In the first week of March, 1965, “My Girl” reached #1 in Southern California, knocking out the Righteous Brothers’ “ You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” which had sat atop the chart since New Years Eve.
Strange that you mentioned the Righteous Brothers. Because the first video on the sidebar of the the My Girl vid that I sampled was a black guy singing Unchained Melody, also in the NYC subway.
“In the first week of March, 1965, “My Girl” reached #1 in Southern California”
“My Girl” brings to mind my last night at Camp Pendleton in July ’66.
Our flight date Down South was on deck and we’re restricted to the company area. In prep for going “in-country”, aside from walking around money, we’d money-ordered home or otherwise turned in US currency. We’re basically broke.
Well, our platoon sergeant, a truly decent Marine who’d previously been a Drill Instructor in Special Training Battalion at Parris Island, had other ideas about our last night in the States.
So Staff asks, “who has money?” After a response indicated WE ALL had money, he suggested pooling our funds and head down to the 1-2-3 Club. In a military manner of course.
In formation, off we went to spend a few hours in the club drinking Tre-Deuce beer, eating chips and whatever passed for hamburgers & hotdogs. All the while listening to possibly every jam on the jukebox. And a great evening it was…..
Now getting back to our area was literally an uphill trip. Ordinarily, moving a formation in a military manner on anything other than level ground can be a challenge. The task was now compounded by darkness and Tre-Deuce beer.
Somewhere along the way, Staff began calling cadence and someone was inspired enough to slip in a few lines of “My Girl” in response. Immediately everyone kicked in with some semblance of a marching chant.
Now the point of so much spiel is to provide an image of a platoon of half-tight Marines marching uphill, in the dark, to “My Girl” AND punctuating the key lyric “My Girl” with SAPPHIRE”…as in “talkin’ bout…talkin’ bout..SAPPHIRE”. EVERY time since that I hear Smokey, I think of that night and I’ve gotten more than one strange look if I smile and say “My Girl’s true name.
We flew out the next day to Oki via commercial. Once there we boarded C-130’s. Between a feathered engine in route, loss of cabin pressure and a tarmac fuel gusher, it took three tries for our Bird to get to Danang. An aside; among the cast of characters in my platoon was a Marine with the unlikely of Harvey Oswald. A short-timer with less than six months remaining on his enlistment, a critical need for someone with his MOS had necessitated his transfer.