Saturday, September 27, 2003 Teresa Brewer, "Music! Music! Music!" (March 18, 1950) Its ricky-tick piano brings us back to the thrilling days of dixieland, and since I read Amiri Baraka's Blues People at a fairly early age, I suppose I should consider this reactionary bullshit, "jazz" for folks who couldn't take their black music straight up and...um...fuck that, Baraka's not bullshit-free either. Probably. I don't know, I haven't read the book in ten years. Better dixieland than Guy Lombardo, anyway. I was fond of this as a kid, but I don't remember how I heard it. It seems too retro for the oldies stations -- and the dixieland vibe marked it as doubly retro; maybe the shrillness and the twang in Brewer's voice made it acceptable to the country stations the family was listening to in the seventies. But there's this one odd, unretro moment about three quarters of the way through: "C'mon everybody! Put some nickels, and keep that old nickleodeon playing." Brewer doesn't sing it, she talks it out with an odd emphasis on the word "playing," and she addresses the listeners rather than guy she wants to dance with. It disarms me every time; she's so...solicitous. It's between a plea, a come-on, and a soft-sell for toothpaste. I'd imagine it might be unnerving blaring from a jukebox: a machine expressing desire, a machine desiring you and your nickels. 5 (link)

Red Foley, "Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy" (February 18, 1950) The shoeshine boy is one of those quaint little stereotypes of black life that no modern American can regard without awkwardness, and with his happy-go-lucky singin' and dancin', the titular character seems to inhabit the role quite well. The thing is, I hear nothing in the lyric which says the song's "little ball of rhythm" is in fact black or not, so I don't know if I should be indignant at the song's cute racism or feel like crap for jumping to conclusions about a bunch of musicians with innocent intentions. Isn't that just great? Isn't it great how such an innocuous little thing as this could have many forms of guilt embedded in every nook and cranny? God, I suck the life out of everything. 3 (link)

Wednesday, September 24, 2003 The Ames Brothers, "Rag Mop" (February 11, 1950) The entrance is really grand, big staccato horn blasts in quick waves of attacks that rock and reel back and forth. They tell you: you're not only gonna dance to this song, but you're gonna dance FAST to it, too. But the hook is the words, and the words are pretty stupid, or maybe provocatively stupid: M! I say m!o! M!o!p! M!o!p!p! Mop! M!o!p!p!mop!mop!mop!mop!r! I say r!a! R!a!g! R!a!g!g! Rag! R!a!g!g!m!o!p!p! Rag Mop! Da-doot-daaaaaah-de-yadda! Rag Mop! Doot-do-doot-daaaaaah-de-yadda! Rag Mop! Doot-do-doot-daaaaaah-de-yadda! Rag Mop! Doot-do-doot-daaaaaah-de-yadda! Rag Mop! Da-doot-daaaaaah-de-yadda! R!a!g!g!m!o!p!p! Rag Mop! They even go "A! I say a!b! a!b!c!" etc. a little later. Doo-wop, then "Louie Louie" and "Surfin' Bird" would get a lot of credit for taking subverbal charm as far as it go could while still being something recognizably pop, but it's entirely possible that "Rag Mop"'s dumbness was understood as in-your-face, too. Maybe there's a tradition here, a "Rag Mop"-'Surfin' Bird" one, and maybe we can also find other examples and stretch it back and stretch forward, too. Dr. Demento has played this on ocassion. Umm...it's a 5. (Anyway, why are the words stupid, though? Shouldn't it be understood that when words, letters and phonemes function in ways other than providing narrative, like in scat-singing, say, they're beyond smart and dumb? Isn't calling a song dumb because the mouth-sounds don't tell a story kinda like complaining an URL isn't a complete sentence?) (link)

Tuesday, September 23, 2003 The Andrews Sisters, "I Can Dream, Can't I?" (January 14, 1950) Before fading away, inhumanly popular singing group releases what amounts to a solo-artist-plus-backup record of an uncharacteristic syrupiness. Practically a pop archetype, that. But it's about unrequited love, so I'll give it a pass. If "pop" is "about" "desire" (lust, wishes, dreams) then songs about love thwarted are possibly the most archetypical kind of love song pop can offer because you can't desire something you already have. 4 (Much better is "I Wanna Be Loved," also from the same year, also a syrupy semi-solo effort, but also as intoxicatedly erotic as you'd imagine a Andrews Sisters song might be: "I wanna be thrilled...to desperation.") (link)

Gene Autry, "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer" (January 7, 1950) It's almost hard to believe this song ever allowed itself to be compared to other songs in the court of public opinion via the charts on its way to the immortality of guaranteed seasonal airplay, obligatory covers, Rankin-Bass TV specials, elementary school singalongs. It's always felt like it was always there. Ironically, even with that kind of ubiquity, I think the last I paid attention to the song was nearly twenty years ago, one time when my dad and I were driving to the mall with a country program on the radio, and I was faintly amazed and proud that I knew who sang this. Listening to it now I'm also amazed that it's glossier than I remember. I expected something sparer and slightly more honking on the vocals, but it's got strings, very nice ones, plus a nearly minute-long instrumental section, and oddly no coda so it seems to end abruptly. Maybe I'm mixing it up with "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." Autry reputedly hated this song, and unsurprisingly he sings it elegantly but without any discernable involvement. Unlike "White Christmas," with its totally modern (and very non-Christy) sentiment that lingers on the displacement and nostalgia that comes with the holiday nowadays, "Rudolph" was another absurd wrinkle -- a flying reindeer with a supernaturally red nose -- on a Christmas myth that was always already encrusted with multiple absurdities from multiple eras. "Rudolph" actually has a theme that's potentially just as emotionally resonant -- being bullied for being weird then rising above, Black Flag-style -- but it took the 1964 Rankin-Bass TV special to properly flesh all that out. 4 (link)

American Hot Wax: The Intro I think I'll finish "Send in the Clones" another time. Instead, in the hopes of smashing my writer's block, I'm going to try something crazier -- an American version of my friend and colleague Tom Ewing's "Popular" blog, all the American #1 singles from 1950 onwards, reviewed and rated, in order. These are the kinds of challenges I like taking up: the stupid ones. I don't especially care if I finish this or not, though right not now I can't imagine myself doing anything but. Anyway, this little project will be called "American Hot Wax" until and unless I can think of something better. Now for the boring complicated stuff. The Billboard "Hot 100" -- the gold standard of American popular song charts -- has been around since August 4th, 1958. Prior to that date, Billboard had a bunch of different weekly pop charts, one for airplay, another for jukebox spins, still another for store sales. Unsurprisingly, each chart had a slightly different set of #1s. One record that went #1 in one chart wouldn't be #1 on another, and so on. These charts were gradually phased out until October 1958 when only the "Hot 100" remained. So, what's a blogger with an obsession to do? Well, most Billboard publications, when quantifying the pre-consolidation pop #1s, list ALL the #1s that appeared on ALL the pop charts. Other Billboard books, namely ones like The Billboard Book of Number One Hits that are more for the general public rather than the historian or the chart obsessive, admirably foresake the technicalities involved and simply use the "Best Sellers" chart until the "Hot 100" is available. The latter approach is the one I'm taking. A few charming hits like the Andrews Sisters' "I Wanna Be Loved" and Jim Lowe's "The Green Door" get passed over this way, but I've got enough crap on my mind as it is. (link)