Endless Quest: Charlie Rich: "The Most Beautiful Girl"

This is one of those songs that takes me back to a time – very roughly, when it was a big hit, a time I don’t recall that well, but this song crossed all kinds of boundaries on the radio, so the song’s easy for me to remember – and a more recent time, the 90s, when I was socially active with a bunch of good folks whose interests and obsessions and completist tendencies had almost nothing to do with mine.  I don’t talk about the Serial Diners much in my writing about music as I didn’t have a lot of experience with them that had a musical focus; they were collectively bound by a dining in a different restaurant every Friday night at 6 or so, and beyond that it was up to the group as to what would happen next.  A movie?  A games night?  A night where we’d just wander around, not up to much?  It all depended, but no two people’s musical tastes were really the same, so going to a concert was never on the agenda, not at even a small, affordable club on Queen St. West.  Why pay for fun when we could convene with a tape recorder and microphone and bell and do improv comedy at someone’s house? 

And so, within the group my own musical epiphanies and enthusiasms were mostly bottled up.  I had a Walkman and listened to CFNY by day and the easy-listening classical station at night to help me get to sleep, but found myself really isolated within the group, forever trying and failing to find common ground with anyone besides one person…and there were a lot of people in the Diners back then, men and women, older and younger than me.  I found myself at a loss once in being asked by one main member what made Jimi Hendrix so special; again at a loss when another one (who was courting me at the time, or about to) didn’t know who Al Green was; and long before I pretty much stopped attending the Diners on an even semi-regular basis (c. 1999) I was disheartened by an event that I will write about in the fullness of time*. 

 

This song I remember mentioning to yet another Diner and she didn’t know it and I attempted to sing it – my voice certainly isn’t like Rich’s – and she still didn’t know it.  I was a little puzzled**, since the song hits the bullseye for American music in so many ways – and it was a #1 hit in the US and Canada, obviously a number two in the UK, too – I remember hearing it on a jazz station at the time.  Rich’s ‘countrypolitan’ music finally saw him succeed in the charts after two decades in the business. . 

Rich was a jazz and r&b guy who wasn’t considered ‘bad’ enough for Sam Phillips at Sun Records, so he worked there as a session musician and songwriter, instead of being one of the Big Five – Elvis, Jerry Lee, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins  and Johnny Cash.  He had the odd hit here and there on one label and another, including at Phillips (“Lonely Weekends”) and at another with “Mohair Sam.”  He considered himself a jazz pianist at heart and wasn’t really getting anywhere*** until producer Billy Sherrill (who helped Rich to write this, along with Rory Michael Bourke and Norris Wilson) turned him into a country crooner, a man with clear experience in his voice, a man who’d been there and back and didn’t need a damn souvenir.  His success came when, as “The Silver Fox” this (and other songs, notably “Behind Closed Doors”) were hits not just in the world of country music but in pop charts, too.

The story is just about the oldest one in pop; he said something he shouldn't have, she leaves, he wakes up in the dawn to the knowledge he's wrong and is looking for her, his "sun" - the one thing he has worth having in the world.  His casualness (starting a song with "Hey") isn't far from The Chi-Lites' "Have You Seen Her" though you get the idea that Rich isn't about to go asking anyone who hasn't had the same experience themselves.  He's not about to talk to kids in the park about her; this is one guy speaking to another in a bar, a truckstop, the laundromat.  He asks if she's crying (not because she misses him too, but because he caused her such pain - this narrator knows he's in the wrong) - and that if she has been spotted, this intermediary should go and tell her that he needs her.  That's it, but the solemnity and maturity back it up, and I can imagine many a man hearing this song and maybe realizing, before it's too late, just how brutal and cold being alone is, that this song is one long exercise in hopeful hopelessness, that being without her is much, much worse than being with her.

As a girl when I heard this I didn't really understand how someone could be the "most" beautiful; someone either was beautiful or she wasn't.  How could he ever find her if there are so many beautiful women, I thought, this man is on a long, long quest.  And knowing now that beauty is also in the eye of the beholder, his quest seems even more hapless, that short of being like The Bee Gees and having a literal picture of her to show to others, or phoning the cops, he's never going to find her.  But the real story is the terrible gulf between the cold morning of his loss and the warmth she brings, as if there were no spring or fall in his life, just summer or winter.  And for his sins, he'll spend the rest of time asking for her, trying to describe the indescribable...

Next up:  the return of Glam Slam, football and the Fog.  

   

*It wasn’t the night I couldn’t go to the 8th  anniversary of the Diners as the guy who didn’t know about Al Green and I had an arrangement wherein I’d miss the dinner but get to hang out afterwards.  I did show up, feeling…odd, and when I asked the Diners if anyone knew anything about Stereolab, no one did.  It was 1997, and I’d just discovered them via a tv commercial for the new VW Bug, so it wasn’t like I was all that hip.  But it was alienating, nevertheless.  Something  much, much worse, however,  had already happened years before…and I will get to it on Then Play Long. 

 **There were plenty of times I'm sure she was puzzled by my musical knowledge (or lack of it) too.

***His exhaustion at being an outsider for so long can be heard in the b-side of this single, "I Feel Like Goin' Home"; this is the demo version.

Time To Say Goodbye: Peter, Paul & Mary: "Leavin' On A Jet Plane"

And so we step from swirling drama to plainspoken fact. The 70s are almost upon us and it is time to leave; even if we enjoyed it, it is over and the future is coldly blank, empty, as empty as a departure lounge once a plane has left; as empty as a life feels without that other person to share it.

What genre of music has been there, lurking in the background, the whole decade, ready to step up for this moment of separation and brave steps into the unknown? Why, folk of course.

And what is folk? That is something I have been pondering, and it’s a tougher question than I expected. It’s far easier to say what it isn’t; it’s not multiple costume changes, strobe lights and elaborate sets; it’s not a category on The X Factor/American Idol; it’s not exactly enamored of show business.

Folk music is of the people, for the people and by the people, hence its name. It celebrates and laments ordinary life, life as lived by the person(s) singing it, whether the story being told is personal , historical or observational. The great songwriting teams dutifully pounding away through the 60s at Motown, the Brill Building or elsewhere had not much to do with folk, though they certainly observed it – all the social struggles of the 60s had a voice in folk, indeed folk led the way (I am counting Bob Dylan as folk, for all intents and purposes here). The early 60s folkies got into rock simply as a way to (literally) amplify their message, and once that had been accomplished, reverted back to their folk/roots/country sounds by the end of the decade. Others just kept strumming and didn’t go rock at all, as it simply wasn’t for them; by far the most famous was Peter, Paul & Mary, who had a lovely hit (amongst many) with their self-deprecating “I Dig Rock And Roll Music” which wasn’t rock at all.

This song was recorded in 1967 (written in 1966 at the airport in Toronto by one John Denver*) and released in 1969, perhaps as a fond farewell of sorts to the decade; no doubt they had been performing it - both Peter, Paul & Mary and The Chad Mitchell Trio (Denver standing in for Mitchell). The song is direct and simple in its way, Mary taking the lead and giving the story - she's sad, she wants forgiveness and unity, but has to go, against her will. Anyone who has had to leave someone at an airport - Toronto or otherwise - will know the sad acceptance here, the longing, the necessary brevity...it is a hushed song, an uneasy one, but Peter, Paul & Mary had been around since 1961; before the psychedelic paisley freak-outs, before the go-go boots and paper dresses, before the British Invasion, even. They were the ones who helped to make Bob Dylan famous, and they are here to help say farewell to the decade (this was a #1 in the US, sitting neatly between two other songs of promised reunions, "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye**" and "Someday We'll Be Together"). After the agonies of "Ruby" and "Suspicious Minds" - country and rock - comes the actual departure with folk.

All music is folk music as Lester Bangs says, but I've always thought of it as music that is open, direct, perhaps a bit mysterious and poetical at times, but more than anything, immediate and public, earnest and funny at turns. Folk was there to wake people up, protest, empower, encourage and console; it was only right, at the end of a troubled decade, for it to come back and acknowledge the loneliness and longing at the end, when there was no choice (the 70s being that taxi honking its horn) but to leave. The future is calling, the past is gone, perhaps to be resolved in the future. But for now, a kiss and hug, quiet words, and then distance, the plane taking off into nothingness.

Whether people wanted it to end or not, the 60s were gone, but as we will see, that doesn't mean they will be forgotten; far from it. 1967 in particular haunts and reminds, popping up and flashing back when least expected. One time cannot help but grow and progress from the seeds of another, and folk continues on, true to itself, even if it's not getting into the charts as it once did***. What is left? For many, it's the only option left: the blues. Boogie is up next, but it's boogie with a purpose.


* I can only wonder if he had heard Gordon Lightfoot's "Early Morning Rain" and wanted to write something like it.

** A personal aside: I always find myself crying at the end of this, even though it's not a sad song, really. The fact that it's sung by fans at the end of games kind of makes it a folk song, in that people are singing it for their own purpose (as opposed to team songs, which are kind of like unofficial anthems).

*** That said, Bruce Springsteen's latest album Wrecking Ball is most certainly folk; as he first was an aspiring folk singer himself back in the mid-60s, this is no surprise.

The Black Sheep: Robin Gibb: "Saved by the Bell"

And now, dear readers, we turn away from big statement singles recorded live to the more mundane world of family struggles and "you're too beautiful to suffer" sentiments. Despite all the big happenings of the summer, there were still those who wanted a sad ballad and a pin-up for their locker; Robin Gibb was as likely a candidate as anyone (so he felt) and he was tired of having to squabble over who sang lead on Bee Gees songs. When a song of his was demoted to a b-side (the a-side being Barry's quite good "First of May"), he left, determined to have a solo career, knowing the audience for him was already out there. He was the runaway child of the group, the one his parents threatened to have made a ward of the state. His parents must have had second thoughts on this, and instead the whole family watched as he went his own way, musically and otherwise.

Thus, I cannot be too harsh over this song. Sure it's clunky; sure, Robin is as usual singing like a particularly lost lamb.

Even if there was no evidence of drug use, no one puts out a single like this totally straight; and the more I think about it, the stranger the song gets. Who is this "two" he mentions - him and his ex-girlfriend, or himself and some other guy? Has he had to lie about who he is in order for her life - a "carousel" of men - to continue peacefully? The whole aura here is of a man who is sacrificing himself to someone and then bleating about it, as if that would, or could, change things. Will this other man love her? He is crying for both of them, just in case he doesn't. Oh Robin, where will you go? "Now I'll walk down heartbreak lane" he sings at the end, needlessly*, rhyming with nothing else in the song. (Is it me, or does he also sing "heartbreak place" as well? And are either of these near a certain hotel on lonely street? Ah the mysteries of music.)

This is, in essence, a wail of a song that was simple enough to be a big hit and yet, for all that, not quite enough. Robin's Reign came next but was not a success; and Gibb doesn't recall making his next album, Sing Slowly Sisters at all, which may well point to stresses that the music itself was unable to ease. "Saved by the Bell" was the whole high point (commercially, at any rate) for Gibb, who returned to the Bee Gees in 1970, having had his say and said his piece (even if Sing Slowly Sisters wasn't ever officially released; I think bootlegs of it must have appeared in the 90s, but I'm not sure).

For a while, Robin Gibb got to make his own music, pained and melancholy and beautiful, in its own way. The weight of the world is on his shoulders, walking alone; a mixed-up kid, learning the hard way that independence means sacrifice and isn't always the joyous thing it's made out to be. For now he walks alone, apart from his brothers...who are next.


*By the overly orchstrated near funeral march pace, we already know this is a song of heartbreak, though not in the Housewives of Valium Court style, exactly.

He's Got The Whole World... : Fleetwood Mac: "Man of the World"

And now the focus shifts from the loud, sometimes obnoxious world of pop - a world where Peter Noone unfortunately can't find a jukebox - to something deeper, more primal. I am strongly tempted to say this is music coming from the very roots of all this music to begin with, as if the listener just went down a rabbit hole and was cast into sudden darkness, or descended into a cave. Why?

The blues boom of the late 60s in the UK was a reaction against things, as well as a continuation of what made those things possible in the first place. The blues is primal - John Lennon compared it to a chair; I tend to think of it as more like bread - and there were those who started in blues bands before going on to other things, those who remained loyal and those who never really could leave the blues in the first place. For so many UK musicians the blues was their first love, and after the Summer of Love that weirded so many out, that first love asserted itself as both a reaction and a return. Every town worth its yeast had at least once decent blues band, some going on to worldwide fame once they got going (Black Sabbath were a blues band originally, Led Zeppelin obviously came out of the blues, as did Free, Ten Years After, Deep Purple, etc*.)

At this point however, there was one band that held sway, and it was Fleetwood Mac, a band from south and west of London that had a woozy instrumental, "Albatross" already go to #1 in the chart. The blues scene - or at least some of it - might of thought of this as 'selling out' (i.e. having hit singles) but at this time record companies still wanted them to help get the word out and of course to make money, even if the leader and main guitarist of Fleetwood Mac was becoming increasingly alienated from the whole process of recording, touring, recording, touring...

For this is Peter Green's song.

It is quiet; pretty, like the girls he has seen, but guarded, unnerving. And then that line: "I just wish I'd never been born." But there he is, in his cave full of melody and longing, the clamor of life around him as he nakedly sings about how he wishes he was in love. But there is no one there. There is no Other, not even in the past. The pretty girls are just part of the outer world, but not his inner world of experience. That inner world is scarily barren and full at the same time, like a glittering cave of riches that serves no purpose as there is no one to share its beauty with...clearly this is Pluto before Persephone, miserable, alone, wishing he did not exist, living only to tell others how down he is, the wry guitar lines mangled and yet still beautiful, but overwhelmingly different.

That such a cry of anguish got to #2 is remarkable, to say the least; I imagine some bought it as they were fans, some because they identified all too well with the lyrics (not everyone enjoyed the Summer of Love) and some because the song just stood out from the rest of the chart, bracingly intimate and close - no big production here, no cheery message, no real aspirations to pop stardom. One man and his tale of having the world and having nothing; a palpable emptiness that portends something bigger...

For those who wanted the real sourdough thing, Fleetwood Mac were it; but Peter Green's growing alienation (not unlike Syd Barrett's, in some ways) would push the band's fate in ways they would barely comprehend at this time, including a young Californian who was listening to them and copying Peter Green, as if writing his own fate. There are big things afoot here, things that even in the self-mythologizing world of blues/rock are strange, as the 60s relentlessly grinds everything down to its essence, and ordinary songs of love (for the purposes of this blog) are no longer enough.

Next up: we go to the other root of popular music, and the other side of the equation.


*One other band I should mention is Chicken Shack, whose lead singer was one Christine Perfect. She liked Fleetwood Mac and was attracted to Peter Green but sensed he would be a little difficult, so she got to be friendly with their bass player, John McVie.

Sophisticated Misery: Englebert Humperdinck: "A Man Without Love"

It is easy to see that on the same block as Marriott and his bothersome neighbors, the Housewives of Valium Court have their own method of escape; not just through doctor-approved medication but through daydreams. There he is, unable to leave the house as he is crying (and real men don't cry in public) over his lost love. It was, perhaps, a Mediterranean romance - Spain, Italy, somewhere where (the Housewives think) Romance is constantly in the air and a broken heart is seen not as a mere scratch or bruise but as a near-fatal condition that must be treated with respect.

Crying is a funny thing in songs; it's an easy enough thing to sing about, but if you have the wrong voice for it, it renders the emotional outpouring as something more or less as emotionally involving as trimming the hedge or kneading dough*. It requires a big voice to handle those big emotions, and if Englebert here sounds less than believable (compared to say, Roy Orbison) he at least has the appropriate voice for the song and its Italian origins. (The song was originally written by Roberto Livraghi, Daniele Pace & Mario Panzeri as "Quando M'innamoro" for the Sanremo Festival, an Italian song competition that was the inspiration for Eurovision; Barry Mason wrote English lyrics.) Part of the reason this works is simply that so many I'm-going-to-stay-right-here-and-mope songs** were Englebert's territory already, but there is a languorous smoothness here as well, and the Housewives could easily imagine him wearing his silk dressing gown and eating his eggs Benedict and being as elegant as hell, and still suffering.

Loneliness is indeed a cloak he wears, as a more avant-MOR balladeer would sing, and if he can't go outside he is in a way just as imprisoned as his intended audience; what may look like more fromage to some was more than likely reality for many. That it has a slightly too-sweet aura about it - like a kind of glaze - adds to the sealed-for-your-protection feeling of immobility he's felt since she went away, after that Mediterranean romance.

Still, this immobility is cozy in way - there is a reassuring gentleness and suaveness in the music that guarantees that once the narrator (who recognizes himself as one of many lonely men, a member of a tribe if you will) gets over his loss and goes outside, he is bound to meet another woman and Romance will bloom again. For now he cries and can't go outside, though, and while that seems harsh at least his suffering isn't as acute as the one in this song, a song that brings romantic agony's endless and near-morbid condition only too close to home***. (That it didn't get into the Top 40 in the UK could in part be because of its intensity; it could also be because Motown music wasn't as of yet being pushed that much by certain DJs and music folk.) The Housewives of Valium Court are comforted in their way by this shared misery, thinking and feeling the common "He's too beautiful to suffer!" as they pause after housework or during the baby's nap; that maybe in a few years they might think that way about themselves is possible, but at this point marginal. For now they sit and imagine the Mediterranean breezes, exotic romance, meeting a lovelorn man while strolling by the sea...

Next up: a song that lives, like other things, in infamy.


*Witness the completely emotionally non-involving Jason Derulo single "Fight For You" where when he sings about crying he sounds like a robot. The overuse of Toto's "Africa" doesn't help much either.

**As opposed to Tom Jones, who is forever trying to get home and never really managing it.

***Roger Penzabene, the lyricist, wrote the song about his marital troubles; he killed himself on New Year's Eve, 1967. The Summer of Love had many victims, and the heaviness of '67 was beginning to crush many in '68.

On Guard For Thee: Crispian St. Peters: "You Were On My Mind"

"...a country with a rich heritage of identity crises and inferiority complexes, enough open space for everyone to co-exist in a state of complete aloneness, cold and snow and long winters to ensure cyclical depression for up to ten months a year, an endless supply of trees that could be cut down and fashioned into acoustic instruments of many varieties, and a shared sense of what it's like to grow up under the influence of The Tommy Hunter Show, Don Messer's Jubilee, The Friendly Giant and other TV fare with strong singer-songwriter content..."

Phil Dellio & Scott Woods, I Wanna Be Sedated



It is rare to have a look-in on Canada in this blog, and as you might expect whenever this does happen, there's an awful lot behind just the one song. As Phil & Scott write, there's a lot of time, space and wood in Canada, which adds up to a ton of music, sometimes cheery, sometimes, not. "You Were On My Mind" is as ambivalent a song as has been written about in this blog, in that - no matter who sings it - here it's St. Peters - just what is preying on the mind of the singer is never made clear. Is it the Other, who has dumped him/her? Or is it something more sinister?

In the world of folk (which is undoubtedly where we are - St. Peters is out in a field miming in a way that suggests he is lost in thought and the words are near-emanating from his heart) it can be both; "you" is somehow inescapable, maybe even a sign of something bigger that is hopeful and yet - that word again - ambivalent. I don't know if Sylvia Tyson wrote this about the end of a relationship or not, but the blues in her shoes and her worries seem to be competing with the persistence of this Other, and to me this Other seems to be winning out. Or could it be that no matter what her worries are, the Other is on her mind anyway and there hasn't been a break-up at all, just relationship difficulties?

As usual it's hard to listen to this and point to what is specifically Canadian about it, but that it's a far more complex song than usual, and it has an openness that strays into solitude...a normal condition, but here the Other is part of that large space that is in the back of all Canadian imaginations (certainly Glenn Gould will tackle this in his own way in his Solitude Trilogy) in that it is ALWAYS there, representing whatever freedom or aloneness means to the person beholding it. This may seem a big claim, but Canadian music differs from American at this point - "Four Strong Winds" (which was voted the top Canadian song of all time by CBC listeners) is full of romantic longing, grounded in the brutal realities of the seasons...is profoundly Canadian. St. Peters does a cool version of it, getting its urgency, the ambiguity that makes it as haunting as it is, but I cannot help but prefer the acidity of Tyson's voice. The aching emotions of '66 begin right here, teetering between wanting to forget and holding on to the memory in defence of something else even bigger...

Lend Your Voice: Petula Clark: "Downtown"

The man, in the dark, after he cries and perhaps is a bit cold and numb, turns on the radio, and hears this.

He is perhaps warmed by it, by the simple piano and then the unveiled band behind her, as if the city's core itself were made of music, bright and shiny and capable of lifting even the most tired and bedraggled soul. Of course he resists and tries to pretend that what is on offer - all the distractions - are beneath him or beside the point. But then it filters through slowly that it is just being out there that matters. He does not have to do anything but go and walk and look, really look and let himself become part of a greater whole. There is no great mystery to it, or conspiracy. Yes, the city is yours too. Do with it as you will. And yes, I am there, you might meet me, and we can exist, if only for a while. The city knows no time or particular emotion; it is what it is, and it accepts you, whoever you are.

It is easy to feel as if you don't mean very much, but then you can turn it around and say, it's just a city, of course; and cities are made of people. The idea of "life" making you lonely is no joke, and the city can only act as a bandage at first, while the real work goes on underneath. But all reviving souls need a distraction, and the city is there for you, if you can stand the "noise and the hurry."

Losing yourself to find yourself; getting rid of loneliness by becoming part of the lonely crowd - these are primal Sixties ideas and gathering together in order to do something good is a natural when there is a sudden boom in people who are young and don't have much else to do; but this song goes deeper than just addressing gawky, awkward wallflowers and hermits to go out and learn to socialize. In Canada a man the same age as Clark heard this song and was struck by it, and it was something of a soundtrack to his own outings, wherein he began to think of the voices of others - the sound of the crowd, if you will - as instruments in and of themselves, interweaving, contradicting, supporting, that the flow of life itself was music.

This was far beyond producer/songwriter Tony Hatch's idea of course - he simply wanted to get the song finished (it was, in the men's room minutes before recording) and give Clark a hit in English (she was doing much better in France than the UK at this point). It was a fragment he played for her at first, something he'd written hoping it would be recorded by The Drifters; Clark immediately recognized it was for her, and Hatch had only a few days to finish it. So in a way she is pouring herself into this song, singing directly to you to join her, in a way that is not just pretty or elegant but a personal invitation. There is a small clause in her "might" at the end, but this is because so many will turn out that she may not be able to see you. The song gives confidence to the listener that s/he will not be alone, whatever happens, and that includes the shattered man, gathering pieces of himself, recognizing himself in others, and others in himself.

Last Breaths: Cliff Richard and the Shadows: "Do You Want To Dance/I'm Looking Out The Window"

This presents two rather different versions of the Cliff Richard Experience; an experience which is rooted in the 50s (those lock-steps that he does with the Shadows) and yet the same song, as done by the Beach Boys just a few later (I cannot help but mention my fellow Californians, particularly since Dennis is singing lead here) is a song that verily defies you not to dance; the Cliff Richard/Shadows version sounds as if maybe you'd want to do a brisk minuet or perhaps the stroll, at best. I know it is unfair to jump into the future here, but the future in 1962 was very close to appearing; in a way this seems like the last breath, the last relic before something is about to happen - something that Cliff and the Shadows will bravely live through and endure in their own ways. But in the meantime, here they are doing their dance and being the polite and lovable rockers that they are.

And now we have Cliff's future, and thus a way out - a gentle mourning hum, softly hoping and waiting, the Shadows like a beneficent sun on Cliff's focused pain. He sits in his suit (a suit he claims to wear every day, just in case - not visible here, just audible here, alas) and sings the words as if they were almost too awful to sing. How can he be second best? How can he have fallen for someone who treats him like this? The main problem here is that Richard is just, lest we forget, 21 and cannot really be suffering as much as he claims here; but again the poignancy of this is that he can see into his future, wherein he is always there, ready and well-dressed and waiting, but no one calls; at the time this may have been just a song, but songs have a way of becoming uneasy reality after a while. The girls presumably loved this one and rightly found Richard too beautiful to suffer; Cliff and the Shadows' dancing had everyone happily tapping their toes. However it is late June 1962, and while heavy smog descends once again on London, Algerians are about to gain their independence and the Port Huron statement is written, printed and distributed across the U.S.; the polite world that Cliff Richard and the Shadows represent is coming to a close, with rougher and wilder voices just edging in from the wilderness.

Raw Not Cooked: Del Shannon: "Hey! Little Girl"

By 1962, Roland Barthes was probably already working on the idea of the grain of the voice; the punctum of the voice, if you will. Some songs work because the lyrics are so good; others work because the voice that sings is so, well, grainy that there is no way to ignore it. Del Shannon's voice is one that sounds almost perpetually on the edge of being too rough and out-of-key for proper singing; unlike the operatic Orbison, he jumps over the idea of a 'normal' or 'average' voice that could be expected from a pop single. It's not a non-voice as such, or an anti-voice, but there is a certain punctum here that takes a song as nominally average as this one and makes it into a virtual short story. He is walking the street; he sees her crying; he remembers wanting her and not being able to talk to her, even to learn her name. His open and honest growls and cries makes his desperation more than credible (and makes him the godfather to emo, along the way) and his addressing this girl is far more intense and anguished than the easy-going Bruce Channel - suddenly with this song the story* here deepens, the plaintive tone that probably started in the chansons of yore has come back with a vengeance.

Otis Blackwell (the song's writer) must have been happy that this was a much bigger single here than in the US; and it almost goes without saying that a certain group still to be accepted by a record label must have listened to him with keen interest, their own directness coming in part from Shannon's brave example.


*The story of the 60s in this case; a decade that is about to change in ways that were unthinkable to most, including a lot of musicians who were unaware that something big was about to happen. Shannon wasn't one of them.

Life Vs. Death: Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen: "Midnight in Moscow"

And so we are in 1962; a year when the past infiltrates the present and thus, the future. This is, after all, a traditional song played in a relatively traditional way; but it would be a mistake to think this as some kind of throwback to an older, perhaps wiser time in the midst of show tunes, pop music and so on. The traditional music (known as trad, as opposed to modern, jazz) craze was tied quite specifically in the UK to the anti-nuclear movement, a movement which grew out of the late 50s dismay with the Cold War and in the UK's involvement in the production of nuclear weapons. Every rebellious movement needs music of some kind, and trad jazz - for reasons that will become apparent - was the choice of the campaigners and followers of the CND - Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The world in 1962 was on the brink; people sensed that the arms race was getting far worse and much closer to home than they would like, and everyone alive knew about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, not to mention the newly built Berlin Wall. Post-war peace was beginning to look more like the run-up to yet another war.

"Anyone who doesn't like jazz has no real feeling for music, or people." This was first heard onstage in 1956, and it pretty much sums up what many young people (not teenagers, but not thirtysomethings either) felt, particularly those who were restless, rebellious, tired of the old UK and all it stood for and represented. Jazz was a simple wordless refutation of it all, representing staying up late, getting buzzed this way or that, and above all not conforming to whatever the 'establishment' thought was proper. Trad jazz nights went on into the wee hours, people took drugs and danced, flirted and fell in love - all with that special intensity of people who want to have a good time in the face of what looks like eminent destruction, not to mention madness. An insistence of life over death, ultimately; and if the CND is still in existence now, it is due to the failure of successive governments to see how pointless nuclear weapons are, not the CND's quiet and persistent efforts to get Trident, for example, stopped.

So trad's rise to number two here shows that the public is starting to catch on, whether or not they knew (I think they must have known) the context of the song - the nuclear clock is poised minutes before midnight, and a guy is missing his gal.

"Stillness in the grove, not a rustling sound/Softly shines the moon, clear and bright/ Dear, if you could know/How I treasure so/This most beautiful Moscow night."

Is this a song of not just love but solidarity? Written by and treasured by Russians in the 50s (and loved ever after), covered by Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen here, but I can well imagine a slightly older Jimmy Porter playing it to himself on a lonely night, to give himself some solace one cold Midlands evening. It is music that transcends and laughs in the face of danger and meaninglessness; it is the reason jazz meant so much to those born in the 30s. That it was such a hit everywhere shows that maybe things were going to be all right, after all.

One River Heading For The Sea: Al Hibbler: "Unchained Melody"

The room is dark. It is night. A man sits, unable to sleep, looking out the window, searching for the moon. He is alone; surrounded by so many men, he is indeed very alone.

I’ve never seen Unchained, but the movie is set in a prison in Chino, California – based on a book written by someone who worked there. The dilemma – does our main character stay in and serve his time and be guaranteed to see his wife and kids, or does he escape? At some point, perhaps as he gazes longingly out the window at night, this song plays – not this exact version, but this song. Unchained has faded into obscurity, but the song was recognized as an instant classic, nominated for an Oscar and being covered almost immediately – first as an instrumental, then by both Jimmy Young and Al Hibbler. By June of ’55, they battled for number one, Hibbler getting second place, but surviving ably as it is one of the best versions of the song (and there have been tons).

“Unchained Melody” is both named after the movie and also after the song’s structure itself – it feels a bit improvised, a bit loose, with lots of room for the singer to move and express him/herself. Certainly in the Righteous Brothers’ version there is a grandeur and longing that are practically operatic, for instance – but it is easy to take this song and simply belt it out as an expression of missing the Other and miss out on all the nuances. Those singers (such as, oh, Tom Jones for instance, and as another example, Robson & Jerome) forget that the lyrics are ‘sung’ by a man in prison. He needs his Other intensely and yet also worries that she doesn’t love him anymore or perhaps has found someone knew. He wants her to wait for him, but does she? He is beside himself to know how she feels, but he has no idea, no clue. Al Hibbler sings with some doubt but also some reassurance – as if this song is a lullaby he sings to himself to keep himself going. (Whether Hibbler's being blind from birth has anything to do with this understanding, I don't know - he sings the song with great sympathy, if I can put it that way). At the same time, it is formal enough - sweet strings, noble singing, nothing that would upset Lord Reith should he offhandedly hear it one morning. But Hibbler's "to....me" is humble and wishful, expanding the song into a prayer for anyone who has been away from anyone for too long, who is anxious to know that they are indeed loved.

If you know very well you're loved, The Goons' version is perfect, complete with a cry to "Make it fresh!" in the instrumental break. Clearly something rambunctious and impolite was heading towards the charts, as the smooth 50s gave way to something rougher and looser. But for now, Hibbler is a step forward to more open-throated singing (as opposed to Young's much more formal and British version) and the eventual appearance of r&b on the UK charts.