Loud Family - Music: What Happened?

1957
by Scott Miller

"Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On" - Jerry Lee Lewis
I began this survey choosing 1957 as the first of the bygone 50 years; it happens to be at about the middle of the explosion of rock and roll, the style of music I've worked in. By the time I took that music up just after classical guitar—after Dylan's having embraced rock and roll in 1965 and after Miles Davis's having reached detente with rock in 1970 with Bitches Brew—rock and roll would have become the serious music anyone below age 35 made; but in 1957, most serious music listeners considered rock and roll something for teenagers—lowbrow teenagers, at that. Jerry Lee here illustrates the appeal and the threat. A young girl who's apparently never done this before is invited to a party in a barn; there is shaking, and Jerry gives her the personal instruction she needs on how to stand in place and shake things the way the Killer requires. Had this rendezvous with the long-haired piano-pounding wild man been with a daughter of mine, I wonder if I'd be off to as promising a start with the rock, but that's not what happened, and as John Lennon would say, thank you, Killer, for teaching me how to rock and roll.

"Hey! Bo-Diddley" - Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley's pulverizing late 1955 appearance on the Ed Sullivan show must have been teased out into this variation for a 1957 single (with the also-great B-side "Mona"), convolving the earlier "Bo Diddley" with "Old MacDonald had a farm": women here, women there. Speaking of which, those backing vocalists on Sullivan with the evening dresses, one with the guitar with the white coiled cable, were a knockout. That little gradually-advancing step they did for the second half—a second half Ed apparently didn't authorize—reinforced the confrontation element coming from Bo up there staring the whole place down.

"You Send Me" - Sam Cooke
One of 1957's differences from today is the phenomenon of singers who were so good they carried the proceedings on their own terms. "You Send Me" isn't breaking a sweat as a composition, but when it allows Sam a chance to zoom up to those high "woahs," it surprises you in a way someone isn't surprised by, oh, Christina Aguilera. Four words into a song of hers, you know Christina's is a much more brute force approach—every syllable hard at work transmitting signifiers of soulfulness and realness. Sam is just transmitting singing. Then, yikes, at some odd moment you realize how much he's got in reserve. Christina isn't just singing, she's executing a mental floor exercise, wonderful news for today's advanced world; we now know that what people really want from a singer is his participation in an amateur-status competition in agreed-upon technique.

"Embraceable You" - Chet Baker
Sounding like he's had a nice fix of smack and isn't worring much about some lost teeth, Chet croons out romantic atmosphere rarefied into perfect indifference to anything but what will fly with paying customers. The guy is good; forever branded "West Coast jazz," in Mr. Baker—someone with whom I feel one of those sheer geographical affinities, knocking around the Western Addition or Milpitas—the term was usually manifest as genuinely cool, rather than crossing to the dreaded "laid back."

"I Put a Spell on You" - Screamin' Jay Hawkins
This has to be a pioneering event in the Dr. Demento universe—the A.M. radio D.J., monster movie version of the sixties—and its influence can still be found on as late an act as Marilyn Manson. You can hear the influence in serious somber artists like Jim Morrison, too; Screamin' Jay is not just a novelty act. He is, as Eva from "Stranger Than Paradise" reminds us, a wild man, so bug off.

"Young Man's Blues" - Mose Allison
Mose's clever and literate bluesspeak has many deeply committed fans, including the Who, who honored this under-two-minute haiku as the leadoff track from Live At Leeds. This young man's lament, that in "the old days" a young man at least had physical intimidation on his side, is a little more obviously wry humor here than when Mr. Daltrey explains how all the people would step BACK.

"Blues for Pablo" - Miles Davis
Even in the Gil-Evans-orchestrated era, Miles seemed like an intense cat. I'm guessing the title might refer to Pablo Picasso, but that may just say something about my own perceptions, in which there's a common ground in the revolutionary approaches of jazz and cubism. The twentieth century was powerful where it was explosive and incendiary; when we try to remember how to admire the flames, we have the ashes in front of us.

"Just Because" - Lloyd Price
I also love John Lennon's version of this on Rock and Roll, his 1975 album made primarily to appease the publishers of Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me," which contained the quoted lines, "Here come old flat-top, he come grooving up slowly." The very talented Lloyd Price's version has plenty of its own advantages, especially little inflections; Lennon sidesteps the challenge to capture "Just because you think you so smart."

"Shenandoah" - Harry Belafonte
A strong candidate for the best-sounding pop singer of the era, Harry Belafonte will also go down in history as one of its key humanitarian activists. His rendition of the beautiful "Shenandoah" is monumental, but I actually dream of an edition project where I shorten the drawing out of every single word so you get something that almost follows meter.

"Keep a Knockin'" - Little Richard
The crazed, perfect resolution of "You keep a knockin' but you can't come in/Come back tomorrow night and try it again" is the climax of one of my favorite Little Richard cuts, the first of the next round of songs after Here's Little Richard. I couldn't follow the drum intro Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" until I paid attention to this.

"Tammy" - Debbie Reynolds
As a child, I considered this an enchanting melody, but upon entering adolescence it became a signifier of sentimental horribleness. Adolescence had a point; Debbie Reynolds is simply the wrong music business pro for this assignment. I respect what Livingston and Evans are doing with hyper-alliterative lines like "the old hooty owl hooty-hoos to the dove"—if you slur the words just right, it sounds like declension of some mysterious Germanic language—"olhudi aulhudi"—the last thing my ear wants is militant enunciation fighting off that pattern recognition in favor of perfect Lady the Cocker Spaniel understandability. Realizing I'm a bit of a chump, I do still love it; a line like "I'd sing like a violin if I were in his arms" knows what it's talking about.

"Bony Moronie" - Larry Williams
Even in the midst of some of the hottest Elvis and Little Richard material, this rocks like nobody's business. The guitar and sax play together to achieve a fat, fuzzed-out sound not unlike heavy, distorted riffs years later like "Birthday." Mr. Williams's voice then comes in and blows even that big sound away. It's such a fun, silly song about being proud of his gangly girlfriend, it reminds you that pop-rock's stakes have been bid up so high most artists forget to have fun.

"Suzie-Q" - Dale Hawkins
This is one of the savoriest, most enduring rockabilly guitar riffs ever created. Forget rockabilly, one of the. I really don't have a feeling for whether Dale himself baked it from scratch or it existed in folk form, but you sure heard it again and again after that. The drumming is fascinating, too—a swing basis but with lock-step eighth note fills thrown whenever the mood strikes. It gives the impression of a band with a loose feel pulling it together at dramatic intervals.

"Bye Bye Love" - The Everly Brothers
As much as their marketing played up the backwoods-curiosity angle ("Songs Our Daddy Taught Us"), the Everly Brothers always sounded pretty damn modern. That minor 1-3-4 blues run-up on the guitar wasn't really ready to become a pop staple for another ten years.

"Blue Train" - John Coltrane
I'm reading the Wiki on this and I'm finding out how "Lazy Bird" was the first one to do chord changes that were brutal sequential major thirds down (I, uh, think), and those were the "giant steps" of the next album, and you can tell a good jazz soloist by his ability to follow that stuff. I'm blushing a little when I admit that this inspired me to illustrate my reaction to "Blue Train" in a way that shows off my musicological background a little. It's on the third repetition of that great theme hook, and it goes something like this: Wow! Oh my God! A normal chord! Trane is my main freaking man! I've never heard anyone express the thought before, but I like that John sets me up the right way to be excited by the conventional by framing it with the unconventional.

"Chances Are" - Johnny Mathis
Johnny Mathis has to have the greatest native vocal gift of any modern stylist. The sheer resonance of his voice is a match for any of my favorites in that area—David Gilmour comes to mind—but with an arsenal of technique that assures world domination. He can invoke a full vibrato instantaneously and sustain it indefinitely. This allows him to send the message of being the master practitioner of the emotion he's capturing. Any song on this list will do for many occasions, but if you want the first dance at my wedding, it has to be "Chances Are."

"Bemsha Swing" - Thelonious Monk
The strident, indelible theme, highly accessible but punctuated with piano that reminds the listener it's juggling some dissonance, is the kinetic center of Brilliant Corners, which with Monk's Music constitutes one of the great late flowerings of a top artist's productivity, in time for Monk to enjoy overdue appreciation as a major figure. But I'll bet you fans know the important issue here: what in God's name does "Bemsha" mean? I was all ready to go with a theory that it comes from notation, as in, you start on B then go to E minor (Em), but I couldn't make that work—a quick listen suggests it's really in C, and I think it has to be in C to work with horn keying.

"That'll Be the Day" - The Crickets
The extra words "when I die" constitute one of the best little melodic resolutions in pop music. So does the lyric hook: telling his girl her threats to leave him aren't serious because it would kill him is extremely clever. Together these present important early evidence of rock and roll's potential for sophisticaiton. The great skill of rock composition was right-sizing the value added: folk, country, and blues could be almost anti-compositional, and modern classical, jazz, and even Broadway could be insensitive to how much novelty the ear wants to absorb on one listen, compared with how much the writer wants to dish out. Rock and roll's founding fathers found the sweet spot.

"Jailhouse Rock" - Elvis Presley
Leiber and Stoller's "Jailhouse Rock" is the most powerful statement of rock and roll as an admirable and sustainable way of life. I haven't heard many people claim to literally "believe in rock and roll" and not really mean either that they cling to deliberate recklessness embarrassingly late in life, or only that they are happy to dismiss any musical style requiring a hint of open-mindedness. But rock and roll at its best is an enlightening synthesis of Western culture that makes life a party that no one isn't invited to. It's the good news that at the end of the day, the people getting their kicks can be the people who do the right thing. Like the Jesus of John's gospel, Elvis turns our attention directly to society's outcasts—in this case, hardened criminals rotting in prison. I don't think it's out of order to observe that rock and roll's architects were for the most part observant Christians and Jews; rock and roll's ultimate vision isn't the ecstatic liberation of the mob from its own perceived mores, it's an intervention on behalf of those on the wrong end of the mob's collective scorn—it takes on the work of Old Testament prophets. It's "Number 47" saying "to number three/You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see." Like "Some Like It Hot," this song asks for a pass as a put-on, but the listener is encouraged not to be a person who has a real problem with either the suffering of the guilty being relieved, or, hey, how about with men pairing up with other "cute" men? In that spirit of tolerance, even the unpopular among the rejects is OK in the rock and roll dispensation: to the one who's "Over in the corner sittin' all alone": "If you can't find a partner, use a wooden chair!" This is not an easy lyrical and vocal burden to handle, even where the handling is close to wild abandon, and Elvis tears the roof off like no one else could, leaving the subtleties intact. He is the King.

"Somewhere" - West Side Story original Broadway cast
I love the unprofessional-sounding mic distance and electrical pops at the beginning of this recording—as if the most magnificent passage in popular music were about to go down and no one was thinking in terms of ceremonious archival, some techie just happened to have tape rolling. For being such a monument of invention, the original ballet soundtrack today gives a hint of leaning too heavily on stodgy vocal technique—stage diction and operatic projection—yet I like these decisions and have a feeling that a hundred years from now, they will stand the project in good stead. I approach "Somewhere" after first having heard dozens of attempts to replace Carol Lawrence's textbook delivery with something more poppy, flowery, swinging. But that's somehow not where the soul of the material is situated. Dried out to Leonard Bernstein's string-quartet-heavy, slightly modern-classical orchestral arrangement, the dramatic and emotional range unfolds. Stephen Sondheim's lyrics are more obviously brilliant; this isn't everyday dreamy romance, this is the very future of dreamy romance hanging in the balance. "Peace and quiet and open air" is such a great, unlikely choice of words. The characters are canaries in a mine shaft running out of air, with no escape from the encircling mechanics of urban violence. Carol Lawrence's vocal, slightly constrained as it may give the first impression of being, is awe-inspiring and moving in its technique: that vibrato that speeds up as the emotion gathers is remarkable. For all that, center stage here really belongs to Bernstein. Absurd as it must be to try to choose the very best popular melody of an era, this is probably the front-runner, and the arrangement is decorated with nuanced and informed musical decisions it would be beyond me to make, but that I find relentlessly engaging. The big dramatic arc is where the first "some day, somewhere" climax diverges to the bridge—"We'll find a new way of living/We'll find a way of forgiving" is a choice plot reference—and then the final climax adds the resolution on "Somehow/Some day/Somewhere." The choir and booming bass in the coda add soundtrack tone poetry suggesting a landscape so bombed-out that finding the way to peace is a pressing matter of survival: your survival and mine, not someone else's, and not next year but tomorrow. The message hasn't drifted toward irrelevance.