After years and years and years of diligent research, our team of Collectible Chart Maniacs have put together charts reflecting the information that many of these guys wrote down in their private journals for this era and, thanks to that diligence, we are able to share this chart information with you today.