Saturday, June 23, 2007 The Chordettes, "Mr. Sandman" (December 4, 1954) As a kid, I was a spirited singer in music class, and there were a few pop songs that I could stand to admit I adored (like Anne Murray's "You Needed Me") but in general, I didn't seek music out. It came to me instead, usually through the radio in my parents' cars or through television, especially ads for cheap-o oldies compilations. Any song that I heard in my childhood must've had a fairly significant amount of cultural capital in order to break through this wall of uninterest. I remember "The Doggie in the Window" and the Nat 'King' Cole hits, and the Christmas songs, of course, were played every December. I think I knew "Music! Music! Music! from Teresa Brewer's appearance on The Muppet Show, and "If I Knew You Were Comin'" because it was reffed in Same Time, Next Year. And then there's this one. WCBS-FM, though it was a pioneering rock & roll oldies station, would still play this and a few other non-rock hits from the smudgy border of the Presley-and-beyond era. While it has the gooey girlish pleading common to Patti Page, it also shares a musical sensibility with doo-wop in that it's the harmonic acrobatics of the Chordettes themselves that act as the primary hook. The song has a barrage of instruments and effects -- hand claps, vibraphone, upright bass, drums, a few horns, a male vocal, and a piano -- but they serve only to supplement rhythms and establish counter-rhythms, and they don't get in the way of those prim and precise bum-bum-bums. The effect is minimalist compared to the blaring mush of something of the number #1s from only a few years back: the novelty ethos, but on a diet. That said, it's surprisingly less pristine than I remember, and like a lot of amateurish doo-wop singing, suffers for it. The tenor of the group (a thankless job for a girl group, I guess) goes awfully flat once the middle eight starts. When she hits the line "give him the word that I'm not a rover" it leaves the unfortunate impression that she's not pleading she's monogamous but that's she's not a dog. 6 (link)

Friday, June 22, 2007 Eddie Fisher, "I Need You Now" (November 13, 1954) He's a little too plummy for this jaunty bit of nothing (it's like he's physically incapable of sounding casual), but finally, something by Eddie Fisher that doesn't asymptotically approach total dogshit. 5 (link)

Rosemary Clooney, "This Ole House" (November 6, 1954) This one kinda hits home in an amusing way. Lately I've spending my spare time going on the tours in the AIA Guide to New York City, working my way through Manhattan, methodically visiting site after site, taking pictures, getting myself real real gone for a change in the shifting landscapes. So I've been doing a lot of thinking about buildings and how they pass through time and accrete the residue of human history. This song pays homage to that idea, with its titular house described as having known its owner's wife and kids and their travails. I like the way this lyrical detail evokes the past (which I guess might be reflective of an older record-buying audience -- as well as an audience of home-owners) but doesn't luxuriate in a sentimental reflection of things past. The song never stops to detail what happened to the owner's wife and kids, doesn't try to feel sorry for guy. The song's relentlessly uptempo old-timey rickey-tickey backing won't allow any time for that kind of reflection. Sadly, the only weak link here is Rosie. Where she infused uptempo fluff like "Come On-a My House" with curls of suggestion in every syllable, here she rushes through this one and comes off strident as a result, especially towards the end. 6 (link)

Thursday, June 21, 2007 Rosemary Clooney, "Hey There" (September 25, 1954) In The Pajama Game, the male lead sings this song into a Dictaphone, addressing himself, telling himself to forget an unobtainable woman; he rewinds the tape, and responds to it as if it was a surrogate self, then sings along. In Rosie's version, about three-quarters the way through, Rosie's singing briefly shifts to the background, and her overdubbed speaking voice answers it back: Hey there -- you with the stars in your eyes... Are you talking to me? Love never made a fool of you... Not until now. You used to be too wise... Yes, I was once. Since there's no simple way to explain the Dictaphone conceit in the space of a single, this version disposes with it altogether, and the intro ("Lately when I´m in my room all by myself/In the solitary gloom I call to myself") presents this dialogue as somebody talking out loud to their inner voice. With or without the Dictaphone, solo dialogue is a potentially awkward premise for a pop song. If by chance you tuned into the song without hearing the intro, you'd think it was someone admonishing a friend until you got to the spoken word bits, then you'd really be confused. So this is unusually brave for a chart hit of the time: its concept isn't instantly grasped, the lyrics (when understood) are self-loathing, and as I've argued before, double-tracking is a studio effect that can be as off-putting as it is alluring. What overwhelms any potential alienation from the song -- what makes the song's appeal immediate -- is Rosie's voice, hesitating, choking down each line, ready to swoon in her misery. For once, she gets some material worthy of her. 7 (When I started this blog, I think I half assumed that I'd be encountering more than a few songs from Broadway's golden era. Far as I can see, this hasn't happened 'cept for this song. I've done a little armchair theorizing to figure out why Broadway doesn't seem to be fertile ground for hit records in this era. First of all, even in 1954, there's quite possibly several divides of age and class that separates Broadway from the hit parade that are completely lost on me. Secondly, given that a musical at best can only be staged only so many places at any given moment -- while a movie can appear in thousands of theaters during one weekend, and a record can played on this country's radio stations umpteen million times a day -- the musical theater alone doesn't have the omnipresence or influence that can make a good song a hit. A musical has to be put on wax, or made into a movie in order for it to be disseminated on a mass level, and by the time that happens, it's already old news to much of its core audience.) (link)

Sunday, June 17, 2007 The Crew-Cuts, "Sh-Boom" (August 7, 1954) The first haircut band? I guess it'd be fun to overturn the received wisdom of this song -- bowdlerized version by white group sells more copies than superior original by black group -- but the Crew-Cuts make a good scapegoat. Mind you, no feel for rhythm & blues isn't these guys' problem. They're just the least commanding singers this blog's encountered so far. Oh, they can sing, they can harmonize, they can sustain notes and all that, but Tony Alamo's murmuring, Perry Como's mooing, and Johnnie Ray's spazz attacks all evidence more presence than these husky ex-choirboys can manage. Coming out of the mouth of a decent singer like Perry Como, a line like "Now every time I look at you, something is on my mind/if you do what I want you to, baby, we'd be so fine" would just sound dumb (Johnnie Ray would make it sound incomprehensible, and fascinatingly so); the Crew-Cuts make it sound smarmy, a clumsy pick-up line by a drunken fratboy. I can sense how the forthrightness of that line and the speed with which they sing the others must've seemed to them like the essence of roguish slick. Wikipedia says their name "refers to their short hair as opposed to long hair, which at the time implied classical music," so even their name carried with it resonances not of whitebread blandness (or homoeroticism) the way it does now, but anti-respectability. But these guys just don't have the goods to achieve a species of pop revolt that (incidentally) rock & roll is already doing at least ten times better. 3 (link)