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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.
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.
