Music and Memories

With 2,805 songs in my jukebox, there is grist for many a fond (and occasionally not so fond) memory. I think it is safe to say that more than half of the songs carry with them the thought of some past event, friend, lover, or place. Many - most - of the memories are trivial, but do bring a smile to my face, or at least the thought of a smile to my mind.

Some songs that trigger a memory trigger *exactly* the same memory every time I hear them, although my mind might wander anywhere after the initial thought.

I cannot convey to you the substance of those memories, and if I tried then you might never return here, having learned that the printed word can indeed put one to sleep, but I'm not quite ready to abandon the subject of the jukebox, so I thought I'd give you some odd facts about it, at least a few of which you might find mildly interesting.

• Artist with the most songs on the jukebox: Elvis Presley, with 60. It might have been The Beatles (47) but for the fact that many of their songs didn't make the top 20 only because they were not released as singles. Singles purchases and jukebox plays were part of the Billboard scoring criteria, so songs released only on albums paid a price for that.
  
  
• Song with the most radical difference in presentations: With a Little Help from My Friends, by The Beatles and by Joe Cocker.
  
  (Note: this excludes a number of possiblities created by white artists covering releases of songs by black artists, a common practice in the 1950's. They are too numerous to recite, but a fine example would be Long Tall Sally by Little Richard and by Pat Boone. I once emailed a friend with links to YouTube versions of those two), and she subsequently told me that she simply could not listen to more than one verse of Pat Boone's version. Try it yourself:
  
  Little Richard: 
  
  Pat Boone:  )
  
  
• Best cover version done in the same style as the original: Angel of the Morning, Merrilee Rush and the Turnabouts, covered by Juice Newton
  
  
• Too good to leave out: That's All Right, by Elvis Presley (his first recording)
  
  
• Longest recording: Tubular Bells (Part One), (25:33) by Mike Oldfield. The ultimate stoner recording.
  
  
• Best disco number: Stayin' Alive, by The Bee Gees (To be fair, there is very little on the jukebox in the way of disco.)
  
  
• The song that breaks my heart: Adios Mi Corazon, by Juice Newton
  
  
• The song you wouldn't believe is on my jukebox if you knew me: Dance Hall Days, by Wang Chung
  
  
• Earliest recording: White Christmas, by Bing Crosby (1942)
  
  
• Latest recording: Time After Time, by Blaque
  
  
• Earliest Rock and Roll song: (We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock, by Bill Haley and His Comets, the one that kicked it all off.
  
  
• Longest (that made the charts): Money for Nothing, (8:13) by Dire Straits
  
  
• Artist with most duets that charted: Marvin Gaye, with 8 - 5 with Tammi Terrell, 2 with Mary Wells, and 1 with Kim Weston

That's all I got.

Doo Wop. Umm, Maybe Next Time

I grew up in New England, which was largely what you might call a white bread area. In the sixth grade (Portsmouth, New Hampshire) I met a black person for the first time, a classmate named Harry. That's pretty much how life went for me until I joined the Army.

In my teens (Beverly, Massachusetts) my friends and I listened to rock and roll on the radio and began to be exposed to music by black artists. At first the Boston area stations played almost entirely songs by white artists. When blacks had hits on the R&B charts the songs were covered by white artists such as Pat Boone and Georgia Gibbs, whom I consider the King and Queen of Cover Artists, based entirely on the number of black artists' songs they jumped on.

In 1955 the flood gates opened when the Platters became the first black artists to reach number one on the pop charts, which they accomplished with The Great Pretender.

As a result, some popular R&B singers such as Big Joe Turner, Clyde McPhatter, and Ivory Joe Hunter began to be heard on stations that were previously devoted pretty much to whites, the exceptions being singers of ballads and blues, such as Nat King Cole, and suddenly the charts really showed a mixture of black and white. Fats Domino, Little Richard, The Coasters, The Platters, and others often reached the top of the pop charts, not only with rock and roll but with slower music as well, and we white teenagers not only liked it, we liked it a *lot* more than white cover versions.

Here it must be noted that things were very different on the music charts in those days. It was not unusual for there to be two or three versions of the same song in the top twenty. Occasionally this was simply due to several white artists or groups recording the same songs, but often it was a matter of white artists covering tunes by black artists.

I think the reason we preferred the the black artists is that the white artists didn't know what the Hell they were singing about. If you'd like to hear a classic example, listen to Long Tall Sally by Little Richard and then listen to it by Pat Boone. Another? Listen to Shake, Rattle and Roll by Big Joe Turner and then by Bill Haley & His Comets.

There's no getting around it: the white versions fail in two respects. First there's the style of the playing and singing, with black artists displaying emotion and excitement. Second there's the bowdlerization of the lyrics. Consider, for example, Little Richard's

Long tall Sally, she's built for speed.
She got everything that Uncle John needs.

And now Pat Boone's

Long tall Sally's got a lot on the ball
And nobody cares if she's long and tall.

Similarly, there is Big Joe Turner's

Way you wear those dresses, the sun comes shinin' through.
Way you wear those dresses, the sun comes shinin' through.
I can't believe my eyes, all that mess belongs to you.

And Bill Haley's

Wearin' those dresses your hair done up so nice;
Wearin' those dresses your hair done up so nice;
You look so warm but your heart is cold as ice.

My absolute favorite comment on a "cover" situation involved the song Earth Angel, recorded by both The Penguins (black) and The Crew Cuts (white). I'd love to attribute the quote, but I don't remember who wrote it and I can't find it on google. It went something like this:

On the pop charts the Crew Cuts version reached number three and the Penguins version reached number eight. On the R&B charts the Penguins reached number one and the Crew Cuts were nowhere in sight.

I didn't want to clutter up this post with images of videos, or even with links, so I'll leave it to those of you who are interested to search YouTube for the songs and artists. You'll find everything mentioned here.

Well, I intended to write about doowop, but you can see what happened. Doowop will be next up.