Loud Family - Music: What Happened?

1960
by Scott Miller

"I Pity the Fool" - Bobby "Blue" Bland
1960 offers a long, loving look at the great American postwar musical institutions, nowadays with the knowledge that it's something of a last group picture before the Beatles' Sixties were to blow them all off the map. This Bobby Bland recording makes it clear that the stakes were high when it came to what was to be lost and gained; little in the Beatles canon, dominating though it be, achieves the balance of pathos and comic timing in, "Look at all the people/I know you wonder what they're doing/They're just standing there/Watching you make a fool out of me."

"Exodus" - Ferrante and Teicher
Hum the first four notes to Ernest Gold's epic theme to anyone in the world, and chances are there's a percentage of people who can name that tune to rival Mozart or Beethoven. The occasional avant-garde leanings of Ferrante and Teicher were not enough to keep frequent unfortunate Liberace-esque trills out of the proceedings.

"Will You Love Me Tomorrow" - The Shirelles
With a melodic arc worthy of the more serious stage—that happens to get right to the point—and a likewise decidedly believable lyric of romantic misgivings—that happens to be played for teens—and its pocket orchestral arrangement, this was the breakthrough song for the amazing Brill Building songwriters Carole King and Gerry Goffin. Four years later, the Beatles were to produce their first self-composed album, causing the songwriting-for-hire industry to dry up virtually overnight.

"Four on Six" - Wes Montgomery
Unusual as a guitar-led jazz act, Wes Montgomery was, for whatever my limited perspective is worth, probably the premier electric guitar soloist at this time. This is a fascinating composition, going a certain distance out by letting angular, almost robotic patterns create interesting chromatics, then reeling them back into a fairly mellow, bossa nova-like realm. The instrumental skill here is worthy of repeated double-takes.

"Ten Thousand Miles" - Penny and Jean
Penny Palmer and Jean Amos—Jean later joined the also lavishly gifted Womenfolk—were eighteen years old when they recorded the now-borderline-lost album Two For the Road. They're both from serious musical families, but that only begins to explain the recording's jaw-dropping sophistication. I wish it weren't such a lost cause to seek this out, say on iTunes, because it would be worth a buck to anyone just to marvel at the refined delivery and wordly musicality of this piece which, almost unbelievably, is a self-composition. A young woman's pining for an absent lover is signified in, "Who's going to shoe her foot/Who's going to glove her hand?" An impressively authentic-sounding pancultural folk air, but one that winks with the humor of: not that I won't miss you, honey, but, my God, "what if I can't shop for shoes?"

"Money (That's What I Want)" - Barrett Strong
With its satanically altered piano boogie riff and its greed theme which though played for humor is still a good slap in the face, this was perhaps rock's most significant early peak in brainy pagan implacability on the way to Iggy and the Stooges. John Lennon smelled genius here for his Beatles cover, which dusts the original's backing vocals, but otherwise can't touch Mr. Strong's recording, especially on the howl of "That's what I wa-ha-ha-ant."

"Shakin' All Over" - Johnny Kidd and the Pirates
It must have seemed nearly unthinkable that English people could rock in 1960, but damn, this is the real thing; it lacks the sheer loose energy, but in most respects keeps right up with Johnny Burnette or Dale Hawkins.

"Dig Dis" - Hank Mobley
Wynton Kelly's gymnastic piano intro makes a splashy first impression, and the rock solid Mr. Mobley takes it from there on this compelling, swinging blues that feels like a great uncle to the likes of Neal Hefti's 1968 Odd Couple theme. That's Art Blakey on drums.

"Cathy's Clown" - The Everly Brothers
The Everly Brothers stayed interesting and surprisingly versatile well into the sixties as their popularity waned unfairly, but it hadn't waned yet when the curiously monumental "Cathy's Clown" hit big. It's an incisive lyric about a cheated-on boyfriend, with a boldly martial drum pattern and harmonic cadences that were forerunners of a class of haunting Lennon motifs such as would be heard in "All I've Got To Do" and "Not a Second Time."

"Concierto de Aranjuez" - Miles Davis
Barring my information being unreliable, which is virtually certain, Sketches Of Spain can really be called a Gil Evans record—he seems to be the one responsible for transforming the adagio from Joaquin Rodrigo's guitar and orchestra "Concierto de Aranjuez" into sixteen minutes of flute harmonies and modernist turns that resemble the composed score for an episode of "Star Trek" or a Clint Eastwood film almost as much as they do jazz—or Spanish folk. I'm not entirely comfortable with all 16 minutes of it, but it's so auspicious I'd be afraid of editing anything out, lest in a week I find a reason the missing piece is actually brilliant.

"Walk Don't Run" - The Ventures
Situated at the intesection point between Bach and Spanish folk, the Ventures' powerhouse rendition of Johnny Smith's "Walk Don't Run" is a key component of the 1960s soundscape. This solid, vibrant, drum-rolling rave-up is probably the most all-around enjoyable of the great guitar instrumentals.

"Theme From 'A Summer Place'" - Percy Faith and His Orchestra
It's not just an easy listening piece, it's the easy listening piece—ubiquitous in the Luckys and Montgomery Wards of my childhood. But I'm certain this isn't sentimental attachment; it occupies a categorically separate part of my psyche from equal contenders with fancier pedigrees like "Poor People Of Paris" or "The Girl From Ipanema." A combination of the almost impossibly wistful composition of Max Steiner (he also wrote the Gone With the Wind music, which does little for me) and Percy Faith's inspired arrangement and flawless execution—love the pizzicato strings and French horns—the blush of ironic distance it invites is annihilated by the pure joy of listen to it.

"Shop Around" - The Miracles
This is really the first record that sounded like the sixties. The intro—"When I became of age my mother called me to her side"—sounds pointedly old-timey-fifties, but then the verse comes in and pow, suddenly you're in the world of go-go boots and Ford Mustangs. With the seventh chord accents, busy backing vocals, and out-of-nowhere chord changes going into the chorus, it's the one song on this list that could almost be on Help or Rubber Soul. Speaking of: another underappriciated sixties architect, George Harrison, was unrestrained in his praise of Smokey Robinson.

"Spoonful" - Howlin' Wolf
One of the greatest of the great Chess blues 45s, this traditional blues (tracing to Charlie Patton according to Wikipedia) came ostensibly with the Willie Dixon imprint. A canny observation of the pittance life and death matters can revolve around, it's too bad the supremely economical vibrancy of Wolf's delivery has a chance of being confused with Cream's dreary, interminable guitar jam version on the mostly terrific Wheels Of Fire.

"All My Trials" - Joan Baez
"All My Trials" would be my answer to, "Quick, what's the best vocal performance of the rock era?" I could probably come up with a few I like better, but this would take the early lead. The signature rapid vibrato is amazingly rich and clear; it's not a tremolo—there's a strong constant volume—yet it has a lot of some kind of play without there being a dimension of phonying the note like a typical operatic soprano. As far as I can tell it's a literal mother's death song to the children about to survive her, strictly biblical in its outlook.

"Try to Remember" - Jerry Orbach
Nothing about the beautifully wrought yet comfy standard "Try To Remember" prepared me for finally experiencing the bizarreness that is The Fantasticks, history's longest-running off-Broadway production. It's Shakespearean in its comic sweep—two fathers use reverse psychology to get their offspring to fall in love—yet with kabuki and theater of the absurd overtones that disrupt its family entertainment veneer; "Try To Remember" is sung by El Gallo, a sort of surrealistic troubador mercenary who sells the idea of a fake kidnapping notoriously referred to in the script as "the rape." So, I stopped picturing Perry Como in a cardigan.

"My Favorite Things, Part 1" - John Coltrane
I had to back-form the realization that this actually came out years before the Julie Andrews vocal version that saturation-bombed the world in 1965. What an inspired choice, both in terms of musical potential and audience relationship potential. After Coltrane's incredible soprano sax performance, the strongest impression is made by McCoy Tyner's flavor-rich minor/major chording on the digressions, along with Elvin Jones's typically adventurous meter. I as interested to find out that when Coltrane did a session, he would unpack the horn and furiously practice a piece right up until it was time to roll tape. Why does that surprise me? One version of the thought is: how odd—he does what I do; wouldn't some force in the universe be constraining Coltrane to be doing the exact opposite of what I do? But maybe it's not so strange to just be looking for ways to improve the result. Maybe Coltrane holds up better than anyone because he better understood that it was work. Work and other things, but not much without the work.