Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Roses Are Red (My Love)

July–August 1962

 As I did with Connie Francis, I am going to further expose my naiveté with this post. When I saw the name Bobby Vinton come up on the list, I thought, well, this sounds like another one of those one-hit wonders, like Joey Dee or something. Turns out I was wrong; this guy was very successful throughout the 60s, and this song is the first of four times he was able to top the charts. Shows what I know. This was not only his first #1, but his first hit—he was unknown before this song came out.



This reminds me a bit of a previous song I've covered, "Little Star;" both rely on a trite, familiar rhyme for the chorus, and the song depends on the irony of hearing those lyrics in a pop song context. However, "Roses Are Red" is clearly the better song of the two.

It was not uncommon in these days to tell a narrative story of two star-crossed lovers in a pop song like this. Remember the one where the girl got hit by a train at the end? This one's less violent, but it's the same idea. In this one, the high school sweethearts grow apart, and eventually live their separate lives, but they still retain some sort of wistful sentiment towards each other.

Ho-hum. I can't say I'm looking forward to the rest of this guy's #1s (although one of them is a much more well-known song). I think it's a little funny the way he says "gawd" like a televangelist.

C

Thursday, July 12, 2012

The Stripper

July 1962

Stripper is just about the last word I would have expected in a #1 song title from the conservative early 60s, but here it is (and yes, it means what you think it means). It's one of those sleazy sounding, big band striptease numbers—perhaps the definitive one, written and performed by bandleader David Rose.



Call me crazy, but I can't hear this without thinking of the finale music to the 1990 video game Super Mario World:



The similarity is most striking near the end, starting at about 3:27. I would not be surprised at all if the game's composer, Koji Kondo, used "The Stripper" as a reference for this passage. Behind the cheap-sounding MIDI instruments and repetitive structures that define the medium of video game music, Kondo is one of the very best, for what it's worth: classic themes like this one have inspired a generation.

Anyway, I'm not sure what to make of the David Rose track in question. It's well done for what it is, but it's certainly a curve ball. Maybe I'm feeling generous today.

B

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

I Can't Stop Loving You

June 1962

It's no secret that the great American musical traditions are mostly divided along racial lines. Blues, jazz, and (later on) R&B and rock and roll were products of American blacks, descendants of West African slaves—on the other hand, folk and country music were the domain of whites, descendants of European colonialists. Both groups had their own stories to tell, and both created hugely rich musical traditions, to express themselves. But crossover was always relatively rare, and still is—it's at least rare enough that when it happens, it's notable.

Quick, name a black country singer! Time's up. It's okay, I couldn't think of one either. A cursory web search turned up one Charley Pride, who, for about 15 years starting in 1969, produced a staggering string of country hits (but never broke the mainstream top 10—country music, for all its popularity, has never been the dominant popular form, with the exception of a few crossover hits here and there).

And I can't help but think that someone like Charley Pride owes a huge debt to someone we've covered a couple times before during this project: Ray Charles. The great R&B musician, known for popularizing the sounds of gospel and soul that he grew up with, suddenly blindsided the American public in 1962 with a record called Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. Calling it a "country album" is probably a misnomer—it's filled with blues scales, syncopated rhythms, and jazzy horn sections, not to mention a slick, pop production—but it's country enough to be a noticeably different venture for Charles. But the man himself didn't necessarily consider it such a drastic change. In his own words, "You take country music, you take black music, you got the same goddamn thing exactly."

The record's lead single is the #1 hit in question here, a cover of a 5-year-old country song called "I Can't Stop Loving You."



The song, which tells a familiar story of its subject unable to move past a lost love, was originally written and recorded by Don Gibson, and has been covered by many artists over the years, but most would consider Ray Charles's version the definitive one.

As is often the case with #1 hits, the track is not even all that representative of the album as a whole, or of where Charles was musically at this point in time. But it was the most palatable to the hoi polloi, and so here we are. I'm more partial to the more upbeat numbers, where Charles seems most at home, such as this leadoff track to the album. At any rate, this post was a refreshing departure from the rather long stretch of middling songs I've had to cover lately. It also is the last of the three songs by Ray Charles I'll be covering—his popularity waned as tastes changed gradually throughout the 60s, but he left us with some great stuff.

A-

Monday, July 2, 2012

Stranger on the Shore

May 1962

Including this one, we've now seen six instrumental tracks on this list so far—can't really call them songs, since nothing's being sung. While it's cool that instrumental music had chart-topping power in those days (it doesn't anymore), only the two from the 50s were any good at all. Acker Bilk's "Stranger on the Shore" marks the fourth instrumental in a row that falls into that sickeningly safe genre that we call "easy listening."



Considering all that, this one really isn't so bad. Behind the sappy string arrangement there does lie a rather nice little tune. Bilk, a British clarinetist, has a pretty unusual approach to the instrument, playing deep tones with a huge vibrato. The song is a little light on substance, though.

To me, this kind of thing sounds like the inevitable conclusion of the "cool" jazz movement, pioneered by, among others, Miles Davis (who quickly abandoned it). Jazz, an incredibly popular genre back in the swing days, had become cerebral and difficult in the 40s, as musicians like Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk eschewed danceability in favor of virtuosic streams of consciousness. In that decade, the music gained an intense following and respect among musicians and serious music listeners, but the masses weren't interested in such complex expression. Cool jazz tried to change that by slowing down the tempos and emphasizing catchy melodies, and while it wasn't necessarily a bad thing at first, it ultimately led to the sort of thing Bilk is doing here. The new, trendy components of cool jazz are here, but the jazz part isn't. It has been lost in the pursuit of accessibility.

If you were to try find the one thing that "killed" jazz, you'd be wrong to point the finger at something like this. The music continued to be vital, and some of its best and most adventurous material was produced in the decade still to come. Think of "Stranger on the Shore" and its ilk as a misguided offshoot. I can't call it good music, but it's not outright offensive like Bert Kaempfert's or Lawrence Welk's contributions. Meh.

C