Bluebirds over the Mountain

"Bluebirds over the Mountain"
Single by The Beach Boys
from the album 20/20
B-side "Never Learn Not to Love"
Released December 2, 1968
Format Vinyl
Recorded September 29, 1967; November 14, 1968
Genre Hard rock[1]
Length 2:51
Label Capitol
Writer(s) Ersel Hickey
Producer(s)
The Beach Boys singles chronology
"Do It Again"
(1968)
"Bluebirds over the Mountain"
(1968)
"I Can Hear Music"
(1969)

"Bluebirds over the Mountain" is a song written and recorded in 1958 by Ersel Hickey, later covered by artists such as The Beach Boys and Ritchie Valens.

Hickey's original recording of the song peaked at #75 on the Billboard pop chart and #39 on the Cash Box chart. Ritchie Valens' cover version was released on his eponymous 1959 album following his death. A 1962 recording by The Echoes hit #112 on Billboard's Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles survey and was a top 20 hit on Chicago's WLS.[2]

The Beach Boys version

"Bluebirds over the Mountain" was covered by The Beach Boys and released as a single on December 2, 1968 with the B-side "Never Learn Not to Love".[3] The song features Mike Love on lead vocals and it also features Ed Carter on guitar.

The single peaked at #61 on the Billboard pop chart in the United States, #53 in Canada's RPM chart, #33 in the United Kingdom and #9 in the Netherlands. It reached #36 on the Record World US national Top 40 and was most popular on playlists in a southwestern circle of centers in Los Angeles, San Diego, Fresno, and Phoenix, just below the top 10 (just outside top 20 in San Francisco); similarly in midwestern cities Columbus, Indianapolis, Madison, the Twin Cities, and Detroit; and averaging slightly lower in the top 20 across Boston-Springfield, Detroit, and into the South at Memphis and Birmingham. It was subsequently included on the group's 1969 album 20/20.

The "B-Side" of this single, "Never Learn Not to Love", was written by infamous cult leader and murder instigator Charles Manson. Dennis Wilson was friends with Manson for a brief period of time prior to the "Tate-LaBianca Murders" as they would later be referred to.

Other covers

References

  1. "Lindsay Planer review". Allmusic. Retrieved 2011-04-29.
  2. WLS Silver Dollar Survey, November 17, 1962
  3. Badman, Keith. The Beach Boys. The Definitive Diary of America's Greatest Band: On Stage and in the Studio Backbeat Books, San Francisco, California, 2004. ISBN 0-87930-818-4 p. 232
  4. Dick and Dee Dee, Young and in Love Retrieved May 2, 2015


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