Give Me Another Ticket

Song 315: This week the playlist is again a good place to find The Letter, this time by The Arbors, written by Wayne Carson Thompson. A little over a year after last week’s track had its run at the top of the charts, another version of the same song appeared on the airwaves and started climbing up the top 40. While the current Wickipedia listing characterizes this version as easy listening, it didn’t strike me that way when I was hearing it back in early ’69, particularly with its forceful dynamics and powerful stacked vocals, and I still don’t hear it as easy listening, even though it made that chart as well as the others. I especially liked the way this group took such a well-known cut and rearranged it so that it sounded totally different and yet quite recognizable. During my HS days, I got most of my singles from my best friend’s younger brother, who sold me his 45s for a quarter each when he got tired of hearing them, but for this one, I actually put out the 69 cents plus tax to get it new at Kmart, and had it spinning on the turntable that same evening. A few week earlier, I bought one other single new at Kmart, that being Hey Jude (Song 23), and while I had hoped to get through the line quickly without my parents noticing that I was buying one of those devilish rock and roll records, my father came up to me as I waited in line, asking me if I knew the whereabouts of my younger brother. I felt like I’d just gotten caught, and I expected to hear him say, “What are you buying?” Instead, he took off in search of his youngest son, and I breathed a sigh of relief. When I bought this single a few weeks later, I made it through the check-out without the parents noticing my purchase, and I kept it artfully hidden on the journey back to the house, so that time around, I added another 45 to the collection without my family knowing that I had done so.