It was on this day, 46 years ago, that the so-called Prefab Four reached the top. For on November 12, 1966, the self-titled debut album from the Monkees hit #1 on the U.S. Billboard album chart. It stayed there for an amazing 13 weeks until it was knocked out of the top spot by… the second Monkees album.

So in recognition of the band’s achievement all those years ago — and not because it’s a terribly memorable cover by itself, here’s The Monkees (Colgems COS-101).

The photo of the Monkees — Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, and Davy Jones — was taken by Bernard Yeszin, whose work also appeared on a number of other records from the 1960s. Perhaps my favorite of his is Martha and the Vandellas’ Heat Wave, which I’ll have to cover some other time.