Nick Bollinger counts down his ten favourite singles

Recently I was invited to name the ten albums that had influenced my taste in music, but after thinking about it I realised it had really been singles that had formed my listening habits. 

When I was three I was given a wind-up gramophone and a pile of old 78s. Almost immediately I started sorting out the ones I liked from the ones I didn’t. It started there and hasn’t really stopped since.

So here’s a rough map of my musical journey in ten favourite singles. 

1. The first record (1962)

I’m not sure what the record is. It could be Benjamino Gili singing Tiritomba, or Debbie Reynolds singing Tammy, which were my big favourites at the age of three.

2. Manfred Mann and Cliff and the Shadows (1964)

If you look closely you might be able to read the labels: Manfred Mann's ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’ I asked my parents to give me for my sixth birthday. I’d heard it on The Sunset Show.

The other is ‘Lucky Lips' by Cliff and the Shadows, which I bought for a shilling from the sale bin at Lamphouse. I had never heard it, but knew the Shadows from the radio and as I didn’t have enough shillings to buy the records I really wanted, I took a punt. I quite liked it - a Leiber and Stoller song, I realised many years later - but not as much as 'Do Wah Diddy Diddy'.

3. The Beatles - 'A Hard Day’s Night' and 'I Feel Fine'

Between 1964 and 1970 I bought about two dozen Beatles singles, and every one of them seemed startlingly different from anything I’d ever heard before. These were just the first two.

4. The Supremes - 'Stop In the Name of Love'

In the mid-Sixties there was only one group that seemed to be on the radio as much as the Beatles, and which I loved almost as passionately: The Supremes. Hard to choose one single because theirs were all so good, but this one just has the edge. I had no idea who Holland-Dozier-Holland were yet, but Diana Ross taught me the sound of heartache.

5. Millie - 'My Boy Lollipop'

Of course I had no idea that the singer was from Jamaica or the music was called ska, let alone that it would one day evolve into something called reggae. I just loved the jumping rhythm and that ecstatically squeaky singer, who sounded like she might be about my age (I was six at the time.)

Many decades later I got to meet the great Ernest Ranglin, credited on the label as musical director. “You played on one of the first records I ever bought…” I began. “…My Boy Lollipop”, he cut in, finishing my sentence with a knowing smile. Ernie is brilliant jazz guitarist and has played on all kinds of records but this is destined to remain his most famous.

6. The Four Seasons - 'Rag Doll'

Another one I latched onto at an early age. I thought it was about an actual doll. The harmonies are even more lustrous than the Beach Boys', and Frankie Valli’s falsetto still does things to my skin.

7. The Rolling Stones - 'Jumpin’ Jack Flash'

A friend gave me this one for my tenth birthday and I immediately felt like I'd grown up. The fierceness of the guitars and Mick Jagger sneering and snarling about all the things that had been wrong with the world until he became Jumpin’ Jack Flash, felt rebellious and dangerous in a way the Beatles never had. ‘Child of the Moon’ was the spellbinding B-side. (This is much better than the new song they released the other day.)

8. Cream, Fleetwood Mac and Jethro Tull

I’m going to sneak the next three in together - enduring favourites from what I think of as my adolescent British blues-rock-prog phase.

Cream - 'White Room'

It still surprises me how often this strange, loud, melancholy song was played on the radio in whatever year it was. Jack Bruce’s voice soared mournfully, Clapton’s guitar howled, and bass and drums did all sorts of things I’d never heard anyone do on a pop record before.

Fleetwood Mac - 'Oh Well'

This extraordinary song wrapped itself around both sides of the plastic. The first side has one of the all-time great guitar riffs and Peter Green moaning the East End- Jewish-boy-blues. Then it becomes a theme to an imaginary western, and somehow it’s all still the same song.

Jethro Tull - 'Living in the Past'

Another weird one that penetrated my Beatlecentric twelve-year-old world. Flutes. Woodblocks. Curious rhythms. Bass solo. The ‘Take Five’ of British rock?

9. L’il Queenie & the Percolators - 'My Darlin’ New Orleans'

I bought this single in New Orleans in the early 80s after dancing to this wonderful band twice in the same week, first at the Maple Leaf Bar, then Tipitina’s. As far as I know it's the only record they made, but it evokes the decayed romance of that city for me as much as anything I’ve ever heard. It turned up a few years ago on the soundtrack of the great television series Tremé and sounded good all over again.

10. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five - 'The Message'

I have an indelible memory of hearing this for the first time, London 1982, blasting out of a sound system under the Westway. It was the morning of the Notting Hill carnival, we had got there early and nothing was happening yet, just a couple of kids on skateboards and the sound of the future ricocheting off every concrete surface.