Timely trivia ... from the time of your life ... 1954 ~ 1979. Rock & Roll Radio at its best! It seems trivia is a popular feature of the Blast from Your Past website, so this is the expanded version of the quickie home page blurbs. Included are key events that shaped us not only as Rockin' rebels, but as individuals, societies, and cultures. As time permits, I'll add trivia from the months prior when I first began this feature on the site. Right now, it begins in November, 1961. Where were you ... November 1961 - Back when Top 40 charts were a mixed bag o’ tricks … Mitch Miller, the face behind the music of many early Pop stars like Patti Page, Frankie Laine, and Johnny Mathis, was still hitting it big on the November cover of TV Radio Mirror magazine this month. - "Surfin" by The Beach Boys was released in November '61 and soon picked up by KFWB and KDAY, a couple of Los Angeles' most popular and influential radio stations. A West Coast, it peaked on national music charts at #75. - Cavern Club, Liverpool, England - "At a lunchtime session on November 9th 1961, Brian Epstein from Liverpool’s NEMS record store watched the Beatles perform. By this time the Beatles were arguably the most accomplished group on Merseyside. Epstein offered to become their manager and by May 1962 he had secured a recording contract for them." - But it was a country song that took the country by storm in November, 1961. The ballad of “Big Bad John” by modern sausage king, Jimmy Dean (composed by Dean and Roy Acuff) was released in September and by November it grabbed #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Dean took home the 1962 Grammy Award in the Country category that year. - Yours truly officially became a teenager ... OMG!! Except then, we said, Oh, wow! Gosh! Golly-gee! Think Gidget Goes Hawaiian and The Parent Trap--we were those movies!