'A hypnotic effect that fills you with joy': The incredible story of 96 Tears, the US's unlikeliest one-hit wonder

In 1966, a Mexican-American teen band made one of the great smash-hit singles and helped invent garage rock, a genre that has inspired artists for decades. The strangest song to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966 wasn't 96 Tears by ? and the Mysterians. It was probably Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler's pro-war dirge The Ballad of the Green Berets or perhaps the New Vaudeville Band's bassoon-driven music hall pastiche Winchester Cathedral. But 96 Tears was certainly the unlikeliest number one: an ultra-lo-fi wig-out of a debut from a group of Tejano teens from small town mid-Michigan, recorded in a home studio for a tiny Tex Mex music label. "We were kids," guitarist Bobby Balderrama told the Two Guys Talking About Records podcast. "I'd be walking down the hall and people would say, 'There's that guy with the hit record,' and I kept thinking, 'Are they talking about somebody else?'" In contrast to Adler's and the New Vaudeville Band's efforts, 96 Tears wasn't a novelty song. It was a deadly serious two-minute tale of adolescent heartbreak and bitterness, delivered by a too-cool-for-school singer over a groovy haunted-house organ riff. There were no gimmicks or tie-ins that