Goodbye To 1960: A Year In Retrospective

I faintly remember Quentin Tarantino, in one of his countless appearances on some TV show, briefly and meta-reverently explaining the history of cinema — and though, for the life of me, I cannot find the source, it went something like "...the Fifties came along, and movies turned to shit because of family values and stuff... and then the Sixties came along..." (interviewer perks up) "...and it was the Fifties all over again!" (interviewer’s jaw drops). "But only for a few years", says Quentin, and we all breathe a sigh of relief.

Ironically, I never cared as much for the artistic excesses of Sixties’ cinema as I did for the decade’s musical revolutions — for some reasons, the wildness, freedom, and shock value of the screen does not seem to hold up quite as well over time as the same qualities in music. But regardless of this subjective perspective, it’s pretty clear indeed that the myth of the «Sixties» does not exactly begin in 1960; one had to wait for at least three or four years, depending on which part of the world you were in, for the truly tectonic changes to come. In 1960, the parents largely continued to listen to whatever they were listening to in 1950; their intellectual kids, depending on their upbringing and ideological growth, either listened to jazz (which remained the major artistic pivot in the musical world) or folk (with the popularity of the «rural strain» growing incrementally the further you found yourself away from the actual countryside — "green pastures of Harvard University" indeed!)

The kids that did not go to Harvard University, though... rather tough figuring out what they really all listened to. The most popular song of 1960, according to Billboard, was Percy Faith’s ‘Theme From A Summer Place’, closely followed by Jim Reeves’ ‘He’ll Have To Go’ — and, no matter how hard you try, you really won’t find any genuine rock’n’roll on those lists. They are not entirely tasteless — there’s a good deal of truly great pop songs in there — but it does seem as if the rebel kids of the Fifties were all grown up and mellowed out, and were now busy themselves policing their younger brothers and sisters so that they wouldn’t spend their candy money on all that juvenile rock’n’roll nonsense.

Admittedly, there wasn’t a hell of a lot of great new rock’n’roll records available on the market — so it’s very much a matter of debate of whether the decline of the genre was due to a change of tastes that came from the bottom, or to the conservative strategies of the record industry business put in motion from the top. One thing is for certain: the «novelty» factor of rock’n’roll, by 1960, had ceased to be commercially important, the same way people would buy complex and demanding prog-rock records in the early 1970s sheerly due to the «wow factor» ("hey, did you hear Jethro Tull’s latest LP only has one song on it? how cool is that?") and then just as quickly get tired of it. Another thing that is also for certain is that most of the rockers of the 1950s, having saddled and milked and exhausted their simple, but effective formulas, simply did not know what to do with them any longer.

Indeed, taking a general look at all the output by American rockers that I have reviewed for 1960 reveals rather dismal results. The best rock’n’roll records of the year are retrospective compilations, largely consisting of singles that had originally been released in the last years of the previous decade: Eddie Cochran (came out already after Eddie’s death), Wanda Jackson’s Rockin’ With Wanda (all Fifties), and, of course, Link Wray & The Wraymen, featuring the most reckless and tough-as-nails American rock’n’roller of the early Sixties at his best — and without any hopes at all of becoming a stable commercial presence.

As for the actual present, things were decidedly bleak. Bo Diddley put out a whoppin’ three LPs with a joint legacy of, at best, 2 or 3 songs (like ‘Roadrunner’) that would be remembered in subsequent years. Chuck Berry came out with Rockin’ At The Hops, full of disappointing and largely unfunny rewrites of his earlier genius hits (and this was even before all of his legal troubles began biting him in his rock’n’roll ass). Bill Haley switched from Decca to Warner Brothers and The Comets became an «oldies’ act» practically overnight. Gene Vincent put out Crazy Times!, his mellowest take on rock’n’roll yet, maybe only a small notch above the level of rocking energy you’d see on a Ricky Nelson record. And then, of course, there was the «new Elvis», reinvented as a «mature» pop artist, with ‘Stuck On You’ and ‘It’s Now Or Never’ as his current visiting cards, showing the world how it was going to be run from now on...

Things weren’t all that radiant for the almost-exclusively African-American R&B market, either. Anybody who owns the magnificent Atlantic R&B boxset, arranged in chronological order, will naturally notice that the music released on the label gets notably more soft and sentimental as the Fifties give way to the early Sixties and the rough ’n’ tough R&B grooves of Ray Charles, Ruth Brown, and The Coasters are gradually replaced by the sweeter orchestration of the post-Clyde McPhatter Drifters and Ben E. King. The Coasters, for that matter, opted for «maturity» too, releasing a professional and competent, but completely unnecessary album of old standards — and in that business, they were hardly alone, what with Sam Cooke, for instance, almost completely drenched in saccharine Tin Pan Alley covers at the time. Jackie Wilson descended even further down into schmaltz as well; and Ray Charles’ move to ABC records coincided with the man’s desire to make all of the Americana sub-genres submit to his musical vision — except that the vision itself was being compromised by aligning with the day’s «easy listening» tastes.

That said, while 1960 was a pretty disappointing year for both the «whiter» strain of rock’n’roll and the «blacker» strain of R&B — the two main forces responsible for the finest expression of the popular spirit in the previous decade — there was still plenty of good new music available, and much of it came from genres and styles that were only beginning now to come of age, or were reassembling themselves for the new generation. Surf-rock had not yet properly emerged as its own genre, but signs of a new, lighter, happier and still somewhat mischievous version of rock’n’roll could be seen on some of Jan & Dean’s performances — and the Ventures emerged as America’s leading instrumental rock band, combining tightness, melodicity, and drive in a way that Fifties’ rock did not really know. That’s on the boys’ side of the pop business; on the girls’ side, the Shirelles were busy opening the floodgates for countless acts to follow in their wake, offering yet another alternative for those who did like pop music, but wanted it a little more down-to-earth than the heavily made-up withe suburban variety.

The folk scene was going strong, too, with Odetta now being recognized as a massive cultural force and Joan Baez pretty much inventing a modern musical language for rows and rows of fair maidens singing medievalistic ballads for decades to come — no wonder a young and aspiring Bob Dylan made the decision to switch from rock to folk around that time, (temporarily) disillusioned with the stagnation of the former and sensing that the proper way to the stars now lay closer to the latter. In fact, 1960 seemed to be a time when soul-searching young people really clung on to their country’s music legacy — folk, blues, and jazz were hot, while rock’n’roll was not. Small wonder that it was 1960 that brought on the riots at the Newport Jazz Festival: energetic kids were finding it more fun to trash the grounds at jazz performances now than at Bill Haley or Jerry Lee Lewis concerts!

Ironically, some of the best (and most popular) rock’n’roll records of the year were arguably made... across the Atlantic, where Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, Britain’s first fully authentic hard-rocking band, were able to crack the charts with their rough and angry sound; milder rockers like Cliff Richard and Billy Fury were doing all right as well. None of them had the joie de vivre with which the Beatles would outperform them all in a few years, but they did have some actual grit that seemed to be slipping away from American performers (in the same genre, that is — James Brown, Muddy Waters, and Nina Simone all had plenty of grit in 1960). It was probably just a matter of the typical chronological delay, but the gist of the matter is that, due to rock’n’roll’s later birth in the UK, it didn’t exactly have enough time to die there for the Beatles to need to revive it, so hooray for temporal asymmetry.

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In conclusion, here is another list of «25 semi-obscure gems» from this heavily conflicted year, in which popular taste took a serious dip and the music business was both a perpetrator and a victim thereof — but which can also be construed in a nice revisionist manner as a damn good year for summarizing past achievements and ceding the cultural spotlight from boogie-woogie to a big heap of other musical directions.

A. Rock and roll: here I allow myself to mix a few highlights that were recorded in 1960 with a few titles that had actually been put out as singles earlier, but re-released in 1960 on some of their respective artists’ LPs — which at least gave their fans an excuse to refresh those exciting sounds of 1958-59 for the overall non-exciting musical climate of 1960.

[1] Bo Diddley: Mumblin’ Guitar — this was probably the coolest, noisiest sound Bo extracted from his instrument that year. ‘Roadrunner’ is his obvious classic from 1960, but this one’s an even better proposition for those who worship at the «proto-garage» altar.

[2] Link Wray: Raw-Hide — originally released in January 1959 and re-released on Link’s debut LP in 1960, this one is faster, more danceable, and funnier than the ubiquitous ‘Rumble’, if not nearly as groundbreaking or well-known. (And if you want to hear the man play it even dirtier and «glammier», well, he used to rip it up in the Seventies just as well!).

[3] Eddie Cochran: Somethin’ Else — originally released in mid-1959, this was one of the very few songs already in that year that dared to have a monumentally rocking sound, perhaps the single most perfectly polished rock’n’roll song Eddie ever came up with. So perfect, in fact, that Heavenly powers decided the man had nothing left to live for on this planet...

[4] Wanda Jackson: Rock Your Baby — this one’s ultimately from November 1958, but LP buyers would only get to hear it in 1960, and how could I leave unmentioned one of the finest Nashville-style rockabilly numbers of the decade? Not surprisingly for a lady, Wanda Jackson was one of the last artists to hop on the rockabilly train in the Fifties, but she was also one of the last ones to hop off it.

[5] Brenda Lee: Little Jonah (Rock On Your Steel Guitar) — really cheating all the way here: the single dates to as early as June 1958, and it was not even included on the self-titled Brenda Lee LP in 1960 (only sometimes appended as a bonus track). In fact, she probably wouldn’t even have dared to record anything like that in 1960 already. But it’s still a great example of a fun, if melodically generic, rockabilly track with — true to the title — some kick-ass steel guitar work from pedal steel king Buddy Emmons. Don’t miss this one!

[6] Johnny Burnette: Cincinnati Fireball — the combination of Johnny Burnette, former wild man extraordinaire of rockabilly, with one of Elvis Presley’s favorite pop songwriters and Snuff Garrett’s corny strings was not as bad as it might seem. At least this number, the rather forgotten B-side of ‘Dreamin’, is unpretentious, funny, and catchy.

[7] The Ventures: Raunchy — Bill Justis’ original was moody, but the most energetic version of this instrumental was, of course, recorded by the most energetic of American instrumental bands. ‘Walk Don’t Run’ is the obvious first choice, but as long as the song they covered was not too epic in its own right, just about every mid-tier composition by anybody always goes best with some Ventures in the mix.

[8] Ronnie Hawkins: Southern Love — a little of that for Mr. Hawkins, please. He’d begun moving away from straightforward rock’n’roll by the beginning of 1960, branching out into all types of Americana (setting the ground for the future evolution of The Hawks into The Band), and at times, he had a pretty damn good hickory-eyed soul groove going on.

And now a little respect for the Brits:

[9] Cliff Richard & The Shadows: I’m Gonna Get You — far from the perfect rock’n’roll song, but listen to that guitar break and tell me there ain’t a whole lotta ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ in there already, three years before the fact. If only Cliff weren’t so stiff...

[10] Billy Fury: Don’t Jump — okay, this guy definitely wasn’t stiff, and when he was at his best, he had the power of both rock and soul at his disposal. This here has a little whiff of Elvis, but the song itself is a twisted teen drama with a far more complicated plot than any of Elvis’ songs...

[11] Johnny Kidd & The Pirates: Please Don’t Touch — even Motörhead covered this decades later. Along with the more famous ‘Shakin’ All Over’, this is the definitive moment in pre-Beatles rock’n’roll... actually, the Beatles never sounded this creepy, at least not in the early days. This is more like pre-Alice Cooper, if you ask me.

B. Pop (of the whitebread variety):

[12] Elvis Presley: I Gotta Know — this is just one of those absolutely perfect pop songs, you’d think an AI wrote and recorded it (not; contrary to popular belief, AI is incapable of writing perfect pop songs). For every occasional gem like this, I’m ready to forgive the King three soundtracks and one handshake with Richard Nixon.

[13] Ricky Nelson: I’m Not Afraid — if, like me, you think that Ricky Nelson’s voice had a strong strain of melancholy magic rather than simply a complete lack of emotion, then this song might just be the single best use he put it to in 1960. I don’t often cherish ballads by rock’n’rollers, but Rick was more like a natural balladeer accidentally caught in the rock’n’roll craze. If it were up to him, he’d sing ‘Johnny B. Goode’ as a melancholy ballad.

[14] The Everly Brothers: Love Hurts — 1960 belonged to ‘Cathy’s Clown’, but that one was a big hit, while ‘Love Hurts’ wasn’t even a single, and it’s up to us to wrestle the song out of the sweaty hands of Nazareth and restore it to its rightful owners, who could express all the pain and sorrow without oversinging the tune to high heaven.

[15] The Crickets: More Than I Can Say — and once we’ve finished doing that, let’s go here and restore this song to Sonny Curtis and the rest of Buddy Holly’s old pals from the glossy curls of Leo Sayer. It just doesn’t work the same way with electronic drums instead of that friendly piano riff. Buddy would be proud.

[16] Jan & Dean: Baggy Pants — it’s 1960, so it’s impossible not to include at least one silly novelty number, so let it be Jan & Dean’s. These guys really made a living out of being funny by being so completely and totally unfunny, it’s downright hilarious.

[17] Duane Eddy (featuring Lee Hazlewood): The Girl On Death Row — up for a little Goth-pop from 1960? Leave it to Lee Hazlewood, the kinkiest cowboy of the decade, to first break out of the shadow of his twangy friend with this fairly harrowing (for the time) tale of a lady’s impending encounter with an electric chair. Them Beatles could never get that macabre, unless ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ counts.

C. R&B + Soul (and a few other strains of «African-Americana»):

[18] James Brown: Good Good Lovin’ — no idea why this song flopped, as it really opens up a whole new chapter in James Brown history, effortlessly joining the R&B groove with vocal pop hooks. The entire Think! album is filled with these little memorable gems, but this is precisely the moment where J.B. found his niche for the next three or four years.

[19] Etta James: Tough Mary — Etta’s ballads are her most common commercial attraction, but they were always way too spoiled with banal instrumentation, so gimme «Tough Etta» instead. This rather cynically worded little groove got it all: weird flute, groovy saxes, and a blazing vocal that sets a new post-Ruth Brown standard and also presages classic era Tina Turner, I’d say.

[20] Fats Domino: Natural Born Lover — an album-only cut that goes seriously deeper than the average Fats hit. Vocals, piano, sax, and delicate, subtly proto-psychedelic orchestration combine here to almost cathartic effect. A heavily underrated «late-period» masterpiece for the man.

[21] Ray Charles: Carry Me Back To Old Virginny — ‘Georgia On My Mind’ is Ray’s ‘Yesterday’, but the same album (very spotty and poorly conceived in general) also has the man’s take on ‘Old Virginny’, made up in the same wistful-nostalgic-heavenly manner. Certainly beats out Alma Gluck, though direct comparisons between 1960 and 1900 are a bit cheatish.

[22] Sam Cooke: You Were Made For Me — 1960 was a horrible year for Cooke in terms of LPs, but the singles, from Keen’s ‘Wonderful World’ to RCA’s ‘Chain Gang’, were great, and Keen’s little retrospective album at the end of the year did remind us how consistently good Sam could be when not overwhelmed by old-fashioned Tin Pan Alley. This is a slightly lesser remembered, but nevertheless classic pop number from 1958 that made the cut.

[23] Nina Simone: You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To — a dazzling... rather, an almost trance-inducing highlight from the Newport concert, using a Bach-like fugue to deconstruct and subvert a generic Tin Pan Alley mood. Nina’s unique ability to mold African-American jazz, baroque classical, and contemporary European melancholic existentialism is on perfect display.

[24] Odetta: Pastures Of Plenty — Odetta and her loyal bass companion Bill Lee (who, by the way, passed on just a week ago today) turn Woody Guthrie’s energetic and optimistic vision of the future into a chilly-bleak perspective here. Lee was actually quite a genius at using the bass guitar in an "ambient" manner, more to "paint it black" than uphold the rhythm or anything.

[25] The Shirelles: Boys — but we won’t go the predictable way and end this list on a downer. I like The Shirelles a lot, but I still think most of their memorable songs would be done better by other artists (‘Dedicated To The One I Love’, ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ etc.), however, not even The Beatles could do ‘Boys’ better than the original. Perhaps it’s because a song about boys should be sung by girls, after all, not by Ringo...