Farewell To The Fifties: A Brief Recapitulation

This week’s reviews have more or less exhausted my collection of popular music from the 1950s as limited to the genres of rock’n’roll and its immediate sources and neighbors — R&B, soul, blues, and folk music. Obviously, this has not been a complete overview of even those genres for the time interval of 1955–59, but it was never meant to be one: as much as I enjoy the oldies, it feels silly and superfluous to fetishize any particular decade, and the 48 American artists and artist groups selected to represent those years are those who, in one way or another, have defined them with their individual styles, ideas, innovations, and personalities. (On the other side of the Atlantic, these styles were still largely waiting to be picked up — only Lonnie Donegan and Cliff Richard were deemed worthy enough to round the list up to a nice figure of 50).

Of course, one needn’t forget that, on a serious level, the 1950s were not exclusively defined by R&B and rockabilly — on both the black and the white ends of that spectrum, this sort of music was generally regarded as teen-oriented, a bunch of fads not particularly worthy of respectable grown-up music lovers, whose tastes, depending on their overall level of sophistication and social status, gravitated more towards the classical and jazz markets, or the country and adult pop scenes. But it was primarily the young people who bought the records — meaning that, if you look at the top positions on the Billboard charts around 1956-57, you won’t find much Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, or Tony Bennett; there will be a lot of Elvis, though.

The most «serious» genre to undergo radical innovations and grow into the «thinking man’s music» at the time was jazz — with Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and miriads of other innovative artists pushing the music into completely uncharted territory, it might be reasonably argued that in terms of history of Art, the Fifties were truly a «jazz decade» like no other. But at the same time, as we know perfectly well, these same innovations, placing heavy demands on the listener and moving jazz away from the ballrooms into concert halls, quickly converted jazz from the status of «music for the masses» to something much more intellectual and elitist in nature — leaving all that empty ballroom space free for the great rock’n’roll takeover. Watch Bert Stern’s wonderful Jazz On A Summer’s Day movie from the Newport Festival of 1958 — many, if not most, of the young (and old) people in the audience would probably be far more likely to follow up that cultural intake with the latest Antonioni movie, rather than Rebel Without A Cause or King Creole.

Thus, on a «tectonic» level, one could seriously argue that the R&B and rock’n’roll scene of the second half of the Fifties was the principal game changer at the time, establishing a musical language that was both radically new and perfectly accessible to everybody, as long as one were free of the appropriate fears and superstitions. From that point of view, Jerry Lee Lewis was a far more significant cultural force than Miles Davis — despite being ten times as limited in his stylistic, emotional, and technical range. And while all of those «formerly new» sounds may now seem somewhat primitive and antiquated to our ears, one thing you still cannot take away from that music — one thing that still makes it worth coming back to and getting inspired by — is the feeling of unbridled excitement and joy which stems from the artists feeling themselves as the principal, God-chosen agents to spread the revolutionary good news among the flock. In a way, it’s the kind of feeling that you don’t quite get even from Sixties’ artists.

The conventional narrative on Fifties’ rock is that it began sometime around the mid-Fifties, with ‘Rock Around The Clock’, ‘Tutti Frutti’, and Elvis’ early singles leading the way; reached its artistic and commercial peak sometime around 1956–57, with about 90% of the enduring classics from that decade created in those years; then began a rapid decline in 1958–59, caused both by changing public tastes and various incidents happening to the careers (and sometimes lives) of the genre’s major artists. As tempting as it is to keep looking for new perspectives and engage in seductive revisionism, that narrative is largely true — which does not necessarily mean that the underlying reasons have been well understood, or that it does not leave enough leeway for all sorts of subtle nuances, to notice and interpet which you have to dig a bit deeper under the surface... which I have personally tried to do with my overview of both the decade’s first-rate and some of its second- and even third-rate artists.

The big, not fully solved, mystery, of course, concerns the various ways in which rock’n’roll «fizzled out» in America at the end of the Fifties, necessitating its revival several years later from overseas. It is such a fascinating mystery that I’m sure there still must be conspiracy theorists roaming around, trying to establish the various subtle ways in which the FBI and the CIA managed to have Elvis drafted, Little Richard brainwashed, Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens killed off, Chuck Berry jailed, and Jerry Lee Lewis married off to his underage cousin. There is at least one artist, though, who can serve as the perfect antidote to any conspiracy theories — the one and only Gene Vincent. Unlike the others, his career was proceeding relatively smoothly in the late Fifties, without any life-changing incidents other than, perhaps, the unfortunate separation from his best guitar player Cliff Gallup in 1956; even so, there is a razor-sharp change in style between his first two LPs (1956–57) and everything that followed, as the music becomes softer, tamer, more polished and «professional» at the expense of the wildness and fury of his classic early sequence of singles. What happened?

The common answer that is usually given in textbooks, essays, and documentaries on the subject is that even those rebellious American teenagers who were ripping chairs out of their seats at Bill Haley and Jerry Lee Lewis concerts instinctively regarded rock and roll as a «fad», a «phase» well-aligned with their own hormonal transformations but somewhat ridiculous to cling on to as one slowly reaches adulthood. At the same time, the corporate music business also exerted pressure on the artists, convincing them that as their audiences were «maturing» along with their idols, it would be more appropriate to «mature» as well — for instance, by including some Cole Porter or Bing Crosby into your repertoire, because it may be all right for an 18-year old teen to strut his stuff to the maniacal beat of ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’, but now that you’re over 21, isn’t it time to behave like a mature adult and sing something more serious instead?

There seems to have been yet another factor, though, which demarcates the border between the «traditional old world» and the Sixties just as transparently as the «maturity factor» does. For the majority of popular artists, especially those rooted in the blues and country genres which were the primary sources of rock and roll, the very idea of «constant artistic evolution», so typical and common for the modern mindset, was pretty much irrelevant. Typically, you «evolved» only to the point at which you’d finally locate a successful musical formula for your personality — and then, with that formula well in hand, you would stick with it to the bitter end, and not just for as long as it continued to offer you commercial dividends, but for life. Look at 99% of the careers of pre-war country bluesmen, or urban blueswomen, or crooners, or jump blues enthusiasts — once they’d gotten into their groove, they would just keep on grooving. The formula could work for a year, or it could work for a decade, but it was still a formula, which is particularly painfully obvious in the case of those artists who recorded themselves a lot (I’m currently doing an audio retrospective of Big Bill Broonzy’s career, for instance, and it is hard to think how the man avoided going crazy from re-recording the exact same patterns dozens of times in a row — or, rather, how there was actually a genuine market for all those re-recordings).

As revolutionary as the sounds of the late Fifties were, then, most of the artists behind them still shared the same mindset. People like Bill Haley and Little Richard, if you look at their careers from the very start, did significantly evolve in their musical styles — that is, right until the moment when they recorded ‘Rock Around The Clock’ and ‘Tutti Frutti’. With those pieces, they’d finally find something uniquely their own, a vibe and style nobody could take from them and claim as theirs — and the rest of their careers would be spent nursing and nurturing that vibe, not giving too much of a damn anymore about what was going around. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and how could something like ‘Tutti Frutti’ ever go broke? Now imagine, for instance, the Beatles congratulating each other over the success of ‘She Loves You’... and then going on to issue variations on the ‘She Loves You’ formula for the next seven years of their existence. Surely this would make them not the Beatles, but rather the Dave Clark Five or the Hollies... although, to be fair, even the Dave Clark Five and the Hollies tried to evolve and grow and expand and innovate throughout the Sixties — going lite-psychedelic and such — because the times they were a-changin’.

And this does explain a lot, really. The big difference between the classic rockabilly formula and the classic 12-bar blues formula, for instance, is that the former requires a lot more vigor and energy — it’s easy enough to create and record miriads of acceptable variations on ‘Key To The Highway’ or ‘Dust My Broom’ until you’re eighty years old, but with ‘Tutti Frutti’ and ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On’, you are almost inevitably bound to run out of your original stock of vigor and energy in a few years. Just like AC/DC or Motörhead — bands who, almost defying the changing spirit of the times, decided to stick to the same guns for their entire career — will always be remembered largely by the songs they wrote in their first 5-6 years, so was it that the early rockers, unwilling and unable to take their formulae to new levels, were withering away even before the clock would announce the arrival of a new decade.

True enough, many of them were betrayed and pulled down by their own stardom — sometimes rather formally (Buddy Holly would never have been able to charter that plane if he didn’t have the appropriate resources for it), sometimes because their puffed-up head just couldn’t stand it (Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, both in their own ways). But those things, when we come to think of it, aren’t really all that different from all the numerous stories of careers crashing down due to accidents, insanities, and star sickness in subsequent decades: for every Buddy Holly, you have yourself a Ronnie Van Zant or a Stevie Ray Vaughan — for every Little Richard, there’s a Peter Green — for every Elvis, there’s a... uhh... Rod Stewart? On the other hand, the «Fifties’ Curse», how I like to call it (which is, in a way, directly inherited from the Fourties’ Curse, the Thirties’ Curse, and so on), is something whose mystical power had effectively and efficiently been neutered by the likes of the Beatles and the Beach Boys, once and for all — people who intentionally chose to confront the Curse head-on rather than submit to it like almost everybody in the world of popular music before them.

And things weren’t all that different on the more overtly African-American side of things, the R&B scene, such as represented by the impressive roster of artists on the Atlantic label. There, the music was slightly different — though, of course, always intersecting in one way or another with the rock’n’roll scene — but the principle remained the same: look for the formula — find the formula — stick with the formula as long as it brings you fame and fortune — stick with the formula long after it has ceased to bring you fame and fortune. All these people — The Drifters, The Coasters, the Ruth Browns and the LaVern Bakers — who really remembers much of anything they did past the late Fifties, or the early Sixties at best, regardless of whether they quit the musical business or went on to have long (and typically fruitless) careers way past their short-lived prime periods? Even a giant like Ray Charles, whose towering status had never let him out of the public eye until his dying day, could be argued to have produced about 80-85% of his «golden legacy» in between 1954’s ‘I Got A Woman’ and 1959’s ‘What’d I Say’. In fact, just about the only R&B artist I can think of who was brave enough to stare down the «Fifties’ Curse» was James Brown — and that, one could argue, was largely because he spent a much longer time trying to «find himself» than any of his peers (again, from a certain angle you could even assert that he did not truly find himself until ‘Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag’, by which time the idea that a good artist has to constantly reinvent himself was already floating in the air).

All of this makes the late Fifties a pretty crazy half-decade, I think — a proverbially transitional one, simultaneously busy developing a whole new musical language for the entire world to adopt but with most of its artists still working in accordance with the old artistic models. This does not mean that it never pays off, in any possible manner, to try and investigate those people’s careers past their prime periods, and as I move farther into the Sixties, I shall continue to do so, because (a) even the old and dusty formula sometimes throws out accidental gems and (b) some of the people involved did try to adapt to changing times, not always with pitiful or laughable results (Bo Diddley, for instance, comes to mind as one person who could create an interesting, if maybe not totally jaw-dropping, synthesis of his classic style with new influences). But it goes without saying that one should never hold elevated expectations for those investigations — which are more likely to satisfy one’s culturological and anthropological curiosity rather than simply give one a jolly good time.

As for those Fifties’ records themselves, these days, I think, they typically command more formal «respect» and «admiration» than actual live interest — even my own reading audience, I’m afraid, has not been too particularly excited about all those reviews (it’s so much more fun when George writes about the Kinks or the Zombies, right?), let alone people voting for their favorite songs on YouTube’s infamous «reaction channels», where old geezers are far more likely to promote The Doobie Brothers or REO Speedwagon rather than the Burnette Brothers and their Rock’n’Roll Trio, or Ronnie Hawkins, or Wanda Jackson. The reason for this, I think, is the psychological barrier that screams «TOO OLD! TOO OLD!» into one’s ear — indeed, there is a very significant sonic dividing line that separates Elvis’ Sun records or the Coasters’ Atlantic records even from something like Please Please Me, let alone the mid-to-late Sixties when playing and production values reached levels of acceptance that have not significantly been overstepped even in modern times. To truly enjoy this music, one has to install a set of checks and filters in one’s mind comparable to those we install for pre-war Hollywood movies or video games from the 1980s and 1990s — which requires work, and we already have so much work to do on all sorts of different fronts anyway.

Yet I can certainly vouch, in my own case, that this meticulous process of relistening to all the previously known classics from the decade, and throwing in a whole lot more stuff which I had never heard before, gave me a whole new level of appreciation for this music which I, at one time, used to call «proto-rock», as if to instinctively stress its underdeveloped character. In many ways, particularly when it comes to production and playing technique, it was, of course, «underdeveloped» compared to the ways even those same songs would be played in subsequent decades (even today, I still prefer my Chuck Berry as played by the Rolling Stones, I have to say, and my Jimmy Reed as played by the Animals); but the passion and excitement embedded in these «underdeveloped» performances, albeit impossible to describe and prove in objective terms, feels very, very much real to me. At the very least, it is now just as easy for me to get inspired by the «liberating» spirit of so many of these records as it is to do the same for the Sixties and Seventies — never mind the modern times, when it is hard to imagine even on a theoretical level what exactly could be counted as a «liberating» spirit in music, as opposed to the all-pervasive «calculating» one... but don’t let me get carried away to grumble-grumble territory.

Instead, I’ll conclude this conclusion with a short playlist for y’all — let’s call it «25 Generally Overlooked Gems From 1955–1959», make it properly representative, and make sure that it does not include any songs that are too familiar to general audiences.

1. Allen Toussaint: ‘Whirlaway’ — prime New Orleanian piano fury!

2. Bill Haley: ‘Thirteen Women’ — the sinister and suggestive little cousin to ‘Rock Around The Clock’.

3. Brenda Lee: ‘Just Because’ — who’s that Elvis guy, really? Even 15-year girls could outsing him in his prime!

4. The Chantels: ‘Congratulations’ — Arlene Smith and her friends almost had it all before Motown and Phil Spector. Well, not quite... but almost.

5. Chuck Berry: ‘Downbound Train’ — One doesn’t often take Chuck Berry for an angel of the Apocalypse, but in his prime, Chuck Berry could really be anything. That, too.

6. The Coasters: ‘I’m A Hog For You Baby’ — No idea why the greatest comic R&B outfit in the world also ended up as the first ever band with a great one-note guitar solo. But that’s the magic of the Fifties for you.

7. The Drifters: ‘Thirty Days’ — Clyde McPhatter in deeply tragic mode somehow manages to impress me far more than he does in honey-drippin’ mode.

8. Elvis Presley: ‘Crawfish’ — this little dark number from King Creole gives us a short exciting glimpse into an Elvis that could have been... but never came to be.

9. Esquerita: ‘Believe Me When I Say Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay’ — simultaneously Little Richard’s most influential teacher and most slavish imitator; a flawed artist, for sure, but how can we not include a song with such a title on such a list?

10. Huey "Piano" Smith: ‘Well I’ll Be John Brown’ — somebody asked for a hot smokin’ platter of prime New Orleanian humor?

11. Jackie Wilson: ‘It’s So Fine’ — who even remembers the «Black Elvis» any more these days? Here’s something to refresh our collective memory, for the greater good.

12. John Fahey: ‘Sligo River Blues’ — and now for something completely different... a lovely and caring anatomical dissection of the quintessence of folk music, while all those kids were wasting their time on their silly rock’n’roll antics!

13. John Lee Hooker: ‘Tupelo Blues’ — meanwhile, some people were also busy adding a sinister theatrical angle to the blues, arguably influencing just as many future artists as the rock’n’rollers did...

14. Johnny Burnette and the Rock’n’Roll Trio: ‘Honey Hush’ — one of the most pissed-off guitar parts recorded in pop music anywhere, at any time. That tone!

15. Larry Williams: ‘Bad Boy’ — without Larry Williams’ instruction, there would have never been no John Lennon! Really truly!

16. Nina Simone: ‘You Can Have Him’ — again, from a completely (or maybe not entirely completely) different world, sounding almost freakishly modern for 1959.

17. Odetta: ‘Motherless Children’ — when she let herself get carried away, she could get truly spectacular; no wonder Dylan always singled her out of the folkie crowd.

18. Ray Charles: ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ — I always imagine this to a background of medieval dungeons and rattling chains. One of Ray’s most terrifying performances.

19. Ricky Nelson: ‘Gloomy Sunday’ — a good one to listen to if you’ve always thought of Ricky Nelson as somebody completely unworthy of serious attention.

20. Ritchie Valens: ‘Fast Freight’ — at their best, Ritchie and his band had a «proto-Who» sort of energy and drive that certainly went beyond pure «entertainment» rock’n’roll.

21. Ronnie Hawkins: ‘Wild Little Willy’ — did you know that Levon Helm missed his chance in life to be a Keith Moon? Catch him, briefly, while the window of opportunity is still open!

22. Ruth Brown: ‘Wild Wild Young Men’ — okay, this one is actually on the Atlantic boxset, so I’m cheating a bit, but still, anything to promote one of the most rocking tunes of the decade!

23. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins: ‘Little Demon’ — much more typical of the man than ‘I Put A Spell On You’, and we need all the voodoo craziness from the decade we can get!

24. The Wailers: ‘Road Runner’ — creativity runs galore on this superficially simple, but extremely imaginative piece.

25. Wanda Jackson: ‘I Gotta Know’ — converting boring country into exciting rock’n’roll has rarely been that obvious, or that fun!

And that’s enough for us for now. Next year, we move into the early Sixties to wallow in their own surf-rocking and girl-grouping secrets and beyond.