There were a lot of young bucks who were thinking just like Elvis in 1955. The Elvis look was around long before Elvis for one thing. Slicked-back pompadours with pointy shoes were all over the teenage streets of all the east coast cities, at least, in the early 50’s. Black leather jackets were all the rage in 1953. And musically, the idea of combining blues with country was literally in the air, as people heard plenty of both on the radio, especially in the South. Plus electric guitars and amps were suddenly available. It HAD to happen. So it’s not right to call Carl Perkins and Conway Twitty and Gene Vincent and even Ricky Nelson mere Elvis imitators. And who cares if they were, as long as they made great records. This guy Clint Miller was an Elvis imitator I suppose, but this is a rockin tune just the same, with proto-Shakin All Over guitar:
Conway Twitty started out with a pomp while Elvis had his fresh fish special, and if this is imitation let’s have a little more. Too bad Conway immediately dove headfirst into the schlockiest of schlock Country. He had potential:
Moyer thinks the drums on the next one “pedestrian.” I think he’s nuts. They are pumping like what it’s all about. Add Dee Dee’s incredible voice and one the best sax solos ever:
The last two songs were hits in 1960 and 1962, so again it’s not a wasteland.
We watched Snowpiercer tonight. It is a videogame of a movie, each car is a level, and at least for a part of the story it relies on that video game convention. But then it doesn’t.
One of the oddest things about this odd movie is that the one piece of licensed music is Cream’s Strange Brew. Brilliant.
I liked the movie, but it is pretty shaggy. Which is much like Boon’s previously over the top movie, The Host. I suspect he doesn’t care much about tightness.
Lawr mentioned some of the godawful music between 1959 and the Beatles. True, but pick any week in any year and you will see garbage. Take August 6, 1967, when “Windy” and “My Mammy” by the Happenings and “Pleasant Valley Sunday” were all in the Top 10. In 1968 that week were “Lady Willpower” (OMG) and “Turn Around, Look At Me” by the Vogues. 1969 was not bad at all but damn there are Zager & Evans, Neil Diamond was an asshole even then, and Andy Kim was #1:
1. Baby I Love You – Andy Kim
2. Honky Tonk Women
3. My Cherie Amour
4. Sweet Caroline
5. Crystal Blue Persuasion – Tommy James & the Shondells
6. Put a Little Love in Your Heart – Jackie DeShannon
7. Get Together – The Youngbloods
8. a Boy Named Sue – Johnny Cash
9. In The Year 2525 – Zager and Evans
10. My Pledge of Love – Joe Jeffrey Group
So yeah, there was more crap in 1960, but the shit is always with us. I was cherry picking some tunes from itunes tonight and gathered a few 1959-1964 gems. I started with The Regents and this slice of punk from California 1961. I know for a fact that The Ramones loved this and I’m amazed that they never covered it, although it requires a killer sax player like whoever is whaling (not “wailing”) this:
I do like my girl groups and the Chiffons were a good one. This was a follow-up song that was not as successful as their three big hits which were He’s So Fine, One Fine Day and Sweet Talking Guy. But I think it’s their best. Big beat, tear offs on the guitar, and later in the song I think what is the first time anybody played a guitar through a Leslie speaker. Used primarily for organs, these speakers have a fan in them and it creates a distinctive sound which has been used dozens if not hundreds of times since. The tune is Jeff Barry-Ellie Greenwich:
I’ll finish off with one I used to play with Nicky D’Amico when we were between bands. We just loved it and still do. Smoking rhythm section with more punk guitar, more killer sax, and up yours with an electric shaver. It got the people out on the floor:
It’s been a very busy 12 months for Linda Ronstadt. Last summer she revealed she had Parkinson’s disease and is already unable to sing due to its effect. A few months later she began to promote her autobiography, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir, granting a substantial number of media interviews. Oh, and did I mention she was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame this year.
Then just this week, President Obama awarded her a National Medal of Arts and Humanities. At the ceremony, the President said “I told Linda Ronstadt I had a crush on her back in the day.”
Today’s SotW is a Ronstadt song that you all may know, but one that I only recently discovered this year. “I Won’t Be Hangin’ Round” is my new favorite. It’s from her 1972, third solo album titled simply Linda Ronstadt (which I have a copy of) but I only really “heard” it for the first time on a various artist record called Country Soul Sisters. I’ve since learned it’s also on another compilation disc called Delta Swamp Rock Sounds From The South: At The Crossroads Of Rock, Country And Soul.
“I Won’t Be Hangin’ Round” was written by Eric Kaz who also wrote a couple of my favorite Bonnie Raitt songs (that Ronstadt also recorded) – “Cry Like A Rainstorm” and “Love Has No Pride” – among many others.
Ronstadt was fond of covering soul hits on her albums. “Heatwave”, “Just One Look” and “Rescue Me” come to mind. But even though she belted them out with credibility, she still sounded like a white girl singing soul covers. On “I Won’t Be Hangin’ Round” Ronstadt attains a truly soulful performance. The gospel infused background vocals provided by Merry Clayton, Diane Davidson and Miss Ona lend some authenticity to the sound, but it would be unfair to Ronstadt to imply that’s the only reason the performance works. She nails it.
The recording also benefits from the support of the Muscle Shoals house band including Barry Beckett on keys, Weldon Myrick on slide guitar and Roger Hawkins on drums. Those boys know a little bit about soul music.
Lawr’s foray into Dion DiMucci led me via YouTube links to this clip of La La Brooks in recent years performing the Crystals’ And Then He Kissed Me, a record she first sang on as a teenager 50 years ago.
This is a fantastic song, half back alley romance and half religious experience, and needless to say (I hope) that’s often the same physical thing.
But what’s funny is watching a woman who is clearly past the moment reveling in it. La La does so brilliantly, and the band does a fine job creating the atmosphere of the original production. But still, it’s an acting job. One she does very well.
But this provokes a question. Not only how much of a song like this is the singer, and how much the song, but also how much is the audience?
If La La was great playing the 15 year old when she was 60, aren’t the theatrics a tribute to her skill? Hell yes.
And yet I wonder how much is her performance and how much the music of our youth really belongs to us because we were young then. Sorry La La.
I wish there was video, but this is so different, mostly because the voice is in the middle of the music and ideas, rather than looking cagily backward. We have changed, too, and can’t keep the same naive viewpoint for 40 years and not end up in trouble with the law.
I’m not saying that rock is only for the young. Heck, most of the young don’t listen to rock these days. I am saying that something is lost (or changes) when we go from young to old. There are compensations, for sure, but you have to admit, everything changes, and only the song remains the same.
I cannot even remember what I was looking for in YouTube when on the list of suggested items I saw a link to a version Dion’s Runaround Sue, just a fantastic song.
I am sure Peter and Gene, New Yorkers both, appreciate Dion, first with the Belmonts, then as a solo artist, who represented the doo wop bands, and the toughness of the New York streets of the 50’s better than anyone.
Dion’s pained voice and words reflected the unspoken angst of an era when angst was indeed not to be spoken about: but, at least we could live our pain vicariously through Mr. diMucci.
Dion, who had his struggles along with his hits, still lives and I believe still performs, but in the 1961, with Runaround Sue, he was dynamite.
What is funny is this clip, of the singer with the band The Del Satins, is just weird.
First, I don’t remember ever hearing-or at least knowing about–a song by them backing Dion.
Second, I could swear they are all just lip synching here, because Dion recorded the song under his name alone after splitting with the Belmonts. And, the song represented sure as hell sounds like the original recording.
But, even for lip synching, these guys have to be the most laconic band in the history of anything.
Even so, my man Dion is still at least trying to perform, but the rest of the band, especially the back up sax guy who largely snaps his fingers, and sings back-up with the two guitar players, is almost dead. And, when they go into their “awwwwwwwws” none of them moves even remotely close to the single mike. Not too mention their lips are way out of synch.
The piano guy is even worse, for though he is playing, or pretending anyway, he is largely looking at the camera in some kind of earlier wishful version of a photo bomb or selfie or something.
But, enough of the band, the audience is even worse. They seem to be in a nightclub, but no one has have a drink in front of him or her (well, ok, I saw one beverage, but it looks untouched). Otherwise, they are just fucking sitting there, while Dion is at least pretending to wail. And, even if the song is piped in from the original recording, that song rocks.
Yet not one person is so much as tapping their finger on the nice white table cloths, or even swaying just a little.
Which confirms my notion of how sadly repressed we were.
Whew. Glad we can all now have sex and drugs and rock’n’roll.
While we are at it, while thinking about this piece, I happened to hear J.D. McPherson on KTKE, in Truckee, performing a song new to me, but surely evocative of Dion and doo wop and rock’a’billy.
Check it out. Pretty cool tune, and though it seems the sax is overdubbed in this video, the sax player still showed more moxie than that guy in the Del Satins.
Driving around the other day, listening to WFMU, there was a set that started with Nico singing in German, continued into a German version of Send in the Clowns, and then turned to Nina Hagen’s version of White Punks on Dope, which was called TV Glotzer. Also in German.
TV Glotzer was featured here back in February, when I couldn’t find a clip of the Tubes’ version of the song. But now I can.
I first heard the Tubes’ original version of the song while living in a dorm at Harvard with my friend Peter S. (he was going to summer school, I was freeloading) in the summer of 1975. It was mind-blowing, a melding of Bowie and Queen and Cooper with a wicked stupid sense of humor that seemed (I know, this is dum) mindblowing. Lest I build it up too much:
Saw Dawn of the Planet of the Apes tonight. It’s kind of painful to realize how grateful we are for a movie that pretends to have a plot and gives the characters a sliver of emotional stake in the outcome.
I loved the original book, The Planet of the Apes, by Pierre Boulle, and the original 1968 movie wasn’t bad. It has one of the corniest and most effective endings, which I won’t describe in case you don’t know it.
Didn’t see the Tim Burton version, or Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which leads into this one. I don’t think you’ll be unhappy with this one, but I really recommend the book.
I also recommend this Rufus Thomas sequel to his own Walking the Dog franchise.
I promise you I haven’t thought of this song in a long time, though I think I own the 45. Still, I don’t have a story really, and can only say it came up today randomly while I was making dinner and it floored me anew.
Quote of the day (28 years later):
“She stands there like Bill Wyman
I am her biggest fan.”
The song came out in 1986, on the band’s first full length elpee, Especially For You. Opinion’s vary about the album, which sounds great, but also wears its influences fairly heavily. The most famous song from the album is Blood and Roses, which has a wicked bass line, an explosive lead guitar, and darkly foreboding lyrics. But was it a mistake for lead singer Pat DiNizio to adopt a style that was either Maynard G. Krebs or Brother Theodore or a combo of the two?
