Welk and Roll

One year before Elvis invented rock and roll at Sun Studios, Lawrence Welk was recording it. His 1953 version of Don Howard's Oh Happy Day can't be considered anything but r&r--the doo-wop-style bass line, the emphatic triplet feel, and the dirt-simple production, while not characteristic of Welk, were sure characteristic of the Crows, the Platters, and other R&B acts breaking into the pop charts. I had to listen to this one several times before I could even believe it. I'm still not sure I do.

http://box.net/public/lee/files/395979.html Oh Happy Day, Lawrence Welk and His Orch., w. Larry Hopper, 1953.

Confused, I consulted two experts--my mother and father--who had seen Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly in person, and who could easily see through the thickest bubble screen. Did Welk's record sound like rock and roll, I asked? "Very much," they replied. And they weren't at all surprised, as they remembered such music popping up on Welk's TV show during the 1950s.

In fact, Welk's TV family at that time included rockabilly great Buddy Merrill--here are three sides featuring this famous singer/guitarist. The Lawrence Welk audience couldn't have been that unhip if it bopped to these sounds:

http://box.net/public/lee/files/337557.html, Buddy's Boogie, Buddy Merrill, w. Lawrence Welk (1956).

http://box.net/public/lee/files/338102.html, It May Be Silly (But Ain't It Fun) (Little Jimmy Dickens), Buddy Merrill, w. Lawrence Welk (1956).

http://box.net/public/lee/files/312349.html, Rock'n'Roll Ruby (Johnny Cash), Buddy Merrill, w. Lawrence Welk (1956).

And Welk's version of See You Later, Alligator is no croc, either--dig the swinging riffs and the Western-Swing fiddle solo! For that matter, dig the whole crazy track, including the jaunty closing theme, so perfectly-parodied by Stan Freberg (who was no Welk fan, needless to say). MYPWHAE, you can be sure, has nothing but respect for the Lawrence Welk Orchestra.

http://box.net/public/lee/files/357231.html, See You Later Alligator, Lawrence Welk and His Orchestra, 1956.

If music history were any less weird, it wouldn't be nearly as fun....


Lee

The Roots of Country, Part 3--Angel Band

Better-known as Angel Band, Rev. Jefferson Hascall's 1860 hymn The Land of Beulah was featured in O Brother, Where Art Thou? where it suffered the fate of many an "old-time" song: it was credited to "Traditional." A Prairie Home Companion, not to be outdone, repeated the error in April at their website. Since both serve as major sources for info on America's musical past (to be sure, NPR spent much publicly-funded time advertising O Brother), MYPWHAE feels forced to fix the facts. Fact-fixing is a blogging tradition, after all. (There's that word, again.)

The music photo comes from the imaginatively titled The Gospel Hymnal: or Hymns and Tunes for Christian Worship, published in Dayton, Ohio in 1880. It has a neat cover:

The tune, written by William Batchelder Bradbury in 1862, sounds quite modern, possibly because its 6/8 meter has, over the years, become a lilting 3/4. And because it's so dirt-simple, harmonically (the primary triads: I, IV, and V). William wrote the music for many other mega- famous gospel songs, including Jesus Loves Me, The Solid Rock, Just as I Am, and He Leadeth Me. And there's some great info on Jefferson Hascall at the excellent Cyber Hymnal site: http://www.cyberhymnal.org/bio/h/a/s/hascall_j.htm

And now for the files. First up, Smith's Sacred Singers, from 1928, with a version true to the two-beat nature of the tune's 6/8 meter. Very, very down-home, but that's not a problem at MYPWHAE (we're not trying to sell CDs):

http://box.net/public/lee/files/379730.html My Latest Sun Is Sinking Fast, Smith's Sacred Singers, 1928 (from Columbia 78).

And, from 1966 or so, here is the fabulous Blue Ridge Quartet with a bouncy, modern, and not-very-hi-fi rendition of Bradbury's great tune:

http://box.net/public/lee/files/378644.html Angel Band, The Blue Ridge Quartet, mid-60s-ish.

Hm. Seeing as how Cheryl Ladd was a member of Josie and the Pussycats, did that make the cartoon combo an Angel band? (Rim shot) This entry is sinking fast; better get out of here....

Please save, rather than open, files for best results. Thanks!

Lee

The Roots of Country, Part 2--Keep on the Sunny Side

They're perhaps the most famous opening lines in country music history: "There's a dark and a troubled side of life; There's a bright and a sunny side, too. Tho' we meet with the darkness and strife, The sunny side we also may view." Keep on the Sunny Side was the theme song of "Country Music's First Family," aka the Carter Family. And Ada Blenkhorn is deservedly famous for her 1899 lyrics, which are so beloved by so many. I reckon there are probably any number of Ada Blenkhorn sites out there.


Ahhh... yeah. In reality, of course, Ada's lyrics were long ago credited to A.P. Carter, who swiped all three stanzas and who receives credit for Sunny Side in the liner notes for O Brother, Where Art Thou? and at the A Prairie Home Companion website, and just about everywhere else. Which is worse, I wonder? Writing world-famous words and having your name forgotten, or writing world-famous words and having them stolen from you? Tough call.

Anyway, the 1903 Biglow & Main songbook Devotional Songs got the details right, crediting the words to Ada and the music to J. Howard Entwisle. At the bottom of the page are details lost to the ages, including the year of copyright and the words "Used by permission." At this point in the song's history, they seem like artifacts from some forgotten dimension.










"Sunny side" songs were a common item in the 1890s, as suggested by the existence of an earlier Keep on the Sunny Side (1896) by George C. Stebbins: "Keep on the sunny side, Keep on the sunny side. With Jesus near, Why should we fear? Let us keep on the sunny side." And by the appearance in 1899 of The Sunny Side of the Road, whose chorus begins (you'll never guess), "Keep on the sunny side...." None of the tunes in question sound remotely alike, but you get the point.

















And, as we've already seen, sun-themed songs remained popular into the late 1920s. So, how did A.P. Carter, in 1928, get away with swiping the words and melody of a popular sun song?

I suspect it's because, by the 1920s, Sunday-school songs like Keep on the Sunny Side of Life were becoming less and less a part of middle-class life--less of an accepted one, anyway. Average folks didn't stop singing these songs, by any means, but, more and more, gospel tunes and revival meetings came to be associated with "the people" (i.e. the underclass), with the South, with the "folk." Thus, we have today's mass-media myth that revival songs were unknown to the middle class, that class being too busy with bourgeois things like tea parties and chamber music concerts to have time for Send the Light. Who would have guessed that some of our most down-home songs were, in fact, the Ozzie and Harriet culture of their time?

Anyway, here's the superb Johnson Family Singers with a comparatively upbeat rendition of Sunny Side (compared, that is, to the almost funeral-dirge treatment the Carters gave it).

http://box.net/public/lee/files/370433.html Keep on the Sunny Side, The Johnson Family Singers

Please save, rather than open, files for best results. Thanks!

A.P. Carter