Root Down: Ike and Tina Turner: "Nutbush City Limits"

If the whole late 60s/early 70s vibe, in albums anyway, was the constant longing for home - to find a home, to go back home, to be confused as to where or what "home" meant anymore - well, for Tina Turner her hometown was Nutbush, Tennessee, and she has her own song here (Ike Turner wrote the music but for whatever reason let Tina have the full credits) to explain just why she isn't there anymore.  Or does she?

It wasn't known to the general public at the time, but is now very well known - that Tina was in an abusive and volatile marriage with Ike*, and during those last years (things were bad at this time, and about to get worse, with Ike's alcoholism and cocaine addiction) I have no doubt this song played a big part of her eventual self-liberation.  Because, famously (and not too long after this clip from the Cher show) she left Ike with almost nothing to her name, nothing but her Buddhist belief and a sense that she had had more than enough.  "Nutbush City Limits" is a song about roots, beginnings, what makes a person a person - in this case, growing up in a small town (it's not actually a city).  You get the idea it was a place where not much happened (it's a "quiet little community") where people went certain places on certain days ("You go to store on Friday/You go to church on Sunday") and yet the song is so funky that you just know the rest of the week is a push-and-pull between self-respecting neatness and propriety ("Twenty-five is the speed limit") and the gin house where, if you are arrested for drunkenness, you don't get bail, just salt pork and molasses.  There are clear lines in Nutbush ("You go to fields on weekdays/And have a  picnic on Labor Day") and if you are young Anna Mae Bullock then you either fit in or you don't; but as someone once said, a beginning is a place to start and how many musicians have come from places like this?  Almost all of them, I imagine (and even if they didn't, they will say they felt as if they did).  Tina sings this with pride - this is her town, her roots, something Ike cannot take away from her - and as narrow and regulated as it sounds, this is where she is from, quite literally - and while there is no way she could go back to it, it's within her.  The most significant line for me is "You have to watch what you're putting down" - i.e., if you don't conform in some way then you just have to leave, though as it happened Tina left due to family turmoil and was brought up in several different towns, Nutbush being one of them.  Maybe Tina wrote this as a reminder that she was, before she'd gotten onstage in St. Louis to sing with Ike, a person of her own, shaped by experiences and places and that that was worth remembering, in and of itself. 

That this song was done by her several times more (and was done as part of Brian Johnson's audition for AC/DC, and was covered by Bob Seger - it brings the rock and the funk**) shows how important it is to her, how maybe writing it was her first step in finding herself (if I can use 70s psychology speech) and liberating herself from Ike.  Is she still there?  I can't help but think it's a fond song, a proud one, a song about overcoming limitations and actually appreciating those limitations as solid, near-tangible things.  It's not nostalgic in any way, but a badge of toughness; if I survived there, I can survive this.  Life outside the sequin/high-heel shimmy does exist; and sure enough, she learns about Buddhist prayer and somehow makes it through.

Next up:  even doing a cover, he's all the rage. 

*Summed up for me and countless others in the movie What's Love Got To Do With It? in the "Eat the cake, bitch" scene. 

**This was a #2 Radio Luxembourg hit, and the last real hit the couple had in the US pop chart - a bigger hit in the UK, despite/because of its subject matter, I think.

Time and Again: Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood: "Did You Ever"

And now, with a knowing glance or two, we are back in the world of grown-up love; the kind that is casual, deliberately so, where the fresh-faced adoration of The New Seekers has become something else - an acceptance of love lost and yet still remaining.  This is love, or a kind of love, the easygoing kind that has behind it a kind of regret or nostalgia that things cannot be as they once were; neither Nancy nor Lee is giving much away here plotwise, other than that she is with someone now, not that her father (always a loaded term here; it's Frank, after all) knows...yet. This song is full of warmth and humor and tenderness, all undercut by Nancy's audibly raised eyebrow and Lee's drawl, suggesting he is content with just seeing her again and getting the lowdown on what is really going on in her lovelife.  How has she been?  The "8 or 9" shows that he is well aware that she's been up to something, is playing the field - was he the first?  The third?  It doesn't matter, but now she has met the one, perhaps, younger and handsomer than him, "in his prime."  (This is something she may or may not be proud to relate; it also makes me wonder just how far back these two go.)  There is a wryness here, along with the warmth; they both know nothing is going to happen, but "it" - and besides the obvious, who knows what that "it" really is.  They do it "all the time" - especially him - but maybe they are content to think about it more than actually do anything; this is probably tougher on him than on her (from the sounds of it, he's stopped by her place en route to somewhere else, unless the bus at the end is an excuse). 

The joy of the song is that they are both happy - I think - with their situations as they are; nothing else needs to happen in order for us to know anything - there is no "next" here, just the contentment of hearing two people with a past, who maybe were a couple for a while, until she moved on...and they are just catching up now, missing each other but without that strong magnetic pull they once had, orbiting each other and parting, lazily flirty and perhaps saying things with their eyes that we, the listeners, can only imagine.  That she's found someone new but is still interested in him - genuinely interested (this would be a very mean song if she didn't care for him anymore) maybe shows that they have a future; there he is in his jeans and checked shirt, there she is wearing a halter top and maxiskirt, and they are still half in love, the longing still there, the fondness still evident. 

Maybe this song isn't just about a couple but about the complex relationship the public at large has to the 60s; still attached but obviously separated, never able to go back and have things the way they once were.  Too much has happened.  Do folks think about the 60s and what was possible then - and might still be possible now - all the time?  Remember how many were still attached, who were still idealistic and optimistic and also a little lost, as if the neat paths had just disappeared and they found themselves in wilderness, literally or figuratively.  "Back to the garden" Joni sang, and so folks tried to get back, only to find there was no there there, so to speak.  Nancy and Lee know this already, but also know that there is satisfaction in just thinking and longing, remembering what was and - who knows? - what may or may not happen again.  He can live on that hope, and she may just have found her man...or not.  The choices are still open, their love is still free, the complex and gorgeous world has so much to offer. 

Next up:  a history lesson for the kids. 

As Good As It Gets: Lynn Anderson: "(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden"

"I believe that 'Rose Garden' was released at just the right time. People were trying to recover from the Vietnam years. The message in the song — that if you just take hold of life and go ahead, you can make something out of nothing — people just took to that."  - Lynn Anderson

The early 70s was a time, amongst many things, of people who were either pulling back the reins from 60s excesses or people who were sufficiently mellowed out by them to continue being casual and laid back right through the 70s.  Opposites attract, and that seems to be where this song (an NME #2) steps in.  The woman is a (cold) realist, a Ms. Light-at-the-break-of-Dawn type who seems to be upbraiding her more good-timey Other here for some untold reason.  “There’s going to be some rain” she says, as if the “melancholy” other didn’t already know about rain; and she compares happiness to a rose garden, when anyone who’s had to deal with roses knows darn well that where there’s roses, there’s thorns*.  I begin to wonder exactly what on earth is going on in this song – why is he sulking and pouting (presumably)?

Why does she say “Come along and share the good times while we can”?  Somewhere in the background here there’s a clock ticking, ticking, and for all I know it’s a biological clock.  Is there a baby on the way?  Has he been drafted? The song was written by Joe South, and thus there any number of odd undercurrents going on here.  There is clearly a problem between the narrator and the Other, but what it is – besides general dissatisfaction – isn’t at all clear.  The line “so smile for a while and let’s be jolly” is perhaps the least happy version of happiness this blog has yet encountered; and Lynn Anderson’s rather acidic voice makes this more than clear; the clock is running, for certain, on a relationship where one person has hopes and dreams and the other is unable, it seems, to even sympathize with their longings. 

Indeed, the narrator seems to equate such dreams as “big diamond rings” and promising the moon, very traditional romantic tropes that are more or less getting the Lysol treatment here, sprayed and wiped away like so many germs on a kitchen counter**.  I know that country music prides itself on down-home realism, but this is a bit too stern-rolling-pin-and-apron even for me, and I’m related directly to people who can more than identify with this song.  At the end I can only wonder why these two are still together – and that “while we can” hangs over this song and dominates it much more than any promises of real, lasting love (again, represented by the whole “still waters run deep” trope, which South turns into a potential drowning hazard).  “I beg your pardon***” the song says, and then goes on to trample all over any ideas of mercy or pardoning whatsoever.

The rather cold tone of this song was used perfectly in 1988 by Canada’s own Kon Kan in their hit “I Beg Your Pardon”; a KLF's Manual-inspired worldwide hit that mixed this song up with a good imitation of New Order, disco samples and modern technology to depict a relationship that is on its way out, because of the other’s inability to commit; Anderson’s despairing voice makes a lot more sense here, somehow.  Perhaps some songs are better sampled than in the original? Taking hold of life may make sense to some, but here it’s a rather sorry consolation; are the dreams and hopes of the 60s so trampled that settling for a little happiness sounds like a victory?

Up next:  some songs are beyond me.      

*As Poison kindly reminds us in a decade and a half’s time.

**In a kitchen that perhaps has a harvest gold, burnt orange or avocado theme.    

***I Never Promised You A Rose Garden is also the title of a semi-autobiographical book about a young woman’s struggles with deep depression; it came out in 1964 and plotwise has nothing to do with this song, though in true 70s tradition it was made into a movie in 1977, as part of the 70s strand of young-women-struggling-with-society-by-going-nuts movies, including a really bad version of Plath’s The Bell Jar and Sybil.  The 70s was obsessed by “issues” and “movements” and being frank and open, which is why so many remember the decade with a little embarrassment, even in the U.S. 

This Land Is Our Land: Clarence Carter: "Patches"

And now we go back to Detroit, of all places, for a song about rural Alabama.  Native Georgian General Johnson wrote (and The Chairmen of the Board recorded) this song, but it took off when a real son of Alabama, Clarence Carter, covered it. 

As the descendant of a whole line of farmers, I can feel this song in my bones, even though I’m not from the South*.  A farm is a way of life, a perilous one, and dependent on many things, primarily Mother Nature herself.  To be born on a farm is to be born attached to Earth in a way that either attracts or repels; my father was born at home, on the farm, and yearned to get away from it, but it’s hard to take the farm out of the boy, and his appreciation of food – fruit in particular, but all food – is always something I remember about him.  He left home at 18, to pursue the arts, become sophisticated, but he had the stoicism and patience of a farmer, even if he wasn’t one.

Unlike “Patches” he wasn’t the eldest in his family – he was the youngest in fact – but that heavy mantle of responsibility was there, too.  Carter sings about his life as if it was fated, as if no matter where he goes he hears his father reminding him of what he had to do, no matter what.  The father dies of sheer exhaustion before "Patches" is a teenager, and unlike “Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp” his mother stays right there on the farm, doing the things a farmer’s wife always does, no more, no less.  She doesn’t remarry (since this is rural Alabama I’m guessing a lot of the eligible men have gone north, to Detroit perhaps) and the son carries the weight of his whole family – in effect his world – on his shoulders.  There is no bravado here, no defying expectations, just hard work and hoping that the crops will last until they’re ready to be harvested. 

Carter sings the song as if he’s singing it on behalf of every kid who had to stay on the farm instead of being able to leave it and getting to explore the world – to show the solid roots of family, roots that make sure he cannot leave, and as far as I can tell he is still there on the farm, taking care of it like his father told him to decades ago, and will be there until he dies.  He is attached to his family and the farm in a profound way, a scruffy kid inside, older than his years.  You don’t have to have a farming background to understand that attachment; the farm was his father’s and is now his, and he respects his father by tending the farm, which has actual crops and bugs and has to be sown and harvested, but the farm is something else too.  It is his father; it becomes his father, depending on him as much as his father did.  It is a simple and moving story, ancient in a way, a story that takes place way out in the woods in Alabama but could be anywhere, any place a father puts trust in a son and the son, despite hardships, carries out that trust.  1970 has brought many realities to the fore, but none are as basic as this one.

Next up:  hm, did I mention my father was a Mennonite?  And that we’re pacifists?

*My father was born in rural Nebraska, at the beginning of the Great Depression. 

Will The Circle Be Unbroken?: Elvis Presley: "In The Ghetto"

And now, a year after he staged a dramatic comeback - as if to remind everyone, including himself, that he was the King and there could be no doubt about it - Elvis nearly reaches #1 again, stopped only by a song that was automatically taken up by the IRA as their anthem. What is going on here? The top two songs in the land are classics - anyone who hears them can tell that - and neither are love songs? Some might find this odd, but this is just what pop music can do - bend and alter to address what the public wants and needs, and from Elvis they had had enough of the songs about girls for now.

This is the King addressing his subjects, singing as if he has to be persuaded to do so, sombre and compassionate, narrating a story that (without having to explain) he knows all too well himself. Elvis grew up poor, he was looked down upon, he didn't fit in - but he had his music as a shield and an escape. A way out: and his way out turned out to be an open door, a door so many walked or ran through afterwards.

If his comeback was all about showing he still could rock the house, this song came afterwards, written by one Mac Davis*. Its original title was "The Vicious Circle" and it depicts a life of misery, first for the mother who doesn't need another child and then for the violent and early end for the young man, who learns about violence young and ends up a victim of it, not even being able to get out of the ghetto, and as he is mourned another boy is born to a mournful woman, possibly his own, though that's not directly inferred...

And yet some don't like this song! Maybe they think beneath it all it's kind of cheesy; there is some distinctly American pathos about it just because it's Elvis and in the real world Elvis is rich and has been for some time, and oh look here he is condescending towards social commentary. But that line of thinking ignores what Elvis actually did, which was rebel and make money on his own terms, and if that let him make a bunch of rather silly movies which barely had any real rock 'n' roll in them, well, he could always make a great gospel album (he did, in 1967), then show everyone that he was still able to justify his wealth by getting down in a way that revived rock 'n' roll all by itself.

If Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper's "Elvis is Everywhere" states that "Elvis is everybody" then it's only rock logic to conclude that Elvis himself had a bit of everyone in him, including this poor ghetto boy who got a gun and a car one night and had high ambitions and desperation, just as Elvis had himself, once upon a time...Elvis mourns that ambition as much as anything else, that waste, and while this song is set in Chicago there are ghettos everywhere, and thus the song resonated in the UK as well, where Belfast was ever in the back of people's minds, and this song too could be seen as an anthem of sorts, a lament, of what had happened before and was now happening again, rooted in sectarianism, this time.

All this has been heard and comprehended from Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds (a cover of it was their first single) to Three Six Mafia, from Dolly Parton to Cartman from South Park. In truth the song does have a streak of pathos in it, in that the story itself never ends (and is thus pathetic) and yet Elvis is able to take the song on as his own, maybe because he's experienced his own pathetic 60s, as epitomized by his increasingly unnecessary movies; and so he looks at himself here obliquely, remembering his own daring ambition and mourning the death of a symbolic young man. It is like he has come back to first prove he can rock, and then recognize the fact that all are not as lucky as he is, and that this is a cycle which should end, as it brings nothing but misery to those who experience it. And yet it reflects the lives of so many of his audience; he is coming to them, so to speak, to show he does understand, even if in his own life he is removed from the circumstances...that there is a bit of himself here, a bowing down to those who still struggle, a recognition that what separates them isn't that wide a gap as you'd expect. The explosive power of Elvis is toned down here, as if to say: there but for the grace of God...and so it is also a hymn, though a different one from before.

Next up: a bedroom in Montreal and a 'happening' caught on tape, for all time.


*Who also wrote the the "satisfactionin'" "A Little Less Conversation" for Elvis and went on to fame for himself in the 70s, with songs like "Baby Don't Get Hooked On Me" and "Stop And Smell The Roses."

The Knowing: Dean Martin: "Gentle On My Mind"

Sometimes the invisible is just as important as the visible; intangible, tangible. As important as it can be to have an experience of something, it is in some ways even more rewarding to know that that experience is yours and yours alone, softly tucked away somewhere, to rest upon when you need it. It can make a harsh world seem more friendly and bearable, and the rough life smoother, more elegant.

I see a clear path; one away from the city, the town, the village even. It's where he walks and remembers and walks some more, parallel to the railroad track perhaps, nearby some woods where he's found a safe place to sleep...he's away from her and yet she is always there, an interior night light of sorts, a sureness that gives the randomness and, yes, repetitiveness of his life an extra dimension. As he talks/sings he unwinds his tether to her, one that is the most slack imaginable without being undone altogether; neither is one for clinging or even letter-writing.

She and he have a bond; that bond exists not as two irresistible soul mates but almost as two sides of one person, one forever there and content to see him when she can, the other out there in the civilized wilderness, rough and forever on the move. There is no great unrequited longing of romance but instead the sure knowledge that she is there, a quietly profound presence that soothes like medicine and is as solid as the earth itself. He may roam, but he knows there is that one path, that floor he can sleep on...and this gives his freedom a sweetness that takes any sense of deprivation or desperation away.

This is indeed the sweet life without caring; a genial warmth that spreads easily from the singer to the listener, and while Glen Campbell had the biggest hit with John Hartford's song in the US, it was Dean Martin's in the UK, and his laissez-faire style of singing (on his tv show he does it so lazily I can't always make out the words; not sure if Liz Fraser ever heard this or not) suits the words perfectly. The song is carefree, open, wide as the plain I imagine the narrator walks and knows well; and Martin's cheerful embracing of that joy is a pleasure, and you can imagine happily walking along with him, sharing that gurgling soup, if not envying the fact that she is constantly - though not heavily - on his mind. Is he going away from her, going towards her, orbiting her? All are possibilities, but that she and he have that connection is the point, and essentially as long as they are both safe, they are both happy.

This was Dean Martin's last UK hit in his lifetime; it neatly helps to end the decade, to give notice that the early glamorous Mad Men 60s had not entirely disappeared (and how much more secure and at ease this is than Sinatra's persistent hit of the time, "My Way"). It is also damn refreshing to hear a song of love that goes along at its own pace (in a faster tempo than "Honey" - this is the flip side of that in many ways) and is coolly but glowingly happy, instead of miserable and maudlin. Extracting the sweetness in life and teaching the zen of being happy by making others happy - of enjoying the ride, even if he has to hug himself - that is what Martin is doing here, and as it is so many times, it is a stark contrast to the top song, which is one of insecurity, aching and dread. Blessed were those at this time who could live life so easily; whose only needs were a place to eat and store a sleeping bag, catch a passing train and drink the waters of memory.

Laugh Until You Cry: Bobby Goldsboro: "Honey"

There are certain songs that are disliked and then there are songs that are hated. Of the many songs I get to write about in this blog, this is one of the most hated, to the point where it is some people's least favorite song of all time, which is saying something.

That the song is hated so much at least shows that it touches something primal, and in this case that primal feeling is a surprising one: dignity. This song, which tries so hard to be heart-tugging and tear-wringing, gives us a "kinda dumb and kinda smart" figure whose death, just from that description (and the lament at the beginning, not to mention the funeral home 'your call is important to us' music) is beyond foretold: it's mandatory. Once again we are at home, seemingly outside, with a man who is telling his sorry tale to a 'friend' (presumably the audience, as this man doesn't have friends - I'll get to that in a second) who is given a description of a woman so utterly depressed and lonely, that tears may indeed be shed, though another emotion might come to the fore afterwards...

It is hard to kick, if only metaphorically, a man when he's down; the narrator here is sorry and trying to be "good" and misses Honey, but it is he who is himself the cause of his own misery. He laughs at her when she plants a tree; he, even though he's her husband, never seems to question why she might be crying, or even why she would wreck the car. She is, to him, "young at heart" and perhaps messed up in ways he can't understand, but his lack of curiosity or empathy are his undoing. Is her crying "needlessly" due to his lack of sensitivity, care? There is a coldness at the heart of this song that gives me the chills; placidly Goldsboro tells the pathetic tale of a woman who would literally rather die than live with a man who cannot give her the dignity of being a real, living person whose life is worth taking seriously. That he keeps saying he misses her and would be with her "if he could" doesn't help matters any; sure his life is an "empty stage," but by the end of the song he surely deserves his fate, and indeed is doomed to repeat his story again and again, about the "kinda dumb" girl he mocked and condescended to while she was alive, and now pathetically mourns*.

That this song was such a hit shows a few things: there's no accounting for taste, some people don't listen to lyrics, and that if they do the wash of sentiment can outweigh anything else. The dignity of the listener is ultimately what is offended here, as the audience is called upon to be sympathetic with a narrator who is lamenting a death that did not need to happen, one which he no doubt contributed to; marriage is unity, but there was no unity in this one and I can't help but feel that I am listening to a story narrated by a man who is more than "kinda dumb" myself.

Bobby Russell was responsible for writing this, though, and not Goldsboro (who, to his eternal credit, didn't think much of the song and had to, according to Randy Bachman, keep doing takes as he kept laughing during the recording - right at the end you can sort of hear a suppressed smile). Russell also wrote the only slightly less unbearable "The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia"; Goldsboro went on to host his own tv show and have other, less maudlin, hits. Just why he recorded this I don't know; perhaps he was needled into it, and perhaps it was simply that he needed a hit...

That this was such a success (it got to #2 again in the UK in '75; I'm just posting about it the once) could only be explained by a nationwide sulky/self-pitying mood that this song plays into like a home run with men on all bases**; but even here not once does the narrator look at himself and try to figure out what went wrong, and my only (thankfully unnecessary) fear is that he will fall in love with another woman who is "young at heart" and he will be just as callous to her and the whole thing will happen all over again.

I wonder if any of the Housewives of Valium Court had their consciousness raised by this song; in the shared miseries of '68 something is stirring, even as the songs of women's deaths and woes continue to pile up.

Next up: A woman's gotta do what she's gotta do. I guess...


*This song reminds me, of all things, of the sadness that Thomas Carlyle had after his wife Jane's death; not that she killed herself, but that she had a miserable life with him (he read her journals after her death) and he never really appreciated the continual sadness and anger that she felt.

*This song was #1 in the US in the weeks after Dr. King's assassination; having this reach the top was just more misery than was needed.

Don't Touch That Dial: Vikki Carr: "It Must Be Him (Seul Son Sur Etoile)"

And now we step, seemingly simultaneously, into the swanky world of international hotels and the less elegant rooms of that most put-upon figures in pop music, single girls. It is alternately grand and hysterical, tough (what other song of the period uses the word "chump"?) and maudlin. Carr sings the song as best she can (it was originally a song by Gilbert Becaud and Maurice Vidalin; the English lyrics are by Mack David, Hal David's older brother), giving a three-alarm-fire performance of desperation that nearly stood alone in the Top Ten against the invasion of strangeness and beauty that was the Summer of Love. You might wonder how something that reeks (if I can put it that way) of obsessive-compulsive behavior and disdain for others (that "puppet on a string" reference, as if she's in a position to judge) could be so successful, while songs like "See Emily Play," "Strange Brew," and "Paper Sun" didn't get to #2?

The answer is, that as receptive to psychedelia as the some of the British public were, there was a large segment that found it kind of...scary. Not hide-behind-the-sofa scary, but disturbing and weird nevertheless. (It should also be noted that psychedelia's greatest audience, from Sgt. Pepper on down, was in albums, not singles.) What was left for those who didn't dig the new scene, and who weren't crazy for Motown/Stax? Songs like this one, where our heroine has a relationship with the nameless/characterless "him" that makes you think she's virtually a prisoner of her love, unable to see how maybe if she just didn't answer the phone once and got out and mixed things up a little - instead of being so available - he might actually take some real interest in her. It is as if the whole world consisted of nothing but her and him, and all her praying and subsequent dashed hopes and wailing, etc. are all that matters.

This is yet another in I don't know how many songs of the 60s where the woman suffers and suffers and the song succeeds (commercially I mean; it was a big hit in the US as well) and it walks that very fine line between telling like it is and masochism. This puts Carr in the same unfortunate boat as Janis Joplin, who had to live with guys getting off on the pain in her songs - different crowd, of course, but the same dynamic is in place, whether it's in the glamorous world of Carr or the freaked-out one Joplin inhabited. (Oddly enough, they're both from Texas, of the same generation and may well have known of each other. Who knows?)

What is clear is that there are those who like the experimental and those who would just as soon hear a song of woe sung with unironical conviction; these two audiences don't crossover and the latter is taking over the singles chart, just as the former is taking over the albums. For some the 60s were just fine until about now; for others, it's just getting started. The generation gap is clear, and by the time the next song appears, pirate radio will be illegal and stations will begin to disappear from the dial. This lowest-common-denominator everyone-can-relate song will persist in the charts, the single woman's tormented relationship with her phone will also continue...but it's the sob stories that make the Summer of Love a lot less cool than it could have been, and it's not ending here...

One Take's Enough: The Troggs: "Wild Thing"

Following the explosion of '64, everyone but everyone wanted to be in a band, and if they didn't have the songwriting chops well then (as we have seen) there was always someone somewhere writing songs in the hopes that their version of what rock should/could/oughta be would take off. Chip Taylor wrote this, born-in-'64 band The Troggs - from southern England and given to much arguing, as later tapes* would show - recorded it, played it on a tv show called Thank Your Lucky Stars (not, as it sounds, a talent show but one where all the big groups of the day would come on and mime songs; it ended not long after The Troggs appeared because the no-fun Musicians' Union didn't approve of it). And thus it was a huge hit. If I seem to be downplaying its importance - which I am, kind of - it's only to highlight that ye olde garage rock had already been going for some time in the US, and that this song coincided with its apex - there is a multi-volume series of cds that are nothing but garage rock/punk from '66, stupefying in its intensity and determination to be different and maybe even successful, if only regionally. (As an example, here's "Love at Psychedelic Velocity" by the L.A. band The Human Expression**.)

While "Wild Thing" is raw and so laissez-faire it has an ocarinasolo (the only one in pop I know of), it is also about as subtle as a 345 bus in a rush going over a speed bump and about as pleasant. What can I say? I want songs to use the word 'groovy' in an, um, groovier way, and the guy is obviously just bossing his girl around...sorry to be so picky but if she makes his heart sing, why does she have to do anything else? I know garage rock is supposed to be stoopid in a good way...but this is, to borrow from another garage rock classic, just pushin' too hard on me. It needs more...something to make it really work for me; something like, oh, this.



*Warning: lots of swearing here. These tapes are beloved in rock by the way, because every rock band bickers and argues over dumb stuff...fairy dust though? Hee.


*"Wild Thing" sounds feral and direct and plain compared to a lot of the garage rock that came before and after; I tend to think it has lasted because it's relatively simple to play and if you don't have an ocarina handy you can just whistle, as was originally intended. In a chart that included "Paint It Black," "Shotgun Wedding" and "Over Under Sideways Down" The Troggs found themselves in good company, but it was fast company as well; how fast we will see soon enough.

Having Fun, Feeling Numb: The Everly Brothers: "The Price of Love"

The persistence of certain Fifties acts in the Sixties is interesting, mainly because pop music was so young there (I'm guessing) was barely a perception of time passing - I'm not sure when 'oldies' became 'oldies' as such, but then I tend to think of musical time as being quite different from regular time...in that the Everlys here seem to be rocking away as usual, only the context for what they are doing has changed.

Before they'd be onstage by themselves, or with a band, but here there's a near-riot going on, a riot that comes out of a mixture of joy and determination. It is as if - and this is just the feeling I get here - that through partying and having fun something is being avoided, but also there is a real joy in immersing yourself in the music that can't be denied. All this next to a song wherein a man who has lost in love is himself determinedly drinking and dancing with every girl he meets, but it's no good, the cost of his heartbreak cannot be paid that way, no matter how he tries. He's having fun trying, but he always ends up alone, with bittersweet memories and a vague sense that some things can't be solved by throwing yourself into fun. He has to think, but who in this time really wants to do that very much?

And so they are in time with this song they wrote themselves, still popular in the US and becoming even more popular in the UK; the Everlys still have that marmalade sting in their voices and doesn't the song sound...Beatles-influenced? Which would only make sense as they influenced the Beatles in the first place. What goes around comes around, or perhaps doesn't need to go anywhere in the first place...

"The Price of Love" came second to Elvis, another Fifties survivor - however, next we go back to the New, to a group whose importance and fame never quite matched up.

Playing His Ace: Ned Miller: "From A Jack To A King"

After the world-shaking clamor of The Beatles it is heart-warming and surprisingly reassuring to come across this; a song where a man is simply grateful that he took a chance, though as usual there are odd moments. I don't mean that the sentiment is off, because there is a universal emotion here - he proposed, she accepted, he feels like a king. To have this as a card game is what seems odd; as if she was an opponent and not a sweetheart. (Perhaps he had a rival for her that we don't hear about? If they are in love, why should "Lady Luck" have any say in the matter?) But the clearest feeling here is sheer relief; he says he wasn't sure (ah how I remember my anxiety!) and that there was a look in her eye (dubiousness? equal anxiety masked as something else?) and those are now gone, washed clean by her losing/giving in to him (if this is a card game, and his hand defeated hers, so to speak). His success is genuine and heartfelt, though - the song's story is clear enough, and the melody is simplicity itself (Miller wrote it as well as performed it). (For a female version of this, "Your Love Is King" by Sade must be it.) This is as much what folks in Scotland and Northern England were listening to as The Beatles, a constituency that was the same as Jim Reeves (who of course covered this song, as did Elvis). I can imagine a pub, a singalong, a basic story shared, a simple melody echoing around - humble and proud too, a good counter to the excited noises from next door...

(One thing that is endearing about this was that Miller suffered from terrible stage fright, and during the pre-video age this was most awkward for a performer. There will always be those who love to create but hate being in public, and Miller is definitely one of those.)

Homage to the Killer: Cliff Richard and The Shadows: "It'll Be Me"

There is (by this time) something of a tradition building in the UK pop culture of UK artists covering songs by US artists who but for reasons of, oh, extreme notoriety the US artist can't tour the UK, and so hey presto, there's a UK hit from nowhere, seemingly, and thus I only get to mention the last man standing (as of mid-March 2011), aka Jerry Lee Lewis. Yes, nice clean-cut young men do well from a man who does, so to speak, not so well; this looks dubious at first but the song more than stands up as, amazingly, an engaging and warm thumbs-up tribute to the Killer himself. (Lewis had a hit in the charts at this time with the perhaps-not-too-well-thought-out "Sweet Little Sixteen.") Richard and the Shadows sound as if they are digging into a good square meal, Richard in particular getting extra satisfaction by doing his best Lewis impersonation/homage and the song itself is a joy, the man searching for the woman in her sugar bowl, on her fishing hook, on Mars - there is not a hint of desperation or stalkerishness about him, he is just a big friendly guy who wants a certain girl's attention. Considering the hapless passivity of Cliff's last appearance here, it is good to hear him up and happy again (as he almost always is with the Shadows) and giving Lewis his due when the man needed a few friends. (Though I am sure he would have preferred to have the hit himself - it was, however, the b-side to "Great Balls of Fire" so that wasn't to be.)

I should also note that it was - once again, fact fans - Elvis who kept Cliff and the Shadows from getting to number one; also that by the time I get back to Cliff, things in pop will be very different - the scene he plays a part in now, where singers sing and songwriters write and only here and there do they overlap (hello, Brill Building) will not be long for this world; the UK covers of US hits will alas continue, but as the Cuban Missile Crisis begins, another crisis also takes hold - one that crops up on a near solar spots-basis in pop - what happens when the charts get stale? What is the point where things change? They are about to change with the next entry, one that comes from the most unlikely of singers, and it goes on from there.

A Singin' Thistle: Lonnie Donegan: "The Battle of New Orleans"

It is with a little trepidation that I arrive at the end of the 50s; a simple, swell time was mostly had by all and while not everything was, shall we say, pleasant, it is without doubt the decade that has had the most nostalgia attached to it of the 20th century.

History has a longer memory than that, though, and it is weirdly fitting that the last song I write about for this decade looks back to the War of 1812, to its last great fight, the Battle of New Orleans. I say fitting as it was a war between the British and the Americans (with the not-quite-a-nation-just-yet Canada haplessly in the middle, though perhaps not so much as hapless as stuck) - the UK charts were beginning to look like a war between these same two foes, songs being covered here and there, homegrown stars such as Cliff and Marty and Adam (I will get to him, dear readers) doing battle with Yankee ne'er-do-wells, with what I can only call interesting results. (Indeed, the results of this war will only become apparent once a certain band emerges, but that's not for two long years yet.)

Stepping smartly into this field of battle was one Lonnie Donegan - yes, the skiffle fad was over but nothing could keep Lonnie from having hits (indeed I can imagine nothing could keep Lonnie from music, period). His "The Battle of New Orleans" has a certain...something to it though that is different from the original song by American Johnny Horton. Whereas Horton is ornery and military and almost makes you wish you were there, Donegan's version is...well this is his spoken intro in part:

"This is a song about a fit between Yankees and them there English people...in which the British came off rather ignominiously...because they never done no good no how, ciao."

He then relates the tale of the "Bloomin' British" and how they were defeated by the Americans with what I can only call great relish. As a Scotsman he has every right to sing about the English defeat this way, and evidently enough British people in general seemed to think it only fair, more than tolerating his 'ha hiddle-dee-dee's and maybe being a little distracted by Joe Meek's production (yes, we are back to him again), which takes this stern march and makes it more into a dub reggae skank about wily natives showing up the supposedly better opposition. (Sadly I won't be getting back to Scotland for a while here, but when I do it will be with someone who surely knew Donegan's work by heart.)

Past, Present and Future: Little Richard: "Baby Face"

It is a sad but common fact that there are periods of great ferment and excitement if not downright mania in music, and then there are times when things seem to...slow down. The charts seemingly get on a one-way ticket to dullsville and a restless public hies out for new musical territory, or retreats into the comfy old clothes of the past. It is a dismaying and frustrating experience to live through one of these times, as what was inexplicably and irreversibly slides into the past, a past that sometimes others don't share too much affection for, as they never much cared for it when it was the present.

In late January of '59 you might think everything in the world of rock 'n' roll was fine, which to a certain extent it was - Elvis was about to go #1 yet again, a young woman from Tiger Bay was getting more than a little attention, The Big Bopper had a hit with "Chantilly Lace" that was going up the chart and The Everly Brothers and Jerry Lee Lewis had new hits as well. But in just three days The Big Bopper would be gone, along with Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly (a day memorialized in a song that I will eventually get to - but for now I will stay in the present). I can only imagine the dismay and despair upon hearing the news - it was one thing to have Elvis in the army, Jerry Lee Lewis was blackballed from radio because of his marriage, and as for Little Richard...well, he had seen Sputnik fly by while in Australia and took it as a sign he should give up sinful rock for gospel. This he did in the fall of '57, which means, yes, this hit (his biggest in the UK chart-placement-wise) was a song dug out of the vaults.

"Baby Face" (a jazz song from the 20s) may not seem like something to make girls throw their undergarments and leap off of balconies, but the raspy, growly vibrato of Richard's (he reminds me a bit of Buffy Ste. Marie, of all people) - the way he just attacks a song and nearly makes it sound as if the fourth wall, as such, doesn't exist - is a huge wave of desire and surrender, a huge open door flung out to the whole world. (No doubt the reason this got to #2 was that his fans were beside themselves for something new, and this was a song everyone, young and old, knew already.) If Chuck Berry (yes I will get to him in time, dear reader) is rock 'n' roll as a foundation stone, Little Richard was the animating spirit who inspired just as many to yell and shriek and wear shiny clothing and just plain BE themselves. (Brian Johnson of AC/DC counts him as a main inspiration, for instance, as did Jimi Hendrix [who was in his band for a while] and Noddy Holder of Slade.) Little Richard broke down barriers in a way that repulsed some and overwhelmingly gratified others in the repressed and repressive 50s. This song appears here not in a time when rock is on the ascendant but when it is troubled and in need of new energy, new faces and new ideas. In almost no time whatsoever in this sluggish year, a new name would appear out of Los Angeles via The Bronx, one who would never throw a ring into an ocean to save his soul. Was rock dead? Nope, just growing in a different direction.

Can't Live With Them: Elvis Presley: "Hard Headed Woman"

I have been thinking lately about the construct/canonical idea of rock 'n' roll being 'born' and then 'dying' and then 'coming back' as of late; if you like, the death and resurrection of a kind of music that from the beginning has honored and defended itself vociferously against any and all comers. Rock 'n' roll is not music for those who are comfortable or satisfied (actually no good music is, but that is for another essay). So what happens when THE symbol of rock gets enlisted? Is that a kind of death?

I am sure for many it was a sort of ending when Elvis was enlisted and then joined the army in early '58; The Man wanted him and got him. The man himself was uneasy (not to mention his label) about the prospect of no more recording or concerts, and recorded a lot of songs before getting his uniform and haircut. Anyone who went to see King Creole ('58, with Walter Matthau as the heavy) only heard "Hard Headed Woman" at the very end of the movie, which is something of a cheat, since it is (for all I know) the meta-commentary on its plot; but even if you know nothing, it is still a great song, a good-natured protest that "A hard headed woman and a soft hearted man/Been the cause of trouble ever since the world began" and then running through Eve, Delilah and Jezebel like any good Christian boy would, as examples. It is a blues song speeded up (written by Claude Demetrius) and with the New Orleans setting it has the New Orleans horns as well as Elvis' usual Jordanaires backing - in this song it is as if rock is already getting back to the blues, or maybe showing that there is barely any difference besides speed and determination in the matter.

Elvis himself is having a ball - the army clock is ticking and he's going to give it his all before he goes - so much so that instead of just "Uh-huh!" he sings "Uh-hah-hoo!" through the song, digging the bad girls and sympathizing with the guys who haplessly give in to them or just hang around with them. He also looks the complete badass on the cover of the single, which doesn't hurt, either. If this is rock 'n' roll's swan song, then it is a good one.

Mysterious Hillbilly Ways: Johnny Duncan and the Blue Grass Boys: "Last Train to San Fernando"

1957 was the last year - the last official year, at any rate - of skiffle's popularity. It may sound a bit quaint now, what with being made by a bunch of guys with washboards and fiddles and acoustic guitars in basements and cellars, all singing about things they had never actually experienced (rural American culture). But it was fast, exciting, rude and raw - a deliberate reproof to 'good' singing and 'classy' arrangements by orchestras and such. It was the liberating and inspiring music in the UK before rock 'n' roll hit, and it continued for a good year to keep prodding and providing the youth with a way in - not a sexy way, always, but a way in nevertheless.

How appropriate, then, for this big skiffle hit to be sung by an actual American? Duncan was born in a coal mining camp in Tennessee and has the high, pleasant nasal whine of a man who has grown up hearing Appalachian music since his birth; he sings as clear as a bell. Musically, it's a song that speeds up, sounding just like a train - dum...dum-dum-dum...dum-dum-dum-dum until it's going full speed, sounding cheery and free, but the warning is constant: "If you miss - this one - they're never be another one ("bidi-bidi-bum-bum" comments Duncan) "to San Fernando."

Now, as usual, the train in question is both a real one and a metaphor for something present that won't be around for long - in this case, the chance of romance and marriage to a woman who (as far as I can tell; the lyrics are a bit odd) is having an affair with the narrator and "marries into high society" but is still willing to slip away with him if she gets bored. (The song was written in '57; for some reason I keep picturing the woman as Grace Kelly or maybe Ava Gardner.) There's a fine guitar solo in the middle and then after it's done the song slows down, the train comes to a halt and Duncan makes a sound like a last gentle blast of steam: "Pssshhhh...."

Anyone who knows me knows I love train songs; in fact I think there's no such thing as a bad train song (not very good ones, sure, but no truly awful ones). This skiffle song of cross-class love was a hit because it's so damn catchy, to be sure, but it has that same bold confidence (without the extraterrestrial shock) as Elvis' "Mystery Train." (Inexplicably, "Mystery Train" only reached #25 on the UK charts. Other totally awesome songs to reach this position include "Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream, "Cryin'" by Roy Orbison, "Showroom Dummies" by Kraftwerk, "Could It Be Magic" by Barry Manilow, "Diamonds and Pearls" by Prince and, um, "The Longest Time" by Billy Joel. Maybe I should do a blog?? Hmmmm....)

Skiffle was busy going down its own inevitable track by now, making way for other Americans to come in and sit a spell with their own William Carlos Williams-ish "pure products"; Duncan himself eventually ended up in Australia, as so many UK-based entertainers did, and yet he was back in the studio just months before his death in 2000. His genial strangeness (he looks just like he sounds - a bit like Lyle Lovett, in fact) liberated maybe just a few more kids to think - "hey, I don't have to look great or make perfect sense to be accepted." And bless him for that.

Escalator To Transcendence: Elvis Presley: "Heartbreak Hotel" pt. 2

With this list of number two UK singles, there are a few that I call ‘oppositional’ singles; which is to say, they stand far away – in opposition – to the number one song. The number one song for “Heartbreak Hotel” is “I’ll Be Home” by Pat Boone – a song that I’m sure has its merits (I haven’t heard it yet) – but there is no way it is anything like Elvis, either in style or performance. Indeed, looking at the chart, it’s clear that there is everyone else…and then there’s Elvis. (I am also aware that his first try in the charts, “Blue Suede Shoes,” only made it to #9 – Carl Perkins’ original version got to #10, making their friendly contest a draw, which is about right.) So clearly there were those who preferred the good-boy sentiments of Boone in the UK (in the US it only got to #6, tellingly), but there were those clearly caught up in Elvis, without the benefit of seeing him on tv – just by mere photos of him, and hearing the song. The UK’s…oppositional…attitude towards Elvis (as opposed to the US’ reaction, which was to have him at #1 for a very long time indeed) could be due to lack of tv exposure – it is, from this distance, hard to know, but I would guess his roughness (the guitar with a twine strap; the sense that he is enjoying himself and likes to dance) might have caused more than a few English girls to uncontrollably scream as well.

In any case, Elvis has arrived. He has, so to speak, entered the MSBWT building and will be here for a good long time, though there will be times when he seems to be absent. I say seems because, like it or not, Elvis was a prototype, not to mention an inspiration, to just about everyone who wanted something a little bit more raw than the polished and likable and grown-up perfomers we have met so far. Elvis was all of twenty-one when he recorded this (to give some perspective, performers who are twenty-one as of this writing include Joss Stone, Kate Nash and Hilary Duff – with Rihanna coming around the bend) and his youth and style brought an undoubted wave of freshness to the scene. (Not long after him, Gene Vincent comes back to the chart, and Fats Domino and Chuck Berry and Little Richard also begin to chart.)

But to the song!

It is stark and dirty. The hotel in question is dark, illuminated only by the barest of lightbulbs and staffed by the most miserable and indeed funereal of attendants. And yet the song is not a lament. He is miserable and lonely (so lonely he could die: hello, Burt Bacharach, hello Morrissey) and yet he is not alone – how could he be? – and if she – the Other – becomes heartbroken, well, she knows where to go. Where to find him. They can be together in their misery…

…which isn’t really too miserable, as it sounds more like pouting, sexy misery, like an audible James Dean. Elvis was a good boy, but he looked and sounded bad. As if he wasn’t always what society or The Man wanted him to be, that his rebellion was in that he was always himself, twisting and jerking and Buh-Bay-Being for fun. How dare a man shake and show passion? How dare a man inhabit the song as he does, taking his loneliness and throwing it in the listeners’ faces? (He sounds as if he enjoys being miserable, even as he is miserable; hello, David Gedge and hello emo, for that matter.) The piano tinkles and the stand-up bass thumps, the guitar solo is stark and hardcore and not at all interested in being pretty. Elvis’ voice is handsome, as handsome as he is; and I cannot leave out the fact that he is from the South, the poor-grew-up-in-a-shack South that is an exotic plus for any UK listeners. Put plainly, everything here is different and confusing and there are no choirs or string sections or messages of genial consolation. The world is a dark, lonely and unhappy place, Elvis says; but everything else implies that this can be overcome, even mined for its own kind of gold.