1962 Top Ten Pop Countdown Podcast

It’s Twistmania as the Silent Generation peaks culturally, Girl Groups surge, Ray Charles goes Country and The 4 Seasons make Doo Wop a commercial juggernaut.

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Welcome to the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week on Chartcrush, we dive deep into a year in Pop music and culture, and count down the top ten songs according to our exclusive recap of the weekly charts published at the time in the music industry’s top trade publication, Billboard magazine. This week on Chartcrush we’re turning back the clock to 1962, which began with an extraordinary event: “The Twist” hitting #1 for a second time in January after already having hit #1 in 1960 and falling completely off the Hot100 for almost a whole year. The only time that’s ever happened: same record hitting #1 in two different chart runs.

But it wasn’t just a curiosity for chart geeks; it was a legit turning point for Rock ‘n Roll because it was the first Rock record to cross over to an adult audience. That’s how it hit #1 that second time: different audience digging it and buying it: grownups, once high society gossip columns started reporting sightings of mucky-mucks and celebs from Judy Garland to JFK’s sister Jean to the Duke of Bedford doing the Twist at the Peppermint Lounge, a mob-owned dive bar on the West side of Midtown Manhattan that literally overnight became the hottest ticket in town.

Rock needed that win. In the six years since “Rock Around the Clock” and Elvis shaking his pelvis doing “Hound Dog,” many OG Rockers, sidelined for various reasons. Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis, radioactive from scandals involving young girls. Elvis, drafted. Little Richard, now a Preacher. Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper dead in the horrible “Day the Music Died” plane crash in Iowa in ’59.

’59, also the year the Payola scandal broke: DJ’s taking bribes from record labels. With Congress turning up the heat and DJs and radio stations facing fines and jail time, no one was taking any chances with crude-sounding records that could be red flags for enforcers, so Top40 got very middle-of-the-road.

Billboard even debuted a chart in 1961 called “Middle Road.” It later became Easy Listening and then in 1979, Adult Contemporary. Stations needed that chart! Percy Faith’s Musak-y “Theme from a Summer Place” was #1 for nine straight weeks, peak Payola hysteria: 1960’s top hit.

But even before the Payola scandal, Rock records were sounding more polished and professional as hit after hit raked in Teens’ disposable income and labels spent more on production. In ’58, ABC-Paramount A&R head, also a Bandleader, Don Costa signed down ‘n dirty OG New Orleans R&B Singer Lloyd Price and gave him the full Sinatra orchestra treatment in a top studio, and “Stagger Lee” and “Personality” made Price 1959’s top singles artist. And Teen Idol Rocker Bobby Darin scored the biggest hit of 1959 with “Mack the Knife,” not even a Rock song! He went straight at Sinatra on his own turf with that one!

Of course, the notion of cleaning up Rock ‘n Roll went all the way back to the beginning, Dot Records and Pat Boone in 1955, and even before that, Mitch Miller as head of A&R at Columbia getting Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney to record Hank Williams Country songs, but post-Payola, the difference was that only those kinds of records were safe for the airwaves.

So Rock was assimilating, but the Rock ‘n Roll generation, Silents, were aging: aged 17 to 37 in ’62, so most of the adults who “discovered” “The Twist” in ’62: technically in the same generation as the Teens who first got it to #1 after watching Chubby Checker on American Bandstand in 1960. That’s what we call a generational peak, the few years that come around every 15 to 20, when almost everyone in the coveted 18 to 34 target audience for ads and media is in the same generation. The oldest Boomers, just 17 in ’62: still too young to imprint themselves on the culture, which would change in ’64 with Beatlemania.

But the late ’50s and early ’60s were all about the Silents. And one of their defining features was their internationalism at the dawn of the Jet Age. Until 1958 only a couple records by non-U.S. artists had ever topped the charts, but that year Italian Domenico Modugno’s “Volare,” sung in Italian, was the Summer’s biggest hit and many other international hits followed. By ’62 Billboard was devoting a ton of space to musical happenings abroad.

#10 The Tornadoes – Telstar

Like the two British records in our ’62 countdown. Yup, that’s right: two years before The Beatles!

Joe Meek was a trailblazing Sound Engineer and Producer in London, a Silent, fascinated by space and electronic music, so after AT&T put the first comms satellite in orbit in the Summer of ’62, he wrote a song about it. His in-house studio band The Tornados cut it, and within weeks it was climbing the U.K. and U.S. charts. #1 on the Hot100 the last two weeks of ’62 and the first week of ’63 and #10 as we kick off our Chartcrush countdown of 1962’s biggest hits. It’s an instrumental: “Telstar.”

One of the biggest hits of 1961, Del Shannon’s “Runaway,” whet the public’s appetite for weird new keyboard sounds, and “Telstar,” delivered for ’62: #10 here on the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, 1962 edition.

Joe Meek, the Brit behind the Tornadoes was an acknowledged genius, but a tortured genius, likely schizophrenic. His studio was above a shop in London run by the landlady, who’d bang on the ceiling with a broomstick to complain about the noise, which would drive anyone trying to run a studio nuts, but for Meek, it was too much, and in 1967 after years of feuding, he murdered her, then himself with a borrowed shotgun.

By the way, British Rockers Muse: Frontman Matt Bellamy is Tornados guitarist George Bellamy’s son. Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia” in 2006, a tribute to “Telstar.”

#9 The ShirellesSoldier Boy

Next up at #9, what would a 1962 countdown be without a Girl Group? Girl Groups, a cornerstone of the more sophisticated, polished Brill Building sound that filled the airwaves post-Payola.

Notwithstanding countless pulp fiction paperbacks and B-movies, the “Bad girl” Pop star wasn’t a thing ’til Nancy Sinatra later in the ’60s, then Donna Summer in the mid-’70s and of course Madonna in the ’80s. And early Rock ‘n Roll was Male dominated, as was the Greaser hoodlumism critics said it incited. So records by Female Singers: automatically in the safe zone for nervous radio Program Directors, and June 27, 1960, peak Payola hysteria, there were more than three in the top ten for the first time in nearly four years.

Well, April 21, 1962 was another milestone: the first week in chart history with three songs by Black Females in the top ten. Our #9 song was #6 that week, on its way to #1 for three weeks in May. Their second #1 after “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” in ’61, written by Brill Building Songwriting power couple Carole King and Gerry Goffin, it’s The Shirelles’ “Soldier Boy.”

“Soldier Boy,” reportedly written on the spot by Luther Dixon and Scepter’s Owner-Producer Florence Greenberg and recorded in one take with five minutes left in the session, #9 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1962. A song that became closely associated with Vietnam once hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops were in combat there, but in ’62 when it was a hit, Vietnam was just one of many countries around the world where Americans were deployed.

JFK’s administration had two big Cold War setbacks its first year: the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, then the Berlin Wall, and Kennedy was determined to not add Vietnam to that list. Now The Shirelles weren’t a Motown group, but Berry Gordy, Jr.’s first Motortown “Sound of Young America” package tour hit the road in ’62: Marvelettes and Mary Wells, Motown’s two big Female acts, pre-Supremes.

#8 Mr. Acker BilkStranger on the Shore

Next here on our 1962 edition of Chartcrush, the second of the two British records in our top ten countdown, also an instrumental, but unlike “Telstar’s” aggressive futurism, this is a sweet little piece from a BBC show about a French au pair in England that some assume was a hit because people needed something to calm them down during the Cuban Missile Crisis, yet another Cold War powderkeg as Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev put America’s new, young, idealistic President through the ringer. But Kennedy didn’t spot Khruschev’s nukes in Cuba ’til October and this was #1 in May and June, so nope.

But, again, that Payola chill on the airwaves gave records like this a boost, not to mention all-in-one home stereo cabinets now showing up in department stores and the Sears catalog and bringing hi-fi within reach for millions. I mentioned Percy Faith’s 1960 smash “Theme from ‘A Summer Place'” in the intro; in ’62 it was bowler-hatted, goateed, striped-waistcoated English clarinetist Mr. Acker Bilk, “Stranger on the Shore.”

Mr. Acker Bilk vanished from the charts almost as quickly as he arrived, and he was back on the cabaret circuit by the time The Beatles hit in ’64, but his one big hit, “Stranger on the Shore,” secured his legacy. In the top ten for 11 weeks, and #1 for just one, yet Billboard named it the year’s top hit based on the simple inverse-rank point system they were using at the time. That’s one point for a week at #100, 100 points for a week at #1, and so on.

As Billboard started doing in 1967 and refined in the years since, our Chartcrush ranking awards bonus points for weeks at #1 and in the top ten to better reflect the hockey-stick reality of sales and airplay volume as you approach #1.

And by the way, we apply that consistently to every year: same ranking method, so our Chartcrush rankings are truly apples-to-apples.

#7 Chubby CheckerLimbo Rock

So with grownups now doing the Twist, the kiddos needed new dances, and 1962 was a parade of them, one after the other: Loco-Motion, Candied Yam, Slop, Martian Hop, Mess Around, Mashed Potato, Surfer’s Stomp, Bristol Stomp, Swim, Frug, Jerk, Monkey, Hitchhike, Watusi.

And at the end of year, Mr. Twist himself, Chubby Checker, unveiled one. Not his first since “The Twist,” mind you; he was a busy man in ’61 and ’62: “Pony Time” in early ’61, “Let’s Twist Again” and “The Fly” in the Summer and Fall of ’61, and “Slow Twistin‘” with Mashed Potato Diva Dee Dee Sharp in the Spring of ’62, all top tens. But people did this one at parties for decades to come. At #7, “How low can you go?” Chubby Checker’s “Limbo Rock.”

An Island feel on that song, Chubby Checker’s “Limbo Rock” at #8. An instrumental version was out first in the Summer by The Champs (the “Tequila” guys).

Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat Song” unleashed Calypso on the charts in ’57 and it surged again in ’62. Soul shouter Gary U.S. Bonds’ big Summer hit was a mashup of Calypso and Twisting: “Twist Twist Senora.” I mentioned in the intro the Silent generation’s internationalism.

“Limbo Rock” at first was the B-side: the flip of “Popeye the Hitchhiker.” That was two dances in one song, The Popeye and the Hitch Hike. But it was the Limbo that caught fire, and the record peaked at #2, kept out of the top spot by “Telstar.”

But like “Telstar” and other hits in our Chartcrush 1962 top ten we’re counting down this hour, don’t look for it on Billboard‘s year-end ranking because their cutoff week for the ’62 chart year was October 27. Everything after that? Ignored in their ranking. At Chartcrush with the benefit of hindsight and not having to get an issue out by New Years, we get to count every song’s entire chart run and rank it just one year, and that year is the calendar year it scored the most points. Songs never fall through the cracks here on Chartcrush!

#6 The 4 SeasonsSherry

And neither do whole groups, like the year’s top chart debut, who broke through in the Fall and scored two back-to-back #1’s before the end of the year. But neither of those hits is in the top ten on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100: the second because it was after the October 27 chart year cutoff, but the first, which is our #6 song, because despite its five weeks at #1, lesser hits with more weeks on the chart outranked it.

Remember, Billboard wasn’t awarding those #1 bonus points yet in 1962, so under their simple inverse point method, for example, ten weeks at #50 got the same number of points as five at #1. Incredible that it took Billboard until 1967 to address that!

Anyway, they were one of two Vocal Harmony Groups from opposite coasts that burst onto the scene simultaneously in the Fall. California’s Beach Boys, and the “Jersey Boys” (the title of their Tony-winning jukebox musical that ran on Broadway for 12 years in the ’00s and ’10s). That’s right, The 4 Seasons! Their breakthrough, “Sherry.”

Frankie Valli there with his trademark powerhouse falsetto on The 4 Seasons’ “Sherry,” the #6 song of 1962 here on the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. #1 in just its fourth week on the Hot100; only a handful of non-American Idol winners in chart history can say that about their debut singles!

Initially called “Jackie” for First Lady Jackie Kennedy, the song inspired by Bruce Channel’s #1 “Hey! Baby” from earlier in ’62 evolved first into “Terri,” then “Sherry” after the daughter of big-time New York DJ Jack Spector, Songwriter Bob Gaudio’s best bud.

Despite being dwarfed on the charts in 1962, The Beach Boys eventually caught up and surpassed The 4 Seasons in later years to become ’62’s biggest debut looking at career chart points, but The 4 Seasons scored two #1s right out of the gate in ’62, and a third in early ’63, “Walk like a Man.” We’ll be hearing that second 1962 hit here in a few minutes.

#5 Joey Dee & The StarlitersPeppermint Twist, Part 1

But first, another group of Jersey boys that just happened to be playing at the Peppermint Lounge the weekend in October of ’61 that New York society columnists spotted British actress Merle Oberon and Russian expat Prince Serge Oblinski there Twistin’ the night away.

The sighting hit the papers the next day, and that night at the Peppermint Lounge, the NYPD needed barricades and mounted police for crowd control. Which remained the situation on West 45th Street between Sixth and Broadway throughout all of ’62 as 30 other “Twist” records came and went from the charts. Even Frank Sinatra jumped on the bandwagon with “Ev’rybody’s Twistin’.”

But besides Chubby Checker’s original, the only other that topped the chart was the one that replaced it at #1 for three weeks in January and February, by our lucky combo from Jersey, who were immediately promoted to house band at the Peppermint. Obviously!

They wrote and cut the song as a tribute to the Peppermint and the Twist craze, along with a whole album titled, what else? Doin’ the Twist at the Peppermint Lounge, which got all the way to #2 on the album chart at a time when albums by Rockers almost never cracked the top ten. At #5 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1962 it’s Joey Dee & The Starliters’ “Peppermint Twist.”

Joey Dee & The Starliters’ “Peppermint Twist,” the #5 song of 1962 by our reckoning here at the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Billboard had it all the way down at #25, not counting the first six weeks of its chart run in 1961 and not awarding those bonus points for its three weeks at #1.

The group’s namesake Joey Dee co-wrote “The Peppermint Twist,” but the Lead Singer is not Dee; it’s bandmate Dave Brigati, whose kid brother Eddie went on to co-found The Young Rascals with Felix Cavaliere in 1965. Small world!

As for Dee & The Starlighters, they made the top ten one more time with a frantic, live cover of “Shout” that even got The Isley Brothers’ 1958 original back on the charts in mid-’62 and inspired their new top 20 hit “Twist and Shout.” That, of course, became a centerpiece of The Beatles’ early repertoire.

#4 Bobby VintonRoses Are Red (My Love)

Well we’re gonna slow things down considerably for our #4 hit, which is a last-ditch “hail Mary” by a guy from the same Pittsburgh suburb that produced Perry Como, whose dream of hosting a Teen version of the Lawrence Welk Show on TV seemed doomed after his 1961 Young Man with a Big Band album and its singles failed to connect.

But at the meeting where his label was about to drop him he noticed two more singles on his contract, so in desperation he grabbed one of the demos there on the table, cut a version in a Teen Idol style jettisoning the whole Bandleader thing, and promoted the hell out of it. He even bought a thousand copies himself for distribution to DJs with, get this, a red rose! Apparently, that wasn’t considered Payola!

And it worked. The record was #1 for four weeks in the Summer and the #4 song of 1962 both on Billboard and our Chartcrush rankings, one of just two songs in our top ten that line up with Billboard‘s ranking. It’s Bobby Vinton’s “Roses Are Red (My Love).”

Teen Idols weren’t invented in the Early ’60s. Emotive Crooner Johnnie Ray pioneered the look and style in the early ’50s. But after the Payola scandal froze out edgier sounds on the radio, labels were on the lookout for Male avatars of style who had just enough James Dean swagger to get the Teen girls a-crushin’ and a-swoonin’, but who in real life were the opposite of Rockers out riding fast cars and motorcycles, doing scandalous dance moves on TV and generating shocking headlines. Teen Idols like Ricky Nelson, Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon, Fabian and the Bobbies: Rydell, Vee, Darin, and, reluctantly, Vinton, whose first hit “Roses Are Red (My Love)” we just heard at #4.

Bobby Vinton was all the way to the zero-swagger end of the Teen Idol spectrum, but he made up for it with business smarts, professionalism and sheer force of will. After charting nearly 40 more hits over the next decade-plus, he finally realized that dream of hosting his own TV show. The Bobby Vinton Show aired on TV from ’75 to ’78.

#3 The 4 SeasonsBig Girls Don’t Cry

Del Shannon’s “Runaway” not only whet the public’s appetite for weird electronic keyboards like on “Telstar;” it also paved the way for powerhouse falsetto leads, along with Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs’ #1 hit from 1960, “Stay.” And Dion & The Belmonts with their snappy Pop arrangements and harmonies: next level Doo-Wop!

Well, the group at #3 who we’ve already heard in our countdown didn’t have any strange keyboards, but they did have snappy arrangements and intricate harmonies, and they sure took that falsetto to the bank! We heard their breakthrough “Sherry” back at #6; here again, The 4 Seasons: their second #1, also for five weeks and the #3 song of 1962 here on the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, “Big Girls Don’t Cry.”

“Big Girls Don’t Cry,” Frankie Valli’s piercing falsetto along with that cleverly contrasting doofus voice by Bass Singer Nick Massi, another Four Seasons trademark also on their first #1 “Sherry” we heard back at #6.

“Big Girls,” the bigger hit, #3 on our Chartcrush ’62 Countdown, but it didn’t make Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 at all because all but its first two weeks on the chart were after their October 27 chart year cutoff. If Billboard had been factoring weeks after the cutoff into the following year like it started doing in 1972, “Big Girls” would’ve been one of 1963’s top hits.

As depicted in their jukebox musical Jersey Boys, The 4 Seasons’ road to stardom was a long one. Three of the guys had been in a ’50s group called The 4 Lovers, who were on RCA and even played Ed Sullivan, but nothing charted so RCA cut them loose and the hitmaking lineup didn’t come together until 1960, when none other than future Actor Joe Pesci, their friend, introduced them to Bob Gaudio, whose ’50s group The Royal Teens had scored a hit. “Short Shorts,” #4 in 1958, then resurrected in the ’80s for a ubiquitous Clio-winning ad for Nair, the hair removal lotion.

Gaudio wrote most of The 4 Seasons hits including “Sherry” and “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” along with Producer Bob Crewe.

#2 Ray CharlesI Can’t Stop Loving You

So in the Summer of ’62 there were two million-selling singles after three years of tanking sales due to Payola fallout, but also the LP surge from stereo and hi-fi. Summer, typically the doldrums for single sales, so the industry took notice.

One of the million-sellers was Bobby Vinton’s “Roses Are Red,” which was only available on a single ’til after it hit #1, but the other, our #2 song, was on an album, and that album was #1 all Summer, 14 weeks, in addition to the single selling a million.

He’s the acknowledged inventor of Soul music, but also a big Country-Western fan, and in 1962 he went all-in on Country. That album was Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, and the single was his reinterpretation of a 1958 hit by Country legend Don Gibson. It’s Ray Charles with “I Can’t Stop Loving You.”

Ray Charles’ “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” #1 for five weeks and the #2 song of the year as we count down the top ten from 1962 here on this week’s Chartcrush. It was also Billboard‘s #2 Hot100 hit of the year, and despite being a Country song, #1 on the R&B chart for ten weeks.

Connie Francis also dove head-first into Country earlier in ’62 and scored what turned out to be her last #1: “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You.”

#1 Chubby CheckerThe Twist

Well we’re down to our #1 song, and I’m not really sure what else to say since I’ve been talking about it since the top of the show: the centerpiece of 1962 Pop and the only record in history to get to #1 in two separate runs on the Hot100. That after it caught on with adults in late 1961 once gossip writers started catching celebrities slumming at New York’s Peppermint Lounge doing the dance.

It was a Teen sensation in 1960 after he did it on American Bandstand; then again for two weeks in January 1962 after dropping off the chart for almost all of ’61: Chubby Checker’s “The Twist.”

So Billboard has “The Twist” at #9 on its year-end ranking for 1962 because they didn’t count the first seven weeks of its historic second chart run in late 1961. Again, at Chartcrush, we count every song’s full chart run and rank it in the year it earned the most points, so “The Twist” takes its no-brainer place as 1962’s top hit.

If you’re wondering, we consider chart runs “separate” if they have at least six months off the chart in between. And besides Christmas hits, and in the streaming era, songs that chart again after an artist’s death like Whitney Houston, Prince and Juice WRLD, only three records besides “The Twist” have made the top ten in separate runs:

Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me,” #4 in 1961 when it first came out, and then #9 in 1987 when it was the title song of the movie Stand by Me.

Bobby (Boris) Pickett’s 1962 Halloween #1 “Monster Mash” peaked again at #10 when it was reissued in the Summer of 1973.

And Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” #9 in 1976 and then #2 in 1992 when it was in the Wayne’s World soundtrack shortly after Freddie Mercury’s death.

And that’s it!

Bonus

Well there you have ’em, the real top ten songs of 1962. But in deference to Billboard despite their flawed ranking methodology in ’62, before we sign off we want to take a look at the songs that they had in their top ten for ’62,  but weren’t in our countdown. There were five of ’em.

#43 The SensationsLet Me In

At #8 they had a one-hit Doo Wop group out of Philly, The Sensations.

Sensations Singer Yvonne Mills Baker also wrote that song, “Let Me In,” Billboard‘s #8 song of 1962; #43 on our Chartcrush ranking: one of the first all-Male groups to add a Female Lead Singer.

#22 Little EvaThe Loco-Motion

We heard three dance craze records in our countdown, Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” and “Limbo Rock” and Joey Dee & The Starliters’ “Peppermint Twist.” Of those, Billboard‘s year-end top ten only had “The Twist” at #9. But they had two different ones, including their #7 song, #22 on our Chartcrush ranking, Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion.”

Husband-and-wife Brill Building Songsmiths Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote “The Loco-Motion” as the follow-up to another Singer’s dance craze record, but she passed so they gave it to their 16-year-old babysitter, and Little Eva Boyd went from making $35 a week to earning a cool $30 grand as a Pop star. She scored three more charting singles in ’62 and ’63, all written by Goffin and King.

#11 Shelley FabaresJohnny Angel

At #6 as we continue our look at the songs that made Billboard‘s year-end top ten but not our Chartcrush top ten we counted down this hour, Billboard had the record by the Teen daughter in TV’s Donna Reed Show, actress Shelly Fabares. It shot to #1 after she sang it in an episode, about a girl’s hopeless crush on a boy who doesn’t know she exists, “Johnny Angel.”

Shelly Fabares’ “Johnny Angel” just misses our Chartcrush Top Ten at #11. Fabares remained a big star on TV and movies into the ’90s but her Singing career began and ended with “Johnny Angel” and its sequel “Johnny Loves Me” a couple months later.

#17 David Rose & His OrchestraThe Stripper

Billboard‘s 1962 year-end top ten also had two instrumentals: their #1 song, Acker Bilk’s “Stranger on the Shore” (#8 on our ranking), but instead of “Telstar” which was too late in the year to factor, at #5, they had… “The Stripper.”

Legend has it that a young, Male office assistant was sent down to the tape vault to grab an unreleased recording by David Rose & His Orchestra to slap on the B-side of their new Easy Listening version of the standard “Ebb Tide,” and he returned with “The Stripper,” recorded in 1958. And it was delighted young, Male Top40 DJs who completely ignored “Ebb Tide” and instead played the B-side to death in the Summer of ’62, making “The Stripper” Billboard‘s #5 hit of the year. Our Chartcrush ranking puts it at #17.

#14 Dee Dee SharpMashed Potato Time

And finally, Billboard‘s #3 song of 1962 didn’t make our top ten. It had lots of weeks in the Top 40 so it got a longevity boost in Billboard. But it never got to #1, so it lands at #14 when songs that did get their bonus points. It’s the hit that Goffin and King wrote “The Loco-Motion” as a follow up for: Dee Dee Sharp’s “Mashed Potato Time.”

The Mashed Potato, the biggest Teen dance obsession of ’62 while mom and dad were out discovering the two-year-old Twist. But, wait, The Mashed Potato dance move was older than the Twist. James Brown came up with it in ’59!

Oh, and fun fact: “The Monster Mash” is the same dance as the Mashed Potato. Just add Frankenstein-style zombie gestures with your arms and hands!

So 1962, an interesting year in chart history! I hope you enjoyed our look back here on the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi, and if you did and want more, go check out our website, chartcrush.com where you can listen again to the podcast version on Spotify,  follow along with a written transcript and check out spiffy extras like our full Top100 chart and interactive line graph of the top ten songs. We do that for every year we count down, and we count down a different one every week on this show, ’40s to the present, so check it out, again chartcrush.com, and be sure and tune in next week, same station and time, for another edition of Chartcrush.

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