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To be honest, it would have suited my agenda far better had this been the final song of 1959 rather than 1958 because it would have been a neat way to end the decade. So far we've seen the songs at number one move away from the traditional crooners and balladeers toward a younger sound aimed at a younger audience, and as a primer of the fifties, 'It's Only Make Believe' has a little bit of everything that we've encountered so far.
Twitty was a major country star and the influence of his genre is evident in 'It's Only Make Believe's opening strum and shuffle, but when Conway kicks in he's more Elvis than Hank. And while he doesn't have Presley's low notes, he uses his trick of building to the high ones in a heartburst of misery as he realises his love is all one way traffic. This repeats in cycles that climb the ladder to a crescendo before sliding down a snake to begin again before ending on a shout of self pity at the realisation of self delusion at which point Twitty presumably slinks off to cry himself to sleep. Throw in some doo-wop 'do do do do' backing vocals and you have a song that straddles the past and the future in a way that suggests Twitty both wants to have his cake and eat it.
The fact he manages to do just that is testament to the quality of the song and spareness of the writing/arrangement. A self penned song, if 'It's Only Make Believe' wasn't born from experience then Twitty makes a pretty good fist of convincing us that it was. Much of the emotion deriving from the non closure of the song - unlike The Everly Brothers, dreaming of his loved one isn't going to be enough; it's the real deal or nothing. And much of the song's heartache is derived from the fact that that's precisely what he's left with at the close - nothing.
There's always room in every decade for a big, bawling ballad - 'Release Me', 'Without You', 'Everything I Do (I Do It For You)' all spring to mind as turning on the emotional tap for a dewy eyed audience to bathe in. But whilst all of these can in part be accused of overwraughtness or self indulgence, at just over two minutes 'It's Only Make Believe' is prizefighter lean and as earthy as groundsoil with no flab evident to distract from what it's trying to say. Number ones are getting better with every release.
One of the common criticisms of British acts of the rock and roll era was that, with a few notable exceptions notwithstanding, they were by and large pale imitations of their American counterparts (certainly as far as the commercial market went in any case). We've seen this effect already with Tommy Steele's take on 'Singing The Blues', but that's not to single him out for the bumps - for every 'Shaking All Over' or 'Move It', there were skiploads of half hearted filler from Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Adam Faith et al that tried and tried but missed every point.
Lord Rockingham's XI was the shop front name for a bunch of session musicians, led by Harry Robinson, brought together to play as the house band on TV's 'Oh Boy!" Not an auspicious beginning and one that doesn't promise much, so it's all the more surprising to find a definite greasy vibe about 'Hoots Mon', a Church Street Five/Johnny & The Hurricanes saxophone drenched instrumental workout of gusto and energy. Basically a revved up jazz/rock re-write of the traditional 'A Hundred Pipers', Robinson teases out the central line of melody and floors it to the max in much the same way as Johnny Paris (of The Hurricanes) did with 'Red River Valley' and 'Blue Tail Fly'.
Which isn't to say that it's some carbon copy knock off - the interjection of the stereotypical Scottish colloquialisms may irritate some but it only adds to the fun. I love the way they defiantly stamp 'Hoots Mon' with a Made In Britain watermark; 'there's a moose loose aboot this hoose' - unless you're in the know then the enigma machine itself won't crack the meaning of that one. And that in turn links to my opening point - the comedic touch shows that Harry Robinson and his band weren't trying to imitate rock and roll so much as say 'pffft, is that all there is to it'?
The sense of joie de vivre about 'Hoots Mon' is palpable. The key changes at the end of each round of bars link with the handclaps and a funky organ to whip it ever faster like a top until you honestly believe it was only the space restraints of seven inch vinyl that made them break off where they did, but that they kept on playing afterwards anyway. Maybe they're still playing now, either in this world or the next, it would explain why they never got round to recording much else anyway. Which is both a shame and a great 'what if', because 'Hoots Mon' captures the good time kinetic riot of rock and roll as well as just about anything did, and a damned sight better than most.
When I was growing up in the seventies, the first 'record player' we had as a family was a hefty wood and bakelite 'Radiogram' cabinet affair made up primarily of a two foot diameter woofer on the front face. It also had a chunky turntable that let you build a wobbly stack of singles on its central spindle that would drop down onto the platter in sequence until the tonearm was virtually at right angles to its base. Happy days indeed, but even back then I thought there was something anachronistic about the likes of Suzi Quatro and Slade blasting out of something that seemed more suited to Al Bowly. I get the same feeling of mismatch from Tommy Edwards' version of 'It's All In The Game', only in reverse.
As a recording it's startling retro, almost defiantly so, but not in any kind of La Roux knowing or ironic way; Edwards sounds like he's just emerged Rip Van Winkle-like from a cave after falling asleep mid song in 1939 and then carried on where he left off, oblivious to anything going on around him. Is this a fair criticism of anything in itself? Doesn't quality always win out? Maybe. And there's no doubt that the song's quality shines through when artists like the Four Tops and Jerry Vale are in the driving seat. But Tommy's cut is creaky stuff that would have creaked no less a decade or two previous.
Compared to the va voom of 'Stupid Cupid' it's still on the starting block tying its laces carrying a sense of inertia not helped by Tommy's half hearted cabaret phrasing that makes every line sound like a question. Nothing certain in any event, and it's this general lack of conviction that makes for an uninvolving listen. Not an unpleasant one, just uninvolving. We've moved on from this and, quite frankly, it's showing its age, though I will say it's the greatest number one of all time to have been co-written by a US vice president.
A double A side from Connie and, unlike her previous 'Who's Sorry Now', she keeps the cork in the venom bottle on both and instead showcases two other strings to her bow. Contemporary familiarity with 'Stupid Cupid' makes it surprising that 'Carolina Moon' was regarded as the lead song here, but it's not difficult to see the appeal of its lush, country balladry. Connie's voice is given acres of prairie space to yearn for her lover over in a spooky swoon that provided KD Lang with her entire career, whilst the underlying panorama of plucked guitar and harmonica safely roots the song to terra firma.
On the flip, 'Stupid Cupid' is a far more frothy affair where Connie seems to have borrowed Alma Cogan's laugh for her voice with a glorious hiccup on the 'stupid' that's mirrored by a single detuned twang of a guitar string. The blowsy saxophone and handclaps give it a virtual continental feel, and though Connie is picking a fight ("Hey hey set me free, stupid Cupid stop picking on me"), she's not fooling anyone - she's only too glad to be "acting like a lovesick fool". The lightness of touch in 'Stupid Cupid' belies the craftsman's hand in its construction; with not a note wasted or out of place the barely two minutes of play time wraps up the charm of the past and the thrill of the present in one neat package that personifies for me what seven inches of vinyl were made for.
'When' first came to my attention via Showaddywaddy's 1977 revival. If that band were good at anything, it was stripping out the superfluities on older numbers and reducing them to the power of the tune alone with no excess baggage. Sure enough in their hands 'When' becomes an almost Northern Soul-like floorshaker, but in its original form the song that The Kalin Twins were purveying is a less gutsy affair all round.
With a biscuit tin drum beat and plastic Palitoy saxophone squawk, 'When' is an overly fussy trinket that throws in a lot of eggs but never manages to create a decent omelette out of the mix. The tune follows the same route from A-Z as Showaddywaddy's take, but there's a lot less fun to be had on the journey - if the latter created a house of bricks from the raw material then The Kalin Twins abode is one made of straw just waiting for one good strong puff to blow it all over. It's still a catchy tune, but sometimes that's not enough. Like here.
On a trivia note, a pair of genuine twins wouldn't reach the UK number one spot again until The Proclaimers managed it in 2007 with 'I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)'
A double A side from The Everly Brothers, but it's very much a game of two halves. First off, 'Claudette was originally written by Roy Orbison while he was still plying his trade as a rocker at Sun Studios. As he wrote the song for his wife it was always going to be a tall order for anyone to tackle it and make it their own, and though the brothers are game enough with some choppy acoustic bursts that stab with a purpose, it's all a bit too hayseed for my liking. The drive of the original is lost and the brothers never sounded less comfortable on a song where their harmonies weren't allowed to shine.
The gold is on the other side - 'All I Have To Do Is Dream' is a Felice and Boudleaux Bryant tune that provided a coupling which Orbison, knowing a thing or two about dreams himself, would have appreciated. The song is wistful enough in anyone's hands, but the lazy longing for a lover who may not even care is captured perfectly by the summer's almost gone ambience of the twin harmonies that make "I need you so that I could die" sound like a throwaway remark of adolescent angst yet at the same time totally believable.
Unlike Tab Hunter's attempt to describe it, this is young love personified, a curious mix of ennui, inexperience, inertia and obsession that the older generation would frown upon and dismiss with a curt 'pull yourself together'. But by 1958 popular music wasn't aimed four square at such people anymore, and away from sex crazed rebellion (sic), rock & roll could have a tender side that was no less appreciated by the young. Ah yes, the young - the Everly's know there's no future in living for maybes ("Only trouble is, gee whiz, I'm dreaming my life away"), yet they manage to sound like they neither care nor care that they don't care and in that sense the song is an emotional dead end representing an ever looping spiral of self delusion that leads nowhere, helped no end by the not quite there dreamlike (sorry!) ambience of shimmering guitar.
This isn't the straight forward young lust of 'I wanna hold her wanna hold her tight. Get teenage kicks right through the night"* or the couldn't give a fuck self loathing of "I've got nothing to do, but hang around and get screwed up on you"** (to cite two more contemporary riffs on the same theme) but something more detached and somnambulistic, a mood that recalls T.S. Eliot's (who himself knew a thing or two about somnambulism) "One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing white light folded". More akin in fact to Orbison's own "In dreams you're mine all of the time, we're together in dreams", right back where we started in other words. In short, a timeless quality that gives it a timeless appeal that makes it entirely appropriate that the song closes on a repeated "Dream, dream, dream dream" - teenage dreams really are so hard to beat. * The Undertones - Teenage Kicks
** Therapy? - Screamager. Chosen purely for the personal pleasure of seeing Therapy? and The Everly Brothers together in the same review.
Isn't this where we came in? 'On The Street Where You Live' is a song from Lerner and Loewe's 'My Fair Lady' and on it Damone pulls every stop marked 'restraint' and bawls out the lyrics 'Here In My Heart' stylee in an over the top bellow that goes beyond excitement at being on the street where his loved one lives and borders on the psychotic. If he gets this worked up with "the overpowering feeling that any second you may suddenly appear" then lord alone what state he gets into when he does finally spot her. I bet he's forever changing his pants at any rate. Pants - a good word to sum up the charmless bombast of this histrionic throwback to an era I thought had been concreted over. The song is by no means a bad one, but Vic's performance just makes me want to stick my fingers in my ears.
'Who's Sorry Now' had been kicking around since 1923 before Connie Francis gave it definition and made it her own. And make it her own she did - all previous versions that I've heard (Marion Harris et al) present it as a wistful jazzy ballad, but Francis turned it into a Patsy Cline-alike gloatathon - there's no question mark in that title, Connie knows who's sorry and by god he's going to pay.
There's an understated yet unmistakably country tinged arrangement to the song, though it keeps to the background seemingly too scared to challenge Connie when she's in this mood - whatever her guy has done, her steely "You had your way, now you must pay. I'm glad that you're sorry now" would make you feel sorry for Hitler if he was on the sharp end of it. It's unusual to see so much bitterness at number one yet undeniably refreshing - a good put down always strikes a prescient chord with me and 'Who's Sorry Now' makes a fine change from the usual boo hoo, spurned lover as victim tragedies that clog up the charts with their goo.
I always feel like I'm doing Marvin a disservice before I even start with this one; with a title like that, I imagine some AC/DC cum Led Zeppelin hybrid that shits electricity from arm thick cables with a volume loud enough to get the furniture moving around. Alas, it's not, but I can't blame him for not living up to my expectations; 'Whole Lotta Woman' is in fact a rockabilly tune with affinity enough to Elvis and the boys to allow it to blend in at the back fairly inconspicuously in the manner of a young looking thirty year old putting on a uniform and trying to pass himself off as a schoolboy.
But not that inconspicuously - you don't have to look too closely to see the cracks that reveal 'Whole Lotta Woman' to be the work of a chancer hanging on to the coat tails of rock and roll for grim death with a hope that the front facing facade of frantic energy and innuendo (to be fair, the "It takes a whole lotta loving just to keep my baby happy. Coz she's a whole lotta woman and she gotta have a whole lotta man" is about as mainstream risqué as it was possible to be in 1958) would be enough to disguise the Eddie & The Hot Rods to Presley's Sex Pistols scratchy, guts free, weak tea too stop starty for its own good end result. But I'm afraid it doesn't. 'Whole Lotta Woman' may have punched its weight in 1958, but in modern parlance it's the portait in the attic made flesh.
Another crooner's tune to depose 'The Story Of My Life', 'Magic Moments' (also written by Bacharach and David) for me is one song with two strong memories. On the one hand I can remember singing a rather crude set of fresh lyrics to this in the schoolyard while on the other, it's a song that I habitually confuse with 'Memories Are Made Of This'.
Thankfully, I've grown out of the former, but the latter still holds sway, largely because the two do share similarities. Both seek comfort in a rose tinted remembrance of things past, but while Martin's song served up a recipe for a good life, Como is more specific in his nostalgia, relating a series of events that give an everyman appreciation of the kind of commonplace happenings that provoke the warmest glows. And for every "I'll never forget the moment we kissed, the night of the hayride" for UK listeners to scratch their heads over, there's a "The telephone call that tied up the line, for hours and hours" bullseye from Hal David that's universal enough to drag a whistful sigh from anyone.
It's feelgood stuff, marshmallow music with no bite with the good humour underlined in crayon by a brass motif laughter track that chuckles everytime Como recounts a memory and (yet another) chirpy 'whistle while you remember' theme to give it a backbone of sorts. It could have been unspeakably smug in its insular cosiness, but there's a wry, kindly uncle smile in Como's voice that makes it hard to take offence.
Sure it's a step backwards from the hole in the wall punched by Elvis and co, but that doesn't make it any less endearing. Or enduring even - I seem to have known this song forever (even before those crude lyrics were added) and it's longetivity is born from both the quality of the writing and 'born to sing this' performance from Como that plays to his strengths instead of pretending he's something he isn't.
Written by Bacharach and David, 'The Story Of My Life' breezes along with a jaunty whistle and a spring in its step that lets you know that even when things are bad ("The sorrow when our love was breaking up, the memory of a broken heart"), they'll soon be alright again ("But later on, the joy of making up, never never more to part") with the underlying message of togetherness foreverness ("So the story of my life can start and end with you") able to force a smile out of the most granite of hearts. Holliday hailed from Liverpool, but on this recording he could have been from anywhere in the Anglo/American axis. His voice sounds never less than chipper throughout and the wink in his tone conjures up images of him surrounded by cartoon birds whistling along as they perch on his shoulders. Which makes it all the more distressing that he actually committed suicide five short years hence following a mental breakdown.
On the one hand it's incredibly heartening to view just how open and generous the record buying public appeared to be back in the late fifties as rock and roll swept across the Atlantic to blow away the cobwebs of the past. Or as the genre's poet laureate wrote, "Hail, hail, rock and roll, deliver me from the days of old". Usually such a new wind hits walls of distrust and refusal that keep it out, and yet here we are with an Elvis song topping the charts for the second time in a matter of weeks on the back of number ones by Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly. It must have been a great time to be a teenager. Needless to say when my own time came there was no trilogy of number ones from the Sex Pistols, The Clash or The Buzzcocks. Those walls kept that particular wind firmly shut out.
That's one way of looking at it anyway, but get out the magnifying glass out for a closer look and a slightly different picture emerges. Because after all, what was really that different? Jerry Lee gave us a good time party song slap bang in the middle of the party season, Buddy gave us a tune safely steeped in familiar country and while Elvis's hit may have had sensuality to burn, he always sounded in control of his libido and the womenfolk were safe enough.
Just as The Clash eventually hit number one with the ramalama chug of 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' rather than 'White Riot', there's little of the rebellion or in your face sexuality that could be found elsewhere in the genre. There's none of the generational gap 'fuck off' of 'Summertime Blues, the paedophilic lust of the teenage groupie in 'Sweet Little Sixteen' or the barn dance shagathon of 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On' ('Shakin'? Right!) - the songs so far have been safe, songs the parents could enjoy along with their kids. Until now that is - 'Jailhouse Rock' rocks (HA!) this particular boat with a violent shove, with the shove coming not least from Presley himself.
A Lieber and Stoller tune from the eponymous movie, 'Jailhouse Rock' is an 'adult' song that the adults of 1958 probably didn't appreciate all that much. From the opening yell of "The warden threw a party in the county jail" this is Elvis with the lid off. One of Presley's strengths was always the fact he could sing anything and sound believable, yet the throat peeling rasp he produces for this was rarely heard again and certainly not in any of his post army output. There's an edgy friction to his vocal that stares down any attempt to label 'Jailhouse Rock' a novelty tune about jailbirds, yet Presley knows how to take the brakes off on the call to arms of "Let's rock, everybody, let's rock" to find a swaggering sexual rhythm for his hips to follow.*
Ah yes, the sex and the rhythm; if 'rock and roll' was originally taken as an euphemism for sex then 'Jailhouse Rock' carries on the tradition admirably. Probably carries it even further than it's been before in fact; Presley's vocal is macho personified, but there's more than a hint of a homosexual subtext to what was going on down at that jail. "Number 47 said to number 3, 'You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see'" - the film itself didn't have the convicts dressing up as women concert party style (which is actually the kind of context Mike Stoller had in mind when he wrote it), but it adds another layer of depth for both discussion and to make the older generation uncomfortable (see? an adult song that's not for adults).
The song's tone is set by that ominous, two chords and double dragged drum beat opening. As an intro it's as recognisable as Chuck Berry's guitar burst on 'Johnny B Goode' or Jon Perry's nervy twitch on 'Another Girl, Another Planet' but around it Scotty Moore whips up some of his most barbed and stinging guitar lines at the breakdown while Bill Black puts a walking bassline in any gaps that Elvis leaves to fill. Add The Jordanaires on backing vocals and you have a veritable who's who of early rock and roll royalty meaning that unlike 'Great Balls Of Fire','Jailhouse Rock' is no one man band performance, no matter how much Presley tries to dominate.
Jerry Lee Lewis, Michael Bolton, Merle Haggard, Motley Crue, ZZ Top, The Cramps et al - all and sundry have had a crack at 'Jailhouse Rock' over the years (clever clogs seventies band 10CC wrote 'Rubber Bullets' as a sequel of sorts where the national guard poured cold water on the dance party by spraying the convicts with the titular bullets) yet most have missed the point of the package by either stressing the groove or the vocal while never coming close to marrying the two with the same primal urgency of this 1957 recording. There's nothing 'safe' about 'Jailhouse Rock; it's wild and it's uncompromising. It's also the last time such a pure genre recording would top the UK charts. In a few short years both Holly and Cochran would be dead, Berry would be in jail, Jerry Lee silenced by scandal, Little Richard back in the church with Elvis himself only appearing again after his balls had been shorn along with his hair by the army. But while it lasted it must have been a good time to be a teenager. A hell of a good time.
* To my mind, the dance sequence in the film that accompanies this performance compliments the song brilliantly, with the grooving prisoners and baton wielding warders visually presenting the mix of campness and borderline violence that underpins the song. The first music 'video' proper? Yes, I think so.
On a visit to the Louvre in Paris some years ago I was curious to see a huge crowd congregating around the Mona Lisa with each person pushing and shoving for a better view. Perhaps not surprising in itself - after all, it's probably the most famous painting in the world, but what was surprising for me was that the thing is set deep behind darkened, bullet proof glass, making a close up view impossible. Honestly, you'd literally be better off looking at a reproduction in a book.
And yet in their clamour to gawp, the two Raphael's hanging openly either side were more or less ignored in the crush. Then again, you don't go to the Louvre to look at two obscure Raphael paintings do you? It's the big boy on the block they've all come to see, just to confirm both its and their own existence by viewing it with their own eyes. I think the point I'm trying to make is that when dealing with 'Great Balls Of Fire', there's a temptation to consider it more than just another song.
Probably moreso than either 'All Shook Up' or 'That'll Be The Day', 'Great Balls Of Fire' comes pre-packed with the baggage and weight of cultural significance and expectation. It is, after all, a cornerstone Sun Studio recording by a rock and roll pioneer of no small fame, giving it a lot to live up to just by virtue of what it is. And what it is is a title that even those who don't like all this wild rock and roll stuff will be able to recognise and source even if they've never actually sat down to listen to it, in the same way they'll be able to tell you that Da Vinci painted the 'Mona Lisa' when they probably couldn't name a single other painting hanging in a single other gallery. And when we're dealing with Jerry Lee Lewis, 'wild' is invariably considered a suitable adjective
Like Presley, Jerry Lee was part of the first wave of rock and roll performers who, unlike Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Little Richard et al did not write their signature tunes ('Great Balls Of Fire' is an Otis Blackwell/Jack Hammer composition). Whether this consideration was catalyst to the mix that spurred his lifelong rivalry with Elvis I don't know, but there was always something unhinged about Jerry Lee, something more than a bit strange about the driven by God Southern boy playing the devil's music in the manner of one possessed by the devil himself. That's the accepted view anyway, but taking 'Great Balls Of Fire' as an example then you'd struggle to find all that much satanic about either song or performer.
As a song, 'Great Balls Of Fire' shrugs off its chains of expectation with a good natured chuckle and sets about it's good time business; 'Great Balls Of Fire' is a party song through and through. Nothing fancy, there's a percussive beat throughout that keeps the 4/4 time signature as surely as a white line divides a road, but Lewis makes a mockery of its straightness by playing clear over the top with a left hand boogie woogie roll and a right hand that runs across the keys at random. Like a bad actor who doesn't know what to do with his hands, Lewis sounds like he can't keep still with the excitement of it all, that he can't wait to stop playing and telling us about his girl because he wants to go off and play with her himself. At less than two minutes long it still crams in two piano solos and a bolero building breakdown with Lewis's vocal modulating all the while with the unpredictability of a teenage voice on the brink of breaking .
If you try to view 'Great Balls Of Fire' as a milestone in culture and popular music then like as not you'll come away as disappointed. It's too slight for that. Lewis himself makes the song and busts a gut to make it what it is, but there's precious little going on around him. That label credit of 'Jerry Lee Lewis And His Pumping Piano' is absolutely spot on, and in isolation he could be any New Orleans boogie woogie merchant jacked up on too much bourbon on a Saturday night. But listen to the song as a whole cold and its fresh as a daisy, over the top spontaneity ("Well kiss me baba, woo-oooooo....it feels good") leaps out at you the same way it must have leapt out at parties and dances over the 1957 Christmas holidays. Timeless, in other words, or in other other words, the mark of a classic single.
But look at me - I could have said all that in one paragraph if I'd set my mind to it. I guess I'm just as crushed by the weight of expectation as the next man so I'll close before I'm hoisted any higher by my own petard.
To be honest, it would have suited my agenda far better had this been the final song of 1959 rather than 1958 because it would have been a neat way to end the decade. So far we've seen the songs at number one move away from the traditional crooners and balladeers toward a younger sound aimed at a younger audience, and as a primer of the fifties, 'It's Only Make Believe' has a little bit of everything that we've encountered so far.
