Jul 13, 2014 5 min read

In 1964, the song of the summer was “A Hard Day’s Night” – no matter that “the song of summer” craze wasn’t in existence yet, or that another single, “Chapel of Love,” actually topped the pop charts a week longer than “A Hard Day’s Night.”

It didn’t even matter that at least two songs, Barbra Streisand’s “People” and the Beach Boys’ “I Get Around,” spanned the entire summer, while “A Hard Day’s Night” didn’t make much noise until mid-July.

No, what mattered most was that in the summer of 1964, the Beatles established themselves as playmakers. After six months of dominating the airwaves, the Beatles were obviously going to get a lot of radio spins for “A Hard Day’s Night.” But radio stations took it a step further by playing cuts from Beatles albums – and that never happened on AM radio before. The Beatles’ fan base began to expand beyond female teens to males and females of all ages. Even the most skeptical film critics jumped on “A Hard Day’s Night” bandwagon.

On this day 50 years ago, “A Hard Day’s Night” was the No. 1 song in this area, even though it had yet to debut on the national charts. The top 100 was clogged with British acts riding the Beatles’ coattails: Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Dave Clark Five, Peter and Gordon, Billy J. Kramer and the Searchers among them. And just as the Beatles’ spring hit, “Love Me Do,” was finally beginning to fade, a Boston Pops version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was moving on up the charts.

And yet, the often-cited domination of British invasion acts that summer simply wasn’t true. Most music-minded Americans adhere to the belief that the Beatles and company obliterated any music born in the USA in 1964. The Brits obliterated nothing. They merely pushed music along, albeit at a faster clip than some would have liked.

The misconception, I think, comes from that summer – the last week of June to be exact. That week, Peter and Gordon’s “World without Love” hit No. 1 just as Bobby Rydell’s virtually identical version of the same song dropped off the charts after peaking at No. 80. The perception was that British newcomers delivered a knockout punch to one of America’s iconic teen idols. It was personified by the fact that Rydell’s pop chart prowess then pretty much ended, as it did for many contemporaries, including Bobby Vee, Dion, Gene Pitney, Ricky Nelson and Chubby Checker

But wait. Perhaps the creative juices of those artists simply went dry. Other male artists, with Canonsburg’s Bobby Vinton as a prime example, fared extremely well post-British invasion. For every Rydell, Vee and Dion that faded, another took its place. Bobby Goldsboro, Johnny Rivers and Ronnie Dove became ’60s mainstays.

The Beatles also didn’t oust all-American bands. There simply weren’t that many around at the time. And one of the few in existence – the Beach Boys – delivered some of their finest work after 1964.

It’s also not true that the Brits blasted doo-wop/rhythm and blues into oblivion. Except in this area, where doo-wop got a free pass well into the late ’60s, the genre was already in a tailspin. It wasn’t Mersey, but Motown, that inflicted the mortal wound. And doo-wop groups that modernized their sound – notably the Drifters, Four Seasons and Impressions – blended in quite nicely during the summer of ’64, with “Under the Boardwalk,” “Rag Doll” and “Keep on Pushing,” respectively.

Still, the summer of “A Hard Days Night” nailed the coffin for easy listening music.

Or did it?

The same summer that rocked with the Beatles also was saturated with “adult pop” sounds, including “The Girl from Ipanema,” “Somewhere My Love,” the aforementioned “People” and Dean Martin’s “Everybody Loves Somebody,” which, it should be mentioned, knocked “A Hard Day’s Night” out of the No. 1 position. Top 40 continued to support Dino, Streisand, Al Martino, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Andy Williams for the remainder of that decade – any beyond.

If any one entity is responsible for tagging the British invasion as “changing music forever,” it is radio. Disc jockeys accented British acts because their music was fresh; they created British countdowns because they appealed to an advertiser-friendly audience. Moreover, the music was creatively superior to the multitude of similar-sounding dance hits that had dominated from 1961 to 1963 (think disco from 1977 to 1979). A change of some kind was overdue.

Ultimately, though, Top 40 radio in 1964 was the same as it had been since 1955: a blend of genres. The Beatles and company didn’t change that. They merely injected it with a much-needed energy boost. Three summers later – in 1967 – the Beatles did indeed change pop music forever.

But that’s a tune for another time.

1. “A Hard Days Night” – The Beatles

2. “Rag Doll” – The Four Seasons

3. “Keep on Pushing” – The Impressions

4. “I Get Around” – Beach Boys

5. “Everybody Loves Somebody” – Dean Martin

6. “Can’t You See That She’s Mine” – Dave Clark Five

7. “Under the Boardwalk” – The Drifters

8. “Girl From Ipanema” – Getz/Gilberto

9. “Memphis” – Johnny Rivers

10. “People” – Barbra Streisand

Source: KQV, Pittsburgh survey