#54: The Mt. Rushmore Series

This iteration of my long-running Mt. Rushmore series was inspired by a recent comment I received when I solicited help for my next music course. My March 29th post entitled Cover Me prompted an anonymous reader to suggest Every Time You Go Away, a great song written by Darryl Hall in 1980 and made famous by Paul Young in 1985. Presto - My newest mountain began forming in my addled brain. By the time I learned Paul Young was not a one-hit wonder - turns out he had another big hit, a cover of the Chi-Lites Oh Girl - construction on my monument had already begun.

So, if you had to select just four one-hit wonders to put on a musical Mt. Rushmore, which would you choose? A one-hit wonder is an artist who had only one single that reached the top forty over an entire career. Apologies for the baby boomer whiff coming off my monument. Alphabetically ...

1.) Angel Of The Morning (1968) by Merrilee Rush & the Turnabouts - Written by Chip Taylor (who also wrote, infamously, Wild Thing) this simple tune holds up beautifully more than 50 years later.

2.) Baby It's You (1969) by Smith - Both the Shirelles and the Beatles had a hit with this song before the band Smith (not to be confused with the Smiths) tore it up in 1969, never to be heard from again. Gayle McCormick's scorching vocal immortalized this atypical Burt Bacharach composition.

3.) Play That Funky Music (1976) by Wild Cherry - If you can keep your feet from tapping and your face from smiling while listening to this classic, I'd suggest checking your pulse.

4.) Union Man (1974) by the Cate Brothers - Though the Cate Brothers never made the top forty again, this winner cracked the top twenty. Unfortunately, this tune gets less airplay nowadays than the other three on my mountain. Too bad; it has energy and attitude to spare and those guitars - whew!

I'm looking forward to hearing which one-hit wonders you'd enshrine.