Last week saw the death of Levon Helm, one time drummer and singer with The Band, who were much more than Bob Dylan’s one-time backing band.

I’ve already posted the Band’s version of The Weight, their second biggest UK hit. Their biggest, curiously, was Rag Mama Rag.

Levon took lead vocal on this one, though.

Levon Helm: 26/5/1940-19/4/2012. So it goes.

Speaking of Badfinger, this song of theirs only just creeps in to this category as it was released in the UK in December 1969.

Badfinger were one of the (few?) successes of the Beatles’ Apple label. The only other one I can recall was Mary Hopkin.

For Davy Jones.

It was only after I’d gone to bed on Wednesday that I realised that this song might have suited the mood better.

“Today there is no day or night,
Today there is no dark or light,
Today there is no black or white,
Only shades of gray.”

Shades of Gray was written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil whose list of song-writing credits is mightily impressive.

I’ve just been listening to an iPlayer rerun of last Saturday’s Sounds of the Sixties where they gave a run out to Joe South’s Games People Play which I featured on Friday on my Mind a couple of weeks ago. Brian Matthew’s intro to it said Joe sang all the vocal parts and played all the instruments himself – as well as writing it.

Talented guy.

This is one of those sixties songs that you never hear much nowadays.

I suppose it was a protest song, of sorts.

South also wrote Walk A Mile In My Shoes which was a hit for Elvis in 1970.

Another of his songs was Hush which I remember Deep Purple released as their first single.

South’s website is here. If you click on the link it belts out Games People Play very loudly.

Speaking of The Troggs, this was the first of their singles that I bought. Almost the first single I ever bought, it being two or so years since the previous one.

An example of the group’s more tender tendency.

This song has been recorded many times over. The most famous of these is probably the one that gave Jimi Hendrix his first hit but I also know it from Love’s eponymous first LP. [See also Friday On My Mind 3, Alone Again Or. Btw I noticed on checking that the original video I featured there has been withdrawn so I have updated it.]

Jarvis Cocker has been playing various versions of Hey Joe on his BBC 6 Music Sunday Service programme (4–6 pm) roughly every month. The one he played last Sunday (New Year’s Day) surprised me as the performing artists Kasenetz Katz Singing Orchestral Circus are probably more widely known for the “bubblegum” hit Quick Joey Small. I had certainly not paid them more attention than that. Their Hey Joe is much better than I would have thought.

I’ve finally found an embeddable clip of Chicory Tip’s Excuse Me Baby, the original version of which I featured over two years ago.

Listening to it now, with its hints of Trad Jazz, I understand why my brother liked this. (See my Friday on my Mind category.)

Speaking of Jeff Lynne, his first brush with fame came with The Move’s Birmingham contemporaries The Idle Race.

One of my schoolmates raved about The Skeleton And The Roundabout though it didn’t trouble the charts much; and nor did other Idle Race tracks.

If you listen closely you’ll hear that the singer actually pronounces the unusual (for a song’s title) word in the song’s title “skelington.”

The Move was of course Roy Wood’s (and Bev Bevan’s) first brush with fame. Not content with rattling out some of the mid 60s best pop songs Roy then went on to found ELO with Jeff Lynne but quickly tired of that and formed Wizzard.

This clip (I believe from French or German TV) certainly sounds live but isn’t well synched.