Robbed hit of the week 2/24/20 - Big Mountain's "Get Together"...
from the album Resistance (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #44
This week's "robbed hit" comes from the rock-reggae band Big Mountain, who scored a top ten pop hit in the spring of 1994 with their cover of the Peter Frampton 1970s arena-rock classic "Baby I Love Your Way" from the soundtrack to the movie Reality Bites. However they weren't able to have a big follow-up on their album at the time, Unity. So when it came time to put out their next record, Resistance, in 1996, the band played it safe by releasing another cover, this time going a decade back for the flower power anthem "Get Together". Originally made famous by the Youngbloods, the song was written by Chet Powers and first recorded by the Kingston Trio back in 1964. The following year, the group We Five released it as a single and made the top-40 at #31. It was also covered by psychedelic rock titans Jefferson Airplane on their debut album. The Youngbloods first released the song in 1967, where it was a minor hit (#62), but two years later its inclusion in an ad campaign brought a whole new audience for the track, which was re-released and rose to #5 on the American pop chart...
Big Mountain gave the song the same lite-reggae treatment as they did to "Baby, I Love Your Way", although it actually works better for this flower-power anthem with its message...
Despite the charm of this version, Big Mountain's take on "Get Together" stalled right under the pop top-40 in America in January of 1996. The song did better on "easy listening" radio, climbing to #28 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary format chart and #24 at Adult Top-40. Internationally, the single was a decent hit in Canada, making it to #16, while also missing the top-40 in New Zealand at #49. The album completely missed the main sales chart (it would place at #3 on Billboard's Reggae albums list), and while they would continue making albums (the most recent in 2016), it would be their final big American success with this song.
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Here's the song as done by the Kingston Trio, who included it on their 1964 album Back In Town..
And We Five, who first took the classic to the top-40 the next year...
Here's Jefferson Airplane from their debut...
The Carpenters also included the song on their debut album Ticket To Ride in 1969, with brother Richard taking lead...
In 1970, British Invasion vets the Dave Clark Five scored a top ten hit in the UK at #8 with their version...
The same year, Gwen and Jerry Collins brought the classic to the country chart at #34...
In 1999, probably the most left-field use of the song was when country superstar Garth Brooks released his In The Life Of Chris Gaines album under the mentioned alter-ego, which included the song "Right Now" that was interpolated from the original by Cheryl Wheeler and then remixed as a club single which went absolutely nowhere. He's even successfully kept it off of YouTube...
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