Song of the Day 8/6: The Drifters, “Up on the Roof”

H/t El Somnambulo. It’s his favorite song of all time. It’s also one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s “500 songs that shaped rock and roll.”

It’s appropos now because Donnie Dotard took time out of his busy TV-watching schedule to take a stroll on the White House roof yesterday. He wasn’t up there seeking the solitude Gerry Goffin wrote about – reporters shouted questions up to him and he answered, after his fashion. This was all sanewashed by the media as having something to do with the ballroom he wants to add to the White House because he finds the building insufficiently tacky in its current condition. He’s already paved over the grass in the Rose Garden, which should be easy enough to undo, but tearing out whatever he desecrates the building with will be harder. It will have to be done, though, because someday it will make a fitting mausoleum.

Carole King came up with the tune while she was out driving and envisioned “My Secret Place” as its title. Goffin, then her husband, made the idea more specific, inspired by the several rooftop scenes in “West Side Story.” Little Eva recorded it first, but the Drifters were the first to have a hit with it when it reached No. 5 in 1962.

Other artists who placed it on the charts were James Taylor, the Cryan’ Shames and, ironically, Laura Nyro, who wrote numerous hits for others but charted only once, when her cover of “Up on the Roof” made it to No. 92 in 1970.