#39: First Hymn from Grand Terrace by Mark Lindsay
City: Fredericton, NB
Radio Station: CFNB
Peak Month: August 1969
Peak Position in Fredericton: #9
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #81
YouTube: “First Hymn From Grand Terrace”
Lyrics: “First Hymn From Grand Terrace”
Mark Lindsay was born in Eugene, Oregon, in 1942. In 1958 Lindsay was working at a bakery. While picking up hamburger buns at the bakery cafe where Lindsay worked, 20-year-old Paul Revere Dick began a conversation and found they shared a fondness for music. At the time Revere owned several restaurants in Caldwell, Idaho. Lindsay . Within a year the two formed Paul Revere and the Raiders and released their first instrumental hit in 1960. In the group’s song, “The Legend of Paul Revere”, they sang about how they got their start.
In a little town in Idaho way back in sixty one,
a man was frying burgers, gee – it seemed like lots of fun.
But to his friend the bun boy, he confessed it’s misery,
I think I’d like to start a group, so come along with me.
The song was using poetic license as they group started in ’58 not ’61. But “fun” rhyming with “one” had more appeal then writing “way back in fifty-eight, a man was frying burgers, gee, it seemed to be real great.”
Just as they were starting to get a name Paul Revere Dick was drafted into the United States Army. He became a conscientious objector and worked as a cook in a facility for patients with mental health issues. While Revere was in the U.S. Army, Mark Lindsay toured with the Raiders in 1961, after they had a Top 40 hit instrumental in the USA called “Like Long Hair” early that year. It climbed to #3 in Cleveland, Ohio, and #29 in Vancouver. That summer a piano player named Leon Russell filled in for Paul Revere. When Revere returned to civilian life in 1962 the band moved to Portland, Oregon. In April 1963 both Paul Revere And The Raiders and The Kingsmen recorded a tune called “Louie Louie”. Both versions were spirited, but it was The Kingsmen’s version that would go to #2 on the pop charts in the USA, while Paul Revere & The Raiders version missed the Billboard Hot 100.
By 1965 the band had released fourteen singles, but didn’t have any sizable hit. Then they released “Just Like Me” and everything changed. The infectious pop rock tune climbed to #11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1966. They had Top Ten hits in Canada and the USA that year with “Hungry”, “Kicks” and “Good Thing”. In November, 1966, Paul Revere & The Raiders appeared on the Batman TV show, in an episode called “Hizzoner The Penguin.” They were also regular guests on Dick Clark’s Where The Action Is. In 1967, “Him Or Me – What’s It Gonna Be?” became their fourth Top Ten hit.
While remaining with the band, in 1969 Mark Lindsay released the single “First Hymn From Grand Terrace”.
In “First Hymn From Grand Terrace” a singer recalls a memory from their youth, of “the games that children play” and a hill they climbed. On rout to that hill they’d fly “across waving grass.” There was a rock “that sheltered us from passing planes.” A romantic relationship is inferred as he sings “…the earth caught fire when you turned, but nothing burned.” They watched the stars at night, and were old enough to drive a car, as “for just a while cars would pass, and we were out of gas. But we didn’t care even though we walked a mile” presumably to get a jug of gas to take back to the car on the side of the road. So it’s poetic license to refer to themselves as children. Though the age to get a drivers’ license in Arizona was (and apparently still is) at age 15. So for those reading the lyrics, one can view the context of the song as a romantic adventure a couple had with the guy being plausibly 15 years old.
Jimmy Webb, born in Elk City (OK) in 1946, wrote “First Hymn From Grand Terrace”. In 1966, at the age of 20, he composed “By The Time I Get to Phoenix” which became a crossover country-pop hit for Glen Campbell. In 1967, Webb wrote “Up, Up and Away” which became a Top Ten hit for the Fifth Dimension. In 1968, Webb won Grammy Awards for “Up, Up and Away” for both Song of the Year and Record of the Year. The Fifth Dimension recorded two more songs by Jimmy Webb that reached the Top 40: “Paper Cup” and “Carpet Man”. Glen Campbell recorded Webb’s songs “Wichita Lineman”, “Galveston”, “Honey Come Back” and “Where’s The Playground Susie”. Brooklyn Bridge, featuring Johnny Maestro, had a Top Ten hit in 1969 with “Worst That Could Happen”. His biggest hit was “MacArthur Park” which was a #2 hit for Richard Harris in 1968 and a number-one hit for Donna Summer in 1978. Webb also had songs recorded by Roberta Flack, Nina Simone, Art Garfunkel, Tony Bennett, Issac Hayes, Dionne Warwick, the Four Tops, Andy Williams, Thelma Houston, Al Hirt, the Three Degrees, Judy Collins, Joe Cocker, the Everly Brothers, P.F. Sloan, Chuck Jackson, Johnny Rivers, the Supremes, Billy Eckstine, Vicki Carr, Nancy Sinatra, the Vogues, Dusty Springfield, Clarence Carter, Frank Sinatra, Bobby Vee, Al Wilson, Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, Barbra Streisand, Ray Charles, Connie Stevens, Hugo Montenegro, the Association, Jackie Trent, Tom Jones, the Fortunes, Cass Elliott, Harry Nilsson, Bob Dylan, Toto, Waylon Jennings, John Denver, Kenny Rogers, David Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, R.E.M., America, Shirley Bassey, Carly Simon, Cher, Amy Grant, and Linda Ronstadt. Over the decades Jimmy Webb has also recorded 14 studio albums. His most recent is SlipCover in 2019.
“First Hymn From Grand Terrace” peaked at #2 in Knoxville (TN), #5 in Lansing (MI), #7 in Springfield (MA), #8 in Denver, and Bowling Green (KY), #9 in Fredericton (NB), and Grand Rapids (MI), and #11 in Sarasota (FL), and Seattle.
In 1970, Lindsay had his only solo Top Ten hit with “Arizona”. His followup, “Silver Bird” made the Top 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1970. It was featured in the 2022 Netflix film The Grey Man. Later that fall Lindsay released “And The Grass Won’t Pay No Mind”.
Lindsay continued to perform with Paul Revere And The Raiders who had their biggest success in 1971 with their #1 hit “Indian Reservation”. However, both Lindsay as a solo artist and Paul Revere And The Raiders failed to release any substantial hits after that year. Lindsay made a number of appearances on The Carpenters variety show Make Your Own Kind of Music. He also sang the theme for the 1971 film Something Big and the theme song for the 1973 film Santee. He also wrote songs for the films The Love Machine (1971) and For Pete’s Sake (1974). Lindsay was a session musician for the 1973 Jerry Lee Lewis album Southern Roots. He released eight more singles with Columbia Records. None were commercially successful. In 1975 Mark Lindsay left the band.
Between 1974 and 1981 Lindsay released another seven singles variously with CBS Records, Capitol Records, Warner Brothers, United Artists and Ariola. His final single release was a song titled “Disco Kicks” in 1981, just as the disco fad was on the wane. In 1980 and 1982 Lindsay wrote songs for the soundtracks of two Japanese films: Shogun Assassin (1980) and The Killing Of America (1982). In 1984 he released a Best Of Mark Lindsay album. Meanwhile, Mark Lindsay also wrote TV jingles for Baskin-Robbins, Datsun, Kodak, Levi’s, Pontiac, Yamaha and others.
For a number of years Lindsay was a DJ on his oldies program Mark After Dark. He opened the Mark Lindsay’s Rock & Roll Cafe in Portland, Oregon, in 2006. The restaurant got into a legal dispute and closed after eleven months. Between 1969 and 2013 Mark Lindsay has recorded fourteen albums.
During of summers of 2010-2013, Lindsay had a heavy touring schedule throughout the U.S. as part of the Happy Together: 25th Anniversary Tour, along with Flo & Eddie of The Turtles, The Grass Roots, The Buckinghams, and ‘Monkees‘ singer Micky Dolenz. And in 2015, 2016 and 2018 Lindsay returned to perform with the the “Happy Together” tours. In 2018 his setlist included “Where The Action Is”, “Hungry”, “Arizona”, “Good Thing”, “Indian Reservation” and “Kicks”. In 2019 Mark Lindsay appeared with The Cowsills, The Buckinghams, Gary Puckett, Three Dog Night and The Association for a concert in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire on June 23, 2019.
In 2020, Lindsay released his 14th studio album, Book of Love. In 2021, Lindsay was featured in a TV documentary titled Where The Action Was. In 2022, Lindsay began hosting a show on SiriusXM’s Underground Garage channel, called Mark Lindsay’s American Revolution. He continues to tour. His website indicates he is working on a new recording project with the draft title “The Oregon Project”.
October 11, 2025
Ray McGinnis
References:
Peter Blecha, Music in Washington, Seattle and Beyond (Images of America) (1st ed.), (Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, SC, 2007).
Daniel Kreps, “Raiders Leader Paul Revere Dead at 76,” Rolling Stone, October 5, 2014.
“Hizzoner the Penguin,” Batman, ABC, 1966.
Paul Revere’s Raiders.com
Gordon Oliver, Rock & Roll Cafe Dies Before it Gets Old, Oregonian, May 12, 2007.
Nancy Adamson, “Mark Lindsay Talks About New Music, Cats and Charlie Manson,” Midland Reporter-Telegram, Midland, Texas, June 8, 2013.
Johnno Cary, “The History of Driving Age,” Itstillruns.com, August 5, 2023.
Johnny Takiff, “The Man Behind the Hits,” Philadelphia News, January 17, 1992.
“Mark Lindsay – Bio,” marklindsay.com.
CFNB 550-AM Fredericton (NB) Top Ten | August 9, 1969
