vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 28, 2012 19:38:50 GMT 1
OK. Finished one project, need another.
This one came to me as I was trying to explain copyright law to a room full of students a year or so back. I mentioned how The KLF were always being sued for copyright infringement.
The room met me with a blank stare.
"The KLF? You MUST have heard of them."
Shaking of heads.
"They set fire to a million quid. And threw a dead sheep into the audience at the Brits."
Now the audience was looking terrified.
And then it struck me. They were all about 2 when Cauty and Drummond were terrorizing the charts.
But even so the acts who were around when I was 2 are familiar to me. Mostly glam rock and (ugh) The Osmonds.
There's a definite lack of pop music edumacation around.
And so, with all these 100 Best Of lists knocking around, and with a nod to the wonderful Radio 4 series, I thought I'd try to distil the history of the British chart period into 100 songs that do something to explain the history of music. Either because they moved music on in some way, or represented what was happening, or caught a mood.
So what I did was pick one single per year to represent that year. Originally I was going to leave it at that - 60 singles for each complete chart year - but 100 is a suitably round number, and I was going to have to leave out a LOT that was important. Therefore for 2 of each group of 3 years I added a second.
And I had some other rules as well. No artist was going to be represented more than once. I didn't have to like the song. The song had to be a single of some sort (sorry Led Zep fans). And it has to represent something of note - not just a record that happened to be around at the time.
I thought I'd pop them in here, to see what people thought - and to see what other suggestions anyone would have.
I suppose I ought to do them in chronological order, rather than skip around stochastically, so we can see how music evolves over the history of the chart. Which means I have to start in 1953.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 28, 2012 19:52:44 GMT 1
1953
Frankie Laine - I Believe
And what better way to start with what is statistically the most successful single ever? This will give us a baseline of what was popular as the charts dawned - and give us an idea of how much music has moved on. And trust me on this - not everything in this list is going to have been successful...
The 1953 charts were full of this sort of stuff; slow ballads with orchestras in the background, sometimes not even bothering with the singer (Frank Chacksfield spent a couple of months at number 2 with the cascading strings taking the nominal vocal line). And there was nobody more successful in Britain than Frankie Laine. He would remain the number one chart act until 1956, when his seventeenth top ten (in less than four years) became his final number one hit.
And then the hits practically stopped. Music had already moved on. Less middle-aged and there were new stars to attract this strange new breed of species called the teenager. Laine kept his name around with recordings of western television series and film soundtracks - after "A Woman In Love" topped the chart, his only UK top ten was the theme to Rawhide - but in fact Britain was already behind the times. Laine's last home number one had come in 1950 and in the UK chart era "I Believe" was one of only two solo top fives Laine had Stateside.
Nevertheless, for being most representative of what people in Britain were buying in 1953, this is the most appropriate song to kick off the list.
In sum: right back to where we started from.
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Post by raliverpool on Aug 28, 2012 19:57:57 GMT 1
How very Vox 100 Records That Shook The World of you.
As you are starting in 1953, then this definitely means no:
I can't wait to see what you come up with, as you are only selecting singles, does that mean they have to (UK) chart to qualify or not?
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 28, 2012 20:53:27 GMT 1
No - indeed, the next one is from an artist who never made the UK charts...
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Post by Shireblogger on Aug 29, 2012 8:44:29 GMT 1
Great concept vas, I look forward to following this, although I'm sure I'll disagree with some of your choices.
1955 and 1956 are "no brainers" in terms of track selection, but I'm intrigued what you'll pick for 1954.
In my music collection I have just 15 tracks from 1953 and 15 tracks from 1954, but 101 from 1956 and 112 from 1957. This reflects how dramatically pop music changed in the mid-50s.
In hindsight, the NME couldn't really have picked a better point in time to start compiling a singles chart.
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Post by S1m on Aug 29, 2012 10:51:18 GMT 1
What did 1952 do to upset you?! I know originally you said each complete chart year, but surely in expanding to 100 it could've got a look in?
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 29, 2012 17:47:15 GMT 1
What did 1952 do to upset you?! I know originally you said each complete chart year, but surely in expanding to 100 it could've got a look in? I did try using a couple of approaches; one, going back to 1940 and having 75 records; two, doing 1 per year for 100 years. The problems included that I could not get under the skin of what was happening before the fifties, a lot of what happened did not really influence music going forward, it would have been almost entirely American and, as shireblogger suggests, it was a bit same-y. You could have plonked hits from 1942 in a 1955 chart and they would not have looked out of place. There were some interesting changes, thanks to an ill-advised strike, and doing this excludes a lot of the legendary blues performers, but the maths of doing 100 from 60 years were too alluring for me to include 1952. And Frankie Laine would have been a decent candidate to represent that year as well. Meanwhile the second single from 1953. Hank Williams with his Drifting Cowboys - Your Cheatin' HeartExemplifies a couple of aspects that become chart memes. Firstly, the flipped b-side; this was backing up " Kaw-Liga" - a song about a carved American Indian who fell in unrequited love with another antique - until the radio stations realized there was something good on the other side as well. Secondly, the posthumous hit... Country music was a genre without a name for a long time. Based on British folksongs played by the original settlers in the southern states, in the early days of recorded music the New York and Washington based labels were not interested in the itinerant medicine show side-players or strolling minstrels. Other than the odd novelty release, such as fiftysomething Fiddlin' John Carson, who had some big-sellers in the 1920s, and the pretend-country Vernon Dalhart, named a la Conway Twitty after a couple of Texan towns, whose "The Prisoner's Song" became the biggest seller of the decade. Eventually it was termed hillbilly music after a ragtag bunch of stringsmen were told by a company they needed a name, and said "well, we're just hillbillies, really"... Two things catapulted country music into respectability. One, World War 2. Loads of fighting Southern boys brought their sound to the attention of the dismissive north. Two, the strike I alluded to above, from the American Federation of Musicians. Labels in need of material just approached non-union men - which included those in Dixieland, who have never been called upon for recording before. And, what's more, setting up in a town in the south away from union activity became a benefit. Nashville seemed suitable enough as it was the home of a radio show. Names like Roy Acuff suddenly became big, and Gene Autry's singing cowboy provided an archetype of the pretty much identical Western music. Hey presto: C&W. But the biggest of the early names were those that died young; Jimmie Rodgers, pre-dating the chart era, and Hank Williams, the former shoeshine boy and rodeo rider who set up his Drifting Cowboys band when he left home in his mid-teens. Williams became a country legend, which was only enhanced by his dying on New Year's Day 1953, in part due to his chronic alcoholism. He was 29. His ex-wife Audrey managed his affairs posthumously. Such was the 2pacesque level of unreleased recordings - which we see again with Buddy Holly and Jim Reeves - that "Your Cheatin' Heart" was actually his third posthumous country chart number 1. But like almost all of his other singles it made no impact on the main charts. "Jambalaya" in 1952 had given him his peak, at number 20; however his " Cold, Cold Heart", another flipped b-side, did top the charts in 1951. Albeit recorded by Tony Bennett. The reason for including this one is because for a brief period country music did coincide for a while with "pop". Certainly in the United States, as country singers like Marty Robbins and Jimmy Dean had chart-toppers, and for a briefer period in the UK as Slim Whitman famously topped the NME for nearly three months straight. And on occasions since country stars have become pop stars with hits that are more or less country-sounding. But country's main influence on music would come from a crossover star... In sum: a country in the place
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Post by S1m on Aug 29, 2012 18:15:11 GMT 1
What did 1952 do to upset you?! I know originally you said each complete chart year, but surely in expanding to 100 it could've got a look in? I did try using a couple of approaches; one, going back to 1940 and having 75 records; two, doing 1 per year for 100 years. The problems included that I could not get under the skin of what was happening before the fifties, a lot of what happened did not really influence music going forward, it would have been almost entirely American and, as shireblogger suggests, it was a bit same-y. You could have plonked hits from 1942 in a 1955 chart and they would not have looked out of place. There were some interesting changes, thanks to an ill-advised strike, and doing this excludes a lot of the legendary blues performers, but the maths of doing 100 from 60 years were too alluring for me to include 1952. And Frankie Laine would have been a decent candidate to represent that year as well. Ah ok, unusual, but you've justified your choices.
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Post by Shireblogger on Aug 29, 2012 21:19:52 GMT 1
Delighted you've found space for the genius that was Hank Williams. He is my favourite artist from the pre-chart era. I had assumed this would have been considered as a 1952 track, but am more than happy to see you interpret your own rules to include it.
His legacy extends far beyond country & western, as I'm sure you'll mention in due course.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 30, 2012 18:57:28 GMT 1
1954Bill Haley & His Comets - Rock Around The ClockThere are many candidates for the first rock & roll song. Not counting The Boswell Sisters, of course. Entire books could (and have been) written about the rise of rock and roll music. You can trace it via blues, country, even swing. And lots of persuasive arguments can be made for artists such as Big Joe Turner, Bo Diddley, Ike Turner (as above), Big Mama Thornton, a truck driver from Tupelo and so on. But to some extent it's angels dancing on the head of a pin. The one that broke rock and roll to the extent that music changed forever was a balding and somewhat portly chap heading into his thirties. It was to some extent an accident. Bill Haley and his group had been mixing elements of country and blues for a few years before Ike's "Rocket 88" had turned him onto a very new sort of melange, capturing Haley's imagination to the extent that he decided to cover it. In 1953 Haley's "Crazy Man, Crazy" had made the Billboard top twenty and become the first single that could be considered rock and roll to hit the chart; he had a couple more minor near-hits, with "(We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock" (as it was termed on its original release) stuck as a b-side but getting bubbling under status in May 1954. Then a cover of blues shouter Turner's "Shake Rattle And Roll" gave him a top ten hit as the year closed. Even so, it looked as if Haley and his men would remain something of an acquired taste, the outsiders playing music ahead of their time and not quite capturing the vast audience they really deserved. But they had a stroke of luck. Jimmy Myers, the music publisher and co-writer of RATC (under his pseudonym DeKnight), pitched it to Hollywood like mad, and one person who picked up on it was a young lad called Peter Ford. His father Glenn was an actor who was shooting a film of teenage rebellion called Blackboard Jungle, and when the producers were looking for the sound of teenagedom Ford rifled through his son's record collection. Haley's was the standout track, it was played behind the credits... It was a perfect synergy. Whereas before Haley could be envisioned as a faceless voice on the wireless, now he was the authentic voice of rebellion. Blackboard Jungle was excoriated for its heroization of degeneracy. And if there's anything guaranteed to get something to sell, it's to declaim its immorality. Suddenly the thirtysomething Haley was pitched right into the faces of an adoring teenage audience, who could put their nickels together and have the sound of rebellion right at their fingertips... And no longer would rock and roll be confined to the margins. The one absolute crucial lesson to the music industry is the only way to get people to buy something is to make sure they hear it. The audience for Blackboard Jungle may never have heard Haley before; he may have been seen as to outre or too innovative or too, well, black (he had had a top ten in the R&B charts). But when they got the chance to hear him they bought him in vast quantities. You'd think that this lesson would have been learnt by now. Anyway, somewhat belatedly, rock and roll was the absolute biggest thing ever. RATC topped the Billboard best-seller chart for 8 weeks in July 1955, and come the end of the year topped the British charts for even longer (unless you really believe Dickie Valentine was more popular). And it was almost as if someone had flipped a switch. Almost overnight the Doris Days and Kay Starrs were old hat. Take Eddie Fisher, for instance. In 1953 and 1954 he had had ten US top ten hits, three of which were number one, and just before RATC climbed the charts his latest hit was peaking just outside the top five; post-RATC he only had four top forty hits. Even more stark is the fate of Patti Page, two years younger than Haley, who was in the top three artists in the States in 1952, 1953 and 1954. In 1955 she had one charting single, that peaked at a measly 16... In sum: après lui, le déluge.
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 31, 2012 18:14:07 GMT 1
1955Little Richard - Tutti FruttiThere was just one problem with Bill Haley. My late uncle summed it up. He had been to see Haley on a British tour circa 1955. "I was expecting to see some sort of rebel," he said, "not a fat bald bloke twice my age." Image was becoming important. Zoot suits and leather jackets were beginning to form a uniform for music tribes. The importance of image in the past can be shown by looking at a gallery of stars and trying to suss out the differences in clothing. There wasn't much, really. Sinatra wore a trilby. That was exciting. The groups had names like The Penguins and The Elegants. It was buttoned-up conformity and perhaps the odd pullover. That would not do. People had televisions now. So the face of rock and roll had to match the sound of rock and roll. There were a number of ways of going with it. One way was flamboyance. Liberace had shown the value of showmanship with his Vegas revues. Sequins, capes, white suits, candelabras. It was only a matter of time before this was translated into the new sound. Richard Penniman was the perfect embodiment. He had been refining his recorded sound for a few years by now; with every flop record he added a new element. Cranked to the absolute max. Now he was a sort of rock and roll, boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues funkster, and in 1955 Specialty Records took a punt on him, putting him with Fats Domino's band. The recording sessions were, like his previous output, too clean, not raw enough, so in one break he started pounding the keys while screaming bawdy lyrics that he used in his live shows to get going. Producer Bumps Blackwell suddenly "got it" and had the song recorded in similar fashion. Once the lyrics had been cleaned up, of course... It was Richard's first hit, sneaking into the US top twenty, just; but in a reflection of the times, Richard's version was de-promoted in favour of a cover version by the extremely white Pat Boone - listen if you dare. Boone's peaked at 12, five places higher... But it did kickstart Richard into a meteoric chart career (14 R&B chart top ten cuts in two and a half years) that crashed down when he quit the music business - temporarily - to become a pastor. Nevertheless, "Tutti Frutti" remains one of the most important songs ever recorded - its injection of raw rhythm and blues gave the nascent rock and roll scene a kick into a whole different world of possible. In sum: he put the bomp in the bomp-a-bomp-a-bomp
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 1, 2012 10:03:03 GMT 1
The Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group - Rock Island LineMeanwhile, what was happening in the UK? Hitherto, not much. What was selling was still largely old-fashioned American or old-fashioned covers of old-fashioned American acts (Jimmy Young), or the occasional silly novelty (Lita Roza, Anne Shelton's throwback to her blitz heyday). The first British rock and roll charting single, far from being cutting edge, fell firmly into the latter category, reminiscent of Mike Smash's Punky Monkey period. As 1955 ended the NME had Dickie Valentine on top and luminaries such as Max Bygraves, The Stargazers, Eve Boswell and Alma Cogan's anti-Inuit advice all rocking the twenty. It was pretty desperate stuff. But in the last chart of the year there was something stirring. Only at 17 in the NME, but a top ten new entry in the trendier Record Mirror. It was one of those happy accidents. Cornettist Ken Colyer had been such a leading light in the British jazz scene that he ended up in New Orleans, learning from the masters. And then in a New Orleans jail before deportation. Oopsie. But on his return he joined Chris Barber's jazz ensemble, bringing the Dixie style with him, and during concert breaks the singer and a couple of other instrumentalists would jam a while, mixing jazz with doo-wop and homespun instruments; washboards, packing crates, whatever. This proved so popular that the singer was given his own record deal. And in 1954 recorded the Leadbelly blues standard "Rock Island Line" as a single, with a little help from Barber on bass and Beryl Bryden - Britain's first lady of jazz (and blues, come to that) and female vocalist of choice - on washboard. Anthony Donegan had been introduced as "Lonnie" in confusion with a fellow band-member at a concert a few years before and stuck to the name. 1954 was too soon for him to have a debut hit, the Big Bang had not ensured the British public was ready for something as out there as this new-fangled sound termed "skiffle" (an obscure American term for jazz on improvised instruments) by Colyer's brother. It took until late 1955 for the single to be released; it spent ten weeks in Record Mirror's top ten and hovered around the charts for six months. Such was the impact of the new sound that Donegan was invited to tour America, and "Rock Island Line" went top ten. A first for a genuinely British-grown sound. By the end of the year Donegan was a bona fide superstar. "Lost John" spent 5 weeks at number 2 in Record Mirror and 3 in the NME (behind, oh dear, Pat Boone), and he had the number one LP over Christmas. But far more important was the effect he had. For the first time Britain had shown that it could come up with a musical movement of its own. Yes, hugely influenced by what was happening in the States, but this was something anyone could do. Indeed it was the punk of its day. Anyone could dig out a washboard or put together a stand-up bass from old pallets, and busk on the streets or take a punt in a coffee shop. And many people did. So many that it's difficult to find someone successful in band music in the early sixties who had not got their start in skiffle. Its indirect impact would, without exaggeration, change pop music for ever. "Rock Island Line" was Britain's own "Rock Around The Clock". And somehow a typically British retort. Whereas Haley's sound was slick and edgy, Donegan's was homespun and effervescent, shambolic yet skilled, order out of chaos. It was not to create remote, untouchable superstars, but to make the kids with whom you went to school famous. It was also the song that made anything and everything possible; within half-a-decade, the charts were unrecognizable... In sum: leader of the Brit pack
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 2, 2012 16:18:37 GMT 1
1956Elvis Presley - Hound DogThe pressure was becoming intolerable. Momentum was building. Perez Prado had the biggest US hit of 1955 but Bill Haley was not far behind. Chuck Berry's ode to, er, self-administration "Maybelline" topped the R&B charts for over a fifth of the year. Fats Domino and Johnny Ace topped it for another 21 weeks. And there were disciples beginning to find their way to recording studios. The sound and the look were gradually scrambling out of the margins and taking over the mainstream. It just needed it all bringing together to explode. There was this Tennessee-living truck driver who had come second in a kids' talent contest at a state fair. His mama bought him a second-hand guitar as a reward for his next birthday. When he was 18 he returned the favour. Back then of course there were no answerphones or portable tape recorders. So if you wanted to have your voice preserved in permanent form you popped into a recording booth to make a cut-price. He thought it might make a decent pressie for his mom and one lunchbreak he stopped his truck at a little place in Memphis to have a go. The recording booth was run by a chap called Sam Phillips. He ran a label out of there. Obviously an important chap like Phillips could not contol everything, and his P.A. Marion Keisker took $4 from the handsome, shy and polite young man, and got a couple of songs down from him. Before he finished the first track, Keisker thought there was something there, and turned on a tape recorder for her to keep to let Sam take a listen. He wasn't impressed, but after Elvis Presley came back for a repeat showing, Phillips invited him back to perform one or two demos - and signed him up tentatively to a deal. So Presley was teamed up with a couple of Sun's staff musicians, and recorded a couple of desultory singles. And during a break Presley had a go at a new(ish) blues standard, "That's All Right Mama". It had come together. Now for the explosion. "Hound Dog" wasn't Elvis' first single; his first handful of Sun singles mooched around the country charts for a while with some impressively large hits. Only on the country charts, only a regional phenomenon. But Phillips realized Presley was too coruscating a talent to hold on to him and cashed in by trading him to RCA. Elvis' debut big label single broke him through. In a changing of the guard "Heartbreak Hotel" kept Perry Como off the chart summit for five weeks. A one-hit wonder? No. A follow-up re-recording of a country hit gave him a second. And then came the supernova. Just watch the performance. The shy young man is already a master of his craft; he controls the Big Mama Thornton song as if it's a toy soldier. Speeds it up, slows it down, and the audience - at least the female portion of it - is his. Oh my God, they are HIS. The gyrations caused a stir. Ed Sullivan declared that he would never have Elvis on his show. Immoral. Steve Allen stepped in instead and made Elvis sing to a rather depressed canine. More than half the American audience watched. Sullivan changed his mind. By now had to pay $50k for three performances. And just listen to the audience this time... In sum: the explosion
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 3, 2012 20:00:39 GMT 1
1957Mahalia Jackson - God Is So GoodIt wasn't a hit. Anywhere. Not even in the R&B charts. But Mahalia Jackson coalesced a number of different strains and started a whole new world of music. Firstly, the song itself. Doris Akers was a gospel singer and writer who moved to LA in her early twenties in search of fame. She found it with Sallie Martin, one of the first gospel stars, but as gospel circles, but as gospel was extremely low on record company production priorities - the gospel audience tended to have very low income and if they bought records it tended to be recordings of semi-sung sermons, the most popular being those of Rev. A. W. Nix - she remained only well known in some fairly tight circles. Secondly, the singer. Mahalia Jackson was the first gospel singer to have commercial success. Her 1948 cut "Move On Up A Little Higher" sold a million, but in those retrograde days it never made the US charts. It took until 1958 for the first of her two hits, neither of which made the top 50, but her success was elsewhere. She became the first gospel singer to break through to a white audience. Indeed her success was such that she came to Europe on tours in the forties and fifties - and created one heck of a stir. Even better, back home, in 1954, she was signed to Columbia which was able to get her onto television. Her fame and fortune came from live performances, rather than record sales, and she was seen as "safe". Her debut album was simply called The World's Greatest Gospel Singer - because she was. Similar to her contemporary, Sam Cooke, Jackson was seen as an island of calm in a sea of civil strife; but they were able to bring over to a larger audience that those folks who were not allowed to sit at the front of buses were real people, not circus freaks. And when she recorded Thomas Dorsey's " Precious Lord" in 1954 she created an icon for many who were still oppressed. It was Martin Luther King's favourite record, Jackson sang it at civil rights rallies, she sang it for JFK, King's last words were to request the song at a meeting he was attending that night, Jackson sang it at his funeral, and when Jackson died in 1972 it was sung at her funeral. By one of her protegees. Aretha Franklin. Which shows the influence she had. Although Jackson was resolutely gospel, her records were moving slightly differently. They were not pitched solely at the gospel audience. A touch of jazz thrown in, and lyrics that could easily be interpreted as love for someone a little more earthbound. In sum: soul stirrer
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 4, 2012 18:57:33 GMT 1
Buddy Holly - Peggy Sue
And now we turn to the antithesis of rock and roll. Rebellion? Outrageous costumes? Stage act? No - we get a geek in a bowtie and NHS-style specs.
But.
That SOUND.
Charles Holley was a Texan and was fully immersed in bluegrass roots. Until he saw Elvis just before Presley broke through. From then on it was rock and roll - to the extent that he was spotted when opening for Bill Haley and signed up to Decca. They mis-spelt his surname, so he ran with it.
In a wonderful instance of the left hand not knowing what the right was doing, Decca dropped him, and then had its subsidiary Coral sign him up. Meanwhile Holly and his regular instrumental crew had signed separately with Brunswick. This could have caused conniptions, especially as one of his flop singles for Decca - "That'll Be The Day" - was re-recorded for Brunswick and, to get around Decca's restrictive covenant, credited to the group as The Crickets. When it became a hit Decca wisely did not sue, but instead re-pushed Holly as a soloist.
He therefore ended up with contemporaneous careers; the songs he (co-)wrote with harmonies were on Brunswick and credited to The Crickets, those with his solo vocals to him himself. "Peggy Sue" was even named after the girlfriend of Jerry Allison, the Cricket drummer (originally it was titled "Cindy Lou" after Buddy's niece, but he agreed to change the name as a favour - only if Allison could get the tricky drum beat correctly), but as a solo vox was Buddy's own hit. His first. It entered the Billboard charts two months after "That'll Be The Day" topped the best seller listing...
The rest of the story is too sad to tell. I wonder just what we lost. Holly was a supremely talented songwriter and performer, and his early songs were well in advance of the music field. He pretty much established the lead guitar/backbeat guitar/bass/drum/vox pattern for a pop band, which was imitated by a later group who took their name in homage to The Crickets. (And also one that took their name in homage to Buddy.) He confirmed that whereas image was all very well, you still needed - at least back then - the SOUND. He also crossed over into other audiences; three Cricket records made the R&B chart top five, which for a white rock band was unprecedented.
Obviously Elvis was the great influence on rock and roll. But The Crickets were the band that set the template.
In sum: it always would matter evermore
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Post by Shireblogger on Sept 5, 2012 12:51:13 GMT 1
Vas, a pretty faultless list so far, and one which would have overlapped with my own version quite substantially, had I prepared one.
Little Richard's singles still sound amazing. I love to put them on while cooking - great for bouncing around the kitchen with a bottle of wine open, and a culinary masterpiece being prepared.
I saw Lonnie Donegan live a few years before his death. He was supporting Van Morrison, and knocked the socks off the main act. I only looked up Lonnie's music after hearing so many of the 60's greats credit him as an influence.
Mahalia Jackson is an inspirational selection, literally. Kudos for that one.
Buddy Holly is my favourite artiste until the 1970s, and the emergence of Bowie. I owe my passion for his stuff to my father, who didn't really care for Elvis, but bought everything he could of Buddy's when it was posthumously released in the late 50's / early 60's. Amazing to think now that the death of the Big Bopper was the headline that day, with Buddy just a sidebar.
My one quibble. Despite getting two mentions so far, it looks like Fats Domino is going to miss out. His greatest records - The Fat Man, Ain't That A Shame, I'm Walkin', Blueberry Hill, Blue Monday - date from 1950-57. He was the performer who came before Bill Haley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Elvis and the rest, but fired the early sparks that showed people that popular music could simultaneously be energetic and accomplished, thus creating a really entertaining show.
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 5, 2012 19:31:02 GMT 1
Thanks SB (or SL pro tem). Fats is a victim of there being so many new things happening in the fifties; there were a few iconic singles that could not be overlooked. It also means that in the early part of the list there are not that many obscurities.
Wouldn't call this chap obscure either.
1958
Cliff Richard & The Drifters - Move It
As hinted at above, Britain's first rock star was Tommy Steele. With his novelty hits. And everyone knew that rock was a passing fad. So manager Larry Parnes moved Steele right out of rock music as soon as he had his name established, and put him in film. It had worked for Elvis. And with such unchallenging fare as The Duke Wore Jeans Steele ploughed a furrow towards the stage which he still holds today.
But it meant there was a gap in British rockstardom. In a sort of X Factor paradigm of the day, a new star was rushed in to fill the gap, and then get moved on to be replaced by the next fresh face.
Didn't quite work.
Steele had made his name with performances at a coffee bar in Soho, called the 2i's. So impresarios flocked there to see who the next big star would be. Steele had started off as a skiffler with The Vipers, and after he went all Buddy Holly, The Vipers recruited new members. Towards the end of their fluctuating line-up they had a young bassist called Jet Harris, a younger guitarist called Hank Marvin, and a similarly young drummer called Tony Meehan. They would end up forming their own group...
In the meantime, there was a teenage singer/guitarist who fronted the odd band that had the odd show at the 2i's. Harry Webb was encouraged to change his name to something more rocky, and what's rockier than a cliff? The Richard was a stroke of genius; once corrected that it was not "Richards", nobody would forget it.
One chap who was quite taken with the singer was Ian Samwell, guitarist within the quantum foam of skiffledom who decided that this was a chap who could go far. Samwell therefore offered to be a member of a backing band for Richard, and as none of the other recruits he found could play bass he switched to that. And on the top deck of a bus wrote a song that was meant to be a throwaway b-side.
And when Norrie Paramor's scouts hit the 2i's, it was Richard on whom they fixated to snap up for EMI. They had the Bobby Helms US hit "Schoolboy Crush" tabbed as the debut single, but instead the b-side was switched to the a-side. Conflicting reasons; firstly that Norrie Paramor's daughter preferred it; secondly that Jack Good thought it better to have an original song rather than a cover played on his show.
Show? Yes. Rock had made television. In 1957 producer Jack Good had pitched a music programme to the BBC, which went out live at 6.05pm on a Saturday. From which it was called the Six Five Special. The BBC being the BBC demanded a public service element to it and had incongruous elements of sport and educational things (like Tiswas had to suffer 20 years later) so Good switched it to ITV for 1958, and renamed it Oh Boy! after the Holly classic.
And this was absolutely required viewing, it was the first show for teenagers and pretty much only teenagers. It made a number of stars - resident band Lord Rockingham's XI had a number one from it, resident guitarist Joe Brown ditto - and if one wanted to appear on the show, one did what Jack Good wanted.
But Good had a good ear...Britain had not properly come up with an Elvis of its own (the Power/Fury/Wildes of this world being more like edgier Johnnie Rays, or cuter Everlys) and "Move It" was very much in the Elvis mould, with Cliff doing his best Elvis impression on it. Samwell led the backing musicians, who were termed The Drifters until confusion with the American act caused a name-change; by that time the band's line-up had changed completely to bring in Jet, Hank and Tony. (And Bruce.)
"Move It" entered the BBC top 20 chart on 4th October 1958. That week there were only four other British acts. Two in the top ten; Bernard Bresslaw and Charlie Drake. Television comedians. Oh dear. It was a bleak landscape and Cliff exploded over it.
Five years later, and the chartscape had changed 180 degrees. The 4th October 1963 chart had Brits at 1 and 2, Cliff at 5, the re-named Drifters at 9, two ex-Shadows at 10, and more Brits at 11, 12, 13, 16, 18, 19 and 20. It was the Americans - Eydie Gorme, Trini Lopez - who were looking old fashioned; in one case, posthumous. Cliff had moved away from rock's bleeding edge into Steelesque variety, but at least the Shads were still kicking it. Yet now a step behind the latest gamechangers who would change the world.
But this was the record that made it all. This was the record that showed the Brits could out-rock the Americans. The record that lit the British invasion.
In sum: the ballad of the rad café
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 6, 2012 22:06:08 GMT 1
Link Wray & His Ray Men - RumbleIn 1940 a chap called Les Paul wondered what would happen if he built a guitar and wired it up. It was quite interesting. A few years later he teamed with a country singer called Mary Ford and had some monster hits in the United States. The electric guitar at first though was pretty much an analogue for the acoustic. It played the same sort of thing. Rock and roll started to do more intricate things with it; but in 1958 Frederick Lincoln Wray came up with something that no acoustic could approach. It was by accident. He and his band had been booked to appear at a show in Fredericksburg, West Virginia, as support to The Diamonds, who were topping the charts in the US with "The Stroll". 5,000 bobbysoxers was not the typical audience for Wray's bluesy sound, and, with no reaction, his brother (and fellow bandmember) Doug suggested Wray play "The Stroll". Instead Wray improvised as Doug beat out the beat, and other brother Ray quickly miked up Wray's guitar. Unusual in those days as only the singer normally got miked; but the effect of Wray's deep blues, reverb and feedback from the mike and Doug's brooding drumbeat sent the crowd berserk. The head of Cadence Records got to hear about the fuss, and when The Raymen recorded a version they destroyed an amp to recover the live sound. Originally titled "Oddball", labelmate Phil Everly suggested "Rumble" instead. That had a twofold effect; one, it made it sound even more aggressive; two, got it banned, as radio stations feared encouraging delinquency. Nevertheless it nudged the US top 20, the only time Wray made it so high. It still sounds fresh today, so one wonders just how it would have come across to fifties Britain. Ahead of its time, it never made the charts, but the people who mattered heard it and emulated it; Jimmy Page, Ray Davies and Pete Townsend, for example. And Hendrix and Clapton. And Jeff Beck, Neil Young and Bob Dylan. Wray showed everyone beyond doubt the electric guitar was not just a guitar that was electric. It was an instrument in its own right. And should be treated as such. As indeed it would be... In sum: electric dreams
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 7, 2012 18:50:35 GMT 1
1959
Chris Barber's Jazz Band - Petite Fleur
You may recall Chris from a little bit above. Whereas Lonnie Donegan went the skiffle route, Barber went the full Dixie jazz route, at the forefront of a popular revival of the 1920s sound that got termed "trad jazz".
It's easy to overlook this movement as in popular music terms it led nowhere, soon corralling itself into its own scene. However after his band's cover of "Petite Fleur" (a 1952 instrumental by Henry Bechet), featuring clarinet from Monty Sunshine, reached the top five in 1959 there was a flurry of big, big trad jazz hits. Mr Acker Bilk, Kenny Ball and The Temperance Seven (so named because they were one under, rather than over, the eight) all had chart-topping singles, with Ball, Barber and Bilk teaming up with four recordings each on a chart-topping album; even in the States the Brits had success - Bilk became the first Briton to top the Billboard Hot 100, "Petite Fleur" topped out at 5 and Kenny Ball reached number 2. Other trad jazz artists like Terry Lightfoot and Bob Wallis also had hits, and a tyro producer called Joe Meek cut his chart teeth with the immortal Humphrey Lyttleton.
Its influence did pop up every now and then, mostly via novelty hits for the likes of Robin Sarstedt and the New Vaudeville Band, but also indirectly - jazzman Mike Cotton moved towards the rhythm and blues market in the mid-sixties and Alexis Korner, a former member of Barber's band, started his own blues outfit in 1961 which influenced or populated many of the sixties pop bands, from the Stones downwards.
But why include this record? Partly as a reminder that there was, once, a genre that was highly successful and is now overlooked. Partly because if you re-ran history maybe trad jazz would have taken over and stifled later developments, or at least delayed them, or spun off into strange new directions. And partly to remind everyone that pop music occasionally can provide a different direction and find a new audience that has nothing to do with the mainstream.
In sum: dead end street
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 8, 2012 15:09:49 GMT 1
Sandy Nelson - Teen BeatThe guitar had come to the forefront of rock and, increasingly, pop. Now it was the turn of the drum. Nelson was growing up listening to Little Richard and (natch) Fats Domino, and his hero was the R&B drummer of choice Earl Palmer, whom you will have heard on "Tutti Frutti" and who became part of the legendary Wrecking Crew. In emulating his hero, Nelson started off drumming for his school orchestra, moved from lowly beginnings as sticksman for Kit Tyler & The Flips and a band of schoolmates called The Renegades to become a session drummer; his Californian birth was a major boon as he could spend all his time in Hollywood studios honing his craft. And he was one of those in demand. As a member of The Teddy Bears and The Hollywood Argyles he had a couple of US number one hits. While doing some session work for Original Sound Records (which was mainly a side-project of Cali DJ Art Laboe for re-issuing oldies) he managed to bag some studio time and pound out his own single. Laboe bagged a writer's co-credit under a pseudonym (which should have gone to guitarist and ex-Renegade Richard Podolor), the single was put out, and reached the US top 5. Its importance is shown by some of Nelson's contemporaries. One of the other members of The Renegades was Bruce Johnston. Yes, THE Bruce Johnston. And two of his schoolmates were Jan Berry and Dean Torrence. Basically, Nelson paved the way for The Beach Boys and Jan & Dean - the genesis of surf music, then garage rock and everything that followed; including AOR (Podolor was the producer for Steppenwolf and Three Dog Night, for example), psychedelia and even heavy metal. We will see bits of these later. And that's ignoring his influence on drummers over the years; could a Moon the Loon create coruscating drumbeat patterns without Nelson showing that drum could be the melody as well? He wasn't quite the first drummer soloist to have a big hit - Cozy Cole's "Topsy Part II" topped some US charts the previous year - but put the two together and you get a Janus head. One is looking backwards, the other to today... Nelson's career was stymied by a bike accident that caused a foot amputation, but he adapted to continue drumming, which he still does to this day with his Sin City Termites. In sum: the drum is everything
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