First, a little housekeeping:
-I have decided not to bother making a follow-up post about the Oscars because I kind of stopped caring exactly when they finished. Not much of what I was hoping for won, but whatever. The ones that won mostly deserved it, mostly my 2nd or 3rd choices. Cool. Except it sucks but is no surprise that Deakins got robbed yet again.
This era of music I will now be discussing can almost completely fit into two categories: Rock & Roll and Jazz. It's almost comical, really. I'm sure other stuff was being made (I also had a limited amount of country pop up, but it was mostly Johnny Cash, who in those days could fit along with the rock & roll) but that seems to be what I've acquired.
We'll start off discussing this "Rock & Roll" sensation that really hit its first stride in these years (1955-1959) and then "died" as it were.
We'll really really start off where we left off last time, and that's with Little Richard. Probably the most enjoyable music of the whole era, to me at least, was Little Richard. At once blues, rock & roll, and soul, he really rocked it. "Rip It Up" is a kind of rock & roll standard (I discovered some songs that seemed to be covered by everyone) and his version really...well...ripped it up!
I have to definitely talk about The King, so here I am talking about him. I only have his Elvis album (a travesty, I know) and a collection of #1 hits. He was great at what he did, and it's no wonder he was so popular.
Bo Diddley was obviously hugely influential. Carl Perkins I hoped I'd like more (after seeing Mystery Train and the one character's obsession with Carl Perkins being better than Elvis) but was still great. And then Jerry Lee Lewis. Cousin marryin' but boy did he ever have some great rock & roll songs. Here's one!
The next year, he recorded "Peggy Sue Got Married" without much comment. The lyrics are basically "you know Peggy Sue from that song? Well I think she's married now!" without singing about the pain it brings. It leaves it for the listener to fill in the gaps. It's an evolution and I'd like to have seen where he would have gone. That's of course a story for an alternate universe.
The other promising young star that died with the music in that plane crash was Ritchie Valens. I just wanted an excuse to share this track that I hadn't really noticed...he played surf rock! "Fast Freight"
Screamin' Jay Hawkins. I couldn't believe this was from 1956! Part novelty, but all funky experimental soul! Everybody knows this song, I just always assumed it was from the late 60s. That makes it even more impressive. Just listen to how nuts he goes.
OK let's move on to some other stuff. Johnny Cash got going here. As far as albums, all I had from the period was The Fabulous Johnny Cash, which doesn't really do him justice. However, the Folsom Prison Blues single popped up first, and I don't even need to post the video for that one. You know how it goes.
Sam Cooke may have been the finest early R&B singer. I only have the hits from this period so I'm not going to post a video. They're all great, they're all well known. I will say that I particularly enjoy his take on "Summertime" though. Seek it out if you happen to have not heard it.
Ray Charles got better in the late 50s. Some greatness that I don't really have much else to say about right now, as it's very late.
Let's move on to the jazz side of things. It was such a comical juxtaposition to me, because the way I've been doing this is creating playlists of each individual year and playing them as "album shuffle" meaning a full album would play, and then a random different album from that year would play. And I can definitely see why people thought rock & roll was just noise. At that point, it was so simplistic and jazz had evolved into this crazy beast so far beyond anything that rock & roll could ever be expected to achieve. It would eventually get there, but in the late 50s there was a lot of landmark jazz released to counter these kids and their guitars.
Frank Sinatra continued to do most of the same stuff he'd done previously. I didn't see a whole lot of evolution, but Come Fly With Me is still a fantastic, diverse album.
Billie Holiday put out kind of a definitive last statement of her career with Lady In Satin (1958). Accompanied by an orchestra her voice seems to sound even more broken. I read a biography once and it talked about how the conductor just didn't get her, he hated her sound because he was trying to make this beautiful sound and Lady Day was just singing all Billie Holiday style, sounding incredibly sad, dropping off the major key, etc. But it's the juxtaposition that makes this such a powerful recording. Strings and a straining voice.
I went through a lot of classic jazz. I didn't realize I had so much in my collection. But I think it was mostly just because what I have is concentrated to this period. But I definitely reached a new level of appreciation for jazz doing this project (particularly contrasting it with the simplistic "rock n roll" sounds). Vince Guaraldi isn't just the Peanuts guy, he's really an amazing pianist. I had a John Coltrane collection of recordings where he accompanies other musicians (basically a "...featuring John Coltrane" collection) and it's all so amazing and I can't really speak to it too much without sounding like an idiot.
But let me talk about Miles Davis. What he created with Kind of Blue just elevated the art to a whole new level. The sound of a trumpet shouldn't be able to bring people to tears. But he plays with so much emotion, so beautifully, that it kind of does that. I'm not going to post a video of a single song because that would mean you could just listen to that. I'm going to instead implore you to put on the album. If you don't have it, well that's just silly. Get it. And listen to it fully.
However, I'm going to close with the album that had the audacity to call itself The Shape of Jazz to Come. Ornette Coleman saw a future in the avant garde. He created sounds that would not only influence the future of jazz, but the future of all recorded music. In this song, he pioneered sounds that I have heard in some of my favorite cutting edge hardcore/math rock/what-have-you bands of today and recently. Like, in my lifetime. Pioneered in 1959. Listen to the crazy stop-start rhythms of this song and compare it to bands like Refused or Don Caballero. Astonishing.
Where I stand at the moment: 1180 of 36363 songs deep. yikes. this may take awhile.
Other Highlights Worth Mentioning:
- Ricky Nelson, obviously.
- We got our first Motown! The Miracles' "Bad Girl" came up!
- Ella Fitzgerald sang some for me.
- So many oldie hits! "Teenager In Love," "Only Sixteen," Everly Brothers, etc etc etc
- I didn't talk about Chuck Berry AT ALL?!?!?!? Weird. But yeah, him. I had the "Berry's On Top" album come on and it has his hits which were the highlights for me. That's the main reason I didn't bother, because everybody knows Chuck Berry.
- The Poni-Tales "Born Too Late"
- Johnny Otis "Willie & The Hand Jive" is totally the basis for "I Want Candy!"
- I think Edith Piaf is finally done. 120 greatest hits is a lot of songs!
- The Beatles officially (unofficially) started, some early demos or something from Anthology 1 came up.
- Patsy Cline, sigh (sigh of love and/or "so great," not exasperation or anything)
In The Next Installment...
I was actually wondering that myself for a while. Knowing that rock & roll would kind of stop evolving since "the music died" I didn't know what was going to happen in the lead-up to the Beatles. I think it's going to mostly be Motown and girl pop stuff, with some more jazz as well. Looking ahead, I saw that 1964 seems like a pretty landmark year in many ways, so the next installment will be 1960-1963 and then I'll go year by year from there. So in addition to motown, girl pop, and jazz, we've got...Roy Orbison! and Etta James! Gene Pitney! Other soul (Stax!)! More Patsy Cline! Ray Charles playing country! Early Beach Boys and Beatles! It'll be good. Talk to you then!
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