“Broken Hearted Melody”, Sarah Vaughan, 1959, Hal David and Sherman Edwards.
A Hal David sighting! Bet it won’t be our last. The song does kind of have that Brill Building sound to it, a little, now that I think about it.
Most songs, the thing that makes them go is the chorus. Not this one. This one, it’s the way Vaughan comes up on the title phrase in the first line of each stanza, slinky and catchy and irresistible. How do you do that. That’s the question, isn’t it? How do you do that?
“Drugstore Rock and Roll”, Janis Martin, 1956, Janis Martin.
Martin was only fifteen when she recorded this, but she puts it over with more authority than you’d expect from a fifteen-year-old. I mind me of a thing I read in one of Bill James’s baseball books, where he lists a number of indicators for how mature a sports league is, as in, how well-developed is it as an institution, and one of the indicators is, are a lot of the players particularly old or young?
Because I think we can agree that the world of rock’n’roll was not particularly mature in 1956, and Janis Martin’s age is consistent with that. But maybe it’s not so simple, because it’s not like super-young performers are going to be phased out as the industry matures. Look at how old Billie Eilish was when she hit it big, and also, brace yourself for when this countdown gets into the 2020s, because I’m going to be listing some songs by some old-ass people. Maybe James’s idea isn’t much use to us here.
So that’s all right. We listened to a song, had a thought, evaluated it, and discarded it. Good day’s work.
“Walkin’ After Midnight”, Patsy Cline, 1957, Alan Block and Don Hecht. #2 Country, #16 Billboard Hot 100.
I had to refresh my memory about this one. Just listened to it now. Singer takes long walks after midnight, missing her guy, old-school country, very good… And then she elevated her voice a bit to sing about the weeping willow and I was like, oh, right, that’s this one! That’s what makes it work right there. And then toward the end she puts some growl into her voice, just for a second? Stop selling when you get to “yes”, Patsy.
“Shake, Rattle and Roll”, Big Joe Turner, 1954, Charles Calhoun (Jesse Stone). #1 US R&B. Marsh’s Heart of Rock & Soul #13.
Shake, rattle and roll? In this economy?
The second stanza here, where Turner is singing about the sun shining through the woman’s dress? You know what that reminds me of? I’ll just pause for a second while you can marshal your thoughts.
(Pause.)
It’s the Billy Crystal comedy movie City Slickers, of course. What else could I be talking about? There’s a scene in City Slickers where Crystal’s character is talking to Jack Palance’s old cowboy character, Curly, about Life And Stuff, and Palance relates how when he was young he saw a beautiful woman, also backlit by the sun, “showing the shape that God had give her”.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this. But now that I think of it, the fourth Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, has a scene where the main characters are walking through Hyde Park and some nutcase is giving a speech where he says, “The purpose of the sun going down in the afternoon, especially in parks, is to make women’s breasts bounce up and down more visibly to the eye.”
I think the odds are pretty low that City Slickers or So Long and Thanks for All the Fish were specifically influenced by “Shake, Rattle and Roll”. So is this just a thing three separate people happened to comment on? Or is it an actual trope? But I do know one thing: none of Big Joe Turner, Curly, or the weirdo in the park were capable of being normal about a woman’s body. Turner calls the woman in the song “the devil”. Curly runs away and builds a philosophy about it. And the weirdo in the park, uh, makes a weird speech in a park. Maybe everybody calm down a bit. Women are around. Sometimes it’s sunny.
“Farther Up the Road”, Bobby “Blue” Bland, 1957, Don Robey and Joe Medwick Veasey. #1 US R&B, #43 Billboard Hot 100. Dave Marsh’s Heart of Rock & Soul #333.
Thing I was curious about, is Bland’s nickname. “Blue”. What I wonder about is, just how was it his nickname? Was it as simple as, his friends would call him “Blue”? Hey, Blue, I heard your new record yesterday, great stuff. That would be straightforward. But as far as I can tell, his records didn’t get sold as either Blue Bland records or Bobby Blue records. They were either Bobby Bland records or Bobby “Blue” Bland records. So, not the same kind of deal where Gary “U.S.” Bonds’ singles were sold sometimes as just by “U.S. Bonds”. Was “Blue” a nickname that he used at all, or just one that he sort of generally had? It’s not important. But I wasn’t there, so I don’t know.
“Raunchy”, Bill Justis, 1957, Bill Justis and Sidney Manker. #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, #1 US R&B, #1 on Toronto’s CHUM charts.
Our first instrumental! Always a good time. I wonder what’s supposed to be so raunchy about it? Really it sounds to me like more of a car song in its cadence.
“Tallahassee Lassie”, Freddy Cannon, 1959, Bruce Moore, Bob Crewe, Frank Slay, and Frederick Picariello (Freddy Cannon’s real name). #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Toronto’s CHUM charts.
This has got to be a fun song to sing for a professional. Big flashy rhymes, deep ah-ooos, what’s not to like. I wonder if people who live in Tallahassee are sick of it.
“Cry Me a River”, Julie London, 1955, Arthur Hamilton. Gold record.
I always like this jazzy loungey kind of stuff. (Unless I don’t.*) We’ll get to rock’n’roll pretty soon, I promise.
—
*Let me spoil one thing about this countdown right now. There’s no Frank Sinatra in it. Frank Sinatra gives me the pip. I’m not fond of his style and I don’t like his persona at all. Could I make an exception? For the sake of a better countdown, theoretically? Of course. But here’s the thing.
I am consciously trying to include women and people of colour in this countdown. I don’t have quotas in mind; I’m just paying attention. Because I promise you if I didn’t pay attention I would produce a very white male list, and I don’t want it to be that way. (The ’50s part of the countdown is going to be pretty male anyway. Too much so. I can’t help it.) So, while I might stretch a point to get somebody into this countdown, I’m not going to do it for a Sinatra or a Crosby.
“Unchained Melody”, Roy Hamilton, 1955, Alex North and Hy Zaret. #1 on the R&B Best Sellers chart.
This is a song that lots and lots of people have covered, and R&B singer Roy Hamilton was one such person, and he had a big hit with it, and it is the first song in our countdown. You may not know his version, but you probably know a version.
Anyway, if you’re only casually familiar with the song, by anybody, you may not know about the title. You might think that the songwriters considered their new composition and said, “What we’ve got here is a song that derives its grandeur from the possibility of love overcoming great distance and time, and that may inspire in its listeners a sense of freedom. We could just pick out one of the lyrics and call the song that, like, ‘My Love, My Darling,’ or similar. That would work. But I have an idea: for the title, we could dispense with the lyrics altogether and just refer to the song in terms of the emotional and musical liberation we’re trying to evoke. We can call it ‘Unchained Melody’.”
You might think that. That would be a better story. But no. It’s called that because it’s from a prison movie called Unchained. It’s not “Unchained Melody” so much as it’s ‘the Unchained melody’.
Oh well.
Dearest Zann,
Crown Prince Erwheel interrupted me. “If I won’t listen to my own family when they tell me I can’t beat the laurans, why should I listen to you?”
“I’m telling you more than that,” I said. “You can’t beat the greenkind and you can’t beat the people of the city, and they can’t beat each other, and they probably can’t beat you.”
“I say we can.”
“You can’t, because you don’t know what’s going on. Why do you think the greenkind are here in the first place?” So much for my prepared speech.
“The laurans. Call them the fucking laurans,” Prolonger said. “‘Greenkind’.”
“Why do you think they’re here?” I said again.
“Who knows why they do anything?” Prolonger said.
“I don’t know,” Erwheel said. “Because they wanted to conquer us.”
“It’s a damn good question,” Castellanatus the wizard said. “I’ve spent some time trying to find out.”
“It’s because they were driven out of the laur,” I said. “They have nowhere else to go. I’ve seen the laur recently. It’s horrible, and there are other things living there now. They can’t go back.”
Wryth, standing behind me, said, “One suspects that if we could only know it, we would find that those who drove out the greenkind were themselves fleeing more powerful foes. And so on through the worlds.” I hadn’t thought of that.
“How in piss did you see the laur?” Castellanatus demanded of me. “I’ve been trying to get in there for I don’t know how long and I can’t do it. I’ve tried everything I can think of.”
“There’s a lost highway north of Crideon. I’ll draw you a map later if you want. But I don’t recommend it.”
“So,” Erwheel said, “you’re saying that the laurans can’t retreat, is that it? That’s why we can’t beat them?”
“Sort of. Also, obviously, they’re more magically powerful. Also, you’re counting on the people of Crideon to join with you against the greenkind, and they won’t. Not for long.”
“They will if they know what’s good for them,” Prolonger said.
“No,” I said, still addressing Erwheel. “They hate you. Your piss-swilling family oppressed the people of Crideon too harshly for too long, and they celebrated when you disappeared. The people of Crideon don’t love the greenkind, but they will never want you to come back.”
Prolonger glared at me. “It really is you. I don’t know what happened to you, but you’ve got the same shit mouth as the Ybel I knew. Did I hear right? Is that really your husband leading the rebels in the city?”
“Where else would he be?” I said.
Erwheel cleared his throat. “All this is interesting and I’m glad to know it, but it’s of no use to me. Ybel, for the sake of keeping the conversation moving, I won’t kill you for insulting my family. At least not right now. I hope you’ve got something to suggest, because I’m not going to give up and grow strawberries just because you don’t think I can win.”
“Ay,” I said. “Sue for peace. Start negotiations with Acea and the people of Crideon, and with the greenkind in the Palace. Agree on a way that all three of you can share the city peacefully. And cooperate to remove Lord Clear.”
“Why should I?” Erwheel said. “It’s my city. Mine. I am the rightful heir of the Talistag family, and I will not negotiate away my birthright to runagates and laurans.”
“I get it,” Prolonger said. “She’s trying to stop the war, because of course she is, but nobody will come to the negotiating table with her, because she’s nobody. So she comes to us, because we’re not nobody.”
“I’m not a woman anymore,” I told Prolonger. “I’m a piss-poor man, I know that, and I never should have gone through the transformation in the first place, but it was my choice and I don’t deny it. You might as well call me ‘he’.” I turned to Erwheel. “I already told you. You should negotiate because you can’t win. More than that, you should negotiate because nobody else can win either, and the war is killing the city. If being a prince means anything, doesn’t it mean that you should act to help your city?”
Erwheel scowled and sat back.
“I told you not to trust him. Her. Him,” Prolonger said.
“Shut up,” Erwheel said. “Youngspar, what do you think?”
One of his other advisors, a middle-aged woman with a burn mark where her left eyebrow should have been, cleared her throat. “It’s not what you wanted, Highness, but it’s what has come to us. I think Ybel’s plan may be the wisest course forward.”
“I want to hear more about this,” Castellanatus said. “I want to know about the relationship between the Valnelatars and Lord Clear. There’s some kind of schism between them? Do I understand you right? And I want to know about this transformation of yours, Ybel, and what it has to do with all of this.”
“The people of Crideon were sporadically rebelling against the greenkind,” I said. “You know that part. The Valnelatars found Lord Clear somewhere and put him in charge of defeating the rebellion, because of how formidable he is. But he immediately went too far and tried to use all kinds of dangerous magic against the city. And eventually he went as far as to seize Cas Crid, which was a strike against the Valnelatars as much as it was against the rebellion, because it gave him, himself, the magical status of the ruler of the city.”
“How do you know that?” Castellanatus said.
“I’m a Rosolla Guard,” I said. “The other Rosolla Guards are compelled to obey Lord Clear now. They’re the backbone of his forces in Cas Crid. But I never swore the oath, so he can’t command me the way he does them.”
“You little shit,” Prolonger said.
“And what about your transformation? How does that fit into this?”
“It doesn’t,” I lied. “It was part of a completely separate adventure. Nothing to do with this problem at all,” I lied some more.
All my love,
Ybel
