The whys of a ’60s music compilation
Last week, I wrote about “The 60s Music Compendium,” a doorstop of a book that examines 6,886 songs from the 1960s, all of which hit the Billboard Top 100 charts.
The exhaustively researched book by author Dave Kinzer burrows deep, documenting which songs used instruments as familiar as guitars and as esoteric as bassoons, which had the longest guitar solo or talked about death or dozens of other categories.
In 2015, Kinzer, a music teacher in Illinois, published “The 80s Music Compendium” in which he did the same in-depth examination of hits from that decade. He has answered some questions about the book, his motivations and what he learned. Here is the Q&A, edited for space.
Q: Why the ’60s as opposed to the ’70s, which is closer to your growing-up decade so more songs would be familiar?
A: In my experience, most people say that the 1960s was the best decade for music. It’s hard to argue when you consider the outstanding artists who debuted in that decade and the music that has stood the test of time. After I listened to over 4,000 songs from the ’80s for my “80s Music Compendium,” a lot of people basically said, “Impressive, but why would you do that to yourself?” So I thought, “If I’m going to listen to thousands of songs from a decade again, I’m going to listen to music from the decade that everyone says is the best.”
Q: What did you learn that surprised you the most?
A: The biggest surprise for me was the fact that three of the most popular and influential musicians of the ’60s made very few appearances on the Hot 100 chart — Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry and Jimi Hendrix. None of them had a No. 1 hit in the ’60s, and only Bob Dylan had at least 10 hits (11). Almost 30 solo artists, like Dion, Bobby “Blue” Bland and Sam Cooke had more than 24 hits on their own.
Q: What are some other interesting tidbits?
A: The best songs I’d never heard before: “What’s a Matter Baby (Is It Hurting You)” by Timi Yuro, “Mexican Drummer Man” by Herb Alpert & The Union Gap, “Heartaches” by the Marcels and “Malaguena” by Connie Francis.
Songs were much shorter than they are today; songs shorter than 2 minutes, 30 seconds were extremely common. Today, songs shorter than 3 minutes are very rare.
“The 60s Music Compendium” and “The 80s Music Compendium” are available as ebooks and in print at Amazon. Kinzer says that, if the ‘60s compendium is successful, “I’m leaning toward doing a compendium for the ’70s.”
I know I have no skin in the game and I’m being completely selfish, but I hope he does.