45 Singles You Just Had to Buy

My era, early 60’s, only girls bought 45’s, to play at basement dance/make out parties on small portable changers with a built in single speaker, flip over needle, Penny or Nickle taped on top to stay in the groove.

I inherited a bunch of Jazz 45’s, washed them, play on my main system, some sound darn good. They usually have a few songs each side.

What an interesting thought provoking post. In my nearly 69 years on Earth, I have only purchased one single, America by the Nice (Keith Emerson’s band prior to forming ELP). Wonderful music I can still hear playing in my head, what a great memory from my early teen years.

Walter Egan "Magnet & Steel"

Wikipedia reports that the Johnny Horton version of Battle of New Orleans was the hit, thus the one that put it in our consciousness. I arrest my case.😎

When I was young with no capacity for downloading individual songs, I loved going to the record stores and scoring old 45s of songs I really liked but by artists whose full LPs I had no interest in owning. Used CDs back then were still likely to be more expensive than an old 45, buying a whole CD for 1 song was not my interest, and shopping for old 45s was just…fun. Especially if they came with the original picture sleeve.
So many:

“96 Tears” - ? and the Mysterians
”Alone Again, Naturally” - Gilbert O’Sullivan
”Reminiscing” - Little River Band
“Voices Carry” - ‘Til Tuesday
“Eyes Without a Face” - Billy Idol
“Just the Two of Us” - Grover Washington Jr./Bill Withers

to name a few off the top of my head.

That kind of stuff was my much-more-fun version of plucking select songs from iTunes. I love being able to go and nab these single songs with ease now (so many great artists have several weak albums but each LP has 1 or 2 killer gems on them that aren’t available on comps), but my enjoyment of that process was rich, and my ignorance as to how poor the sound quality was on the majority of those 45s was bliss.