When you think of rock music that came out of the San Francisco Bay Area in the ’60s, your mind undoubtedly goes first to albums: Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow, Sly and the Family Stone’s Stand, Santana’s groundbreaking debut, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s three 1969 best-sellers, etc. Singles aimed at Top 40 radio were not the top priority once the San Francisco music scene became a national phenomenon in the latter years of that heady decade—it was all about the LP (and the live concert, but that’s another story).
That doesn’t mean there weren’t singles being recorded in the Bay Area though, some of them predating the explosion. Some became hits, others did not, but many are worth a fresh listen regardless of how they were accepted at the time. Here are a dozen.
Bobby Freeman—“C’mon and Swim”
Bobby Freeman was born in, and spent most of his life living in, the Bay Area. He broke in 1958 with his own composition, “Do You Want to Dance,” which reached #5 in Billboard and would later be covered by the Beach Boys, the Ramones, the Mamas and the Papas and others. Only three months later, Freeman followed it up with a strong rocker, “Betty Lou Got a New Pair of Shoes,” which topped out at #37. After that, he went back into the shadows until 1964 when, at the height of Beatlemania, he bounded back with another raucous dance fave, “C’mon and Swim,” co-authored by Thomas Coman and Sylvester Stewart, whose name, you will soon see, shows up a few more times in this story. Released on the San Francisco-based Autumn Records—owned by KYA disc jockeys Tom Donahue and Bobby Mitchel—Freeman’s last big hit landed him back at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Marty Balin—“I Specialize in Love”
Three years before he would co-found Jefferson Airplane, Marty Balin was an aspiring solo singer in the Gene Pitney mode who had previously performed musical theater but longed to make it as a rock and roller. While working as a session vocalist in L.A., he came to the attention of arranger Jimmie Haskell, who gave him three songs to record. The former Martyn Buchwald also cut a song he’d written, “I Specialize in Love.” The four pop tunes, on which Balin’s voice already boasted the soulfulness and smoothness he’d bring to the Airplane, were released on a pair of singles by Challenge Records but went nowhere. Not to worry—he’d be back…