Continuing our week of "ye`-ye`practitioners of the 1960's; Jacqueline Taieb. Though probably less known than the likes of Francoise Hardy and France Gall, Taieb was nonetheless a very popular singer in the Ye`-Ye` tradition even if it was for a short time. Achieving a goodly degree of popularity from 1966-1970, Taieb decided to put her career on hold and focus all her attention on going back to school. She returned to singing in 1988.

Tonight's track is one of her hits from 1967. Le Coeur Au Bout Des Doigts was a good sized hit for her and a follow up to her debut smash 7 Hueres du Matin .

The history of Pop music fairly overflows with perplexities. Bands that should have made it, didn't. Bands that had no reason to exist became wildly popular. Bands with infinite promise that, for whatever reason, never made it out of the starting gate. Bands that just got lost in the shuffle.

It's not clear why a band like The Smoke never managed to secure a licensing deal with a U.S. label, but were relegated to cult status for almost their entire existence. True, their first single, My Friend Jack, became something of an underground legend, based on the fact that it was banned from the start because of it's alleged drug reference. And there were also several other bands calling themselves The Smoke, including a one-off band put together by West Coast wunderkind Michael Lloyd. But those didn't seem like good enough reasons to just ignore the band altogether.

But like I said, the history of Pop Music is no stranger to whims and perplexities.

Tonight's track, It Could Be Wonderful, issued in 1968, was one of a handful of singles that made their way into the hands of collectors and fans throughout the UK and Europe, where they enjoyed a modicum of popularity.

Luckily, because of their cult status, The Smoke have been enjoying a new-found popularity the past several years, due in large part to reissues of their completely rare singles and sessions.

Pop Music may be vague and perplexing, but fortunately it doesn't forget.

I admit, straight up, that I was never a fan of Disco. To me, it was when Pop Music took a bland turn. It felt over-produced, assembly-line and generic.

That said, there was a lot of talent that came out of that genre. And the one who kicked it all off was Donna Summer. Summer was a great singer, whose talent went a lot further than Disco, but became almost synonymous with the movement and, as is often the case with mainstream music, became pigeon-holed as a result.

That Summer became The Queen Of Disco was more of an accident than a plan. Her breakout hit Love To Love You Baby, the song that started everything, was initially a demo produced by Electronica whiz Giorgio Moroder, who was already established in Europe as a purveyor of Italian Power-Pop and had released an album and several singles here in the U.S., to not much success. In Europe he was another story, and when he tinkered with a sound that included elements of heavy strings, synthesizers, and a relentless metronomic beat, topped off with sexy lyrics, it became a natural for the dance clubs that were already popular throughout Europe. And what had been initially a demo track with American ex-Pat living in Berlin, Summer on vocals, got reworked, extended into a 16 minute magnum opus and got its initial release in Holland and Love To Love You Baby introduced the world to Donna Summer and never looked back.

Tonight it's the 7" long(er) version of the song, not the 16 minute full-on orgy.

But you still get an idea what the fuss was about. So as a tribute to the wonderful singer and artist who left us way too early, here is Donna Summer and a reminder of what 1975 sounded like.

Continuing our look at 1950's Pop with Hollywood 1950's up-and-comer Barbara Ruick and one of the very few singles she recorded for MGM Records in 1951. Long a staple in the Pop music diet, the crossover of Hollywood names with the recording studio had been around as long as movies and records were being made, going back to the days of Rudolf Valentino, who managed to make one record during the course of his brief career.

And so it was Barbara Ruick's turn, and the end result was this sultry little number Serenade To A Lemonade which made a brief appearance in 1951.

It didn't make much in the way of chart action, but probably didn't hinder her career either and the likelihood this recording has been reissued seems a bit remote. It's a breezy footnote in the crossover annals of Pop Music and Hollywood.

As so much is.

You probably can't classify Burmese-born British Torch Singer Dinah Kaye as your typical Pop singer of the 1950's. She made her name throughout Europe as a Jazz vocalist who briefly settled in the U.S. from 1954 until the early 60's when she picked up her successful Jazz career and returned to the UK where she enjoyed great popularity for years after.

She only made a handful of records here, including tonight's track which was recorded for the RCA-Victor subsidiary label X. Strike A Match, a melancholy/dreamy ballad backdropped against a lush production that showcased her smokey voice and almost Johnny Ray style of emotion helped establish her as a popular artist on this side of the Atlantic.

Sadly, she passed away in October of 2011 and almost none of her records have been reissued - certainly not this one.

Another example of what Pop Music was doing in the early 1950's before Rock n' Roll came along and shook it all up.

1950's Pop Music leaned a lot on gimmicks in order to stand out. Since Capitol Records had done so wonderfully well with Les Paul and his unique electronically-altered guitar playing, Coral Records attempted to follow suit by signing South American Jazz Guitar sensation Laurindo Almeida and recording a series of discs that sounded a lot like Les Paul clones but didn't make much impression on the charts in 1952.

Tonight's track is one of those gimmick-infested songs. From that series of sessions Almeida recorded for Coral in 1952 Delicado, like the other recordings from this series is an electronic tour-de-force and shows off Almeida's pyrotechnics, but it also shows his considerable talent which, in all honesty, was put to better use in other genres.

After his brief foray into the Pop Music World, Almeida upped his efforts and returned to Jazz and later Classical, leaving this handful of singles as something of a forgotten legacy. I'm not sure and I halfway doubt Delicado (or any of his other Pop efforts for Coral) were reissued on either lp or CD. As always, this is off the original 78's, so there's no way of knowing.

Okay, this is a real stretch tonight. As long as we've been on the subject of Pop Music and Mainstream Pop artists, I thought I would go all the way back to the 1920's and give an example of what Pop Music was all about 90 years ago.

Paul Whiteman, who was alternately referred to as either "Pops" or "The King Of Jazz" was quite possibly the first million selling artist in the history of recording. His first huge hit was a song called "Whispering" which, according to whoever was keeping sales and popularity records at the time, was in the Number One position for 11 weeks and dropped to number 2 for another 20.

As much as the title "King Of Jazz" has been disputed over the years, one thing was certain - he was the world's first Pop Star, raking in an estimated $1million a year in sales and appearances (in 1920's money) and was a widely influential figure in music. In 1924 he was the one who introduced audiences to Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue for the first time. He was largely responsible for the early career of Bing Crosby as a member of Whiteman's singing group The Rhythm Boys. He was one of the first bandleaders to cross the color line by working with arrangers such as Fletcher Henderson and recording with such artists as Paul Robeson and Billie Holiday (one session for Capitol in the 1940's).

When the genre of Roaring 20's Jazz morphed into Swing in the 1930's, Whiteman's popularity began to wane, but by that time he had already established a place in musical history. He went largely into retirement in the late 1930's and briefly emerged in the 1940's.

But in the 1920's, Whiteman was riding the crest of a huge wave of popularity and he recorded a vast amount of records for RCA Victor including tonight's entry - a 1922 recording of Bygones which sounds remarkably like a follow-up to his 1920 hit Whispering.

Yes, the mainstream Pop Music machine was already getting started and it's first honest-to-god Popstar was born.

If the record sounds strange, this was state-of-the-art in 1922. The new-and-improved method of recording didn't get underway until late 1925. But remember, we're talking 90 years ago.

It had to start somewhere.

One of the biggest instrumental hits of the 1950's was a song composed and recorded by Jazz pianist Eddie Heywood and accompanied by Hugo Winterhalter and his Orchestra for RCA Victor. Canadian Sunset was a smash and has, over the years, achieved icon status as a track that typifies Pop Music in America in the 1950's.

Heywood had been around for the better part of two decades in various capacities as soloist and sideman for a number of Jazz outfits including those of Benny Carter and Don Redman. His transition into the Pop idiom was something of a fluke, and even his solo recording of Canadian Sunset didn't achieve the massive exposure the full-blown wall-of-strings version did.

And, as is always the habit in pop music, a follow up single that sounds "almost like" the hit record came shortly on the heels of the mega-hit.

Tonight's track, Lost Love is the follow up, recorded about two months after Canadian Sunset in 1956. But unlike Canadian Sunset, Lost Love didn't make a dent in the charts, despite the signature over-production so popular in 50's mainstream pop. It seems lightning was not destined to strike twice and shortly after Heywood left RCA to greener pastures with Mercury and a resumption of his status as a Jazz figure with fits and starts to continue on into the 80's.

So, just as we did with Joni James a couple nights ago, here is the original 78 just as it was destined for your local jukebox or AM radio station.

And the wheels of Pop fortune continue to turn.

It occurred to me as I was doing my homage to Pop-Music last week that I really only managed to stay in the 1960's and go nowhere else. The world of Pop-Music and hit-tunes goes back a very-very long ways to the dawn of recording.

So I thought I would give you a taste of what pre-rock n' roll Pop Music sounded like 60 years ago via Joni James.

Very much a cult figure these days (she's still singing and doing concerts at the tender age of 81), Joni James was that link between singers of the previous decade (the 1940's) and what was just around the corner in the early days of rock n' roll. A thin but sweet voice, James scored out of the starting gate with a two sided hit, of which tonight's track is the second side.

Purple Shades raced up the charts in 1952 and stuck around for a considerable period of time. Like most every Pop-music entry during this decade, it was wildly over-produced and over-arranged with seemingly hundreds of strings running up against a wall of horns. James runs the risk of being dwarfed by all the instrumental pyrotechnics but it's the simplicity of her voice that carries the tune in the end.

Needless to say, it got lots of radio and jukebox play. Yes, Jukeboxes were a major medium of musical exposure in the pre-transistor 50's and jukeboxes were just as responsible for making a hit record as the Disc Jockey was. And just to let you know we're being authentic in our excursion to the 1950's, we're playing an original 78 rpm disc of Purple Shades, not one of the many reissues available over the years.

Remember, we're talking 60 years ago. It's come a long way since.

The vaults of every record company in the world fairly overflow with master tapes by groups, known and unknown, who tried to crack that seemingly impossible world of Pop Music and, for one reason or another just didn't break through.

The Brothers, more speculated about rather actually known about, were apparently a discovery of Warren Zevon who, in the mid-1960's held a promising career as singer/songwriter and had scored a major hit as Lyme of Lyme & Cybelle and the 1966 pre-psych classic Follow Me. His label White Whale, a small independent record company based in Los Angeles, was an up-and-coming label who boasted the Top-40 hit machine The Turtles as well as the aforementioned Lyme & Cybelle. Zevon discovered The Brothers, previously known as The Upsetters (a name claimed by numerous other bands at the time) and morphed them into a Pop music outfit with leanings towards Sunshine Pop/soft-psych. Zevon wrote material for the band, as well as another up-and-coming singer-songwriter Randy Newman.

Sadly, the group never scored any hits, but gained word of mouth via the Randy Newman classic Love Story which would be their second single.

Tonight it's their first single, Today Is Today, which was initially issued as the B-side of It'll Wash Away (with the rain), but then re-issed as the A-side. But neither side made it. The single has never been reissued in any form; either on CD or LP.

All the elements of a Pop hit with leanings towards Folk-Rock and complimented with good production, the song was only marginally played on Top-40 AM stations early in 1967 and was quickly abandoned for their second single, which was the Randy Newman classic.

However, the Randy Newman song also failed to chart, and with three singles turning in dismal performances, the group dissolved around 1970 and went their separate ways. Of the members of the Brothers, only lead guitarist Michael Ballew seems to have continued and flourished in music, leaving Sunshine pop well behind in favor of a career in Country-Western.

The world of Pop Music never ceases to amaze and occasionally baffle.