Song Of The Day 11/15/2015: Lowell Fulsom – “Make a Little Love”

The Hidden '60s, Part 3 – At last we’ve reached the final week-long installment of The Hidden ’60s, in which I feature songs that made the Billboard Hot 100 chart but peaked no higher than #41. Finally, the end. Looking at my tricked-out spreadsheet I see that I auditioned a grand total of 1,916 songs for this damn thing, all to feature only 21 Songs Of The Day and roughy another 110–120 across four mixtapes (two published, two pending). Why do I do this? Because absolutely nobody else in the world did, and Brenda’s too busy with her “empowerment coaching” to help.

The last, third part of the series focuses on songs from 1967 to 1969. I learned a lot about the pop music landscape in that time. #1: The rhythm & blues and soul music was even more stellar than I remembered it. #2: Vietnam ticked off a lot of pop artists. #3: Vietnam protestors ticked off a lot of country artists. #4: Pop groups picked up a lot of lessons from hearing the Beatles and not all of them were the right ones. And #5: 1969 wasn’t a great year for the pop charts. Lots of self-sanctimony and marching drums. You’re so lucky I weeded this out for you. Ha ha, I said “weed.”

All right, enough of my yappin’, let’s boogie. Bluesman Lowell Fulsom is up first. His actual name was Lowell Fulson, but a secretary at Kent Records accidentally typed his name as Fulsom, and for unspecified reasons the label insisted he record under the mistaken name for a while. Printing costs, I'm guessing. Fulson/Fulsom wrote the comical song “Tramp,” popularized by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas. “Make a Little Love” (#97, 1967) was first made familiar to me via Alex Chilton’s 1987 version from the album High Priest. If you ever wondered whether fully grown men got manicures and facials, you’re about to find out. I do not know, nor could I find out, what exactly “the $50 process” is, but I believe it involves pomade.