"San Francisco" (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) is a song written by John Phillips of the group The Mamas & The Papas, and sung by Scott McKenzie. It was published in 1967, the summer of which became famous as the Summer of Love. It is considered a cultural icon.
This song was the publicity showcase of the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival, being catapulted in a very short time to the top of the United States charts that reached number four, in the United Kingdom and in the rest of Europe. got to be number one. It is one of the best known hymns of the hippie movement.
McKenzie grew up in North Carolina and Virginia, where she befriended one of her mother's friends, "Papa" John Phillips. In the mid-1950s, he sang for a short time with Tim Rose in high school, within a group called The Singing Strings, and later with Phillips, Mike Boran, and Bill Cleary, forming a doo-wop-style band called The Abstracts. In New York, the Abstracts renamed themselves The Smoothies and recorded two singles for Decca Records, produced by Milt Gabler (producer of Bill Halley's records).
