Review: Ricky Nelson - Songs By Ricky (1959)
Tracks: 1) You’ll Never Know What You’re Missin’; 2) That’s All; 3) Just A Little Too Much; 4) One Minute To One; 5) Half Breed; 6) You’re So Fine; 7) Don’t Leave Me; 8) Sweeter Than You; 9) A Long Vacation; 10) So Long; 11) Blood From A Stone; 12) I’ve Been Thinkin’.
REVIEW
As far as I can tell, nothing particularly exciting or out of the ordinary happened to Ricky or his career in the second half of 1959. He had another big hit with ‘Just A Little Too Much’, written for him by Johnny Burnette, who had by now joined his brother Dorsey as a breadwinner for the family in this department — it’s a fun, catchy, solid little pop-rocker, never straying too far away from the middle-of-the-road pop-rock formula, not even when James Burton tries to enliven it with a relatively aggressive (for Ricky’s standards, that is) guitar solo. If you are looking for something just a little more special and exclusive to Nelson’s personality, I’d rather have to recommend the B-side, ‘Sweeter Than You’ — a sugary, tender-as-heaven ballad from the pen of ‘Lonesome Town’s Baker Knight; much as I generally prefer energetic pop-rock to sentimental balladry, there is no denying that Ricky’s deep overtones are way better suited for under-the-balcony serenades than dance proms, so there is nothing surprising about the fact that the B-side eventually caught up to the A-side in terms of popularity.
(For the sake of those who really care, the CD version of the album includes early takes on both sides of the single that are actually better than the final versions — ‘Just A Little Too Much’, in particular, is rawer, faster, with crunchier, more rock’n’rollish guitar tones. It must have been a rehearsal take, but then, of course, they had to «polish» and «smoothen out» the raw angles because it would probably be «unprofessional» to release the song without giving it a proper crew cut. Listen to these two takes back to back — the official single and the alternate take — and that’s the difference between domesticated and untamed rock’n’roll circa 1959 for you right there).
The rest of the album, coming upon the heels of the hit single about two months later, feels like it diligently takes its cues from either of its two sides — there are the catchy pop-rockers, typically supplied by the Burnette brothers, and the chivalrous ballads, usually provided by Baker Knight or dusted off the vault shelves. Not that Baker Knight couldn’t pen a catchy pop-rocker all by himself, as is quickly proven by the lead-in track, ‘You’ll Never Know What You’re Missing’, which straightahead borrows its «baiting» chorus line from Elvis’ ‘Treat Me Nice’ ("well I’m sorry for you but I really don’t know why..." = "if you want my loving, take my advice..."), but then resolves it in a much less interesting manner, mostly just repeating the same phrase ("...cause you’ll never know what you’re missin’ till you try") instead of the mysterious stop-and-start ellipsis that Leiber & Stoller came up with for Elvis. Still sounds fun, though — but now that I think about it, Baker Knight then also stole the main melodic hook from ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ to screw it inside ‘One Minute To One’, whose main line is like a hybrid of... well, let’s say Carl Perkins’ ‘Glad All Over’ (first four measures) with ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ (next four measures). Damn those mediocre songwriting mechanics!
Not that the Burnettes fare that much better — ‘A Long Vacation’, for instance, is different from Buddy Holly’s ‘Not Fade Away’ only because of the obligatory (and a little annoying) pauses between each repetition of the Bo Diddley beat. ‘You’re So Fine’ also feels like it’s composed out of bits and sratches of Buddy Holly chords (there’s definitely a bit of ‘(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care’ in there, and others as well), and ‘Don’t Leave Me’ begins by quoting the Burnettes’ own ‘All By Myself’ (itself a Fats Domino cover)... all in all, I understand that this is the kind of situation where a good knowledge of 1950s rock’n’roll can seriously hinder one’s ability to just relax and enjoy the music — but the fact remains that most of this music is quite half-assed in all respects. Lazily written, lazily recorded, with just enough professionalism and feeling to let me be content with it as tasteful enough background accompaniment; but also good proof that by mid-1959, the «1950s pop-rock» formula had really run dry, if songwriters were already dismantling hits from the past three years and using their singular elements as building blocks for potential new hits.
Therefore, if my opinion matters at all, I’d like to single out an absolute non-hit, the song ‘So Long’ (written by Ricky’s uncle Don Nelson), as my favorite on the album — two minutes of simple jazzy melancholy in the one and only musical and emotional style of which Ricky Nelson might be called the unpeered master. Nowhere near as memorable as ‘Lonely Town’ or as eerily depressive as ‘Gloomy Sunday’, it still belongs in the same category, and I especially appreciate the deep, dark bass tone laid down by James Kirkland; when Ricky’s and James’ notes merge together at the end of each first line of each verse, there is a haunting, ghostly effect there which, for just a couple seconds, takes this out of the sphere of regular entertainment and into the Twilight Zone. If you ask me real hard, I’d say that it is for tiny moments like these, and only for tiny moments like these, that it still makes good sense to remember Ricky Nelson as a unique planetary treasure.
Alas, it does not work quite as well on Ricky’s last hit single from 1959, which came out too late to be included on this album (November 1959), but too early to be included on any of the following ones, either, so it makes sense to mention it here: ‘I Wanna Be Loved’, another Baker Knight contribution on which the out-of-ideas songwriter plunders ‘Fever’. It’s slow, bluesy, with a sensual and melancholic Burton lead and all, but it simply does not have the magic of ‘So Long’; Ricky Nelson as master of the «voodoo-flavored seduction» technique is no Elvis, let alone Muddy Waters. The B-side, ‘Mighty Good’, works better, but it is merely one more of those middle-of-the-road pop-rockers on which, furthermore, he makes the mistake of trying to sound just a tad more cheerful than necessary. Truth of the matter is, a happy Ricky Nelson is almost as hard to believe as a smooth-operating Ricky Nelson. Give me a sad, brooding Ricky Nelson any time of day over all those other attitudes, and I’ll be glad to brood along with him for as long as needed.