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 | ||||
| ||||
"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
- Dick and Dee Dee released a version of the song on their 1963 album, Young and in Love.[4]
References
- ↑ "Lindsay Planer review". Allmusic. Retrieved 2011-04-29.
- ↑ WLS Silver Dollar Survey, November 17, 1962
- ↑ 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
- ↑ Dick and Dee Dee, Young and in Love Retrieved May 2, 2015
