"The Poor People of Paris," by Les Baxter

March to April 1956--(Six Weeks)

Instrumentals!  We have instrumentals, people!  This is not a drill!

You notice how these don't tend to top the charts anymore?  I know a lot of instrumentals were big during the heyday of disco, but you could actually dance to those--so how the heck would one cut a rug to this tune?  I could see children prancing around the classroom to "Poor People of Paris"; I could see a housewife playing it at medium volume underneath a particularly dull cocktail party.  Clearly, however, this is a genre of music that has gone the way of the dinosaurs nowadays:  orchestra leaders simply don't make the charts anymore.

I described the orchestration in "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" as having too many bells-and-whistles, but this--this is in a category all by itself.  The melody is simple and catchy, almost painfully so, so Baxter throws every musical gimmick he can think of at the listener to jazz it up.  It's all in here:  harp, glockenspiel, muted trumpet, pizzicato strings, a disembodied chorus, finger snapping, and--god help us--GROUP WHISTLING!  Yes, the chintziest of chintzy effects in the world, when the musicians put down their instruments and whistle as one!  We even get a "cute" little fakeout from Mr. Baxter in the middle, when everyone turns to their neighbor and says "Oh, that fading out means the song is over!" but NO!  The show must go on!  Seriously, this song is so cheesy, I would be surprised if it didn't end up in the background of a Ren and Stimpy cartoon at some point...

On the other hand, this may have been the last decade of the 20th century when a composer/bandleader could actually be somewhat of a superstar.  In his lifetime, Les Baxter did just about everything you could do in the music industry:  he sang backup and played piano, arranged and orchestrated, wrote lyrics, co-founded a production company, scored B-movies, wrote the theme song to the "Lassie" TV show (which also features whistling), and so on.  However, in the middle of all this, he managed to record a #1 hit under his own name--a feat that most music industry stalwarts today could only dream of.  Interestingly enough, Les Baxter also wrote a lot of "exotica" music for his orchestra (in the vein of Esquivel, NOT pornography), but apparently, that sort of thing was far too adventuresome for the 1950's pop charts.

So just how square is this song?  Well, you might be mildly interested to know that the original actually IS French:  it's an Edith Piaf tune called "La goualante de pauvre Jean" or "The Ballad of Poor John."  The original, a typically gritty tune, tells the story of  a criminal who "chooses crime over love," and ends up in prison.  For reasons unknown, some anonymous American songwriter mistook the name "Jean" for "gens" ("people," in French), and thus wrote entirely different English lyrics around the laughable conceit of "poor people" in Paris:  "I feel sorry for the French/every guy has got a wench/Every couple's got a bench/kissing shamelessly."  (Could Americans in the 1950's simply not comprehend there could be actually poverty in France?  'Cause there was, and lots of it...)  It is THIS version, not the original Piaf song, that Baxter arranged, thus fully transforming an earthy French nightclub ballade into a squeaky-clean American orchestral ditty.  Man, was this decade dull or what?

Up next:  A two minute masterpiece by a former truck driver from Tupelo changes the face of popular music forever.

PS:  Here's the original by Edith Piaf--as always, what the material lacks in musical variety, Piaf makes up for in raw emotion and streetwise authenticity.  Too bad the translation is so bowdlerized...

"Rock and Roll Waltz," by Kay Starr

March 1956--(Three Weeks)

"Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright/They just seem a little weird..."--Cheap Trick

Happy day! This is the first post on this blog where a song on the hit list is a tune I've never EVER heard of before. And while "Sixteen Tons" and "The Great Pretender" are classics, "Memories are Made of This" is familiar because of Dean Martin's presence, and even "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" is somewhat of a standard today,"Rock and Roll Waltz" has fallen by the wayside, a piece of pop fluff that must have seemed outdated mere months after its release. Frankly, songs like these are the reason why I started this blog in the first place:  to mercilessly lampoon the greying favorites of yesteryear.

And "Rock and Roll Waltz" definitely deserves mockery--this is a song that, by modern standards, seems false on so many levels it's hard to count them all.  For starters, although the girl in the story is clearly supposed to be a teenager, Kay Starr herself was no Rock and Roll ingenue:  she was 34 years old and desperately searching for a comeback since her swing tune "Wheel of Fortune" became a chart-topping hit four years earlier.  (You may remember that one from a montage in the middle of "LA Confidential.")  This fact might be easily overlooked if not for the fact that the entire song sounds like it was written and produced by old school music industry veterans trying desperately to cash in on the Rock and Roll craze, despite the fact that Rock was and still is an genre that thrives on youthful energy and rebelliousness.  And while it's often tricky to judge what is or isn't hip, UN-hipness is painfully easy for anyone to spot.

You can hear this out-of-touch mentality several places within the lyrics, such as when Kay refers to the music in the other room as a "Jump tune," which is terminology I've often heard associated with Big Band jazz but never to Rock and Roll.  She also refers to her record player as a "record machine," and then, seemingly in a half-hearted acknowledgment of the music's black roots, calls the genre "good for your soul."  But what really makes this song ludicrous is the fact that, although the song attempts to be a waltz/rock and roll hybrid, it sounds NOTHING LIKE ROCK AND ROLL, from that era or any other.  Starr is backed up by an entire wind section and a chorus, but no electric instruments; there's a little boogie woogie in the piano part, and the drummer contributes some Rhythm & Blues boom-chuck in the chorus, but that's really the full extent of musical ingenuity in the arrangement.  Ironically, the parents who surely made this song a #1 hit (no self-respecting Rock and Roll fan would have bought one) in order to bond with their children were actually dancing to updated music from their own generation:  it's definitely more Lawrence Welk than Bill Haley. 

At any rate, the premise of the song is ludicrous when you really think about it.  Then as now, Rock and Roll is rarely waltzed to because precious little of it was ever written in 3/4, which once again confirms my suspicion that the writers of this song had no idea what teenagers were actually listening to.  And although Kay herself seems entranced by Mom and Pop, singing "They looked so cute to me / I love the Rock and Roll Waltz," I'm fairly certain that most teens would run screaming out of the room upon beholding such an embarrassing sight, along with cries of "I hate this stupid house!" from behind a promptly slammed door.

There's really nothing left for me to add on this one except to note that Kay Starr just might be the oldest living solo artist to have a single on the Billboard 100 pop charts; I haven't made a truly comprehensive survey of the entire post-1955 list, but the fact remains that, having outlived nearly all of her contemporaries, Ms. Starr is 86 years old and still going strong. Cher has a long way to go to catch up...

Up next:  Revenge of the Squares, part 1.

"The Great Pretender," by The Platters

February 1956--(Two Weeks)

This isn't just an awesome song--it's an important one too.

Did black artists ever hit the top of the Billboard pop charts before this song?  Yes, but generally they did it with swing--songs by the Mills Brothers, the Ink Spots, and Nat King Cole all fit neatly into the old Big Band w/ strings genre.  (Cole's bluesier material never went as high.)  Then you have a doo-wop song like "Sh-boom," which went to #9 in 1954 in its original incarnation by the Chords, but had to be covered by the all-white Crew-Cuts in a tamer, lamer rendition before it could go to #1.  This song went to the top without a shred of compromise:  the instrumentation, especially the lone sax and the plink-plink-plink-plink on the piano, is unabashedly Rhythm and Blues.

According to everything I've read, the Platters were just another ordinary Doo-wop band until a Jewish dude named Buck Ram (Samuel Ram to his parents) became their manager and completely reshuffled the deck.  Suddenly, there was a girl in a previously all-male genre (Zola Taylor, whose voice is hard to distinguish from the others on "Pretender"), and just as suddenly, there was a star in the group--lead vocalist Tony Miller.  Ram also wrote, produced, and arranged all of their songs, and insisted that the Platters not be released on a "race music" label.  As a result, "Only You" made it to the top of the R & B charts and #5 on the Pop charts.  "Great Pretender," made it to #1 on both--a feat which had become near impossible for black OR white artists to do in an increasingly segregated decade.

But enough history:  the song works just as well as it did back then.   You've got to love it how Miller, in character as said Pretender, ascends the scale and reaches the highest note on an admission of make-believe, and then recedes in embarrassment (eg.. I seem...to be...what I'm not...you see...)  Great song-writing, great delivery.  And it's also a wonderful touch that Miller spends most of the song singing about how he's an impostor, but doesn't really clearly say why until the end of the lyric--"Pretending that you're still around,"--when he repeats it at the end, you can almost hear the singer's heart breaking.  This song doesn't have one central hook, but it's full of these great subtle touches that keep you listening until the very end--like when the rest of the Platters join in on the word "YES!"  You look forward to that moment every single time it comes around.

Plus, haven't we all been there?  Hasn't every one of us been in a position where we had to hide a broken heart from the rest of the world--especially in our teenage years, when self-composure seemed so important?  Unlike the last three songs I covered, which were mostly for mom and dad, this is clearly a song aimed at the younger set:  for teenagers, by teenagers.  (The Platters were young--Zola was only 18 when this song hit #1)  For the time being, adults still had the pop charts under control, but between this tune and "Rock Around the Clock" from the previous summer, it was evident that something was going on.

Next up:  Embarrassingly enough, Mom and Dad try to keep up.

PS:  Wanna see the Platters perform their hit on national TV?  Click here.  Wanna hear what white Jazz lovers REALLY thought of Rock and Roll?  Click here for a fairly disrespectful Stan Freberg spoof.

"Memories Are Made of This," by Dean Martin

January to February 1956--(Five Weeks)

(Hic!)

It seems hard to believe, but there was apparently a time when Jerry Lewis was a shooting star and Dean Martin, not yet anointed as "the King of Cool," was considered something of a space filler.  He was good-looking and could sing, but hell, that was hardly a novelty back in the 50's; on the other hand, shouting "Hey LAAAAYDEEEE!" in a nasal, childlike voice was an act no one else on Earth could imitate.  Ever.

Nevertheless, in 1956, the Lewis and Martin partnership broke up after 10 highly lucrative years, leaving Martin in somewhat of a lurch.  "Memories" can be seen as the very beginning of a highly successful show biz reinvention, refashioning straight man Dean into Dino the clown, an always-tipsy slacker and ladies' man with a zest for double entendres.  But this song was pre-Rat Pack, which was more of a Kennedy Era phenomenon, so perhaps the persona hadn't been finely honed yet--for a Dean Martin tune, this song is remarkably conservative.

Why do I say conservative?  Because while the first half of the tune is all about the "Your lips and mine / Two sips of Wine" romance that made Dean Dino, the second half turns into a love letter to "One man, one wife / one love through life."  Dean Martin is advocating monogamy?  And--gasp--settling down and having kids?  Three kids?  You get the feeling that the 1960's Dean Martin who sang the more carousing "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?" woulda decked him one.  (Of course, the real life Dean Martin was happily married for 24 years to his second wife, who coincidentally bore him three children, so maybe this song is a lot closer to the real Dino than his Rat Pack output.)

The song itself?  Pleasant enough, I suppose--I've always like songs with a prominent acoustic bass plunking away in the background.  The cooking metaphors used throughout the song are just this side of ridiculous, although a friend of mine laughed at loud at the part that goes "three little kids for the flavor," which sounds just plain wrong to our 21st century ears.  (Cannibalism?  Pedophilia?  You decide.)  And what's up with those background singers?  If you can figure out what they're singing under the "One girl, One boy" part, your ears are better than mine--the best I can deduce is "I was a smoker / but now a joker / it was a happy day when [inaudible]."  (Shades of the Steve Miller Band, if I've transcribed it correctly.)  Frankly, the backup part is an unwanted distraction--Dino's voice and charisma are enough to drive the song home.

Anyway, this is a great example of the American Dream from the Eisenhower era expressed in song--fall in love, get married, have kids, live happily ever after--and thus it's another song for parents, not their children.  Martin was 40 at the time, no longer the fresh-faced hunk from a decade earlier, not yet the ageless swinger he would soon become, and it's safe to say that most of the people who made this song a #1 hit were in their 40's as well.  (Cue the Tom Brokaw voice:)  The Greatest Generation, the men and women who fought a World War and then settled down to reap the benefits of peace, still held sway over the pop charts--but their era was swiftly coming to an end.  

Up next:  Doo-wop steals the spotlight.

(PS:  According to Wikipedia, Broadway lyricist Tim Rice apparently considers the Everly Brothers' 1960 cover of this song to be "the most perfect pop song ever."  Not quite sure I agree, but listen here to decide for yourself.)

"Sixteen Tons," by Tennessee Ernie Ford

December 1955 to January 1956--(Six Weeks)

Admit it: you like this song.  And even if you don't, you've almost certainly heard it.

When Tom Hanks heads to his soul-crushing job in the opening credits of "Joe Versus the Volcano," which song do they have Eric Burdon closely cover on the soundtrack?  This song, naturally.  Bart listens to the original on that one Simpsons episode where the family is sentenced to an afternoon of spring cleaning.  Most of your coworkers probably know the words to the chorus, especially the rueful kicker "I owe my soul to the company store," even if most people these days have no idea what a company store is.  Simply put, "Sixteen Tons" is musical shorthand for drudgery in our culture, and that's not likely to change any time soon.

Why does it work so well?  It's hard to say.  Most people my age recognize "Tennessee" Ernie Ford, if they recognize him at all, as that irritating hick cousin of Lucy's who terrorizes the Ricardos on old "I Love Lucy" reruns.  He milked this same "country bumpkin" persona for all it was worth on TV and radio shows throughout the era, but it's somewhat disconcerting when you learn that he was also a prolific gospel singer with a powerful baritone--so it's possible that Jim "Gomer Pyle" Nabors copied his entire act.  (Unless Larry the Cable Guy put out an album of inspirational music I'm not aware of, our era has no equivalent.  Be thankful.)

This is one of those fun instances where the hit was on the B-side, meaning that the record execs pinned most of their misguided hopes on the other side of the record making it big.  True to form, the A-side, a ballad called "You Don't Have To Be a Baby to Cry," is nothing special--check it out here if you're curious--but "Sixteen Tons" is undeniably potent.  The arrangement is sparse, starting with a haunting hook by two clarinets (NOT a harmonium, apparently), and featuring a descending bass line, finger snapping, some understated percussion, and not much else.  A few spare wind instruments sneak in during the chorus, but the focus is on Ford's rich voice, boasting of outlandish feats of strength in the verse, only to return to the same inescapable truth of a lifetime of bondage.

It's an unusual song, halfway between a swing and a country shuffle, but somehow it works beautifully.  There's no real regional or personal identity attached to the song; Ernie Ford didn't have the working-class cred of Merle Travis, who wrote the tune, or Johnny Cash, who covered it.  But it's Ford's version that became a massive hit, largely for the same reasons that it remains appealing today: a haunting vocal performance and an accompaniment that wisely stays out of his way.

Up next:  A Rat Packer gets (hic) sensitive.   

"Love is a Many-Splendored Thing," by the Four Aces

November 1955--(Three Weeks)

And so the #1 single was born . . . or was it?  (If you don't want to read a rather arcane description of how Billboard's venerable Hot 100 list came into being, go ahead and skip the next paragraph.)

Truth is, I'm starting in the middle.  Billboard Magazine began tracking popular music singles way back in the summer of 1940 (the magazine itself has been around since 1894, at which time it covered not music but--you guessed it--billboards.)  For the next 15 years, however, there were no less than three different methods of tracking a song's popularity:  "Best Sellers in Stores," "Most Played by Jockeys," and "Most Played in Jukeboxes."  It wasn't until 1955 that someone thought of merging all three measurements of a song's popularity (sales, radio play, AND jukebox performance) into a fourth listing--The Top 100.  Three years later, it would become The Hot 100, at which time the other lists were discontinued.  So I won't be going WAY back and covering blue-haired oldies by Glenn Miller and the Andrew Sisters, thank God...

Earlier this same year, such standards as Chuck Berry's "Maybellene," Fats Domino's "Ain't that a Shame," Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman," and Bo Diddley's "Bo Diddley" all made it to the top of Billboard 100's R&B Charts but failed to become #1 Pop singles.  Mainstream America--safe, suburban, middle-class, white America--saw these artists as outsiders.  So what were they listening to?  Apparently, songs like these.

A few years ago, I saw an Off-Broadway revue called "Forever Plaid," in which a fictional male quartet from this same era performed this song and a jillion songs like it.  Much humor was gleaned from the dorky innocence of these groups, who mostly sang non-threatening music for clean-cut kids and their approving parents, before they were all but wiped out by the British Invasion (in "Forever Plaid," literally wiped out--the four are run over by a bus full of Beatles-crazed teenagers on their way to the famous Ed Sullivan broadcast.  Highly recommended--the show, not the deaths.)  The Four Aces seem to fit the mold perfectly:  nice guys in dinner jackets from the 'burbs of Philly who struck it big with this standard and a few others, then largely faded into the background by the time the 60's rolled around.  Leader Al Alberts didn't even stick around for a year after the song hit #1--he vamoosed, and the rest of the group soon followed suit.

As for the song--this may be the understatement of the century, but it's rather flowery by today's standards.  Aside from the harp, strings, and disembodied choir that appear in the introduction, the song essentially speaks not of love for a particular person (or a particularly large posterior), but love in the abstract.  And while no one can argue that love is really keen and nifty, it's a pretty bland subject for a song--even a song that was originally written for an equally bland-looking drama from the same year with the same title.  Actually, the song won an Oscar, but while I hate to butt heads with Paul Francis Webster, the author of the immortal couplet "Spider Man, Spider Man / Does whatever a spider can," I gotta ding him for this one.

Paul, couldn't you have changed the lyrics to, say, "Love is a Very Splendid Thing?"  What the hell does "Splendored" mean, anyway?  Even my blog's spell-checker can't even begin to imagine...

Up next:  a lasting tribute to the working stiffs of the world...