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Ah now, one of my earliest Christmas memories is of singing this at an infant school concert back in the early seventies. Or rather listening to the oldest class sing it while I sat on the floor dressed as a Red Indian. I couldn't follow all the words, but it didn't matter - I got 'stocking', 'reindeer', toys' and 'Santa's so that was plenty to get any six year old's Christmas spirit flowing.
And I couldn't follow the lyrics too well partly because our school's version was taken at a fair clip so it comes as something as a shock to hear Valentine reduce it to a croon and a drawl that sounds as festive as Scrooge before the ghosts popped round. And by taking it so precisely, Valentine's delivery lets the not quite good enough rhymes take more prominence than they should ("S is for old Santa who makes every kid his pet" indeed!) and it replaces the would be jollity with something more dour as bored old Dickie waits for old Santa to bring him his pay check. Surprising then that it's not been more covered by artists intent on writing these wrongs because, as my infant school demonstrated, there's a lot of fun to be had here if you do it properly.
If 'Secret Love' reminded me of Robinson Crusoe finding Friday's footprint in the sand, 'Rock Around The Clock' puts me in mind of the scene in Jurassic Park just before the T Rex puts in its first appearance. We've already seen some of the more harmless creatures but, whilst they've been amusing enough, it's the big boys on the block that everybody has been dying to see.
I've been feeling much the same way myself so far this decade. There have been some interesting enough singles to be sure, but I've been longing to plant my feet in more familiar territory where the music is actually speaking to me rather than at me and if ever a song came pre-loaded with an aura of it's own self importance to do just that then it's this one; plenty of folk still regard this as the birthplace of what we came to call rock and roll. Not that I'd agree with that, but nevertheless Haley and his Comets manage to stamp the ground hard enough to ripple the water in the plastic cup of familiarity perched on my dashboard in their announcement that something big is coming.
So ok, although I wouldn't call Haley's 'Rock Around The Clock' revolutionary, a quick listen to the original version (by Sonny Daye and his Knights) reveals a version as poor as those puns and one rooted firmly in old fashioned cornball. By hooking up to the basic tune from Hank Williams' 'Move It On Over', the Comets light the sort of fire under the song that Sonny was trying to estinguish and in keeping a constant hammering backbeat for the horn and guitar runs to hang themselves on, it distances itself well away from what would otherwise be little more than a variation on trad jazz. No, if there's a weak link here, then it's Haley himself; put simply, he was more in the camp of the problem than the camp of the solution.
There's ample precedent in blues/r&b to take the song's references to 'rock' as a sly euphemism for sex - in the parlance of black music of the time then to rock is to fuck and if that is the case, then Bill would struggle to satisfy the most least demanding lover. He starts off strong enough with his 'one, two three o'clock, four o'clock rock' refrain that carries a wicked glint in its tone, but by the time seven rolls around he's stumbling over his words and from there on in he lags behind the Comets, completely out of puff as they roar over the horizon without him.
Never mind shagging, Haley doesn't sound like he'd be capable of getting to first base, let alone doing any kind of rocking and much of the problem stems from him still being wrapped in the embrace of his previous career as a country star (or else lacks the talent to break free of it). Rather than snapping out the lyrics with an urgency, Haley wastes far too much time pronouncing every syllable to try and make them fit the beats of the bar and ending each line with a balladic flourish that might have been fine for the Grand Old Opry but are ill company for a backing band keen to embrace the shock of the new. In fact, Haley sounds like a bit part player in his own song, a kindly uncle content to put his feet up and smile as the 'young 'uns' do their thing.
Not revolutionary new then (I'm not going to go into a history lesson of the gestation of popular music, it's not the place and I don't have the time - look it up if you're interested), but new enough to capture the minds of an emerging generation of teenager looking for an alternative to the 78's their parents bought, and as far as that goes I think the thing I like most about 'Rock Around The Clock' is the fact I'm writing about it here at all. Lest we forget, the song and its parent film 'The Blackboard Jungle' incited riots and ripped up seats in the cinemas it was shown in and there's something wonderfully subversive in such provocative rebellion landing at the top of the charts. It's more than any punk single would manage anyway.
True, Haley's soft vocal and kiss curl image take more than a slight edge of danger off it all, but it still has teeth enough to set it apart from the majority of the 'moon in June' balladry that filled up the charts around it. In hindsight, it might have been Haley's not inconsiderable bulk that was shaking that ground rather than anything more fierce emerging from the trees, but in crashing through he cleared a path that would make it that much easier for the more aggressive beasts to follow.
Taken from the 1954 musical 'The Pajama Game', 'Hernando's Hideaway' has proved a phenomenally popular tune worldwide (Wikipedia lists at least fifteen different Finnish versions) and even this very month in 1955, The Johnson Brothers were slugging it out with a version by Johnnie Ray. Ray stalled at number 11 and so maybe it was a sense of patriotism that sent the Brit Brothers to the top because there's not a lot to choose between the versions.
Truth be told, there's not much variation between any of the versions of 'Hernando's Hideaway' that I've heard (and I ran through a few more online before starting this). Being a show tune, it's fairly set in stone and that stone is a tale of a hush hush drinking hole where the cool people go set to a fruity tango rytythm. This Latin vibe is permeates throughout with cries of 'Ole!' and a click track of clattering castanets to light the mock drama of secret knocks and match flares. "All you see are silhouettes, and all you hear are castanets and no one cares how late it gets" - 'Hernando's Hideaway' is the kind of bar I'd love to frequent but probably wouldn't get past the bouncer on the door. And to that end, 'Hernando's Hideaway' is a kissing cousin to 'Mambo Italiano' - fun escapism with a wry sense of humour and ultimately too short a ride to irritate.
Us Brits don't do country music all that well. Never have done. It's not in the blood you see. Sure, we have our own traditions of folk songs and murder ballads that draw from the same well of hand me down experience, but original country was always shot through with that old time religion, a love of home and a dread of the hereafter that's typically Southern Gothic. A bit of a simplistic view maybe, but enough to make my point that in tackling a bona fide country song, Jimmy Young was very much a stranger in town.
Being about cowboys and guns, 'The Man From Laramie' seems tailor made for Frankie Laine to have a bash at so it's curious to note that he doesn't seem to have ever actually recorded it. Even so, it's easy enough to imagine what any Laine version would sound like and Jimmy tries to appropriate some of Frankie's tough guy mannerisms to fill the void, but in his efforts he's trying to wear a ten gallon hat on a two pint head.*
That the song's foundations are built on cliché doesn't help: "The west will never see a man with so many notches on his gun " - the only 'west' Young was familiar with was his own home county of Gloucestershire so it's apt that throughout he sounds as authentically cowpoke as a social worker off to a fancy dress party decked out in a Stetson, chaps and cap guns in holsters. Things might have gone better had Jimmy joined in the fun and given a knowing wink to his audience, but his method actor vocal leaves no room for that and any humour has to be wrestled from the camp lyric itself or else unintentionally from every fourth line of verse where Jim tries to end on a high note of drama but produces a strangled yelp of sound as if that dastardly Laramie man has just shot him in the nuts.
As a scene setting song from the film of the same name, 'The Man From Laramie' is a curious proposition that both gives too much information ("The man from Laramie, he was a man with a peaceful turn of mind. He was kind of sociable and friendly") yet not enough so as you actually give a toss. It could work as a useful souvenir for those who'd been to the flicks to see it, but as a stand alone single I have little comprehension as to how anyone under the age of ten could muster much enthusiasm for this. That's not necessarily Young's fault but his blandness does not help, even if it was enough to make him the first artist to score number ones with consecutive singles.
* With respect to Billy Howard.
Like Tennessee Ernie Ford before him, Slim Whitman was a giant of country music sitting on top of the UK charts with a song not entirely representative of his genre. True, 'Rose Marie' is more of a country tune that , but it still has more than one foot in the mainstream to grease the wheels of the crossover. Ironically, what I like most about 'Rose Marie' is what I like least about most modern country music - its cleanness.
For my palette, country music should come covered in soil or tractor oil with a side order of desperation even when it's dressed in its church going Sunday best, a style epitomised by Hank Williams who always sounded like he was singing alone from the bottom of a well. There's nothing rough about Whitman's voice or the tune born of an inter racial marriage with pop that it's hitched to. Sharp as summer lightning, the slide guitar is kept tasteful, never straying into parody and Whitman's own trademark yodelling never loses control to crash into the corny and instead rides the melody like a fresh breeze on a warm day. Yet despite the shimmer, 'Rose Marie' still manages to grit the surface with a sparse and spooky vibe of a forlorn, ghostly suitor haunted by a love that's just out of reach.
And that's because we never know if this great love is requited or not; "Of all the queens that ever lived I'd choose you, to rule me my Rose Marie". Rose might not want to know and Walt could be wasting his time, but he's too smitten to care and in that respect, I love the audacious way the obsession of the lyric rhymes 'you' five times on the trot. It could have been a disaster, but Whitman's joy in subservience to his dream woman masks the repetition or at least papers over it with a wide eyed happiness that would grate in its smugness if it was directed purely at himself. Whether the record buying public of 1955 who put this at number one for eleven weeks* saw beyond the clean cut boy with the catchy yodel is moot, but to my ears Whitman is forever singing into the void of an empty theatre where nobody is there to listen to him and the aura of isolation gives 'Rose Marie' a depth that's endured.
* An impressive record that would stand until 1991 when it was beaten by Bryan Adams and '(Everything I Do) I Do It For You'
In which 'the girl with the laugh in her voice' sounds positively ecstatic on a tune that's vaguely reminiscent of 'Mack The Knife' given a full spin cycle in the washing machine of happiness. Alma doesn't want to stab anyone, far from it - the girl is in love with her "lovable dreamboat" and she wants the world to know in an ever upbeat, 'keep your sunny side up' British way that would be immensely irritating if you were sat next to her on a long coach trip, but on a song less than two minutes long you just smile along and wave her on her way. It's a hard song to dislike and one that will leave you feeling guilty if you do manage to hate it.
A veritable warhorse of a song covered by the great and the good since 1955, the Righteous Brothers' version ten years later may be the benchmark but Jimmy Young's version was one of the first off the blocks. Young can carry a tune, but he needs both hands to do it and all emotion is sacrificed to a strident attention to diction and pronunciation; Young doesn't milk the lyric, but nonetheless he seems in a hurry to be done with it too. Maybe it's unfair to compare it to such a familiar version, but instead of the slowburning intensity of the RB's, Young's take is saddled to a rickety musical backing that never quite seems to know what type of song it wants to be. The end result is a plate of boiled to death food served up on a Formica topped table in a British Restaurant - all nicely functional but plain as hell.
Having two versions of the same song vying for the number one spot is curious enough, but two versions of the same instrumental? Particularly two versions that are almost indistinguishable on a blind taste test? How very odd. You'd think that having such a choice would split the vote so that neither did all that well, but in light of the sales figures then the only conclusion is that some people were buying both. As I say, how very odd.
So what does Eddie bring to the table that Perez didn't? Truth be told, not a lot. The recurring trumpet riff is less lusty and more restrained in Calvert's hands, petering away into the ether instead of following Prado's template of a gutsy blowout. On the other hand, Calvert's take has less of the swagger of Prado's and lets the tune speak up for itself instead of winking in a saucy burlesque that almost parodies the culture it's meant to be representing. Mix them both together and you may end up with a perfect take that pleases everybody. As it stands, Prado's Mambo chops give his version the edge, but Calvert doesn't disgrace himself either so maybe the folks back in 1955 somehow felt obliged to buy both to ensure they weren't missing out on anything, paying their monies without making their choices so to speak.
Very much a singer's singer, Tony Bennett and his tuxedo have been admired and feted from supper club to nightclub for close on sixty years. Bottom line, if you need a ballad crooned, then Tony is generally your man. Generally, but not here - 'Stranger In Paradise' is not the best place to meet up with the man for the first time as doing so may leave you scratching your head as to what all the fuss is about.
Not that that's necessarily Tony's fault - taken from the musical 'Kismet' (with a tune borrowed from Borodin), 'Stranger In Paradise' has a lovey dovey lyric that piles it all on a bit too thickly - "If I stand starry-eyed that's the danger in paradise, for mortals who stand beside an angel like you". Even written down the sugary excess makes my teeth throb, but the restrained musical arrangement pushes Tony right to the front with no hiding place and he delivers the lines with a quivering voiced sincerity that's wincingly mawkish; in trying to convince he means what he's saying, his delivery overeggs the pudding until it clumps with all the falseness of a wooden leg. Ok, maybe I'm of the wrong age and the wrong gender to properly appreciate this, but that's not my fault either. I mean, it's not that I find 'Stranger In Paradise' hateful, it's just that I don't find anything here that appeals at all on any level. Sorry.
Opening with a slutty riff on Gershwin's 'Rhapsody In Blue', Prado's instrumental version of 'Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White)' hammers home it's Latin cha cha rhythm while giving it a definite Cuban mambo spin. The end result is without a doubt the liveliest tune to top the charts to date and the first pure dance track to do so. True, the bulk of the beat is rooted firmly in a structure as formal as a waltz, but when it grinds to a halt Perez fills the full stops of silence with some glorious trumpet that manages to sound both free and filthy at the same time. The passing of over fifty years has taken the edge of exotica off it, but it's still something that would go down a storm after a few shots of rum. Carmen Mirander on your arm optional.
A major player in the country and western field, Ford's distinctive booming baritone was tailor made for the genre's tales of God and the soil. However, expecting it to slip easily into balladeer mode is as optimistic as stitching a pair of home made wings onto a dog and expecting it to fly. He's game enough, but his strained modulation makes this particular single sound like it's been out in the sun too long; there's more wow and flutter in his voice than even the nastiest Amstrad hi-fi could ever manage and it ricochets off the dramatic cod Rachmaninov piano led orchestration with all the grace and style of a builder's tool bag dropping onto a car bonnet. In short, it's a ghastly plod and about as representative of his output as the 'On The Buses' films are to the Hammer canon. The 'River Of No Return' B side was a far better effort and I'd like to think it played no small part in this staying at number one for seven weeks. Unless people really were more easily pleased back then.
And as if to neatly provide a stark contrast to 'Mambo Italiano', here's a song that clocks in at almost precisely the same length yet is resolutely free of that 'leave them wanting more' aura. 'Softly Softly' lives up to its title insofar as the angelic 'ahhhs' on the backing go, but Murray's vocal is too overcooked and the combination of the two creates a treacly sludge of lumpy gravy that's not half as appetising as it likes to think it is and seems to drag on for twice as long than it actually does. And that's a shame because it's a good tune with an evocative lyric ("Softly, softly turn the key and open up my heart") which makes it a double pity that this particular ball was fumbled.
Straddling that hinterland between novelty and parody, 'Mambo Italiano' goes for a summery Latin vibe without piling on any Mediterranean clichés. Ignoring for a moment the fact that Clooney sounds about as Italian as Arthur Mullard, she nevertheless pulls the lid off her vocal after a falsely calm start and lets fly with some guttural rolling r's and 'ay ay ay' exuberance that keep it all bouncing along nicely until you almost go 'awww' when it ends after barely two and a half minutes. I say 'almost' because there's a very fine line between enjoyment and irritation and 'Mambo Italiano' is smart enough to quit while it's ahead.
Now here's something that attains the rare feat of sounding old fashioned even in 1955 - from the vocal mannerisms to the arrangements,everything about 'The Finger Of Suspicion' plays out like a skit on some 1930's speakeasy tune as crooned by an Italian American. Over in America itself, Jane Froman recorded a version of this the same year that's a more contemporary, Hawaiian guitar laced reading that fair shimmers in its telling, though no doubt being backed by The Stargazers kitted this version out with the concrete boots that kept it striding too far into the future. Valentine himself sounds happy enough to play along though this nod to the past is more mimicry than saudade and it's a pity all involved couldn't have put a more Anglicised spin on it for the folks back home instead of kick starting a trend to ape American culture that persists to this day. Not a bad version by any means, but rather a lazy one that doesn't bear too many replays.
Ah now, one of my earliest Christmas memories is of singing this at an infant school concert back in the early seventies. Or rather listening to the oldest class sing it while I sat on the floor dressed as a Red Indian. I couldn't follow all the words, but it didn't matter - I got 'stocking', 'reindeer', toys' and 'Santa's so that was plenty to get any six year old's Christmas spirit flowing. 
