1950s Chart Meltdown, Week 21: Summer Songs, Beaches and Barbeque

For the background on this blog series, see this post.

Lots has gone on this week. On Monday, the initiative to remove parking meters in St. Cloud, Minnesota, passed the City Council unanimously. Since I was the guy who got the ball rolling, I was busy both before and after that meeting, and I spoke to the City Council that night. That had a lot to do with the lack of a Wednesday post, but it wasn’t my only task.

On my web site I have a page I devote to Famous Dave’s, my favorite barbeque restaurant. The company’s ad agency found my page recently. As a result, I am in the running with a few other “Famous Fans” to see who can come up with the best mini-promotion this summer. I figure that, to assure myself of victory (which would earn me free barbeque for a year), I pretty much need to conquer the barbeque-eating world, and the rest of the world as well. You can help!

It’s not hard: if you have a Facebook account, please join my group: BarbeQuest. You don’t even have to become my friend to do it. If you aren’t on Facebook, you can find the BarbeQuest on MySpace, Twitter and YouTube, though I haven’t gotten any video up there yet. I have put some details about my fascination with Famous Dave’s in a blog called BarbeQuest, which you can find via a link to the right.

What is the BarbeQuest? I have plans to travel to every Famous Dave’s location, which means I’ll be visiting 177 restaurants in 38 states. My count is at 32 right now. You can see the list here.

You can win prizes through my group as well. The ad agency, John Roach Productions of Madison, Wisconsin, also has weekly challenges, which I transmit via my networking pages. Weekly Challenge #1 is to write a haiku about the ’Que for Two Platter, one of three summer menu items. But the promotional push is available to you at Facebook or Blogger, so now, let’s get to the charts!

All winter, any contact with summery songs seemed like torture to me. Now that winter seems to have ended here, it’s appropriate that one of the premiere surf/car acts of the 1960s would make its inaugural chart appearance this week—in 1958.

May 21, 1955: In its fourth week atop the Best Sellers, “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White” by Pérez Prado and His Orchestra has finally overtaken the competition to top the Jockey chart, but Georgia Gibbs still reigns on the Juke Box chart with “Dance with Me Henry (Wallflower).”

After starting its chart run on the Jockey chart, Eddie Fisher’s “Heart,” an eventual Top Ten hit, tiptoes onto the Best Sellers this week. Eddie is joined by the Sunnysiders, whose one Top 40 hit, “Hey, Mr. Banjo,” enters as the biggest Best Seller debut of the week. Despite their status as a One-Hit Wonder, the Sunnysiders include two former members of Spike Jones & His City Slickers, and another, Margie Rayburn, will have a solo hit in 1957.

In the Big Mover department, we have Bill Haley’s new hit climbing from #22 to #14 on the Best Sellers. There is neither Jockey nor Juke Box action yet, but this record could be as big as "Shake, Rattle and Roll," which reached #7 and spent half a year on the charts.

May 26, 1956: “Heartbreak Hotel” is still on top of everything. I get the impression that, had anyone had the foresight to rename a hotel as the single was released, it would have had a pretty good occupancy wake for a chunk of 1956.

Whereas there were no Best Seller debuts last week, this week there are three: “Picnic” by the McGuire Sisters, “Ivory Tower” by Gale Storm, and “Walk Hand in Hand” by Tony Martin. As insignificant as these titles may sound from an historic perspective, two of them are future Top Tens, and “Picnic” will reach #13.

May 27, 1957: Once again, “All Shook Up” is the consensus #1 song.

Some very recognizable debuts arrive on the Best Sellers: “Bye Bye Love” by the Everly Brothers and “It’s Not for Me to Say” by Johnny Mathis, for example. A dual Top Ten arrives, as Fats Domino’s Valley of Tears” checks in. Its flip, “It’s You I Love,” will get legs in a couple of weeks and start to compete with the A-side. A One-Hit Wonder, Johnnie & Joe, will reach the Top Ten with “Over the Mountain, Across the Sea,” which also joins the ranks this week.

May 26, 1958: Once again, the Everly Brothers have the consensus #1 song, “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” They should appreciate the moment, as they will soon be eaten alive by a huge novelty phenomenon.

Debuting on both the Best Sellers Top 40 and the Top 100 Top 40 is a couple of minutes of creepiness by Jody Reynolds, “Endless Sleep.” It’s not quite the “teen death song” that we will see surge around 1960, but it’s depressing enough as a precursor to the craze. It will be Jody’s sole Top 40 hit.

Another Best Seller/Top 100 debut marks the start of a huge career: “I Wonder Why” by Dion and the Belmonts. In the same vein, Jan & Arnie garner their first Top 40 hit, Jennie Lee. The song includes the voices of Jan Berry, Arnie Ginsburg, and Dean Torrence, but Dean was in the Army when Jan signed with a label. When Dean got out, Arnie joined the Navy, and Jan & Dean went on to become surf-rock pioneers.

Over at the Top 100, one huge debut is Bobby Freeman’s debut pop hit, “Do You Want to Dance,” which jumps into the Top 40 at #19. It’s also new to the Best Sellers Top 40, moving from #48 to #21 there.

May 25, 1959: Wilbert Harrison remains at #1, though he will give way to a history lesson next week. Among the debuts is a song with an iconic title, “Tallahassee Lassie,” Freddy Cannon’s first hit single. Fats Domino gets off to a good start with “I’m Ready,” which enters as the highest-charting debut at #29.

For your listening pleasure, I’m thinking you might not have heard the Jan & Dean prototype single before. Enjoy its faint resemblance to what is to come a few years later.

For Wednesday, I’ll bring you the twice-postponed discussion of a piano player many of us know by name—only. See you then!

Jan & Arnie, Jennie Lee

1950s Chart Meltdown, Week 19: Chuck Willis’s Weeks

For the background on this blog series, see this post.

Long-running #1 hits and seasonal songs mark this week’s charts..

May 7, 1955: While “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White” by Dámaso Pérez Prado and His Orchestra spends its second week at #1 on the Best Sellers chart, this monster is #4 on the Jockey and Juke Box charts. In fact, it dropped from #2 to #4 on the Jockey chart, an aberration that will correct itself soon. Radios and juke boxes are still cranking “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” by Bill Hayes more than any other single.

Two pop mainstays debut songs this week: Nat “King” Cole hits the Best Sellers with “A Blossom Fell,” and Frank Sinatra climbs aboard the Jockey chart with “Learnin’ the Blues.” Walter Schumann’s version of “Davy Crockett,” which has earned airplay since early April without showing much in the way of sales, is now a Best Seller, debuting at #29. It will drop to #30 next week, then disappear.

Lest I be less than complete with the 1955 debuts, I’ll note the arrival on the Best Sellers of “Boom Boom Boomerang” by the DeCastro Sisters, Peggy, Babette, and Cherie, who hail from Cuba. This gem won’t chart on the radio, but the populace will bypass the jockeys and take it onto the Juke Box chart shortly.

May 12, 1956: Elvis has elbowed his way past Perry Como’s “Hot Diggity” on the Jockey chart, and “Heartbreak Hotel” is now a consensus #1 hit. It will stay that way for three weeks, and then the Jockeys will opt for a slow instrumental as its successor. Everyone but the DJs will continue to keep Elvis atop the charts for a while after that.

The debuts this week are somewhat lackluster, with “The Church Bells May Ring” by the Diamonds and “Can You Find It in Your Heart” by Tony Bennett moving well on the Top 100. Neither song will reach the Top Ten anywhere. A song that will reach the Top Ten for two artists now has both versions on the Best Sellers chart: “Long Tall Sally” by Little Richard and Pat Boone. For once, the unsanitized R&B version is making a greater dent on the Jockey chart, at least for now.

May 13, 1957: It’s “here we go again” time at #1, as Elvis tops all four charts with “All Shook Up.” It’s the third of 6 weeks as a consensus #1.

A debut that will not reach the Top Ten attains the bottom rung of the Best Sellers this week. It’s “C.C. Rider” by Chuck Willis. This event is interesting in a number of ways. First, while the single’s sales have elevated it into the Best Sellers, weak airplay has dropped it from #59 to #71 this week on the Top 100. It will rebound to #46 next week, but the huge drop must have given the Atlantic people a case of the sweats. Next, Willis is just eleven months away from dying at age 30 of peritonitis from a perforated ulcer. Two of his four pop hits will be posthumous. Also, “C.C. Rider” is an update of Ma Rainey’s 1925 hit, “See See Rider Blues.” Her hit features Louis Armstrong on cornet and Fletcher Henderson on piano. Willis took the song to #1 on the R&B chart, exceeding Ma Rainey’s #14 chart performance. LaVern Baker and the Animals will take the song into the pop Top 40 as well. Finally, “C.C. Rider” is the record that teens use to develop a new dance called the Stroll. And we all know what that led to.

May 12, 1958: This is a great week to be a #1 pop single. If you are one, you are either the lovely “All I Have to Do Is Dream” (Everly Brothers, Best Sellers), the romantic “Twilight Time” (Platters, Jockeys), or the bouncy, fun “Witch Doctor” (David Seville, Top 100). Not bad.

The Best Seller debuts this week reflect the free-wheeling playlists that made Top 40 radio so much fun for so long. One debut is “Torero” by Renato Carosone, a One-Hit Wonder from Napoli, singing one of the few Top 40 hits sung in Italian.

Right above Carosone is the debut of the posthumous, final Top 40 single from the aforementioned Chuck Willis. The single’s trajectory is an odd one. The song eventually considered the flip, “Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes,” charted first, entering the Top 100 on April 28, 1958, 18 days after Chuck died. Two weeks later, May 12, the other side, “What Am I Living For?,” entered the Best Sellers as the A-side, with “Hang Up” listed as the flip. Both songs are in the Top 100 now; “Hang Up” will stall at #24, but “What Am I Living For?” will reach #9. In August, Chuck’s final Top 100 single, “My Life,” will reach #46 on the Best Sellers.

Another debut in which I have personal interest is Pat Boone’s “Sugar Moon.” I owned this single as a child, but I chose not to feature it last year in my series of posts about my collection of 45s. It’s headed for #5, and it simply was one of the least quirky 45s in my collection, so it didn’t make the cut. If you really want my take on this record, ask for it, and I’ll give it to you.

A big jumper, debuting on the sales charts now after peeking into the Jockey chart last week, is “Big Man” by the Four Preps, an eventual #3 hit. This follows a #2 smash, “26 Miles (Santa Catalina),” and ensures that 1958 will be quite a year for the Four Preps.

The Top 100 sees a new kind of song reach its Top 40 this week. The first power chord, courtesy of the unlikely Cadence label (think Chordettes, Everly Brothers and Andy Williams), reaches our ears via Link Wray & His Ray Men, who bring us “Rumble.”

May 11, 1959: You can’t get any cheerier than this week’s #1 tune, “The Happy Organ” by Dave “Baby” Cortez. The #2 song, which will be leapfrogged by the next #1 hit, is about being sorry.

Debuts include a song that extols the virtues of (presumably) a woman and, 30 years later, will extol the virtues of a cooking oil. Lloyd Price’s “Personality” is destined to become a commercial for Wesson oil. It’s the only Top 40 debut this week.

For your listening pleasure, a celebration of the work of Chuck Willis, accompanied by the original “See See Rider Blues.” Note the spacious, clean recording of “C.C. Rider.” I’m not sure we’ve ever improved on the sound quality of the best analog recordings.

For Wednesday, I’ll discuss a piano player many of us know by name—only. See you then!

Chuck Willis, What Am I Living For?

Chuck Willis, C.C. Rider

Ma Rainey, See See Rider Blues

1950s Chart Meltdown, Week 17: A Multitude of Instrumentals

For the background on this blog series, see this post.

As spring really arrives in Minnesota, it’s time to listen to bird calls and reflect on a bunch of cover records.

April 23, 1955: Bill Hayes still rules the #1 spot on all three charts, but the all-important Best Sellers chart is poised to welcome a new #1 next week. That song will be the biggest #1 of the 1950s, and no one will log more weeks atop the charts until 1992.

This Best Sellers chart shows that, despite its definition as part of the Rock Era, it is really part of the estuary between “old” music and Rock and Roll. Debuting on the Best Sellers is a song by a big band, Art Mooney and His Orchestra, “Honey Babe.” Also appearing for the first time are Roy Hamilton’s take on “Unchained Melody” and a Broadway tune, Sarah Vaughan’s “Whatever Lola Wants” from Damn Yankees. Dinah Shore, one of the classic 1940s singers, will eventually chart a cover of this tune as further proof that we are not out of the woods when it comes to music for the previous generation.

April 28, 1956: We are truly in the Elvis Era now. His first hit single, “Heartbreak Hotel,” reigns on the Best Sellers for the second week, though he still is looking up at Les Baxter’s “Poor People of Paris” on the other three charts. Perry Como is also outperforming him on the Jockey and Juke Box charts at #2 with “Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom),” an eventual #1 Jockey hit. Apart from the eventual 8 weeks that “Heartbreak Hotel” will top the pop charts, it’s worth noting that this single will be a #1 Country hit for 17 weeks. Four of his Sun sides charted on the Country list before his first Top 40 pop hit.

Just a pair of debuts have reached the Best Sellers this week. The Four Lads’ intended follow-up to “No, Not Much!” is “My Little Angel,” which debuts at #22. However, next week, the single will sort itself out, and the flip, “Standing on the Corner,” will start to dominate. “My Little Angel” is peaking this week, but the flip will shoot to #3 this summer.

This is a huge time for instrumentals. Apart from “Poor People of Paris,” represented by Les Baxter, Lawrence Welk and Russ Morgan, we see “Moonglow and Theme from Picnic” in Morris Stoloff and George Cates versions. (An eventual vocal version of “Picnic” by the McGuire Sisters will feature lyrics by Steve Allen, who played piano on the George Cates instrumental version of “Autumn Leaves.”) Another current instrumental is “Main Title (Man with the Golden Arm)” as recorded by both Elmer Bernstein and Richard Maltby. This song is also covered by Dick Jacobs (“Main Title and Molly-O”). The McGuire Sisters’ flip to “Picnic” is “Delilah Jones,” taken from the melody of the Bernstein hit. Don’t forget Nelson Riddle’s “Port au Prince” and “Lisbon Antigua,” the latter covered by Mitch Miller, and the slow-dropping “Theme from the Three Penny Opera (Moritat)” by Dick Hyman. This musical conjunction leaves me without words.

Thank goodness we have some real rock and roll joining the fray: “Blue Suede Shoes” in an Elvis (Presley) cover, and “Long Tall Sally” by, well, Pat Boone.

April 27, 1957: The #1 spot on all four charts is “All Shook Up,” which takes care of the previous weeks’ turmoil.

Coming back to haunt us is a “Banana Boat” cover, this time with intentional comic relief by Stan Freberg. Bonnie Guitar, who will eventually own a successful indie label, debuts on Dot with “Dark Moon.” A welcome throwback is the Top 100 surge of Rosemary Clooney’s “Mangos,” her final Top 40 hit. Not much else is going on this week.

April 28, 1958: The gospel musings of “He’s Got the Whole World (In His Hands)” by Laurie London still top the Jockey chart, but in addition to having been preceded by “Tequila,” this song is now rivaled by the pagan posturing of David Seville’s “Witch Doctor,” which leaps to #1 on the Best Sellers and the Top 100.

Best Sellers debuts were looking pretty pale until I read all the way up to #9, where “All I Have to Do Is Dream” by the Everly Brothers starts its successful quest for the top spot. The best evidence of the song’s initial impact is on the Top 100, where the record leapt from #69 to #7.

April 27, 1959: The #1 song this week, “Come Softly to Me” by the Fleetwoods, is indeed soft, an anomaly in a week where the Top Ten is full of peppy tunes. Some of the tunes are corny (“Venus” by Frankie Avalon, “Pink Shoe Laces” by Dodie Stevens), but you can’t deny their energy.

This week marks the beginning of the Exotica wave. “Quiet Village” by Martin Denny shoots into the Top 40 in its third Hot 100 week. Soon, this and other tunes laden with bird calls and African percussion will be gracing not just the airwaves, but the turntables of millions of Hi-Fi sets in bachelor pads around the country. Eager young men will be serving martinis, wet or dry, to their potential conquests, all thanks to Martin Denny. It seems to me that there was an uptick in baby boys named either Martin or Denny in the early 1960s. Now we know why.

Another strong debut is “A Teenager in Love” by Dion and the Belmonts. Jumping from #69 to #34, it’s the first eventual Top Ten for these guys. Despite the huge debut, it’s not the biggest one of the week: that belongs to none other than Edward Byrnes, with some help from Connie Stevens. Yes, friends, rocketing from #72 to #25 is “Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb),” which instructed a generation of teens and pre-teens in the proper method of acquiring head lice.
For your listening pleasure, let’s have a listen to a couple of the true quirks of 1950s hit-making: the baby-engendering Exotic Sounds of Martin Denny and the louse-spreading kitsch of Edward Byrnes. After all, it’s spring.

For Wednesday, look for a musical book review that honors the Sunshine Pop era. You’ll love it. See you then!

Martin Denny, Quiet Village

Byrnes & Stevens, Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)

1950s Chart Meltdown, Weeks 10-11: Halloween in March?

For the background on this blog series, see this post.

I’m back on track for my discussion of the 1950s charts. There’s nothing pulling me away from St. Cloud for an extended period of time, so I have my references books here to make this post work. Some good things have been happening in the charts, so here we go.

March 5-12, 1955: On all three charts for both weeks, “Sincerely” by the McGuire Sisters has a lock on #1. Fess Parker’s version of “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” comes aboard on March 12, and two versions still wait in the wings.

The Sarah Vaughan version of “How Important Can It Be?” jumped up 9 spots on March 5, and it seemed to be giving the Joni James cut some serious competition. However, a drop of 7 spots for March 12, with an uptick for Joni James, shows that Joni’s eventual Top Ten recording is the stronger of the two sides.

March 10-17, 1956: An epic moment in pop music chart history arrives this week. I don’t believe I can overstate the significance of the March 10 arrival on the Best Sellers chart (#19) and the Top 40 (#28 after its Top 100 debut at #68 the previous week) of “Heartbreak Hotel” by E. Presley. This is the first of 153 chart singles, 114 of which will teach the Top 40, with 18 reaching #1 and 6 more stopping at #2. But although “Heartbreak Hotel” is destined to peak high, on March 17 it climbs only to 15 on the Best Sellers, from 14 to 12 on the Jockey chart, and to 21 on the Top 100. It still doesn’t register on the Juke Box list.

March 10 is also the debut week for an iconic Perry Como tune, “Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom).” Perry was reportedly not fond of doing novelty numbers, but they were his bread and butter in the 1950s. The flip, another uptempo number called “Juke Box Baby,” is strong enough to peak at #10 on the Top 100, though it is relegated to Best Seller Flip status on that chart.

On March 17, a real blast from the past takes a one-week peek at the Top 40 charts when the Benny Goodman Trio with Rosemary Clooney reaches #20 on the Joke Box chart with “Memories of You.” The song stalled at #52 on the Top 100 and did not show up on the airplay or Best Sellers charts. Benny charted 164 times between 1931 and 1953, and when the film that chronicled his life came out in 1956, Benny was still valid enough to get the recording gig that led to this final hit.

March 9-16, 1957: Perry Como comes up with another big debut on March 9, as “Round and Round” opens at #13 on the Best Seller chart. The jockeys had moved on the record the previous week, and now it shoots from 24 to 12. The radio play helps boost the Top 100 performance from 32 to 19.

Elsewhere, March 9 is Fats Domino’s first Best Seller week with “I’m Walkin’,” whose #4 performance will be matched in May by a kid who gets a boost from his family’s TV show, Ozzie and Harriet.

March 16 brings us a Diamonds smash, “Little Darlin’.” Competition arrives for “Party Doll” by Buddy Knox with the Rhythm Orchids . . . in the guise of Steve Lawrence. You can imagine the disparity between those versions. Even so, Steve jumps onto the Juke Box chart at the same time as Buddy’s version, and Steve’s version will peak at #5.

March 10-17, 1958: This is the debut week for “Tequila” . . . by Eddie Platt. It won’t go as far as the Champs version, which jumps from #23 to #12 on March 10. And in a huge leap for a Best Seller in those days, the Champs go all the way to #1 for March 17.

March 10 is the Best Seller debut for “Maybe Baby” by the Crickets, at #27, and the Top 40 entry date for “Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay” by Danny and the Juniors. In her second and third Top 40 weeks ever, a newcomer named Connie Francis jumps from 19 to 7 on the March 10 Top 100 chart. The song has quite a chart history: Five artists charted with it in 1923, and Harry James did so in 1946. Still to come is Marie Osmond in 1975.

The Best Sellers chart for March 17 shows how eclectic the Top 40 was in the 1950s. Debuts include a song in gutter Italian, Lou Monte’s “Lazy Mary (Luna Mezzo Mare),” John Zacherle’s “Dinner with Drac,” and “Lollipop” by the Chordettes. I think I’m going to have to put “Dinner with Drac” on the blog so you can tell me if you find it amusing, considering its novelty status.

March 9-16, 1959: The Hot 100 serves up a bittersweet Top 40 debut on March 9, as a posthumous Buddy Holly single, “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” climbs from #45 to #36. There are some other recognizable debuts: Frankie Ford’s “Sea Cruise,” Dodie Stevens’s “Pink Shoelaces,” and, way up at #19, “Never Be Anyone Else but You” by the kid from the Ozzie and Harriet show. The flip, “It’s Late,” enters the Top 40 on its own merit on March 16, shooting 91-44-21 at the same time that the A side scrambles from #19 to #9 on the 16th. Ricky Nelson was pretty big then, eh?

“La Bamba” by Ritchie Valens, which had dropped out of the Top 40 on February 23, got a boost from the events of February 3rd, moving back to #37 on March 2, and #28 on March 9. That’s all it can do, as it drops back to #41 on March 16. No, wait: it will get one more push back to #30 on March 23, and then it will really go away, ending Ritchie’s presence in the Top 40, but not the Hot 100.

The really huge debut of the week takes a #55 debut into the Top 40 at #16. The song is “Come Softly to Me” by the Fleetwoods, the debut single for the trip from Washington state, and soon their first of two #1 singles. They show the softer side of the chart; Ricky Nelson and Ritchie Valens have had two-sided records, a rock side and a ballad side, get a lot of airplay. Soon, the loud stuff will back off, and the early 1960s will be very mushy, until the kids get tired of that and embrace the Beatles.

For your listening pleasure, I would like your opinion of the concoction of John “the Cool Ghoul” Zacherle, who hosted horror movies in Philadelphia as an ersatz Bela Lugosi, which enabled the local Cameo label to sign him and make him a national star . . . for a few weeks. Again, is his recording funny? Note that the sax is pretty hot; it’s the Applejacks backing his song.

Here he is (with lettering spelling his name “Zacherley”) on vintage TV. This medium seems to suit him better:



And how can I bypass the one Rock Era week that Benny Goodman spent in top Top 40? And with Rosemary Clooney singing, you can’t go wrong. Frankly, his clarinet sounds as sweet as it ever did.

For Wednesday, expect Really Old Music from Benny, as well as a bio. But you should consider stopping by on Tuesday, March 17, considering that I’m Irish and such. See you Tuesday and Wednesday!

John “the Cool Ghoul” Zacherle, Dinner with Drac, Part 1

Benny Goodman Trio with Rosemary Clooney, Memories of You

Lost in the Shuffle

Before I get into my post, I want to tell you how much I appreciate the people at Record Research. I contacted them about a book, and they went far out of their way to help me with said item. They didn’t help me in order to make a few extra dollars, because the labor involved in rescuing me was probably more costly than what they got in return. They do amazing work and are amazingly helpful. Keep that in mind. Now, on to the post.

I made an offhand reference earlier this year to a couple of occasions where I fell victim to cases of mistaken musical identity. Once, I thought a song went by one title, when it really had a different name. That’s what happened to today’s song. In the second case, I got the artist wrong. More on that situation in October.

How could I not know the name of a song I played more than one hundred times? First, the song was an instrumental. Second, I couldn’t read when I got the 45. I can remember picking the record off the turntable, taking it to my dad, and asking him the name of the song. The problem was that I held out the single to him in an ambiguous way—edge-on—and he read me the wrong title. It was twenty years before I figured out the error, because the 45 perished even before the Great Vinyl Meltdown, thanks to some mishandling on my part.

My dad told me the song I liked was “White Silver Sands” by Bill Black’s Combo (Hi 2021). I believed that to be the case, so strongly that, when I saw a TV ad for a compilation of instrumental hits that included this title, I ordered it. This was in the early days of CD reissues, so I had no record-store access to this two-disc compilation.

Until the CDs arrived, I thought there were two songs named “White Silver Sands.” One was the Don Rondo/Owen Bradley/Dave Gardner hit from 1957, and the other was the Bill Black hit from 1960. When the package arrived, I ran to my CD player, punched in the proper track, and heard an instrumental version of the Don Rondo hit. What a revelation. What a letdown.

In the time gap between the arrival of these CDs and the arrival of an easy way to look up information about old 45s (i.e. the internet), I spent a lot of time wishing I knew the name of the flip side of Bill Black’s “White Silver Sands.” Eventually, I stopped thinking about it, but once I started looking for replacement 45s, I learned quickly that the song I sought was “The Wheel.” I soon came across a single CD that contained two Bill Black LPs, and “The Wheel” was on it. When that CD showed up, thanks to CDNow, I confirmed that I had found the song I sought.

Bill Black’s Combo was the first band I researched, in the early 1970s. Three of his 45s had worked their way into my collection, and I grew fond enough of them to become curious about his career. I bumped into several of his LPs at Recordland and Camelot Music in Southlake Mall in Merrillville, Indiana, and that interaction led me to find sources where I could learn about his work.

I finally figured out why I liked the Combo so much. First of all, anyone who drops a sax into an arrangement is going to gain my approval. But just as universally, anyone who puts a shuffle beat to a song will win points with me. And I don’t know why yet, so I’ll try to figure it out now.

Do you know what a shuffle is? It’s a song in 4/4 time that is almost overlaid with a rhythm in 6/8 time. Instead of using triplets, though, a shuffle uses “broken triplets”: beat (pause) beat-beat (pause) beat-beat. A shuffle thus sounds (to me) less precise in its 4/4 nature than a straight 4/4, more prone to syncopation even among such rhythm-free singers as Pat Boone. So, to me, a shuffle always sounds more like music than 1950s white pop. A shuffle has emotion. From the start, I could always feel a shuffle more than any other type of rhythm. I don’t mean recognize it; I mean feel it.

If you take that groove (virtually every Bill Black track used that same groove in what was called his “Untouchable Sound”) and add smoky sax by the likes of “Ace” Cannon, you get the definitive caithiseach-pleaser. Bill’s bass and Reggie Young’s rhythm guitar thump in time with each drum note. While the organ on “White Silver Sands” plays with the beat as straight as possible, the sax comes in and tugs on the rhythm, pulling every other sound forward in a tense effort to break out of the constraints of the backbeat. The same thing happens in “The Wheel,” though the lead guitar and the piano cooperate more with the sax than the organ did on “White Silver Sands.” Bill’s trademark sound carried him through eight Top 40 hits from 1959 to 1962.

If you are a Bill Black neophyte, you may well think that I had his 45s because, like so many of the other perpetrators of my early vinyl, he was a failure. Not so. Bill Black is one of the great figures of early rock and roll, and he played on the most successful two-sided single of all time.

Bill Black grew up in Memphis, and he learned to play the upright bass. He had recorded a single at Sun Studio in early 1954, and in July of that year he played bass on a little ditty called “That’s All Right” by an act billed on Sun 209 as Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill. Bill went on to play the upright bass in his crazy slapping way on a number of huge hits through 1958, including “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Don’t Be Cruel”/“Hound Dog.” Bill made the transition to electric bass nicely, as an early adopter of the Fender Precision Bass. He debuted that bass on “Jailhouse Rock” in 1957.

When Elvis (Presley) got his start at Sun, Bill and Scotty Moore were important enough to earn a share of the Elvis royalties. Not so when Col. Tom Parker took over at RCA; at last, Bill decided $200 a week didn’t cut it, considering the money Elvis was raking in. Considering that Bill was a huge part of Elvis’s stage show, being the comic type that loosened up the crowd and a participant in some banter routines with the King, I can’t blame him for walking away from it.

Bill went back to his roots, and soon his Combo came into being. Apart from Reggie Young on guitar and Ace Cannon on sax, the personnel tended to shift, but the sound never varied, to the amusement of some and the awe of others. Who dug the Combo best? In early 1964, it was the Beatles, who requested that the Combo open for them on their first tour of the United States. The Combo is probably the strongest direct link between the King and the Beatles.

The longest-lasting connection between the two acts is Bill Black’s Fender bass. Linda McCartney bought it for Paul, and he still owns it.

In one sense, the performance link is not as firm as it seems. Bill had been suffering from severe headaches for a while, and finally the source was discovered to be a brain tumor. He was told that an operation would leave him paralyzed or otherwise incapacitated, and so, one source told me, he opted not to fight the tumor. Another source says that, once he slipped into a coma, an operation was attempted, and he died on the table. Bill was 39 then. Today, September 17, would have been Bill’s 82nd birthday.

Happy birthday, Bill. Here's Bill, playing bass (right), behind the guy I said would not appear musically in this blog. I just painted myself into a corner, didn't I?



For Saturday, I’ll be looking at yet another Mercury single, one that didn’t chart, though its singer managed one Hot 100 hit. See you then!

Bill Black's Combo, The Wheel

Sounds Like Teens Hear It

No Elvis (Presley). I promised that in January. I have all of his hits, because I have nearly 80% of the Top 40 hits from 1955 to last Saturday. I even have some Elvis 45s that came into the family before I did. But this is a blog that sticks to the obscure, unless there’s a compelling reason to feature a hit. My E.P. EPs (four-song seven-inchers) didn’t make a big impression on three-year-old caithiseach. I was more into the King of the Mambo than the King.

I do, however, have an opportunity to discuss the Voice of Elvis (Presley), thanks to today’s artist.

My Uncle Tom brought me a 45 with a gaudy label one day. As accustomed as I was to black labels (RCA, Mercury, Chess, Scope, Diamond . . . ), this pink-green-yellow-orange monstrosity actually hurt my eyes. The label was Gone, and the song was “Girl of My Best Friend” by Ral Donner & the Starfires (Gone 5102).

The bigger shock came when I gave the record a test run. I turned to my mom and asked, “Why is Elvis on a colored record?” I knew Elvis was on the records with the white dog on a black background. Even then, I understood label affiliation. It’s possible that the first letters I learned after S-E-A-N were R-C (with A being part of my repertoire, of course).

So I knew something was wrong when Elvis was playing on this Technicolor nightmare 45. But Mom had an answer. “Little caithiseach, that’s not Elvis. It’s Ral Donner.”

Ral Donner. Ral? Ral didn’t sound like a name to me, and Gone didn’t look like a serious label to me, and Ral sang like . . . Elvis. Three strikes, you’re relegated to the bottom of the box, and thus you become a Survivor rather than a victim of the Great Meltdown of 1972. How does karma work again?

OK. Ral Donner could not help the fact that his voice sounded like Elvis’s. If you like Elvis’s voice, you probably like Ral’s, unless you resent the encroachment on Elvis’s turf. And plenty of people probably thought Ral was at least as attractive as Elvis. So, since Ral Donner was indeed a talented singer who worked hard, he deserved the success he achieved, and perhaps more. The question I’ll discuss shortly is: Would there have been a Ral Donner without Elvis?

Ralph Donner was born in 1943 in the Chicago suburbs. He began singing at a very early age, and once he caught the rock-and-roll bug, he started up the ladder. Between TV and live appearances, Ral was doing pretty well for himself. Just after “Girl of My Best Friend” entered the Top 40 on May 1, 1961, he sang it on American Bandstand. He followed up with “You Don’t Know What You’ve Got (Until You Lose It),” which reached #4 late in the summer of 1961. He reached the Top 40 twice more, which makes for a respectable career. It seems to be well-documented that Ral Donner might have had more hits if he had not complained about nonpayment of royalties and been shut out of opportunities to switch labels.

Ral kicked around, recording short-term for a number of labels, until 1980 or so. He did a double album of Elvis covers that was released in 1980, and he received the opportunity to be the voice of Elvis in the 1981 film This Is Elvis.

Ral started complaining of illness in 1977, but he was ignored by his doctors until August 1980, when he began to cough up blood. He was diagnosed with lung cancer, and he outlived the original estimate but died on April 6, 1984.

Now, back to my question, which is not about Ral Donner, but rather trends in music. Ral was not the first, or last, singer to sound like someone else. The wave of popularity for a certain type of voice starts either with fans or the labels who push the artist. I pin the phenomenon on the labels.

Ed Rambeau’s experience backs me up. When he went to Philadelphia to record “Skin Divin’,” someone from Swan asked, “What are we going to do with a white Johnny Mathis?” There wasn’t a pattern for such a creature, so they might well have passed on him. Music people seem to spend more time looking for the Next “____________” than developing the Next Original Act.

When something distinctive like Elvis’s Voice comes along, every label understandably wants to compete. One way is to distract from Elvis by pushing someone equally dynamic, but the easier and safer bet is to find a soundalike. And so, had Ral Donner come around three years before Elvis, would he have been big, or would someone unearth his recordings years later and call him a precursor to the King?

Casual music listeners are able to buy only what labels produce and market, and only what makes it to the radio will become familiar enough to warrant an investment in the product. Maybe I give listeners too much credit, but with the music industry being turned upside down by grass-roots support for MySpace musicians, the potential for greater variety in available music is enormous. Even so, as soon as one of the MySpace successes makes it big, labels still jump in with similar-sounding artists.

At certain points in history, voices with particular qualities have controlled the airwaves. I think that one singer gains an audience, and the marketers dig up other singers who sound like that one. Then, the listening audience gets comfortable with the nature of that voice, and it becomes the voice of a generation. It doesn’t even matter whose voice it is, as long as it sounds like the voice in every song on the radio that year. Here are some vocal trends that have arisen over the years:

People copied more about Elvis than his hair and his wiggle. While no one was as dead-on vocally as Ral Donner or Greg Tortell of Dread Zeppelin, when listeners started assuming that Elvis made “Blue Suede Shoes” famous, the mistake stemmed in part from Carl Perkins’s Elvis-like delivery.

A bit later, Buddy Holly spawned soundalikes, including Bobby Vee, who idolized Buddy and used the “Holly Hiccup” in “Rubber Ball” in 1960, and Tommy Roe, who took the Holly sound to #1 in 1962 with the “Peggy Sue” clone “Sheila.”

At some point, the Patti Page/Anita Bryant style gave way to Connie Francis/Annette/Shelley Fabares. Then, when Paul and John and Brian were reteaching boys how to sing, Grace Slick and Aretha Franklin did the same for girls.

Down the road a ways, the mellow male voice returned, with Manilow being an example, but soon enough it was the 1980s, and the Fixx and Madness led to Depeche Mode, all with similar vocal sounds—unlike the Britsh artists of the 1960s, who tried to sound American, these guys flaunted their British speech patterns. On the rock front, Grand Funk Railroad sounds very 1970s, and Poison/Metallica/Def Leppard/Warrant sound very 1980s. If we time-swapped the vocalists but left the songs intact, would those bands get signed?

Is it coincidence that all of the Seattle grunge acts have Kurt Cobain vocals? Did 1950s guys who sounded like them just not sing, or did the Elvis fans ignore them?

Shortly after Pat Benatar came along, boom, we had Rindy Ross of Quarterflash. Compare Concrete Blonde and 4 Non Blondes to Heart. I remember a time in the early 1990s when Sheryl Crow, Liz Phair, Lisa Germano and Joan Jones (of Sun-60) all popped onto the scene, all sounding somewhat alike. Now we have Colbie Caillat, Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson. If you’re a female singer in 2008, sing soft and skip the vibrato.

Check out Nickelback, Lifehouse, Coldplay and Daughtry. If you’re a guy with gravel in your voice, you get signed. I can picture a lot of label people going to shows with a mandate to find a Chad Kroeger. No one is looking for a rock band whose singer sounds like Randy Bachman. However, if a Bachman soundalike comes up with a great song that shoots up the charts, his voice will be back in style. Then, of course, what dominates the airwaves becomes the comfort zone of a generation of teens.

In this age of easily heard snippets of new artists’ work, the opportunity will arise for a broader range of vocal styles to be popular at the same time. I don’t see teens surfing for Chad Kroeger soundalikes, to the exclusion of all other types of singers, in the way labels have always sought to copy the Current Big Thing. I suppose I’ll know in five years if it was the labels or the kids who drove the careers of Ral Donner, Tommy Roe and Rindy Ross. Stay tuned.

“Girl of My Best Friend” has a solid pedigree. One of its writers, Beverly Ross, is responsible for “Judy’s Turn to Cry” (with Edna Lewis) and “Lollipop” (with Julius Dixon). Ms. Ross recorded a Top 40 version of “Lollipop” as the Ruby half of Ronald & Ruby. She also worked with Jeff Barry during his formative years. Her co-writer on “Girl,” Sam Bobrick, didn’t get as far as a songwriter, but he wrote episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, Bewitched, Get Smart and Saved by the Bell.

Whether or not Ral Donner was successful by association, he was a talented guy who probably could have made his way without sounding like anyone else. In one sense, not sounding like Elvis might have boosted Ral’s career, since some listeners, like three-year-old caithiseach, saw no need for two Elvises.

I’ll spend next week discussing one of the weirdest and ugliest 45s I owned. If you like to stare at train wrecks, this major-label fiasco will be right up your alley. See you Wednesday!

Ral Donner, Girl of My Best Friend

It Never Got Better Than This

I love many kinds of music, and many songs that have nothing in common with each other. To be honest, the reactions of my easy-listening friends and my head-banger friends to music that doesn’t suit them disappoints me a bit. I don’t understand how people can develop such a rut that they can’t skip to another groove.

I am going to discuss a song that nearly everyone, regardless of age, level of musical sophistication, self-perceived musical superiority or affiliation with Rolling Stone can sing from memory. Everyone knows this song because there has never been a better pop song.

The song is “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies (Calendar 1008).

Any Major Dude, whom I respect as a champion of spectacular music, has not included this song in the Perfect Pop series on his blog. Maybe he won’t. But I can make a case, both technical and personal, for “Sugar, Sugar” as the definition of popular music, perhaps even populist music. From its misunderstood origins to its effect on the careers of its writers, the song has earned smirks from writers who could not stop humming it. I’m going to get militant as I tell you why a memorable pop song is not by nature a pop song to be avoided.

I start with the genesis of the song. Ronnie Dante says that Jeff Barry had encouraged Andy Kim to come up with something for the Archies to record. Andy got the idea for the first bit and presented it to Jeff over the phone. They developed the tune together, with Jeff providing the keyboard hook and some lyrics I’ll get to shortly.

Other writers and producers had created bubblegum music. “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” and “Chewy, Chewy” come to mind. Are they perfect pop songs? No. Why do I say “Sugar, Sugar” reaches that level?

Jeff Barry aimed a lot of his 1960s songs at young teens. In this respect, he was considerably ahead of his peers in understanding the intellectual power, and the purchasing power, of that demographic. Whereas the Ohio Express songs seek to combine a catchy melody with inane lyrics, Jeff’s songs were vibrant enough to energize the young and vital enough to impress music historians. It’s no accident that “Have I ever told you how good it feels to hold you” has been honored by the Library of Congress, while “I got love in my tummy and I feel like lovin’ you” has not.

The difference is that Jeff did not try to capitalize on the innocence of youth; he celebrated it. He still does. If you lament that children are now singing “Shawty need a refund, needa bring that nigga back/Just like a refund, I make her bring that ass back,” you are not alone, and it’s not age that makes one sad about where lyrics have gone.

When Jeff was asked by Don Kirshner to write for the Archies, Jeff did so with a goal of bridging the gap between kiddie pop and adult pop. Jeff risked his stature as a serious producer/writer when he took on this task. He and Andy Kim succeeded with “Sugar, Sugar,” above all other Archies tunes. Andy got it started, and Jeff knew this was a keeper.

The risk paid off commercially, but the intelligentsia, in the throes of psychedelia and Beatlemania, among other –ias, branded Jeff as a simplistic writer. A number of years later, one critic of this ilk asked Jeff why he didn’t write for adults. Jeff replied that recently he had heard a line by Rod McKuen: “I just can’t believe the loveliness of loving you.” The critic replied that Jeff should have written lines like that.

“Fuck you,” Jeff replied. “I wrote that. It’s from ‘Sugar, Sugar.’”

That is part of why “Sugar, Sugar” is a perfect pop song. It’s not about laughing all the way to the bank, like High School Musical 2. It’s about making music that neither shuts out kids nor sends their parents screaming from the room. Compare “Pour a little sugar on me, honey” with “Pour some sugar on me,” and tell me that the lyric Def Leppard echoed is really more adult than the Archies original.

The “Sugar, Sugar” recording session shows another level of sophistication that people tend not to hear. For the first fifteen or so unnumbered takes, Jeff couldn’t get his drummer, Gary Chester (born Cesario Gurciullo, 1924-1987), to match what Jeff was feeling for the song. Unlike the session for Andy Kim’s “Baby, I Love You,” Jeff persevered. He wound up standing in front of his drummer, swaying to the beat in his head to keep the tempo surprisingly slow. Jeff had no use for the frenetic pace of a kiddie tune here.

As the end of the second chorus approaches, Ron Dante sings “You are my candy, girl, and you got me . . . wanting you.” After “me,” he sucks in his breath, the way people do when someone attractive walks by. I asked whose idea that was, and Ron said it was Jeff’s. It is such a subtle touch that kids would never hear it, yet adults know what it implies. No need to say what “wanting you” means; the lyric stays kid-friendly and the breathing provides the subtext. I didn’t hear it as a kid, but I hear it now, every time, and I nod in approval of the tactic.

Did that mean Jeff controlled the song too much? Ron Dante himself came up with the “Whoa-oh-oh” part that leads out of the second verse. At that point the song crosses into soul music; counterpoint shouts of “honey” crop up, and after Toni Wine sings the low “Betty” version of “I’m gonna make your life so sweet,” she belts the high, Aretha-like “Veronica” version of the same phrase. She told me she crafted that pair of singing personalities.

Now, with a pretty good track ready for release, it was up to the kids to buy it once they heard it, right? Ron Dante said that, after two very kid-oriented singles, this third Archies release met with radio resistance simply because of the artist name. At last someone played it, and the listener response was so intense that the song could not be denied airplay. The result was a single that entered the Top 40 on August 16, 1969, spent four weeks at #1 starting September 20, and logged 22 weeks in the Hot 100. “Sugar, Sugar” was the RIAA Record of the Year for 1969. That consumer-driven success is what makes me call it a populist song as well as a popular one.

I have given you bio information on Jeff Barry and Andy Kim before, but I owe you Ron Dante and Toni Wine. Ron Dante, born Carmine Granito in 1945, sang the Archies hits, as well as “Tracy” by the Cuff Links. He also sang (but not the lead) on “Leader of the Laundromat” by the Detergents, a parody of “Leader of the Pack.” Everyone involved with the parody knew it would be subjected to a lawsuit for royalties by the writers of the original hit, among whom was Jeff Barry.

Ron Dante moved on from the Archies to production work for all of Barry Manilow’s records through about 1981. He sang background on “Mandy” and a number of other hits. He still performs regularly.

Toni Wine, born in 1947, wrote “A Groovy Kind of Love” when she was about 18, and she wrote “Candida” for Tony Orlando after she left the Archies. She and Robin Grean sang the backing vocals on “Candida” and “Knock Three Times”; don’t let Joel Whitburn fool you on this one. Ellie Greenwich didn’t participate in the Dawn recordings, but you can hear her on the Archies songs. Toni tours with Tony Orlando now.

While I’m at it, I should note that Gary Chester played drums on “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” as just the tip of his session-work iceberg.

And now it gets personal. As soon as “Sugar, Sugar” leapt onto WLS in August, 1969, I fell in love with it, along with the rest of the country. At home, I was the daytime caregiver for a very sick mother, and this song kept up my spirits. This one, and “Honky Tonk Women,” of all things.

I didn’t ask anyone to take me to the store to buy the 45, but I didn’t have to. I got a copy of it on the back of a cereal box. Four Archies tunes were featured on a cereal; I believe it was Sugar Crisp. I bought the cereal, hoping to get the right record (the songs weren’t named; you had to play them to know what you had), and on the third try, I had my song.

By 1969, though, my stereo tonearm had been snapped in two by rambunctious siblings, and finally the wires pulled loose. I bought a little record player from a neighbor for a dollar. Its drawback was that it played only 33 1/3 rpm records. So I played my Archies cereal box record at LP speed and imagined that it was playing faster. It was better than nothing. I would still have asked for the actual vinyl single, but it seemed sacrilegious to own such a cheery 45 when I was walking my mom to the toilet every couple of hours. I didn’t turn off the radio, though.

And yet, Mom rallied in late 1969. On November 12, she and I were watching the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, sitting together on the sofa, when Glen and the Lennon Sisters started singing “Sugar, Sugar.” My mom started swaying to the music, but I thought it was a ridiculous performance. If you wanted sacrilege, there it was. I snapped, “They should sing their own songs.”

My mom looked at me, her mouth open in shock, and I stomped off to my room. Fifty-nine days later, she died. And, you know, sometimes you can’t go back and apologize for screwing up a perfectly decent evening. She never asked me about it, and though I tried to make myself explain what had been going through my mind, I never could. That’s too bad, because she would have gotten it, after all those years of nurturing my musical tastes.

The day she died, “Don’t Cry Daddy” by Elvis Presley was #11, heading for #6. “Sugar, Sugar” had slipped out of the Hot 100 on December 20. That was a huge and unwelcome change in the radio landscape for me, but I still had my cereal box cutout, and I still played it at LP speed. Sometimes you have to make do with what you have left.

Saturday I’ll look at another Archies song, one that is evocative for different reasons. Thanks for reading. See you then.

Archies--Sugar, Sugar