Farewell, 1961: Another Year In Retrospective

From the roughest point of view possible, 1961 could probably be considered the worst year for popular music since the beginning of the rock’n’roll revolution and up until... [...insert your own preferred year of «when pop music died» here]. In more precise terms, «roughest point of view» here would pretty much mean the year in which the world finally understood that Elvis was no longer the Elvis of old, but did not yet have the Beach Boys, the Beatles, or Bob Dylan to replace him. In other words, this was the lowest point of the infamous interim period, with the music industry in the throes of payola, punditry, and predictable pre-planning. Safe and sunny teen idols ruled the day, with the «dirty» rockers rotting away in jail or in their tombs, and with good taste in popular music on the verge of complete extinction.

That’s a fairly traditional narrative, one that we have all been subjected to through so many rock biographies and documentaries — and it still makes a lot of sense even after all those decades. But there is also another one (isn’t there always?), far more sunny and optimistic, in which 1961 happened to be an exciting year of fun and innovation, with the world hungry for new artists, new vibes, and new unpredictable surprises. The general hierarchy of musical genres had not changed since 1960: John Coltrane (My Favorite Things), Ornette Coleman (Free Jazz), Eric Dolphy (Out There) and other jazz revolutionaries were the primary fodder for intellectually oriented listeners on both sides of the Atlantic, with the Greenwich Village folk scene coming in second for the American side (and the respective European folk scenes coming in second for the other side). But the pop music scene, contrary to the superficial impression one might get from the most basic types of introduction to pop history, did not stand still — not for one second.

In fact, even looking at the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 single chart shows that the world around it was aching to move rather than quiet down and stand still. According to the chart, the biggest song of the year was ʽTossin’ And Turnin’ by Bobby Lewis, a loud and dynamic blend of soul and classic dance­-oriented R&B — a complete accident for Bobby, whose one-hit wonder career fizzled out pretty quickly, but hardly an accident for a society that was actually yearning for hot action rather than meek sentimentality. The same Top 10 also had Roy Orbison (ʽCrying’), Del Shannon (ʽRunaway’), and ‘Wheels’ by The String-A-Longs, who looked and sounded like a 50-50 hybrid model between The Crickets and The Shadows — playing music that was nowhere near aggressive or rebellious, but still fun in a refreshing, tasteful sort of way. Rock’n’roll might have looked dead, for sure, but public thirst for new ways of composing, singing, and playing was anything but.

Perhaps the most important impact that the rock’n’roll explosion of the late 1950s made on the charts is their transparent and irreversible shift to music oriented at young people. In 1956, the rising star of Elvis Presley shared the Top 10 with such figures as Nelson Riddle, Dean Martin, and Doris Day — the record industry was still thinking that music was something enjoyed primarily by people over 30, making Mose Allison’s bitter March 1957 cry of "a young man ain’t got nothing in the world these days" much more understandable than it would become in the Woodstock era, with The Who taking over that relay. Elvis and the other rock’n’rollers changed all that, but even as the doomed early rock’n’rollers were throwing themselves under the wheels of the record industry grind, they were impressing one important new idea on the cynical, but lively minds of the music moghuls: young people mattered. And they were impressing it for the first time ever in the history of popular music — nay, in the history of music as such — nay, in the entire known history of humanity, just to nail that point even further.

The reason why so much of that simple, naïve, crudely recorded, cars-and-girls-and-guys-and-surfboard-oriented music from the earliest Sixties retains its charm today (well, for some of us, at least) is because the process of making it was so thrilling and exciting. Modern day takes on the various aspects of teen romance and teen break-up may be more lyrically sophisticated and more glossily produced, but the main reason for why they feel lifeless and boring in comparison is their aura of total predictability: they know they are treading safe, well-explored waters, and they are barely ever willing, let alone able, to steer their ships into genuinely uncharted territory. But for the lucky guys and girls like Roy Orbison or the Shirelles, there was pretty much nothing but uncharted territory on the horizon. Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and George Gershwin did not really write music for their target audiences — and, luckily for us, the music record industry was smart enough not to pressure their new stars into continuing to write music for the target audiences of Cole Porter or Irving Berlin.

Ironically, almost none of that thrill and excitement in 1961 was coming from artists of the previous generation — the rockabilly and R&B heroes of the mid-to-late 1950s. Rock’n’rollers, in particular, were a downright sad bunch: Chuck Berry hit a particular low with New Juke Box Hits (none of which were), Fats Domino and Bo Diddley released subpar self-rip-off efforts, and Elvis’ Something For Everybody was arguably the most pathetic LP in his entire career so far (though he would certainly go on to surpass its painful mediocrity in the following years by sinking to the level of absolute self-parody). The old-fashioned ladies like Brenda Lee and Wanda Jackson were doing a little better, but both were giving out clear signs that their heavy flirtation with rock’n’roll was drawing to an end, switching either to more traditional torch ballads or getting sucked back into the predictable, generic Nashville country swamp out of which they originally grew up in the first place. The best rock’n’roll LP releases of 1961, unsurprisingly, were albums that dug deep into the past, such as the Greatest! compilation from the long-ago-disgraced Jerry Lee Lewis.

Most of the big, rambunctious stars of 1950s’ R&B also kept a low profile that year, remaining in semi- or complete retirement (the only exception that comes to mind is LaVern Baker, whose Saved was a decent collection and earned her a couple last-minute big hits before the inevitable fade into the same obscurity as her elder colleagues). In their place came new, younger, and somewhat more «refined» and «civilized» performers, such as Atlantic’s Ben E. King (shifting to a solo career from fronting The Drifters) and Carla Thomas, both of whom placed more emphasis on the sensitivity and vulnerability of their (admittedly beautiful) voices than on burning down the house. The biggest veteran star of them all — Uncle Ray — remained impressively prolific on his new ABC label, but most of his contemporary projects paled next to the outtakes released on the older Atlantic label (Genius Sings The Blues).

Still, the seeds of a brand new, smokin’ hot era of soul and R&B were being planted at the same time, and we mainly have the ladies to thank for that. First, Aretha Franklin, who would have to wait until the mid-Sixties to be allowed to show her full potential but (as her self-titled debut clearly shows) already in 1961 sang with more sharpness and hot burn than any young R&B star from the previous decade (when the idea of «sassiness» was still more typical of an R&B female singer than the idea of sticking sonic knives into your listeners’ souls). Second, Tina Turner, the first R&B singer to truly elevate unbridled screeching to a separate art form — the popularity of her early singles with Ike shows that, contrary to how the music industry would like to portray contemporary popular cravings, the people actually were hungry for music that inspired wildness. Perhaps they did not always realize it themselves, but they were.

Despite the differences in style, one thing was shared by the 22-year old Tina and the 19-year old Aretha: already on their first records, they sounded mature — strong, confident, experienced women singers who made you feel like they already had a solid understanding of the world around them (biography-wise, perhaps more true for Tina than Aretha, but we are talking about auditory vibes here, not biographical truths). But since this was a brand new kind of musical maturity, one could say that these artists were actually ahead of their time rather than behind it — so, perhaps, the world was simply not quite ready yet for an Aretha Franklin. The adolescents of 1961 had to become the adults of 1967 to properly «get it».

In the meantime, what they all could revel in were the girl groups. The Shirelles led the way with ‘Mama Said’, possibly the ultimate teenage girl anthem of 1961, but Tamla/Motown led in quantity, with both the Marvelettes and the Supremes’ careers taking off, as well as solo singers like Mary Wells. In between ‘Please Mr. Postman’, ‘Bye Bye Baby’, ‘I Want A Guy’, and other classic hits, 1961 was the first major year for teen-oriented girl pop, and black artists won that round fair and square — next to the heat of Motown, who but the most square of white audiences would prefer the likes of Annette Funicello? It is amusing, in a way, to realize that the «Sixties» as we know them did not really begin with the Beatles, but with I want a guy to need me, want him to love me completely (ironically, a song whose opening vocalic melisma would be flat-out copied by the Beatles on ‘There’s A Place’ two years later).

Also amusing is the fact that the boys seemed to be lagging behind the girls — Smokey Robinson’s Miracles, for instance, found it hard to duplicate the impact of the previous year’s ‘Shop Around’, while the young Marvin Gaye got carried away by his ambitions and, tellingly, went for a «mature» look with his debut LP that put him more in the camp of Frank Sinatra than Aretha Franklin and eventually forced Motown to «reboot» his career altogether. If you wanted the genuinely good boys in 1961, you had to look away from Motown and seek out the likes of Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, busy inventing the «deep soul» style on Duke Records, or stick around with James Brown, who had finally found himself with Think! the previous year and was showing no signs of slowing down.

Perhaps there is a social explanation for it — the teenagers of 1961 were perfectly okay with starry-eyed romantic material as long as it was sung by girls, but when it came to boys, they were expecting something a little more dynamic, like Del Shannon’s ‘Runaway’, for instance, or Dion’s ‘Runaround Sue’. Surf-rock would not properly hit the beach until 1962, but some precursors of it were already in existence, and the Ventures were going strong, too, even if they found themselves unable to sustain the novelty impact of last year’s ‘Walk Don’t Run’.

In other, less influential but no less optimistic news, we had some nice releases on the folk circuit (Dave Van Ronk and Joan Baez both released acceptable, if predictable, sophomore albums, and Judy Collins softly broke folk music out to a bigger world by signing a contract with Elektra) and in the world of the newly emerging blues-rock, with fresh young artist Freddie King blurring the lines between blues and pop and influencing a whole new generation of aspiring guitar heroes. It wasn’t all that much, but it wasn’t exactly nothing, either.

Of course, if I decided to make a complete retrospective of the American popular music scene in 1961 (and I haven’t even mentioned the UK circuit, where fairly little of interest was going on apart from an occasional tepid Cliff Richard or Billy Fury rock’n’roller), I would be slogged with boredom (Bobby Vee! Bobby Darin! Bobby Rydell! NIGHT OF THE BOBBIES!). But if you take the cheating way out and decide to look at 1961 through the prism of its 10–20 best LP releases and a couple dozen more classic singles, you shall see that progress in popular music had by no means stopped — rather, the forces at play were busy regrouping and reshaping, correcting the balance from too much emphasis on rhythm to more concern for the melody, bringing us closer and closer to the solidification of what we now call «pop-rock». Even if you were a rebellious, rule-breakin’ teenager in 1961, you could hardly complain about the lack of excitement in the musical world around you, as long as you could keep yourself from being strictly confined to Disney-run shows on TV.

With that said, let us continue the tradition and pull out a short list of some of the not-so-well-remembered musical highlights from 1961 that, for now, remain strong and vibrant in my memory after all those reviews. (Also including some earlier songs that go back to 1960 or even the late 1950s, but were only released on an LP in 1961 — not very correct technically, of course, but it would be a shame to miss out on them otherwise). A serious problem here is that most of the LPs released in 1961 seemed to embrace the principle of «one big hit, 11 cuts of forgettable filler» almost as if it were a written law, not to be transgressed under penalty of being banned from the Ed Sullivan Show, so I am forced to cheat here occasionally by including commercially successful (though, arguably, still largely forgotten) A-sides, otherwise this list would be really sparse. Still, unless you were a teenager in 1961 yourself, you probably won’t be storing these little ditties on the front row shelves of your brain, so help yourself to some fine memories.

A. Rock and roll / Pop (of the whitebread variety):

[1] Elvis Presley — ‘Little Sister’

Immediately starting off with a cheat: the song was a hit and remains relatively well-remembered. But as long as Elvis was at least occasionally putting out great music, I just couldn’t omit him from this list, and what am I to do if the only great music he put out in 1961 was commercially successful? ‘Little Sister’ is an almost jaw-dropping bunch of musical and lyrical naughtiness in the context of the King’s mostly toothless output from that year: the vocals, the guitars, the rhythm section snap their hungry teeth as they proceed with their retelling of the old if my baby don’t love me no more, I know her sister will narrative. How the hell Colonel Parker let Bad Boy Elvis slip past his fingers that one time, I really have no idea.

[2] Paul Revere & The Raiders — ‘Like, Long Hair’

Most people who remember Paul Revere & The Raiders at all remember them from their long string of hits during the psychedelic pop era of the mid-Sixties, and some might even be surprised to learn that the start of their official recording career precedes even the Beatles — and that their first hit was an instrumental piece of boogie from 1961. It’s not a great piece of boogie, but what makes it special is its intro and outro — Mr. Revere channeling a bit of watered-down Grieg-Rachmaninoff — which just might be the first recorded instance of mixing elements of classical and pop-rock music, almost a decade before ELO established their whole career on it. Plus, maybe it ain’t all that great, but it’s still headbanging fun!

[3] Roy Orbison — ‘Blue Avenue’

Not released as a single, the song is absent from my 50 Greatest Hits collection, so let’s label this an obscure masterpiece from the man. His sad, melancholic ballads are predictably beautiful, but it takes special talent to imbue a technically upbeat pop-rock shuffle with similarly subtle gloominess, through clever use of lyrics, voice, and string arrangements (the «overhanging thundercloud» of strings during the bridge section is one of producer Fred Foster’s crowning moments of glory).

[4] The Ventures — ‘Harlem Nocturne’

How many individual Ventures songs, other than ‘Walk Don’t Run’, are you able to keep in segregated compartments inside your head? Probably not a lot, and nobody could blame you. But if you ever feel ashamed about that and think about atoning for such a cardinal sin, the band’s cover of the Viscounts’ ‘Harlem Nocturne’ may be a good place to start. It’s just such a beautiful sound — the impenetrable darkness of the bassline married to the dazzlingly shining moonlight of the lead guitar as you quietly stroll through the empty city streets. Few of the Ventures’ slow numbers are as pittoresque as this cozily ominous little masterpiece.

[5] Wanda Jackson — ‘Hard Headed Woman’

One of the highlights of Wanda’s most fiery recording session from October 1960, with an LP-only release and an energy level that easily matches Elvis’. In Wanda’s hands, the song becomes a celebration of girl power (rather than an expression of frustration about girl troubles), and even more so through her raspy-ragged, snarlin’-sarcastic vocal tone than the actual lyrics. One of the last genius gasps of classic rockabilly before she, too, began the inevitable slide down the old country chute.

B. R&B + Soul + Girl Groups:

[6] Aretha Franklin — ‘Won’t Be Long’

I’ll be the first to agree that this recording, the opening track on Aretha’s proper debut LP, has none of the immense social value of ‘Respect’, but if you try to deny that there is even a smidgeon less passion, energy, and intense vocal burn here than on the song that made her famous, you’ll end up a very poor liar. It’s just that the world was not yet ready for such an onslaught from a female black soul singer in 1961, and Aretha really had to tone it down for her entire remaining tenure with Columbia. But truly and verily, already at the tender age of 19 she could play Mother Earth to all us disposable mortals.

[7] Bobby "Blue" Bland — ‘I’ll Take Care Of You’

This song has steadily reclaimed its original popularity ever since multiple artists began covering it in the 1990s (I think the most popular version today is the unbearably overcooked pomp-a-cover by Beth Hart and Joe Bonamassa from 2011), but absolutely nothing beats the subdued original, a quietly deep-soul duet between Bobby and the wintery nightingale tone of the organ. This is like the blueprint for all late Sixties / Seventies soul balladry — recorded in frickin’ 1959, and a major highlight on Bobby’s debut LP from 1960.

[8] Carla Thomas — ‘A Love Of My Own’

‘Gee Whiz’ was Carla’s big hit that everybody with a bit of perspective still remembers, and it did a great job of combining contemporary starry-eyed teenage exuberance with old-fashioned musical solemnity — but I am even more partial to her second self-penned single, a relatively minor hit that feeds on teenage despair rather than exuberance and captures the mood even better with some perfectly placed vocal lines. Unlike the sassy new arrivals like Aretha or Tina, Carla built her style on fragility and vulnerability, but still combined it with a touch of rustic roughness (unlike, say, Dionne Warwick), which makes her just a touch unique.

[9] The Chantels — ‘I Can’t Take It (There’s Our Song Again)’

From 1959, actually, but don’t let it get lost on the Chantels’ second album from 1961 ( a mish-mash of the old and the new with two totally different lead singers). This is still old-school doo-wop, but it’s got contemporary teen drama written all over it, too, with one of Arlene Smith’s greatest vocal deliveries. Sometimes I think that a world in which the place of Diana Ross in the public conscience was taken over by Arlene Smith might be a much better world to live in, but then again, perhaps it’s for the best that some of those heroes stepped out of the public eye before the music industry turned them into goofy puppets.

[10] Freddie King — ‘San-Ho-Zay’

This was a much lesser hit than ‘Hide Away’ (if it was a hit at all), but it’s got a cockier, sassier, somewhat more proto-ZZ-Top-ish attitude to it, and something tells me Eric Clapton would be too shy to attempt to make it his own. If you wanted a tough, snappy, aggressive sound in 1961, and you could no longer get it from the veteran rock’n’rollers, who did you go to? You went to our man Freddie King, who, unlike so many of his electric blues peers, was not afraid to give the people what they really wanted — blues that you could actually dance to, or even headbang to, whatever forms «headbanging» could take back in 1961.

[11] Gary U.S. Bonds — ‘Quarter To Three’

Cheating once again — this song was a big hit, one of the biggest explosions of 1961, in fact, but I think that today most people would just brush it off as a messy lo-fi novelty. Which it was, but it also pretty much invented the sound of the E Street Band twelve years before people learned about the E Street Band, and gave those teens who craved it their own scream-your-head-off anthemic (and, somehow, still quite unpretentious) rock’n’roll party sound. For all the general stiffness of American Bandstand, one can only imagine the national thrill when something like this hot mess blasted out of the TV screens in the age of Fabian.

[12] Ike & Tina Turner — ‘I Idolize You’

I like this follow-up to ‘A Fool In Love’, the single that put Tina on the popular map, far more than the original — dark and bluesy, the music provides much better padding for Tina’s screechy-roary style of vocal delivery than the generally more «poppy» material Ike was writing for her. She really channels the spirit of Howlin’ Wolf on this one, funnelling it through a woman perspective, of course, and the result is a deep-reaching psychodrama, probably seen as way too «obscene» and «vulgar» next to all the cultured jazz and blues lady singers of the time — but hey, that’s how they reacted to Marlon Brando, too.

[13] Jackie Wilson — ‘I’m Comin’ On Back To You’

By 1961, poor Jackie was reduced to releasing entire albums honoring Al Jolson, of all people, and his career was running in much the same direction as that of his white counterpart (Elvis), but every once in a while somebody still threw him a tasty bone — like this one, a fun, catchy, energetic rave which demonstrates his fabulous range and his ability to use it to maximize orgasmic excitement. Very slim pickings as opposed to his strong beginnings, but still absolutely unique in terms of sheer vocal craft.

[14] The Marvelettes — ‘Please Mr. Postman’

Another heavy bit of cheating — the song was B-I-G back in 1961, one of several that really helped Motown establish its reputation ­— but I couldn’t not include the Marvelettes, and, unfortunately, they had nothing else in 1961 that would even come close. Besides, how many people actually remember the original after the Beatles (and then the Carpenters) claimed the song as their own? But as solid as those claims were, it is difficult to deny that Gladys Horton sounds far more convincing in her pleading role than John Lennon. (Certainly the latter never spent a day tearfully waiting for a letter from Cynthia). Have yourself another tasty slice of teenage drama — from that golden age in which teens were first allowed to frame their drama as marketable art.

[15] Mary Wells — ‘Bye Bye Baby’

The first minor hit from Motown’s first big solo female star; Mary would hit it really big upon assuming a softer, more fragile image, but for the true connoisseur, she was arguably never as good as when she belted it out in the early days. That rasp, with a slight nasal tinge, was quite badass, and sympathetic at the same time — and she wrote the song herself, too, rather than taking her obedient clues from Smokey Robinson. Never ignore the humble beginnings of performers (especially female ones) inside the pop music machine; their earliest stuff often remains as the very essence of their individuality and humanity.

[16] Ray Charles — ‘One Mint Julep’

To be perfectly honest, Uncle Ray released a lot of crap in 1961, with the obvious exception of legendary singles like ‘Hit The Road, Jack’ and ‘Unchain My Heart’ that remain too huge in public memory to be listed here. The only new title that is comparatively a little more obscure and which I could openly recommend would be this instrumental, a jazzy reinvention of the old Clovers hit where Ray took the vocal hook, turned it into a kickass brass / organ riff, and developed an almost mystical groove around it — an almost accidental mix of classic, no-holds-barred R&B with the bluesier strain of contemporary jazz (think Jimmy Smith, etc.). Put this at the start of your best-of-1961 compilation and watch your brain making the automatic adjustment to your perspective — «actually, 1961 was a serious year in pop music history!»