Yesterday Once More

24 Jun 2015

Speechless

Hi Listeners,

You won’t hear any words on ‘Yesterday Once More’ this week. Well, you will hear Mossy and me prattling away as usual but the songs will be speechless! That’s right – we are presenting a whole program of instrumental hits. The phenomenon of ‘instrumental hits’ is unknown today and had its heyday in the fifties and sixties. The last instrumental hit to reach #1 in the US was ‘Miami Vice Theme’ by Jan Hammer in 1985 and the last top ten instrumental hit was ‘Sadness’ by Enigma in 1991.

We have selected an array of different types of instrumental hits for the program. During the rock era there were popular guitarists like Duane Eddy (Rebel Rouser) and in Melbourne, The Thunderbirds (New Orleans Beat) as well as drum soloists like Sandy Nelson and pianists such as Bent Fabric (Alley Cat) and Horst Jankowski (A Walk In The Black Forest). Probably the most successful instrumental group of the sixties was the English group The Shadows (The Savage) who had a string of hits during that era. Orchestras also routinely recorded instrumental tunes that became huge hits such as Les Baxter Orchestra’s ‘Poor People In Paris’ and Henry Mancini’s ‘Baby Elephant Walk’. Themes from television and movies often rated highly in the charts – ‘The Hustle’ by Van McCoy and ‘March From The River Kwai’ by the Mitch Miller orchestra are two examples of this. Other interesting tunes are Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’ which was the first jazz instrumental to hit the charts and our own Denvermen with the surf classic ‘Surfside’.

So tune in and listen to the variety of instrumental hits that once proliferated on our charts.

Playlist