How did I do my research? Well, I spent several nights monotonously going through every weekly chart on the Cash Box Top 100 web site from 1970 to 1996. Luckily, I didn't have to reread each song title in each weekly Top 100 list just to find the newest entries. I only had to find the few songs on each weekly list that show "--" in the previous week's column. That means they had not been on the charts the previous week.
Without further ado, here is a quick sampling of what I intend to do on this blog occasionally (or frequently), for the foreseeable future.
Please click the song title to hear a short clip of the song. It will really help to set the mood (you may have to click the play button once the page loads).
Song Title: Wear Your Love Like Heaven
Artist: Donovan
Date that it entered the Top 100: December 2, 1967
Peaked at No. 26 on: January 1, 1968, and remained there for one week.
Left the Top 100 on: January 20, 1968
Utterly Meaningless Trivia:
When this song entered, peaked and left the Top 100, my family was living in Pierre, SD. I celebrated my 7th birthday during that time period. [Note: I don't remember ever hearing this song until much later in life; but it clearly has a 60s "feel" to it, so I automatically loved it immediately.]
Place, Date and Event with which I Associate This Song:
In the spring of 1991, I was a student-teacher at the high-school level a small town here in western Nebraska. I was a pretty busy person because I was teaching in two different subject areas: English and history. During my two months of teaching, I believe I was only able to show two videos to my students. In one of those instances, I showed an episode of Our World, which is one of the best TV series of all time (critics agree with me wholeheartedly). Therefore, naturally, it only survived for one season (1986-1987 on ABC).** The hosts, who are masters of their trade, were Linda Ellerbee and Ray Gandolf.
The series shows only those episodes of American history that were captured on film; therefore, it only covers topics dating back to the late 1930s. This is very good for many reasons, not the least of which is that high-school students are more fascinated with recent history, especially the history of popular culture, and "Our World" always includes plenty of that. Popular culture is the bait that entices the little buggers to watch and learn. Furthermore, each episode covers only a particular season of a particular year, for instance, Summer 1972 (please, I urge you to click that link! maybe it will jar a few of your memory cells). A number of episodes deal with the 1960s and 1970s, including the hippie movement, war protests and many aspects of our modern popular culture (such as movies, music, fashions, fads, etc.) to which most Americans are still addicted today.
On that day in April 1991, four years after the series ended, I was showing an episode on the late 1960s to one of my history classes. I believe it was the "Winter of 1968." It is one of my favorite episodes of the series. At one point, while showing the hippie fashions and dancing styles of 1968, the Donovan song, Wear Your Love Like Heaven, is playing in the background.
Shortly after that song clip ended, someone knocked on my classroom door. I paused the video and said, "Come in!"
About three students from the math class next door (seniors, I believe) opened the door and walked a few steps into the room. I didn't know any of them.
The "spokesperson" asked in a somewhat awestruck voice, "What are you watching?" I explained. He replied somewhat along these lines, "We could hear it through the wall, and it sounds really cool! Is it OK if we come in and watch too?"
Struggling to hide my happiness, I replied, "As long as your teacher says it's OK, you are perfectly welcome to come in."
He replied excitedly, "Hey, he's fine with it. He's the one who let us come over here and ask you. A few other students want to come in too. Is that OK? They're waiting for me to tell them what you said."
I replied, "You bet. I'll wait for you all to come in before I start playing it again."
I think 75 percent of that math class came into my room to watch the video.
It's extremely rare moments like that that made my student-teaching experience memorable in a nice way.
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Footnotes
**One of these days, I hope to do justice to the "Our World" TV series in a blog entry. I started one two or three months ago, but I haven't been able to do justice to it yet. This amazing series, which was a favorite on college campuses (that being exactly where I was located in 1986-87) is barely mentioned on the internet, and it is not available on DVD.
