Loud Family - Music: What Happened?

1961
by Scott Miller

"Apache" - The Shadows
Brian Epstein was famously rebuffed by some British record exec who told him something like, "Go back to Liverpool, Mr. Epstein, 'four-groups' are out." I've never been entirely clear on the "four-groups" (four-person musical combos, I assume) that had such a heyday before the Beatles that they could be said to be "out," but with their suits and guitars, the Shadows look the part. An instrumental band, they must have been a reaction to the Ventures, and this is an amazingly cool, respectably arranged recording. That's a pretty Ziggy-Stardust sounding use of acoustic guitar. But as I look at this list, I realize that the abstract mental picture I had built up of 1961-1963 being inhabited by a rising and falling wave of "four-groups"—of which the guitar instrumental contingent was a minor subgroup—seems not to bear out in any reality I've been able to discover.

"Doozy" - Benny Carter & Quincy Jones and His Orchestra
Venerable Benny Carter gave a start in the forties to Miles Davis, and to a young Quincy Jones here. This great theme riff is essentially a big band swing piece, with just enough bebop edge to sound fresh in 1961 and fresh today.

"Town Without Pity" - Gene Pitney
Gene Pitney had one of those fascinating careers. He played piano well enough to do Rolling Stones sessions, he wrote "He's a Rebel" and "Hello Mary Lou," and this melodramatic yelp isn't the best demonstration of his vocal skills. Nor is it the best music from Dmitri Tiomkin (who is the guy who wrote Station To Station's "Wild Is the Wind"). But there's something classic and special about the almost accidental capture of alienation, that goes beyond that of either the teenage lovers in the song or the more sinister situation in the movie for which it served as the title song.

"The Red Rooster" - Howlin' Wolf
Usually referred to as "Little Red Rooster" since the Rolling Stones used that title variation for their U.K. blues revival hit (I learned from Wikipedia that Sam Cooke is really the one who changed the title), this Willie Dixon song as well as the performance—on which Willie played bass—have a timeless slide guitar coolness. People's imaginations apparently do different things with the fact that there's no peace in the barnyard when the little red rooster is too lazy to crow for days.

"Stand By Me" - Ben E. King
An interesting thing about "Stand By Me" is what a delayed response song it is. Ben E. King apparently couldn't even convince the Drifters to record it, so he did it solo. I didn't personally start caring about it until John Lennon covered it in 1975. It became a gleaming golden classic in retrospect in the eighties, with the advent of the movie of the same name. I think a song with a common chord progression that's about commitment probably always seems boring at the time, and later people think, "oh, that's that quaint old way everyone used to do things," and have no particular trouble becoming fond of it.

"Gloria's Step" - Bill Evans
Sunday at the Village Vanguard, the piano album for people who like bass, is one of those canonical recordings from the days when jazz was an experience treated by the likes of Downbeat magazine with reverence appropriate to basic human liberty or zen enlightenment. Breezy in its sympathy with Ornette and the freers from jazz's perceptions of modal tyranny, we have the piano pre-hook, then the piano hook, and then basically several minutes of the bass of 25-year-old L.A. studio hotshot Scott LaFaro (the tune's composer) making a lifetime's worth of emancipatory gestures, ten days before he died in an auto accident.

"A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues" - Arthur Alexander
Like Smokey Robinson's "Shop Around," this is a recording that starts building the foundation of sixties pop in earnest, updating Huey "Piano" Smith's "Rockin' Pneumonia" blueprint with a harder rock edge and a dead-cool slapback echo effect on the vocal. The Beatles would be covering it in their BBC broadcasts within a couple of years.

"Hide Away" - Freddie King
A huge influence on the heavy blues guitar contingent of the sixties and seventies, Freddie King telegraphed an incredible hand strength—the sheer precision and power of his playing put it in a class by itself. The unforgettable chorus riff of "Hide Away" was bar band rock as it would start appearing around 1968 practically fully formed.

"Finnegan's Wake" - The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem
This is the Irish drinking ballad that gave the surrealist James Joyce book its title (Joyce's removal of the apostrophe was typical of the book's chopping of language into a sort of Jabberwocky inviting all the puns and echoes the ear can take); it was the first time I ever heard the song. The Clancy Brothers were just breaking as national stars with Ed-Sullivan-Show-level exposure. They do a fine job of rendering the idiom, but the standout aspect is really what a strong melodic composition the song is—way more like "I'm Looking Through You" than any other song from the 1850s, I can just about guarantee.

"The Wanderer" - Dion
I used to think nothing of this recording, but the more I get to know it, the more I like it. First of all, it sounds like a million bucks—really a hot, hi-fi rock and roll recording. The vocals must have been a challenge of theatrics, and they're pulled off with adept comic delivery—to the three girls he's seeing today is added the fourth tattooed on his chest--as well as world-class pop technique. More impressively, they sustain a sad and serious note for those listening closely: "I'm happy as a clown/With my two fists of iron/But I'm going nowhere."

"Little Sister" - Elvis Presley
Here's the King of Rock and Roll revisiting a fairly straight rockabilly style, but with a slick, updated production that anticipates Creedence or "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress." A slightly witless low harmony toward the end doesn't stop this from being one of my five favorite Elvis records, and Elvis vocals.

"At Last" - Etta James
Not more than a modest hit at the time, this lushly orchestrated, controlled soul blues tear-up of the forties Glenn Miller standard has elevated Etta James to the ranks of premier artist. She brings a remarkable emotional immediacy to the understanding of deep romantic love being something long waited for.

"Hoe Down" - Oliver Nelson
How does someone come up with an album title as cool as Blues and the Abstract Truth? The composed theme is an amazing riff on the Appalachian motif—18 years after Aaron Copland's somewhat different modern classical stylings—with acrobatic close harmonies leading into the improv section. With Bill Evans, Eric Dolphy, and Freddie Hubbard in the session, it's a wonder of technical execution.

"Hit the Road Jack" - Ray Charles
Wow, here's a great article. I see there's been some rigorous categorization of chord progressions that I've made parochial attempts to articulate, and now in my enlightened state I can simply mention that "Hit the Road Jack" is an example of a Malaguena progression and not have to, for instance, further torture the words "Spanish Folk." I've always loved "Hit the Road, Jack"; the arc of "no more, no more, no more" is a brilliant leap of the imagination, and an unbelievable amount of entertainment is crammed into about 1:45.

"I Fall to Pieces" - Patsy Cline
I don't do a whole lot of country, but Patsy Cline for sure gets a place of honor. Willie Nelson's "Crazy," also from 1961, is of course another Patsy Cline standard; the melody of "I Fall To Pieces" grabs me a bit more. To friends who want her to forget the man who left her, the response of "I've tried, and I've tried, but I haven't yet" is somehow just the right direct and understated way to make us really feel the hurt.

"Aisha" - John Coltrane
The ravishing theme, written by pianist McCoy Tyner, is one of the high points of jazz; Reggie Workman's slow, swinging bass part ends hanging on a contemplative ninth, ushering in Coltrane's unforgettable counterpoint melody; Freddie Hubbard and Eric Dolphy provide the pyrotechnics.

"Runaway" - Del Shannon
A denizen of moldy oldies collections my whole life, this is a fantastic little composition on close scrutiny. Max Crook's nimble clavioline keyboard solo (over a Malaguena progression!) is a bizarre but perfect addition to a song that is otherwise deceptively simple—just the first two chords of a standard doo-wop progression repeated over and over. Shannon's vocal and lyrics are wonderful. The hook is of course that falsetto "I wa-wa-wa-wa-wonder," but the emotional energy for me is in the resolution of, "And I wonder where she will stay/My little runaway." Somehow it opens the song into the night: a familiar lost love theme becomes a tangible concern for the well-being of another, and the bittersweet mystery of new beginnings.

"Moon River" - Henry Mancini
With Leonard Bernstein, Henry Mancini was the great author of 1950s pop eclecticism in serious music. They worked on top-dollar Broadway and film projects, and like George Gershwin before them, they had a mastery of orchestral forms and brought a keen interest in integrating jazz, blues, and Latin elements. Their facility with melody, the range of their talent, and the resources they commanded seem unlikely to come into the world again. Someone like John Williams could conceivably be said to enjoy something like a similar exaltation (I thought Jurassic Park was a very good score; I could take or leave Star Wars), but putting aside his potential to rise to the height of "Moon River" according to his native abilities, the world simply doesn't put the same gun to his head and insist he be, in a word, charming. Breakfast At Tiffany's the movie is well inferior to "Moon River" the theme song, but I'd attempt to illustrate my point by asserting that Truman Capote and Audrey Hepburn can tap into charm in the same way the song can. "Moon River's" melody is sentimental in the best sense—shamelessly evocative, but taciturn and expected at just the right moments. The lyrical oneness with the river is mystical: "Wherever you're going, I'm going your way" is a great line, as is all of "Two drifters off to see the world/There's such a lot of world to see/We're after the same rainbow's end/Waiting round the bend/My huckleberry friend/Moon river and me." "Rainbow's end" is almost sappy, but "huckleberry friend" is so weird (is that a description of color?) that it provides mooring as a kind of imagined colloquialism. The drum beat with two snare hits on two-and is so utterly wrong-headed that it almost adds an avant-garde confrontationalism to the proceedings. But having nothing to do with the ubiquitous, swinging facility of something like rock and roll is what charm is all about.