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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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
