Countdown: 60-51.

60. You Turn Me On (I’m a Radio) - Joni Mitchell. Two and a half minutes of ‘did I really hear that?’ by precociously talented vocal stylist. ‘I envied her easy conversational phrasing that turned everyday banter into a new kind of song lyric.’ - Jimmy Webb

59. Crazy on You - Heart. Jawdropping 4 minute 53 second guitar master class.

58. For Your Love - Yardbirds. Eric Clapton didn’t like the commercial bent of this song, so he walked out of the band with Jeff Beck replacing him.

57. High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me) - Frankie Laine. There’s more drama going on in Laine’s version of the 1951 movie soundtrack than in the movie itself.

56. Operator - Jim Croce. Yet another tragic telephone call - see nos. 64 and 79.

55. Year of the Cat - Al Stewart. Storyteller Stewart accurately described his songs as aural cinema. Reviewed in this blog on 4/9/19 - see archive.

54. Tuesday Afternoon - Moody Blues. If Al Stewart's songs were aural cinema, the Moody Blues made cinematic sound, if that makes any sense. This track - and much of the Moody Blues opus - transcended progressive rock into some new galaxy of choral electro-baroque.

53. Twisterella - Ride. Possibly one of the sweetest, smoothest pop songs ever recorded, and it's completely unknown. One day in 1992 Ted Crystal, bass player of garage/surf/rockabilly band Beware! Black Holes (with whom I worked at Grey Advertising) handed me a compact cassette while we were working on a catalogue page of automotive components for Autobarn. Since then, track 2 of that compact cassette, Going Blank Again, remains the only song that never tires with repeated playing.

53. Lonesome Whistle - Charlie Feathers. Dawdle-paced rockabilly bluesman chewed up the Hank Williams song and spat it out amongst the shards of guitar note lying around on the floor.

52. (I'm) Stranded - Saints. By the mid-'70s TSOP had morphed into a bastard crossbreed. Into the disco detritus the Saints launched a guitar-laced RPG, directed not at the diamond-encrusted disco artists but at the record-buying public who played Disco Duck at their Saturday night parties. They called it punk but that was just a label: this was Chuck Berry redux. About time.

51. Someday We'll Be Together - Diana Ross with Johnny Bristol, but released as the Supremes who sang on the B-side. This song closed the 1960s, topping the Billboard chart in the final survey of 1969. Reverberating late-Motown rhythm and blues/soul fusion: the loveliest sound of them all.