The top-selling single of 1966, according to Billboard magazine, was neither “You Can’t Hurry Love” by the Supremes (which came in at number 8), nor the Troggs’ “Wild Thing” (number 24) or the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” (number 33), nor anything by Simon and Garfunkel, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, or Bob Dylan. It was Barry Sadler’s martial “Ballad of the Green Berets.”
