#617: The Touchables by Dickie Goodman
Peak Month: March 1961
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX’s chart
Peak Position #3 on CFUN
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #60
YouTube.com link: “The Touchables”
Lyrics: “The Touchables”
Richard Dorian Goodman was born in Brooklyn in 1934. His father, Saul, a Russian Jew immigrated to the USA. Saul’s brother Herman already lived in America. It was Herman who told Saul to tell the folks at Ellis Island that your surname is Goodman. No one in Dickie Goodman’s household ever learned what his father’s surname was back in Russia. The family lived in Long Island in the town of Hewlett. On July 8, 1947, the press reported that U.S. Army personnel had recovered a “flying disc” in the Roswell Army Air Field near Roswell, New Mexico. There were reports of people interviewed who had handled the debris from the flying disc. And some people said they saw aliens. Dickie Goodman was 13 and the story made a strong impression on him. In 1955 Dickie Goodman was studying for a Law degree and writing songs on the side at Hanson’s Drug Store at 51st Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. He got acquainted with another struggling artist named Bobby Darin who ended up living in the Dickie Goodman’s parents home for a spell. In early ’56, Goodman had a song he wrote titled “Why Should We Break Up”. It was recorded by the Sonnets, a doo wop R&B group from Harlem.