Review: Eddie Cochran - Singin' To My Baby (1957)

Tracks: 1) Sittin’ In The Balcony; 2) Completely Sweet; 3) Undying Love; 4) I’m Alone Because I Love You; 5) Lovin’ Time; 6) Proud Of You; 7) Mean When I’m Mad; 8) Stockings And Shoes; 9) Tell Me Why; 10) Have I Told You Lately That I Love You; 11) Cradle Baby; 12) One Kiss.

REVIEW

Life had been supremely unkind to Ray Edward Cochran: not only did she push him into the embrace of Death at the age of 22, but she also made sure that during his lifetime he would see the release of only one long-playing record — and that none of his well-known compositions would be featured on it. It is understandable that Liberty Records could not fit in ‘Skinny Jim’, his first single on which he sang in a rough, crackling, hideously twisted voice and played a rough, crackling, chaotic rockabilly guitar solo — because that single was, after all, released on a different label (Crest). But why they could not bring themselves to include his first bona fide classic, the immortal teenage anthem ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ (originally recorded in the summer of 1956 and included into the soundtrack of The Girl Can’t Help It) is much harder to fathom. It has been suggested that the label was trying to groom him as an early teen idol — which would have made commercial sense a couple years later, perhaps, but in late 1957 kids still had the hots for rebellious rock’n’roll, and only a seriously moralistic record executive would want his guitar-swingin’ protegé sing orchestrated ballads instead. Then again, what exactly can we expect from a record label whose biggest commercial success was ‘The Chipmunk Song’?

The way I see it, Eddie Cochran had precisely one talent which made him somewhat special — he was a gifted and creative songwriter, putting his own special musical and narrative twist on the rockabilly formula whenever Mother Inspiration came down from the sky and cuddled him, which was not too often, but often enough for us to fondly remember him even after he became too old for the 27 Club. As a singer, as a guitar player, as a personality he was good, but no Elvis, no Chuck, and no Gene respectively. Therefore, any intelligent talent nurturer would have done the obvious — namely, let the boy write his own songs, and let him write them the way he wanted to. Alas, Singin’ To My Baby simply miscasts Cochran by (a) having only five of his compositions and (b) way too often featuring him as a young and rowdy crooner rather than a young and rowdy rock’n’roll troubadour.

The average sound of this album is that of a Gene Vincent on tranquilizers: reverb- and echo-laden guitar and vocal tracks with a country-derived melodic basis, but slower, softer, more «gentlemanly» than the Blue Caps’ wild raves. A good example is the album opener ‘Sittin’ In The Balcony’, originally released by struggling country artist Johnny Dee — if you like the track and end up excited by it rather than bored, the rest of the record will be «completely sweet»; but I somehow find this kind of half-hearted «already not quite country, but not yet proper rockabilly» music traitorous to the spirit of both country and rockabilly, and would rather have me some Hank Williams and some Gene Vincent instead, rather than an emasculated mish-mash of both. Eddie does play a nice «twirling» guitar solo in the middle, though.

The only song of Eddie’s own off this album, I think, which has been occasionally covered by other artists is ‘Completely Sweet’, with a non-trivial key and time signature change that makes it half-pop, half-blues rock — a quirky little trick, even if the sum of the parts ends up being more impressive than each individual part. The other four songs, however, are doo-wop-influenced pop ditties and ballads which seem to suck up to Elvis way too much: ‘Tell Me Why’ tries too hard to be ‘Loving You’, ‘Mean When I’m Mad’ tries too hard to be ‘Too Much’, ‘One Kiss’ tries too hard to be ‘Teddy Bear’, and although ‘Undying Love’ has no immediate prototype that springs to mind, its overall arrangement and style is still early RCA-era Elvis to the core. The problem is, while Eddie did have a fairly impressive vocal range and could plunge almost to the same trembling depths of warm bass as the King, it did not come as naturally to him as it did to Elvis — Cochran’s singing style on ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ and ‘Summertime Blues’ is far more his than this soulful stuff. And, of course, he never could boast the same studio resources as Elvis when it came to backing bands and sound engineers.

And these are the self-penned songs: predictably, it gets worse when we get to outside songwriters. At least when the songs moderately rock out (Terry Fell’s ‘Cradle Baby’), the toe-tapping factor and Eddie’s nicely shaped guitar solos push back the boredom factor; but the ultra-slow, reverb-drenched, overdramatic rendition of ‘Have I Told You Lately That I Love You’ needs to be heard in order to much better appreciate the relatively listener-friendly Elvis version. Worst of all, after a brief while, even if the album itself is mercifully short, all the songs start to fall together — when you use the exact same production style to create the exact same atmosphere, you at least have to be AC/DC and provide memorable distinctive riffs to keep things afloat, and this is not the kind of material that requires distinctive riffs.

The truly cruel thing, of course, is that in the next two years of Eddie’s career, when he was putting out a small, but steady flow of really great singles (‘Summertime Blues’, ‘C’mon Everybody’, ‘Somethin’ Else’), his record label never gave him a proper chance — all of his good stuff would appear on LPs posthumously. Perhaps he did not have the musical vision of a Buddy Holly, but he did have the potential to grow into a first-rate rock’n’roll songwriter, and although we certainly cannot blame the executives at Liberty Records for failing to foresee the tragedy of April 16, 1960, we most definitely can and should blame them for misjudging and misdirecting the talents of their most talented artist while he was still alive.

• Only Solitaire: Eddie Cochran album reviews