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1965 AD Oh, yes. That summer was the best in pop history. Not "probably," not "maybe," not "according to some experts." It was The Best .

In those two months, Tom Jones sings with hypo-hurricane screams It's not unusual , the Rolling Stones launch (I can't get no) Satisfaction , the Beatles - after their concert at Madrid's Las Ventas square, on July 2 - counterattack with Help! , the Beach Boys take a summer anthem from the sleeve by antonomasia, California Girls , and Bob Dylan sees the electric light and blinded composes Like a rolling stone , while debuting the Byrds with their version of Mr. Tambourine man . In addition, Diana Ross's Supremes make Stop! In the name of love , the Temptations sing like princes My girl , Sonny & Cher move their heads full of hair to the sound of that arcadia of pop that is I got you and in every corner of Europe the melody of Poupée de cire is whistled, poupée de so n, by Serge Gainsbourg , with which a teenager France Gall won the Eurovision Festival.

Well, what's so impressive, Hispanic youth wondered? Poor mequetrefes, all of them were crushed by the charisma and grace of a human being named Johnny and another human being named Charley, equal members of the musicovocal duo Johnny and Charley, who had devised a diabolical mechanism that triggered as an enchantment the collective dance They called it The yenka .

This indestructible tune that invited with jovial equidistance to left, left, right, right, was imposed as the first song of the summer of our history . In fact, he could even with the almighty girl Ye-yé de Conchita Velasco, who was second in the hit summer parade of that glorious 1965.

Concha Velasco in the mid-60s, when he began his record career.

It was an epic victory, but also tragic, because poor Charley had been killed in a traffic accident in April of that year. While everyone was having a great time with his cheerful little song inspired by a folk dance from Finland, the author of La yenka had been buried in a cemetery in Barcelona for several months. A short time later, his brother Johnny returned to his country and left the music.

Tall as a lamppost, Charles Recourt lived in Barcelona and worked on what he could while dreaming of being a pop star . He was born in Amsterdam and found another Dutchman as first ally, Tony Ronald, who also lived in the Catalan capital, where he worked in the port as a docker. Since Tony liked rock and roll and not pop, and since Tony & Charley's recordings and concerts barely made an impact, they started pears in 1962.

Then the good Charley Kurt, who was like signing his songs to look more cool, convinced his brother Johnny, as ruby ​​and smiling as he was, to form a duo. One of his first songs was La yenka , recorded by Waldo de los Ríos , a young Argentine producer who was a prodigy : shortly after he would devote himself as a throne arranger for Raphael, Jeanette, Karina, Paloma San Basilio and a thousand other artists, with hits internationals such as the Hymn of Joy of Miguel Ríos, in addition to collaborating with Chicho Ibáñez Serrador. A tremendous race that tragically ended as soon as the spring of 1977 began, when he shot himself with a two-barrel shotgun.

Hispavox timidly published La yenka in 1964, but it was the following year when the snowball was launched downhill until it became the most listened song of that year for history. Shortly after arriving at number one, at the dawn of February 28, 1965, some increasingly requested Johnny & Charley returned home at dawn after a concert in Reus when, at the dangerous crossroads of the N-340 with the road who goes to Salou, next to Tarragona, suffered a terrible car accident . It took a month to leave the hospital. Johnny recovered from the wounds in Valencia, where he had just married a Spanish girl; Charley returned to Barcelona, ​​but the complications caused by the numerous injuries made a new operation necessary, which he did not overcome. He died on April 15 at the age of 27.

Johnny and Charley only recorded 12 songs , several of them published posthumously, like a strange version of My Dairy Cow at the Yenka Rhythm that today causes chills.

The only opponent of La yenka in that summer of 65 also came from carambola. It was the girl ye-yé , a composition of Augusto Algueró who had already recorded without sorrow or glory Luis Aguilé in masculine: Chico ye-yé . It was, surely you remember, the main theme of the film Stories of television by José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, director of Raza and Franco, that man besides Concha Velasco's boyfriend, who played the role of a temperamental girl from Murcia I longed to succeed in music. Singing The ye-yé girl was not foreseen in the script and even less that, as a result of the success, the actress had to record it in single and that way she began a long musical career, completely unexpected.

So, as you can see, it was a very rare year .

And this officially began this so informal that it is the song of the summer, Italian invention of 1960 that was exported to Spain in what it takes to say "a ray of sunshine, oh, oh, oh." There are a total of 55 summers of beach songs that are fulfilled in 2019: Johnny & Charley could not repeat the feat; in fact, only a handful of the elect have succeeded ...

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