Despite the significant differences between the singing styles of Elvis Presley and Don Cornell, Don's But Love Me (Love But Me) has a lot in common with Elvis' Love Me. And Don's record came first. But I just read at Wikipedia that the Elvis song, penned by Leiber and Stoller, goes back to 1954, so....
I hate it when a bit of data comes in and ruins everything!
Louis Prima, who I'll never forgive for the abominable Sing, Sing, Sing, almost redeemed himself with another one-word-tripled tune (didn't know that was a category, did you?) called Yeah Yeah Yeah, a thinly-disguised twelve-bar blues, done here (in 1951) in a completely rock and roll style by Peggy Lee. Amazing single--on the Capitol label. Stomp and Whistle is another tune in the twelve-bar blues form, and Harry James and Buddy Rich use a very simple approach that borders on (you'll never guess) rock and roll, and the year is 1954 this time, and the label Columbia. Jackie Lee's 1961 Isle of Capri Boogie, meanwhile, is Isle of Capri done boogie style. You'd never have guessed from the title. I love the sound of that organ!
Great barbershop harmonies by the Four Preps in the clever 1960 Got a Girl, and a 1962 reminder from the Original Rockets, about whom I know nothing, that young white guys making like African-American bluesmen is not something that started with the Stones, Animals, Beatles, etc. There were countless pre-Invasion garage bands, of course, including the Kingsmen, and these guys. Garbage Can informs us that "Life--it ain't nothin' but a gold-plated garbage can, and people are trash," and what's with the "gold-plated"? Are the lyrics telling us that, behind the fancy facade, the....? Oh, never mind. Fun side--no need to analyze. I think the songwriters just sort of tossed the lyrics out. Tossed the lyrics out. Get it?
Rumble Boogie strikes me as a Rock Around the Clock steal, and quite a good one, with Don Cherry really getting into it, and Ray Conniff doing his usual great producing job. Some folks, like me, seem to realize that Conniff' was really a pioneer rock and roll producer (while working for Mitch Miller, no less), while others seem to feel he was just on the edge. A "proto" type, perhaps. We'd be using the false definition of "proto" that many journalists employ, wherein "proto" means "almost" or "on the edge." Actually, it means the first of its type. As in, prototype.
Lee Andrews and the Hearts could be superb, despite Andrews' tendency to sing sharp. I'll make enemies, but I consider the group's Long Lonely Nights to be a vocal disaster, but here they're like the all-time masters of street-corner harmonizing, with a strong a cappella sound, despite the piano throughout. I realize that accompanied a cappella is technically impossible, but why be too formal about it? For a contrast in singing style to end all contrasts, Lee is followed by Perry Como, my favorite pop singer, whose voice I consider a great natural voice. By that, I mean Perry likely sounded great from the moment he decided to croon. I'd have hated to hear his voice after years of formal training--something would have been lost. There are technically better voices, of course--Steve Lawrence, Johnny Desmond, Vic Damone--but there's a beauty to Como's singing I find nowhere else in the pop field of the time. Call me nuts. ("You're nuts.") Gee, thanks.
Don Howard could hold a tune, and he does so for two sides--Oh Happy Day and You Went Away--and the sound on the former is way better here than on the Essex reissue I featured a couple posts back, and it gives a far more pleasant edge to Don's monotonous crooning. (With this material, there wasn't a lot of room for stylistic noodling.) The disc, a 78, is also in the proper key (Eb Major). John Scott Trotter's 1941 version of Kitten on the Keys is a nice, lightly swinging version of the Confrey classic, and it includes a cornet solo by Paul Whiteman's Bix Beiderbecke replacement, Andy Secrest. The flip side is a Rube Bloom number in the symphonic jazz vein. Then two by Alan Dale--a wonderful I'm Late from the Disney Alice in Wonderland, and a lovely ballad, I'll Buy You a Star, not from Disney.
Two 1947 "Wild" Bill Moore sides, with the Swingin' for Pappy verging on rock and roll, and the Savoy 78 it came from no longer in one piece after I stepped on it. True--I tripped over a stack of 45s, knocking some LPs and 78s forward, my foot coming down on poor Bill. I so rarely break a record accidentally, it's a shock when I do. I don't think I've unintentionally broken more than six or seven shellac sides in my decades of collecting, and that includes one that was likely ready to snap, anyway. This is history in the making.
I put up the Lenny Carson 78 a while back, and I'd found out some interesting things, but I no longer have access to the post. Something about the sped-up voice on Molasses--it definitely sounds like tape manipulation, and I'm fascinated by any and all pre-Ross Bagdasarian sped-up voices on disc, which include 1954's Open Up Your Heart (And Let the Sunshine In), which was recorded at 33 and 1/3 for 45 rpm playback. The flip is a steal of Happy Birthday, which originated as a verse in Good Morning To All of 1893. I have it in its original form someplace, and without attribution.
More R&B--early rock and roll, really--including Wally Mercer's nothing-to-do-with-Rock-Around-the-Clock Rock Around the Clock. From an original 78, and no relation to the famous song whose history may be the weirdest in the history of song histories. You see, Bill Haley wanted his very own Rock the Joint, so he modified a swing-style number called Rock Around the Clock to sound like it (radically altering the intro/verse), but Essex wouldn't let him record it (forgot why), but he got to do it at the end of a 1954 Decca session, his vocals spliced in with the instrumental portions after the fact because the band had drowned him out. Record went nowhere, but after the song was used in Blackboard Jungle, it became a smash hit in 1955, and just about everyone in the world except me and a few people I know have done a version of it. And that's how rock was born.
I bought Shut Up (And Make Love to Me) because I saw the title on a 78 list and just had to have a record called Shut Up in my collection. My other favorite titles along this line include Go To Hell and Huh? Turns out to be a very good song, and Doris Drew is fabulous. The lyrics are sexist, but it's 1950. "Bloom" is in the composer credits, so maybe it's Rube? But a quick Google search didn't connect Rube Bloom to "Shut Up (And Make Love to Me)," but maybe the song went nowhere, and I'm trying to work in a "shut up" joke, but it's not happening. So I'll just shut up.
CLICK HERE TO HEAR: Various Singles, Part 3
But Love Me (Love But Me)--Don Cornell, 1956
Yeah Yeah Yeah (Prima-Kaback)--Peggy Lee w. Orchestra, 1951
Stomp and Whistle--Harry James and his Orch., v: Buddy Rich, 1954
Isle of Capri Boogie--Jackie Lee, 1961
T.D.'s Boogie Woogie--Tommy Dorsey and his Orch., 1950
Got a Girl--The Four Preps, 1960
Garbage Can--The Original Rockets, 1962
Rumble Boogie--Don Cherry w. Ray Conniff and his Orch., 1955
Try the Impossible--Lee Andrews and the Hearts, 1958
With All My Heart and Soul--Perry Como w. Mitchell Ayres Orch., 1951
Oh Happy Day--Don Howard, 1952
You Went Away--Same
Kitten on the Keys (Confrey)--John Scott Trotter and his Orch., Cornet Solo: Andy Secrest, 1941
Sapphire (Rube Bloom)--John Scott Trotter and his Orch., 1941
I'm Late (From "Alice in Wonderland")--Alan Dale w. Percy Faith Orch., 1951
I'll Buy You a Star--Same
Swingin' for Pappy--Bill Moore and his Band--"Wild" Bill Moore, Tenor Sax, 1947
Bubbles--Same
Molasses, Molasses--Lenny Carson and the Whiz Kids, 1950
Ev'rybody Clap Hands--Same
Joogie-Boogie Joint (On a Saturday Night)--Ric Harper and Orchestra, 1951?
I'm a Sixty-Minute Rocket Man--Same
Story Blues--The Four Buddies, 1952
Rock Around the Clock (Mercer)--Wally Mercer, 1952
Shut Up (And Make Love to Me)--Doris Drew, Lew Douglas Orch., 1950
Lee
15 comments:
My goodness, what a list!!!
Quite a meaty selection today!
There must be something wrong with me, but I've never really like Louis Prima that much. I do like Doris Drew (I drew like Doris Do?) and am pleased to have this record!
It would be an interesting exercise to list all the pre-British Invasion garage bands. Besides the Kingsmen, there were the Sonics, the Fendermen, Johnny and the Hurricanes (from Toledo!), the Rock-a-Teens, and I am sure many others. At some point, they meld into rockabilly bands, I suppose.
I slowed down "Open Up Your Heart" some years ago and posted both it and the published version. It would be interesting to know if Stuart Hamblen's work inspired Ross Bagdasarian. Or was there another antecedent?
Ernie,
And I ripped everything a row. Usually, I rip a bunch of stuff, then mix it up, causing all kinds of headaches for myself, trying to remember what I put up yet and what I didn't. This time, I did things in a linear way. Kind of a nice change. Headache relief.
Buster,
I'm guessing we'd find a lot of examples if we did a wide sweep. For an upcoming various-singles set, I have a 1958 Joe Reisman record which uses a sped-up voice (double speed, as with the Chipmunks), but it could have been an imitation of the 1958 "Witch Doctor." Anyway, there had to be people messing with playback speed, even before tape, and maybe Ross is just the guy who struck chart gold with the gimmick.
It seems so obvious that the Brit bands were continuing along the lines of the American guys, but the Rolling Stone and NYT pop page mythologists have to present everything as a revolution, and to hell with history. And garage "roots" go back quite a ways, even as far as the 1947 Bill Moore 78 I posted (then stepped on!), because Moore's rocking instrumentals were the original "surf" music. Surf was R&B, though that label mostly covered the white versions thereof. The Beach Boys continue from that, and their harmonizing has R&B ("doo wop") roots, and they were a rip on Chuck Berry, and they were also hugely influenced by Eddie Cochran, who doesn't get his due(s) on our shore. When I was stationed in Scotland way back, I was surprised to see whole rows devoted to Cochran in the U.K. record stores--he was big there. And, in fact, he did some c. 1960 tracks that sound exactly like Invasion stuff. Point is, as always, everything comes from someplace, but rock journalists have pretty well ruined any chance of anyone ever getting any aspect of r&r history right, because their b.s. accounts are the accepted ones, meaning the burden of proof is on those of us who tell it as it actually happened. That's the danger of lies becoming the official stories.
And glad to learn I'm not the only person not impressed by Prima. Never liked his style, and "Sing, Sing, Sing" is such a piece of garbage, I can't believe the big band guys had the audacity to condemn rock for its monotony and general lack of harmonic invention. Um, hello, guys--"Sing, Sing, Sing"? Kind of the last word on pointless repetition, so anything the "legit" musicians had to say about "Sh-Boom" and "Earth Angel" needs to be taken in context. In their defense, I will say that people, in groups, are often blind to their own hypocrisy. And I do remember a bit Bing Crosby did with (was it Perry Como?) in which inane rock songs were compared to equally inane pop songs of earlier eras.
Oh, and the 1956 "Flying Saucer"--"Goodbye, Earth people!"
combining perry como with the idea of “everything coming from somewhere”, i’ll start by saying that my old man’s favorite singer was perry como. i learned this when “hot diggity dog” was a big hit. being rather young at the time, my conception of history was a bit shallow. i’d learn more about mr como later on. much later, i’d learn that “hot diggity dog” (not an obvious source of musical edification) was in fact based on the orchestral rhapsody “españa” by the late-19th century french romantic composer emmanuel chabrier. my point here is that a surprising number of pop songs come from classical sources. we all know some of them. but i am not aware of any list with any pretensions to completeness that exists with regard to this phenomenon. maybe someone here does.
as for pre-bagdasarian speeders, mel blanc regularly manipulated his voice via tape acceleration for various effects on his records made for capitol beginning in the late 40s. this makes sense as capitol was home to the mixmaster himself, les paul. below is a link to an obvious example from 1952, “bugs bunny and the grow small juice”, capitol cas-3119. when bugs and daffy rub on the juice, not only do their bodies become small as insects, their voices get small, high, and insect-like due to the magic of the ampex 200A.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOISV0bdsYk
come to think of it, another likely source of early sped-up voices might be children’s christmas music in which elves, pixies, fairies, and anthropomorphized ephemera make vocal appearances. if anyone around here knows that kind of music, maybe they could help out.
Hi Lee,
I don't know if the issue is just mine, but when I try to follow the link, Zippyshare claims that the file does not exist, so I have not yet been able to enjoy this selection.
Thanks again for all your hard work to share your musical finds!
Hi, Phil.
Should be back now. I don't know why Zippy does this. Once I've re-upped something, it stays. So far that's been the case. Must be a site glitch.
Thanks for the nice words! And sorry about the Zippy outages.
Good Lord! I'm listening to "Espana" right now, and, yup. I will give the songwriters some praise for not exactly copying it--Classical swipes are usually note for note, like "Groovy Kind of Love" and "Lover's Concerto," though the latter admitted the source. I think, anyway. "Groovy" is Clementi, and I was playing through a book of C. sonatinas, trying to get my piano chops back to something less embarrassing, and out popped "Groovy Kind of Love." Lots of credited borrowings during the big band era--"Moon Love," "Tonight We Love," etc. Any list would have to distinguish between those which made their sources known (usually as a selling point) and those that conveniently failed to (Byron Gay's "The Vamp," circa 1919, comes from Puccini). Romberg stole from Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, and I guess after Vincent Youmans confronted him over plagiarizing the "No, No, Nanette" score--after that, Romberg figured it was safer to steal from dead musicians. I think it was the "New Moon" score that came from Youmans, but the steals are so blatant, I don't know why Romberg wasn't sued. I used to have both in piano scores, and I played them side by side. Hilarious. Andrew Lloyd Whatsisname stole from Mendelssohn--"I Don't Know How to Love Him." While this doesn't relate to stealings from the Classics, there's the issue of certain core songs--Rose Moon, How High the Moon, I Got Rhythm--providing the chordal foundation for umpteen numbers, sometimes unintentionally, since the chord schemes are cliched to start with. I thought I was the only person to realize Gershwin's "A Foggy Day" is straight from Vincent Youman's "I've Had My Moments," but I found a passage on Google Books that halfway acknowledges it. That one is a tough call, because it's a cliche progression, and the melody naturally follows from it. But who knows? Speaking of dads, mine was convinced the Beatles were stealing everything from the Masters, all because of some quip made by Paul or John. The thing with the Beatles is, believe them at your own risk. Some might picture George Martin whistling Classical melodies to them for inspiration, but I have a hard time believing that even a group as talented as the Beatles would be swiping from Bach and Beethoven when they couldn't read or write music and obviously had little interest in "serious" music. People always point out that Classical music is easily enough stolen from discs, but I tend to think swipers of longhair music are likely to have some formal grounding.
I greatly enjoyed this set! Some reactions:
My, that Don Cornell was intense. He sounds like he's about to have an aneurysm.
Speaking of Prima, I really don't like Yeah Yeah Yeah, and the band is particularly bad.
I have all of Buddy Rich's vocal albums (I think), so I feel qualified to observe that he could not sing. He actually was better at this kind of R&B material than ballads, because he could stay in tune more easily.
The Jackie Lee tune is great! Was this before or after Dave Cortez's hit?
I never really cared for Dorsey's rinky-tink variety of boogie-woogie. His band was too stiff.
I love the Four Preps, although they could have backed off on the reverb on the vocal mic.
Speaking of garage bands (as we were), the Original Rockets are a hoot. The singer has been listening to Eddie Vinson, I think. What a great record.
I generally ignore Ray Conniff records, but this is pretty good. I like Don Cherry and used to pick up his 45s when I saw them. Also true of Lee Andrews and the Hearts. Nice tune!
Lovely Perry Como record. He's not my very favorite, but he's always enjoyable.
That sounds like Buddy Cole on the Confrey tune. He uses those figures a lot on Crosby records. The Rube Bloom opus is kind of a bore.
Alan Dale is another singer whose records I used to buy. The version of I'm Late is remarkable.
A little more of the band and less of Wild Bill Moore might have been good.
Ric Harper was kind of a bargain-basement Louis Jordan, eh?
Really enjoyed the Four Buddies song. Also Wally Mercer is great fun.
Doris Drew was a terrific singer. She made a really good album on Mode in the late 50s. Happy to have this one!
Beg to differ with Buster but I thought "Sapphire" was a glorious derivative of Bix's "In a Mist." In any case, more John Scott trotter, please. and thanks for this great melange.
David,
I'm with Buster on the Bloom piece--well-done but blah. But opinions are just that! No right or wrong about this stuff. And... I knew the disc was from a set, based on my amazing sound recording ESP--and the fact that the set number is written on the label. And luck was on my side when I did an eBay search. Here's the eBay pic of the 78 set cover, with listing: goo.gl/eY2AsD It's at my "Text" blog. And here's the discogs listing: https://www.discogs.com/John-Scott-Trotter-And-His-Orchestra-Decca-Presents-John-Scott-Trotter-And-His-Orchestra/release/12386446
It would be great if Decca had reissued the set as a 10" LP, but it doesn't look like it did. The other two tracks I'd love to hear are Maple Leaf Rag and Rachmaninoff's Prelude, but I don't feel like paying $24. Maybe the thrifting god will bless me with a copy of this set someday. Or maybe the Maple Leaf will show up as a single. Otherwise, Trotter of course was Bing Crosby's main man at Decca. Of the Trotter LPs at discogs, the interesting-looking one is Joe Venuti with the orch.! The label is Shoestring (???). That has to be obscure as all get-out. Correction: Three of them on eBay, it turns out. So much for my ESP.
Buster,
Yes, Cornell was intense. I have an entire Coral 33 of his stuff--a hits LP, not one of those LPs where they leave out the hits and put in well-known standards to show off the vocalist's tonsils. (That sounds gross.) Those type of LPs annoy me, because I'm almost always after the hits, not so and so's version of "My Funny Valentine." And especially when it's an up and coming teen singer, and the label wants to demonstrate he or she has more than mere kid appeal. Because everyone in the late 1950s/early 1960s KNEW rock was fading and that jazz and show tunes were coming back. Remember when they did? Me, neither!
I like "Yeah Yeah Yeah," even if it doesn't sound anything like the Beatles (cha-dunk, crash!). It has a strong rock and roll sound. I don't care for Lee's slurring of the words, but, then again, it was probably the best approach when singing the same word over and over. And they made fun of the Fab Four for "She Loves You."
Cortez' big hit was 1959, and this is 1961. Love this so much, I've grabbed up any Jackie Lee sides that show up, meaning Coral label. And they're not remotely up to this side.
I love the Rockets record, too. The flip is disappointing--a drab instrumental version of "The Man in the Raincoat." But the A side more than atones. The singer's attitude is magnificent. There's such a hilarious slacker tone, yet everything is so professionally tight.
I agree that Rich could not sing. Cherry has quite a feel for r&r, and this has to be the best RATC rip-off I've heard.
I'll have to listen for Buddy Cole--my ears were waiting for Secrest's solo to arrive. Fine arrangement. And, yes, the Dale record is extraordinarily well done. Dale's talent plus Percy Faith's arranging skills, which I consider unequaled. Just making it through the "Too Late" score takes some serious vocal chops, yet Dale makes it sound easy. Don't remember where I found this gem.
I love Moore's down and dirty honking! Band was tight as heck, too. It took me a while to warm up to this kind of early rock and roll, because the later stuff sounded more correct, since the later stuff was what I knew. Funny how that works.
I think of Harper as a type of scrape-voiced blues shouter (except it's more like barking). But your description fits, yes. Jordan minus every hint of smoothness!
Totally agree with the rest of your observations. The Como is one of my all-time favorites. One thing that astounds me about Como is that, despite his light singing style, he could sell just about anything. I have a CD of 60s material by him, and it's all marvelous. Nothing that rocks, but the rhythms are of that era--light pop--and the kind of beat that singers from his period usually had no feel for. Of course, there was a good deal of syncopation in big band-era music, to say the least, but the syncopation of the rock era, while it looked the same on paper to a great degree, was very different, and I've never been sure why. Maybe it's because big bad had a driving beat--the relentless 1-2-3-4 of jazz--while rock took a more subtle approach with syncopation--it went beyond the basic African American model of circling a steady 2/4 or 4/4 with syncopated phrases. But that goes against the accepted narrative that rock wiped out everything that preceded it, so we get the lie that rock introduced rhythm to pop music. People who never heard Benny Goodman might have believed that....
Four Buddies are cool. A lot of the really early R&B vocal/doo woop groups were genuinely good singers, imo. Probably Ink Spots wannabes who found that styles were rapidly changing, and had to catch up fast.
Lee,
To clarify, I actually like Don Cornell and have many of his albums. Also Alan Dale, for that matter.
Also unclear was my point about Wild Bill. It's just not a well recorded record, and the tenor blots out the band. A have a lot of honking sax records and enjoy the genre. Although they can be a tad repetitive.
With regard to Ink Spots followers who had to update their sound: I just posted a 5 Red Caps single that David Federman requested. That group was heavily under the sway of Bill Kenny and company, but adopted doo-wop and pop styles in their later guise of Steve Gibson and the Red Caps.
About early rock 'n' roll: I haven't paid too much attention to Bill Haley's pre-history, but I recently heard his 1951 version of Rock This Joint with the Saddlemen, and Rock Around the Clock was a clone of the earlier song down to the guitar break. I am sure that everyone but me knows this, but I was surprised.
Oh, I thought you were complaining about the bouzouki player! (Monty Python reference.) Thanks for clarifying about Wild Bill. And I'll have to check discogs to see what Cornell did, LP-wise--for some reason, I'd assumed he didn't do many. Just checked. I was wrong!
And you are one hundred million percent correct about RATC being a clone of Rock the Joint--I've been preaching that for years! Yes, Danny Cedrone reused his earlier solo--and Wikipedia says he was paid a whopping $21 for the Decca RATC session. Cedrone wasn't a regular member. He died shortly after, long before RATC became a hit. As you know, the record did next to nothing, chart-wise, in 1954, not becoming huge until it was used in "Blackboard Jungle." It was originally the B side, with "Thirteen Women" being the hoped-for hit.
Haley's desire to have his very own "Rock the Joint" (I'm pretty sure, but not certain, that it's "the" on all or most titles) is why he turned RATC into a vastly similar number--as written, RATC is a blah piece of traditional swing with an intro/verse that majorly recalls "The Syncopated Clock." I was pretty surprised when I first saw it in sheet music form. Some of the fake-hit versions use the verse as written, as does Al Caiola on a 1970 Living Guitars LP. At least two of the fake versions do the Cedrone solo, and very well, though most guitarists, including Haley's own Franny Beecher, didn't make the attempt. A rock guitarist friend tells me it's a hell of a difficult solo. Beecher did copy it to a point in live shows but didn't attempt the descending chromatic runs. Anyway....
Prior to Decca, when Haley was at Essex, he'd wanted to do RATC but wasn't allowed. Can't remember if it was the label owner or what--the history is so complicated. There's at least one book devoted to the song. To a single song!
Post a Comment