Some artists only have one really big hit. 21-year-old Claudine Clark had her only chart hit in 1962 with “Party Lights,” which peaked at number 5 in September of that year. She wrote the song, which should have helped by getting both artist and songwriter royalties — the song was recorded by other artists over the years. I gotta wonder if the little girl from Macon, Georgia got a good contract from the record people in Philadelphia and New York. I hope so.
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So many good band and singers. I think the ’80’s is when it was the golden age but the seventies definitely kicked in the boosters.
Claudine Clark was the one-hit wonder responsible for the 1962 smash “Party Lights,” and she was more responsible for it than most other female singers would have been: she also wrote the music and lyrics herself. Born in Macon, GA, Clark grew up in Philadelphia and received formal musical training at the local Coombs College. She recorded her first single, “Angel of Happiness,” in 1958 for the Herald label, but it failed to attract much attention, as did a brief stint at Gotham. Clark subsequently caught on with Chancellor, a label best known for teen idols like Fabian and Frankie Avalon. Her first single, “Disappointed,” initially flopped, but when DJs started playing the Clark-penned flip side, “Party Lights,” it became a huge hit. Sung from the point of view of a teenage girl ordered to her room while her friends were out having a good time, “Party Lights” struck a chord and shot into the Top Five on both the pop and R&B charts. Bizarrely, Chancellor followed it with the morbid “Walkin’ Through a Cemetery,” which stalled Clark’s commercial momentum; by the time “Walk Me Home From the Party” appeared to continue the story line, the moment had passed, and neither it nor “The Telephone Game” could recapture the public’s attention. Clark later attempted to compose a rock & roll operetta, and also recorded for Swan under the alias Joy Dawn, all to little avail.
One of the main problems with music like hers is that within a couple of years we were listening to music like this…………
Quite simply she and many other artists like her and their music had become….obsolete.
Brian Jones said they invention of the fuzz pedal was what actually made the song.
This was linked at Instapundit.
I was never fond of the song or the band but this vocal performance is remarkable.
https://youtu.be/dyMtIwobqbI
Just one hit, but it was a killer-diller.