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1959 Emile Ford & The Checkmates: What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?

Mention Caribbean immigrants to the UK in the context of the 1950's and like as not the music usually associated with the notion is the indigenous Ska, Calypso and Mento that they introduced to British culture. West Indies born Ford however had moved to the UK well before the Empire Windrush set sail and his sole UK number one looked the past and a different culture altogether than the one he emerged from.

Originally an American tune from 1916, 'What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?' in 1959 comes dressed up in a swinging big band persona with side helpings of R&B and doo-wop. Or rather, as big a big band persona as three jobbing musicians can make, but the cocky strut of Ford's humour-filled vocal is big enough to fill any gaps and gloss over the repetition with the good natured smile of a man who knows he's being led on but who also knows he's going to get the last laugh ("Well that's all right, I'll get you alone some night. And baby you'll find, you're messing with dynamite"). There's a confidence about 'What' that blazes a comet-like trail from start to finish - there's not a lot going on here, but it's put to good use with nothing spread too thinly, and the sheer bonhomie of Ford's rolling swagger would have fired up any Christmas party reveller who had the mistletoe handy.

1959 Adam Faith: What Do You Want?

Another British teen idol given voice through rock and roll, Faith's unconventional vocal has always been an acquired taste, but twisted here into a ping pong match between Buddy Holly and Reggie Kray it's more acquired than usual. The Holly tics and gurgles are prescient due to the obvious similarities 'What Do You Want?' shares with 'It Doesn't Matter Anymore' - both glide by on a sheen of plucked strings (courtesy of a John Barry arrangement) though here Faith is trying to get the flames of a new love burning ("Say what you want and I'll give it you darling. Wish you wanted my love baby") rather than saying goodbye to a departing one. At a shade over a minute and a half long. it's the shortest number one we'll be meeting on these travels and it reduces 'What Do You Want?' to a perfectly delightful and fully formed miniature. And while Faith's attempt to bribe someone into bed with money, diamonds and pearls may seem slightly distasteful under close analysis, there simply isn't enough of it to get worked up about. Either way really.

But John Barry eh? Can only mean that The Sixties (TM) are just around the corner.....

1959 Cliff Richard & The Shadows: Travellin' Light

'Travellin' Light' marks a shift in direction for Cliff and The Shadows (name now changed from the litigation bothering 'Drifters'). There's no attempt to emulate anything approximating a rock and roll song and instead Hank Marvin picks out a simple yet mournful country blues refrain on an acoustic guitar in a style that recalls Jimmy Rogers hitching a ride on a train to the next good time - Cliff too is on his way to see the woman he loves and he's carrying nothing that will slow him down. It's a slight song though no less heartfelt for that, yet it would have exuded a whole lot more charm had producer Norrie Paramor not drenched Cliff's vocal in a from a bottom of the well echo. Whatever target was aimed for, it missed and the needless reverb breaks up the intimacy like a klaxon at a eulogy. And that's a shame.

1959 Bobby Darin: Mack The Knife

A Berlin cabaret song detailing the antics of a vicious rapist, arsonist and murderer seems unlikely fodder for a fingersnapping makeover and number one single, but that's precisely what Bobby Darin provided with 'Mack The Knife'; the man is nothing if not versatile. Sourced from Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill's 1928 work Die Dreigroschenoper, 'Die Moritat von Mackie Messer' (to give it it's full title) lays bare the nefarious deeds of Macheath , London's greatest and most notorious criminal, which sets the scene for the opera to come.

Darin's version arrives via the stepping stone of Louis Armstrong's 1956 jazz swing version, and though the lyric is watered down (via Marc Blitzstein's 1954 translation) from the 18 rating of Brecht's original to a 12 (with Armstrong adding a sly reference to Weill's wife and famed performer of the song Lotte Lenya which Darin retains), it's still hardly pop friendly with MacHeath's crimes laid out no less baldly for all to see.

'Mack The Knife' was originally scored for rubbed raw voice with a gritty edge of disdain, not celebration (track down Brecht's own guide vocal version as a good as example as any of this). Darin, on the other hand, lights it up with the sparkle of Vegas with a vocal that relishes his walk on the wild side, providing dispatches from the lowlife like a tourist passing through a slum in a Bentley. Bad taste? It could have been, but Darin's reportage is no less wide eyed and disaproving for all the glamour and his 'Mack The Knife' builds in intensity with each verse, breaking up his telling of the tale with gasps of 'Ah', 'Oooh, and even an 'Eeek' mingling with the stabs of brass that carry you along in the rush till the final warning of "Look out … old Macky is back!!" Wonderfully subversive, 'Mack The Knife' helps close the generation gap from the other side, being as it is a song for the hipper grown-ups that would equally alienate the square ones. Something of a classic.

1959 Jerry Keller: Here Comes Summer

'September' wrote Ray Bradbury, is 'a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn't begun yet. July, well July's really fine: there's no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June's best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September's a billion years away".* Which is in essence a prose re-write of 'Here Comes Summer' - "Here comes summer, school is out, oh happy day. Here comes summer, I'm gonna grab my girl and run away"; it's those teenage dreams so hard to beat again.

'Here Come Summer' is a young man's song with Keller not so much concerned with the season as the freedom it brings ("Well school's not so bad but the summer's better") and on that note the light breeze of the tune recreates the simple joys of being young and in love. Basically a 'School's Out' for the kids from the more respectable families rather than the troublemakers at the back of the bus, what rains on Jerry's parade are some awkward, very grown up harmony backing vocals that sound like they are glad school's out too because they've got a raft of chores for Jerry to be cracking on with. They add a stiffness to the song that's really not welcome and a point of comparison with Cliff Richard's leaner take on it shows how far more enjoyable it is without them. The fact that Keller's and Richard's vocals sound uncannily identical only adds to the contrast.

* Ray Bradbury - Something Wicked This Way Comes. Though it's slightly ironic that 'Here Comes Summer' hit number one in October, just as summer was going. This fact (and the song) would have irritated the life out of me had I been a schoolboy in 1959 in the same was as Cadbury's did in the nineties when they ran their 'Thank Crunchie It's Friday' TV adverts on Sunday night.

1959 Craig Douglas: Only Sixteen

You've got to be either brave or stupid to tackle a Sam Cooke song though I think in this instance Craig 'The Singing Milkman' Douglas is more than a bit of both. Brave for thinking his plod of a voice could follow any path trailed by Mr Cooke in the first place and stupid for choosing 'Only Sixteen' as a song to cover. I can guess why he chose it -"But I was a mere lad of sixteen, I've aged a year since then" runs the bridge and Craig was seventeen himself at the time. Well there's nice.

Such hardwired gimmicks are all very well (and Douglas flogged the teen horse angle until it was beyond dead), but few would regard the cheery swing of 'Only Sixteen' as a song from Cooke's top drawer. It's main selling point was always Sam's own grit and honey voice that could spin the finest gold out of any old straw; Douglas is blessed with no such innate talents and so the song is left to fend for itself. With a bit of imagination something could have been salvaged, but some trilling vibrato doesn't go far when up against the square and chunky British knock off blandness of the music. In Craig's hands, 'Only Sixteen' has all the power and grace of a milkfloat, and this is especially noticeable when Cooke's own version is available for comparison in the same chart, albeit languishing way back at number 23. There's definitely no accounting for taste.

1959 Cliff Richard & The Drifters: Living Doll

When Cliff first appeared on the popular music front he was touted as Britain's answer to the rock and roll rebellion of Elvis. And for good reason - 'Move It' was as authentic a rock and roll single as this country ever produced. It still thrills today. But alas, it didn't take too many miles later before Cliff Richard's vehicle veered from left of centre to the middle of the road and whatever edge was present on 'Move It' had settled into a comfy armchair by the fire and put it's feet up by the time of 'Living Doll', a song that marked the emergence of a softer style that Cliff followed ever since.

A Lionel Bart song, to my mind 'Living Doll' has always hinted of something originally intended for a full length musical that never actually got written (much like Keith West's 1967 'Excerpt From A Teenage Opera'). The narrative of the lyric could have made sense in the progressive context of an ongoing storyline (in the way that West's tale of Grocer Jack does when you know the background), but when taken in isolation there's something downright creepy about it all - much like 'Dream Lover', there's an ambiguity about the lyric that doesn't show Cliff in a good light whatever interpretation you settle on.

Is Cliff's girl so good to be true that she must be a fake, or is she some life sized automated mannequin that he keeps locked up in a trunk solely for his own gratification? Dunno, but whichever way you cut it there's little that's wholesome in "Take a look at her hair, it's real, and if you don't believe what I say just feel" or "Got a roving eye and that is why she satisfies my soul". At least Bryan Ferry had the decency to dress his antisocial dalliance with a sex doll up in a weird swirl of ennui and electronica* - the nursery rhyme tune and sing song vocal of 'Living Doll' lures you into it's oddness like a n'er do well with a bag of sweets and the promise of some non existent puppies in the bushes. And it's those same qualities that ultimately sink the song - put simply, it's too polite, dull and repetitive to truly be any fun. Rock and roll it most definitely isn't, and while Hank Marvin tries to chivvy it along with a twangy guitar break it's not enough - 'Living Doll' is Boresville, pure and simple.

Though saying that, although there is no parent musical to make sense of the weirdness, 'Living Doll' does feature in his 1959 film 'Serious Charge' in a far more upbeat and swinging style with Cliff himself singing it while lounging resplendent amongst a gaggle of adoring females in a coffee bar like some hoodlum king in his teenage pomp. It still doesn't make it a wonderful song, but it sounds better with this bit of bite whereas the 45 version could have been recorded by that Cliff's square twin brother in between Bible study. Which by itself neatly sums up the two sides of Mr Richard. And I know which side I prefer.

* Roxy Music - In Every Dream Home, A Heartache.

1959 Bobby Darin: Dream Lover

The epitome of versatility, Darin's output runs the gamut from goofy cornball to serious protest with the reluctance to be pigeonholed probably the biggest stumbling block between his genuine talent and more widespread fame. For me, 'Dream Lover' is a good example of the kind of paralysis that's engendered by this sense of inner conflict; as confident a vocalist as he is, Darin here sounds remarkably unsure about his own song. There's a rusty stilt to his delivery on the verses suggesting that Darin has written a teen ballad and rather wishes he hadn't. It's only on the terrific build up to the hook of the chorus ("Because I want...a girl...to call...my own") that he pulls away the blocks to let his vocal free wheel with any passion.

And the lack of focus is replicated in the music too - for what is essentially teen orientated pop there's a veritable factory of sound whirring away in the background with precious little of it in harmony. A flamenco-like guitar riff, some plucked strings pinging like raindrops over the top of it, a ghostly wail of female backing harmony and a more earthbound 'yeah yeah' from the men - 'Dream Lover' pulls in too many directions to be comfortable and it makes the end product flat and lifeless. And just what is this dream lover? The idealised, unobtainable female who haunted The Everly Brothers, or does Darin yearn for a presence to share his dreams like some lust fuelled Freddy Kruger? The song doesn't tell and 'Dream Lover' remains frustratingly inaccessible right to the end.

1959 Russ Conway: Roulette

Second number one of the year for Mr Conway and, truth be told, one that's not a million miles removed from the earlier 'Side Saddle', almost to the point that the reviews could be interchangeable. Except perhaps to say that I prefer 'Roulette' to the latter. It's a busier tune with all the gaiety and substance of an ice cream van jangle, albeit an ice cream van plying its trade around the dusk tinged streets of a council estate on a late October evening. In the rain.

1959 Elvis Presley: A Fool Such As I/I Need Your Love Tonight

Another much covered song from 1953, Presley's recording shows the great leap forward from country to rock and roll never was a jump that far, if there was ever much of a divide in the first place. Either way, 'A Fool Such As I' is an exercise in treading water for Presley and the band with all participants wobbling unsteadily on the ledge between innovation and entertainment. 'A Fool Such As I' is meat and potatoes stuff for sure, but rather than spice it up with some jagged guitar licks and runs, any rough edges are sanded flat with Presley himself, if not exactly taking the piss, not exactly injecting any fire either. 'I Need Your Love Tonight' on the double A side is better in terms of rockabilly swing, but it still sounds like something from one of the myriad Elvis impersonators instead of the real thing. It's all solid enough stuff but - come on - it's not what he's remembered for.

1959 Buddy Holly: It Doesn't Matter Anymore

"When a young singer dies to our shock and surprise
In a plane crash or flashy sports car
He becomes quite well known
And the kindness he's shown has made more than one post mortem star"

So wrote Paul Williams on "Goodbye, Eddie, Goodbye" from his soundtrack to The Phantom Of The Paradise. Buddy Holly, of course, had been killed two months previous by a plane crash in a snowy field, and in what will become quite a depressingly regular scenario, his record company Coral saw mileage in releasing a back catalogue single to cash in, thus giving popular music its first ever posthumous number one.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh there, after all, 'It Doesn't Matter Anymore' was only recorded the previous year and it's hardly the sound of a barrel being scraped. A Paul Anka song, Holly's take keeps the basic tune but overhauls its presentation by replacing Anka's more pedestrian chug with a ball bearing quick orchestration of pizzicato strings repeatedly pulling the tablecloth from under Holly's sharpshooter vocal that manages to both spit out bile at his departing lover while dosing them in couldn't give a toss sweetness for her benefit.

Holly's vocal tics are there to rub her face in his indifference ("Well whoops a daisy how you drove me crazy, well I guess it doesn't matter any more") though by song end his true feelings poke through when the 'it' of their love gets personal ("I'll find somebody new and baby, we'll say we're through and you won't matter any more"), making it just as well that the song is barely two minutes long - given any more rope and things could well have got nasty.

I've always liked Holly's 'It Doesn't Matter Anymore' and I've always believed it was number one material even had he not caught that small airplane in Iowa. Holly was a class act before death made him a "post mortem star", and whilst it's true he didn't write this, he'd already written enough stone cold classics to let someone else provide a song for him without diminishing his own talent. In fact, his approach to this shows his versatility and originality extended to redrafting the texts of others as well as creating new ones on his own songs, defying anyone to pigeonhole him as just another rock and roller. A fitting enough memorial on the whole.

1959 Russ Conway: Side Saddle

I can remember once asking my mother what it was really like back in the sixties and her replying 'well they didn't bloody swing around here". I can relate to that now - I wasn't alive for most of the sixties, but after effectively growing up in the eighties I always find myself cocking a wry snook at those who think it was a day glo era of big hair and pastel suits. Because it wasn't. Not round here anyway. I wasn't alive in the fifties either, but to my idealistic mind it was all expresso bars, pony tails and Wurlitzer jukeboxes. And whilst the presence in the charts of Elvis and his buddies only serves to egg me on, it's the appearance of the likes of Russ Conway that lets in the most light to give probably clearer picture of the true state of Britain in 1959.

A pianist by trade, next to the finger shredding runs of Winifred Atwell Conway is a far more relaxed player with a lighter touch, a Hank Marvin to her Steve Vai.* Lightness can be a virtue, but the self penned 'Side Saddle' and its production is an inconsequential dribble of light entertainment that comes with a lack of guts and a surfeit of repetition that fails to hold the attention beyond the first couple of bars; something as short as it is really shouldn't get so boring so quickly.

'Side Saddle' has the quaint and dusty feel of a pianola endlessly tinkling out it's scrolled rhythm to no one in some long abandoned Western ghost town. To my mind it conjures up an image dreary black and white world of lardy cakes, weak tea, half day closing, de-mob suits and BBC radio's 'Light Programme', and in that respect it forever puts me in mind of Verne, the half brother of the narrator of Colin MacInnes' 1958 novel 'Absolute Beginners'. Verne was a bitter 25 year old in 1958, too old to enjoy the lifestyle of the new breed of teenagers yet young enough to feel bitter at missing out on what his teenage half brother was experiencing. The jollity of 'Side Saddle' tries hard to make friends with its perma grin cheer, but it missed the party to such an extent that it must have felt old and in the way mere seconds after it was recorded.

* Perhaps because one of his fingers had already been shredded courtesy of an accident with a bread slicer.

1959 The Platters: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Now then, how did we get from there to here? 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' was originally a Kern and Harbach showstopper from their 1933 operetta 'Roberta'. In the 1935 film version, it's sung by light opera diva Irene Dunne in suitably flamboyant light opera style at a dinner table, ending with her breaking down in tears (I'm going to keep Dunne's interpretation as a reference point here). So much for 'then' anyway. As for 'now', for at least the past thirty years it's difficult to tag any fifties based film, TV series or stage show that doesn't have The Platters' version of the song on the soundtrack somewhere (usually at a prom scene where the prom queen has been jilted by some jock). Nevermind that the song has been recorded by over thirty different artists from across all genres since, it's always this version that's returned to as the standard.

I'd peg the reason for its ubiquity largely on the striking lead vocal from Tony Williams. Falling into a hinterland between Broadway and street doo wop, Williams starts out with a slow fuse on "They asked me how I knew, my true love was true" before igniting and leaping out to grab you by the collar on "Oh, I of course replied" with a lunge of confidence that dares you to disagree. Yet disagree we must because, as Williams recounts, his love turned out to not be true at all ("Yet today my love has flown away") and by the close when it's all gone sour he's shedding "Tears I cannot hide" through a brave face that insists "Oh, so I smile and say, when a lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes".

But these lyrics are there for everyone; Williams neither wrote nor modified them so why has his take endured where Dunne and her like haven't? Again, I'd put it down to impetration; Dunne had sophistication in spades and trilled the song as pretty as a canary, yet its central imagery of "Oh, when your heart's on fire, you must realise, smoke gets in your eyes" rings hollow in her mannered delivery that doesn't make it sound like she'd get into much of a lather about anything. To compensate, the film version has her with her head in her hands at the close to hammer home the message, but in wrapping it up in a more immediate and youth friendly doo wop package, Williams and The Platters ensure such visual aids are not required.

Williams' more earthy tone veers from an in your face assuredness to a less cocky hubris, painting no less vivid a picture of hurt and generating a general atmosphere of emptiness that mines a layer of depth you don't get from a surface reading. It's not rock and roll, but then neither is it tin pan alley. There's an eerie, ghostliness about the arrangement; Williams sounds like he's singing to himself in some empty dancehall long after everybody else has paired up and left for home but what blows it is an orchestral backlash of an ending that shatters the solitude with the subtlety of a nailbomb, puncturing the drama rather than accentuating it. Such bombast didn't work for Shirley Bassey and it doesn't work here - the song isn't ruined, but it ends it on an awkward note of defiance when Williams sounds like he'd rather slink out through the back door unnoticed. Luckily for him and the song, he's done enough by then for such indulgence to be overlooked by all but the hardest of hearts.

1959 Shirley Bassey: As I Love You

Very much a singer's singer, Shirley Bassey is showgirl to the core to the extent that she'd play to the gallery even in a bungalow. Her performance here is no exception, but perhaps it should have been - underneath it all, 'As I Love You' has the heart of a tender ballad, but brassy Bassey slaps on the glitter and glue to belt it out like she's singing for her every supper past and to come. There's nothing wrong in playing to your strengths (and this kind of tinitus inducing oomph works wonders on showstoppers like 'Hey Big Spender'), but the music here simply can't contain the onslaught; it's too slight for that and as a result, Bassey colours outside of the lines at every opportunity to make 'As I Love You' a sloppy mix and match that's about as odd, unappetising and faintly nauseating as double cream poured over a bowl of dog food. Forgettable.

1959 Elvis Presley: One Night/I Got Stung

A tortoise and the hare twofer from Elvis - the tortoise comes in the shape of 'One Night', a slow and strung out bluesy holler that follows much the same template as set by Jane Morgan previous. Unlike Jane though, Elvis makes good on the promise of the music by delivering a pressure cooker vocal of sexual frustration; the anguish in his "Now I know that life without you has been too lonely too long" suggests he doesn't plan on doing much sleeping during that one night. So far so good, but beneath it all Presley by now sounds more like he's putting on an act, a bit of showmanship that aims for one last gasp of groin based bravado before the flame of rebellion gets snuffed out for good (that sleeve shot shows it's already more than half ways there). It's not a bad song, but its merits shine that much brighter when placed next to some of the horrors to come than when compared to some of the gems that have been.

The hare duly arrives on 'I Got Stung', a busy bee tune that leaps around like a bust spring but winds up chasing it's own tail in an ever diminishing spiral. Elvis puts out his by now trademark 'uh huh huh's' on cue but here they're the sound of a singer marking time, filling in the gaps while he waits for the song to get a grip on itself and take off in a single direction he can follow. Sadly, it never does and 'I Got Stung' limps to a close with its tail between its legs in a way that makes you wonder if there ever was a song there in the first place. On a note of trivia,'I Got Stung' was co-written by David Hill who, under the name David Hess, spent most of the seventies murdering, torturing and raping his way through a series of low budget, high violence video nasties like 'Last House On The Left', 'The House On The Edge Of The Park' and 'Hitchhike'. If he'd channelled some of that aggression into this then we'd all have been quids in.

1959 Jane Morgan: The Day The Rains Came

My first exposure to 'The Day The Rains Came' was via some incidental music on 'The Young Ones' back in the early eighties. This helped fix it in my mind that Jane Morgan was some kind of comedienne peddling a comedy song, but on that score I was wide of the mark. Written by Gilbert Bécaud, 'The Day The Rains Came' is very much a mixed metaphor made aural. It opens with a bawdy brass swagger before settling into a languid pace for Morgan to sing predatorily over and such sleaze begs a lyric of seduction and desire. But alas, 'The Day The Rains Came' busies itself with equating the rustle of spring with blossoming love in a po-faced manner that would make even the most shameless Hallmark hack feel queasy. "The day that the rains came down buds were born, love was born. As the young buds will grow, so our young love will grow" - it's all too much for me I'm afraid so it comes as no surprise that I far prefer the B side to this. It's exactly the same song, but as it's sung by Morgan in its native French (and because my French only extends as far as 'bonjour') then I can at least pretend that Jane is enticing me into her den of vice with a wink and a leer.