December 5, 2025      —–     Chart #327

Hello Music Friends,

Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Chart of the Week. There are songs that sound like a warm blanket, a sunset, or a memory. California Dreamin’ sounds like all three, even if you’re listening to it in February while scraping ice off a windshield in Little Rock. It’s one of the great American singles — part folk, part pop, part fever dream — delivered by a quartet whose internal drama made Fleetwood Mac look like a well-adjusted church group.

When those harmonies hit — that soaring blend of Denny Doherty, Cass Elliot, Michelle Phillips, and John Phillips — the entire world turns sepia and suddenly you’re walking down a chilly New York street thinking about sunshine, freedom, and questionable life choices.

The Backstory

The song was written by John and Michelle Phillips in late 1963 when they were living in New York City — broke, cold, and missing California with the kind of longing usually reserved for Golden Retrievers waiting by the door.

Michelle had been a Californian her whole life. John, born in Parris Island and raised all over, was still a West-Coast convert, but even he agreed that New York in winter can make a person rethink their goals.

One especially miserable night, John woke Michelle up at 3 a.m. to show her the chords he was working on. (“Nothing good ever starts with somebody waking you up at 3 a.m. with a guitar” — yet here we are.) They finished the song together in bed, wrapped in blankets, songwriting by survival instinct.

The Recording

They recorded California Dreamin’ in 1965 at United Western Recorders in Los Angeles. This was deep in the era of the legendary Wrecking Crew, that elite group of session players who seem to have played on every great American record made between 1960 and 1975.

Musicians on the track included:

• P.F. Sloan – electric guitar (that signature riff)
• Larry Knechtel – keyboards
• Joe Osborne – bass
• Hal Blaine – drums (yes, that Hal Blaine — the guy who played on more hits than most radio stations broadcast in a day)
• Bud Shank – the iconic flute solo

If you want to know how good this band of studio assassins was: they recorded the whole track in one take.
The Mamas & The Papas then added those famous vocals over the top, and a classic was born.

Chart Performance

• Released: December 1965
• Climbed to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100
• Ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the 500 greatest songs of all time
• Became one of the definitive anthems of the 1960s — the soundtrack to everything from the Sunset Strip to VW buses to anybody who ever sat in a social studies classroom wishing they were someplace else

Fun Facts

• Michelle Phillips was temporarily kicked out of the band not long after this, because — as previously noted — the band had more drama than a season of Yellowstone.
• The flute solo was improvised by Bud Shank, who had no idea it would become one of the most recognizable moments in pop history.
• The song became a surprise church favorite because the lyric mentions walking into a church. (Never underestimate the evangelical power of cold weather.)
• Cass Elliot’s voice on this track is a masterclass in warmth — she could sing a grocery list and make it feel like a spiritual awakening.

What’s It Really About?

Simple.
It’s about longing — the universal human condition of wanting to be anywhere but where you are. Especially if “where you are” requires gloves, scarves, or shoveling.

That’s why the song has lasted 60 years. Every generation has somebody staring out a window thinking, “You know… California doesn’t sound that bad.”
Of course, then they look up the taxes and rethink it.

Playing the Song

Acoustic players love this one. It’s the perfect sing-along tune, familiar to every crowd, and the chord progression feels like a slow Sunday sway. You can play it on a Martin, a Taylor, a Fender, or whatever guitar you accidentally “forgot” to mention to Debbie when the UPS truck arrived.

If you add harmonies, you’re one good Cass Elliot impression away from magic.

Why It Lasts

Because it hits the same nerve that makes people take road trips, write postcards, or scroll Zillow late at night.
It’s hopeful, melancholy, dreamy, and warm — the musical equivalent of stepping out of a cold room into a sunbeam.

The Mamas & The Papas may not have survived the decade intact, but this track will outlive all of us.

Keep Rockin’,

Stan Bradshaw