Music matures before our eyes here. Music for under-thirties all begins to sound like rock.
Switching up honky tonk country with a twist of the blues, Chuck Berry has been blasting out the hits since ‘Maybellene’ in 1955. This year with “Merry Christmas Baby” Berry plays it cool. Cool as a rock.
Switching up doo wop with a percussive beat, The Montereys wail in an unreleased single from near this time (?) “Santa Claus Gained More Weight.” Are you not rocked?
Switching DOWN the gospel with tubular bells and a touch of sass, Georgia Harris and The Lyrics propose “Let’s Exchange Hearts for Xmas.” Rockety rock, McRockerson.
The only trend in rock we have to watch out for is the white sport coat crowd, the follow-authority fellas and ladies who think The Four Aces are just swell. These types rock out to the tunes ‘Love is a Many Splendored thing’ and ‘Three Coins in the Fountain.’ I guess the boys can’t help how white they are. Bear in mind they started the ‘Fifties with an odd number (‘There’s a Christmas Tree in Heaven’), and now continue the blah band sound (‘bland’) of “The Christmas Tree.” Fairy land, kids!
Elvis joins the Army just in time for Ike to invade The Caribbean and The Middle East. Mao and Kruschev are talking…but that Pasternak book Dr. Zhivago makes them Reds seem nice enough.
So, we’re rocking the world, am i right?
Well, Exhibit A: “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee (Teresa Brewer does a perfunctory pass at it as well) seems to indicate so.
Big band maestro Hugo Winterhaller jazzes up ‘Merry Christmas’ with some Samba ferality in his “Christmas Cha Cha.” This ain’t your grampa’s dance music!
But then there’s radio/TV hostess Ruth Lyons. She had been introducing big bands and hosting her own shows (like Petticoat Partyline and The 50/50) while she’s been songwrighting. But the wax she drops this year, including “Let’s Light the Christmas Tree,” “Hey Nonny Nonny,” and “Christmas is Getting Mighty Close” sounds pretty old fashioned.
Oh yeah, and who’s still selling Christmas music in 1958? Bing Crosby. Yeah, i know! Check out his polka-like daddy-kins vocalism “Just What I Wanted for Christmas.” Yeah, he wants the thought (that’s what counts), but he really wants you shopping. He does, you know.
Comedy novelty for this year seems unintentional, or at least so over the top as to be as odd/offensive as amusing.
I’ve already referenced Buchanan and Goodman’s “Santa and the Satellite.” But i remind you of that ’57 goodie in order to introduce another dynamite DJ, Mad Milo. “Elvis for Christmas” is what radio spinners did for kicks back then. Kids were supposed to dig it.
Elvis and even Johnny Cash were lifting country music to a new, danceable level. Old soldiers, like George Jones were being left behind. Mr. Jones knew how to spin a sad tale of common woe, even for the holidays. “Maybe Next Christmas” certainly does that. But in “New Baby for Christmas” George takes us to a dance floor he hadn’t visited before. It’s kinda wacky.
Country was a bumpy rutted road to follow to higher hills. Jimmy Dean was getting his feet under him in 1957, Perhaps someone thought he oughter follow Gene Autry’s ‘Rudolph’ novelty route with an odd ode:”Little Sandy Sleighfoot.” I know this little ‘children’s’ number helped his career, but gee whiz–it’s awful.
For a legitimate dose of comedy, consider the borscht belt babbling of Eddie Lawrence. A year before, his ‘Old Philosopher’ charted well. Comedians (not ‘stand ups’ back then, but ‘monologists’) did NOT chart. “The Merry Old Philosopher” was a holiday follow-up to that previous spirit-lifting hit. Not to be confused with “That Holiday Spirit” which was the dark side of can-you-top-this rambling. Look up The Old Philosopher to discover the cult-like following he generated.
Rock don’t roll all at once. While we’ve been noticing some rhythm creeping into easy listening, by 1957 the doo wop and R&B and swing and jazz and honky tonk and blues has fused closer and closer into Alan Freed’s so-called “rock and roll.”
This is the year of “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms. In this iteration, it’s sooo country.
True street corner doo wop still sounds like La Fets & Kitty singing “Christmas Letter.” It’s da blooze with a harmony hard-beat chaser. Awww.
New Jersey white guys harmonizing lead us to the boy band early rock. The Cameos make a pretty merry-go-round of music with their “Merry Christmas.”
Detroit doo wop sounds like”Can This be Christmas?” asked by The Falcons. Killer sax. Familiar bass beat. Yeah, we’ve got this.
Also from Detroit The Enchanters wax exotic with doo wop in “Mambo Santa Mambo.” It’s slick as a candy stick. (I listen to the millennial salute of this every year by The Bobs a la a cappella.)
Melvin and Johnny take a page out of Fats Domino’s book with this tinkly, twinkly “It’s Christmas Time Again.”
If you were an R&B fan in N’Awlins in the ’50s you hadda be a Fats Domino man. But a few early rockers dug more the swirlin’ stylin’s of Jimmy Beasley who remains so unrecognized today he doesn’t have a Wikipedia page (except he does–in German). I suggest you check out his 1957 album Jimmy’s House Party. Until then, enjoy “Christmas is Here Again.”
Welcome to Nineteen Hundred Fifty-Seven. A couple months after Humphrey Bogart dies the American Cancer Society publishes a paper accusing cigarette smoking as causing cancer. The American juvenile delinquent epidemic is touted, clouted, and flouted. A bit later in the year, Kerouac’s On the Road is published. After several failed USA Atlas rocket launches, USSR’s Sputnik successfully circles the planet. During this year Atlas Shrugged and The Cat in the Hat are published. Go, cat, go.
Life is getting more absurd by the moment. The new rock ‘n’ roll music celebrates this craziness, as well as allowing its primal beatability to carry the overwhelmed young person away like at a revival tent meeting.
Not that ’57 bridges the generational voids easily. We still get Big Carols (now in convenient 10-song 33 1/3 rpm vinyl libraries) from the likes of Bing Crosby (last last generation)(“How Lovely is Christmas“) and Frank Sinatra (last generation)(“The Christmas Waltz“), and Pat Boone (the anti-new generation)(can’t bring myself to link to any of his old stuff!). Footnotationally, please contextualize the New Generation’s Elvis (“Blue Christmas”–recycled from Ernest Tubb and Doye O’Dell) as strange and disturbing back in this old age.
The old guard clung to their old musical style, but could still be naughty. Sex symbol Julie London hit big in 1955 with ‘Cry Me a River.’ So, here in ’57 she tries out the whispery, intimate, sensual style with “I’d Like You for Christmas.” Playboy magazine has been spreading its circulation for a few years by now, you know. Time to titillate the tinsel.
Contrariwise, wholesome daughter of Kitty Wells, Ruby Wright, lends her next-door-girl pipes (with an adorable childrens’ back up) to “Let’s Light the Christmas Tree.
Now, to keep your skills in rhetorical logic even more off balance, here is a different singer also named Ruby Wright, also singing with kids, also releasing in 1957: “Merry, Merry Christmas.” Yeah, she does sound cooler.
Frankie Lymon’s The Teenagers hit big last year with ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love.’ This year he solos a real downer “It’s Christmas Once Again.” Didn’t make me wanna dance. Maybe question my existence.
The 5 Keys grew out of an R&B foursome in the ’40s. They went through group changes and recording tragedies. “Every Heart is Home at Christmas” may represent an early ’50s effort, but at least one site claims airplay in 1957. It’s hep, so we can fully recover from the last song.
Well, i’m not sure how much more schizo i can get besides bebopping church music. The Norman Luboff Choir took a century old hymn and jazzed up the gospel. “Mary had a Baby (Amen)” does make me wanna dance. Hallelujah.
In the way of kiddies’ yule, Line Materials delivers their employee Christmas bonus for 1956: a special vinyl song concoction entitled “The Magic of Christmas.” Santa sounds drunk, the toys seem to come to life–not in a nice way, and all the singers here are so tired i feel guilty that i was ever a child.
Commercialization has created bigger and bigger shopping centers. In Edina, MN “Southdale for Christmas” tells us through radio air play jingle what a wonderful life you’ll have buying stuff. Ching a ling sing the mad men.
The Elvis craze has replaced the Eddie Fisher craze finally. So now we have Eddie Cochran & The Holly Twins with “I Want Elvis for Christmas” dueling with the more polished rockabilly version by Marlene Paul this year “I Wanna Spend Christmas with Elvis.” Which is creepier? Don’t be so millennial, dude! Fans don’t stalk in 1956!
But the descendent of vaudeville comedy oddness, the non sequitur nonsense television show, ripens to a rich vintage this year. On our side we have Erie Kovacs. But as he left us no great novelty Christmas tune, i will reach across the pond to Spike Milligan and The Goons. So, here it is, the Dadaism of the 1950s: “I’m Walking Backwards for Christmas.” Try to make sense of it and we will laugh at you.
Who wants to dance to that new fangled music? You know, that hard-driving black soul with a harmonious chorus? That poor person country swing with a whiskey bottle beat?
The Youngsters begin to turn our tried and true doo wop into rhythm and blues. In 1955 they put out ‘Don’t Fall in Love Too Soon’ and ‘Shattered Dreams.’ By 1956 they have reususcitated 1929’s “Christmas in Jail.” If it walks like a rock and quacks like a roll…
Long Island white guys tried on that old doo wop sound as The Echoes in ’55. With the help of Gee Records, as The Debonairs, they released the single “Christmas Time/Crazy Santa Claus.” It’s measured and slick and trying too hard. But it’s a gas.
I’m not partial to covers of standards regardless of the funk that gets brung, but “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” by The Cadillacs crafts something R&B without slick bells and whistles. This is the raw power of cool, the soul of rock ‘n’ roll.
Country music this decade keeps toying with a hard backbeat. Unable to break into Sun Records, Cordell Jackson starts her own label to sing and produce her own music including “Rock and Roll Christmas” and “Beboppers’ Christmas.” Do you feel the power of Elvis compel you? Well, honky tonk you too.
Brenda Lee is 10 years old in 1956. The shorty poor Atlantan sang for candy at the neighborhood store, and worked up to radio shows. She will use her country rhythm later to rule pop/rock in the ’60s. Here she sings from her second single of all time: “Christy Christmas” backed by my favorite poverty-aggressive Christmas song “I’m Gonna Lasso Santa Claus.”
Welcome to 1956, where Kruschev denounces Stalin–but USSR tops the Melbourne Olympics; where Montgomery faces a bus boycott–but we re-like Ike; and Elvis begins his own Ascension.
Granted, it was a year where the biggest selling single (Doris Day’s ‘Que Sera, Sera’) was still more grownup thrown up than the runners up (Elvis and Fats Domino). So don’t let’s give up on middle of the road musical fool-de-rol.
Dave King sings “Christmas and You” like the second coming of Bing. The strings are weepy, the percussion tinkly, the backup mush mouthed. Eyes half closed, lips parted, heart unmoved.
I hate to say it, but Harry Lillis Crosby Jr. is STILL making Christmas classics like “I Heard the Bells.” It ain’t novelty, but it is history. You’re right, i should not have included that.
Harry Belafonte helps us escape the conservative crud for Christ music with his down-home/island plain-spoken canticle “Mary’s Boy Child.”
But let’s get back to our ’56 schmaltz, already in progress. Here’s an amazing record on a postcard from Ford Motors, featuring Rosemary Clooney sending up ‘Jingle Bells’ with a jingle that smells.
Don Charles presented The singing Dogs in 1955 with “Jingle Bells.” (So it’s not from the ’70s like your parents told you.) Novelty music history!
Maybe it’s just me, but there’s little difference between amateurish country recording and kids’ music. So, to fill in our peanut gallery, let’s consider Sue Childers. These sample recordings, “Ooh! Ooh! Golly Gee!” and “Kiss-Mus-Tree” catch Sue early in her modest career. Dig that accordian.
Little Richard, Al Green, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry all start to chart their success in 1955. Hop those socks, chicks and daddios.
The Chordettes hit with ‘Mr. Sandman’ the year before, and its puckish author Pat Ballard penned a novelty Christmas send up this year. Dorothy Collins charted to #51 with “Mister Santa.” Hey, that’s kinda funny.
Please, keep in mind, we want to rock and we want to roll. But we need to marry up doo wop, the blues, some jazz and some attitude here.
Let’s dole out the doo wop, baby cakes! The Voices look dapper and trim. I’ll let their “Santa Claus Baby” and “Santa Claus Boogie” speak for them. ‘Cuz i can find no more ’bout dem. Yet, they send me.
Bluesy and sultry Johnny Moore with his Three Blazers scorch their way through “Christmas Eve Baby.” Lock up the women!
Jazz standard bearer Louis Armstrong (he’s only 54 years old here) is still churning out the beat in 1955. “Christmas in New Orleans” paints you a trumpetty landscapes of happenin’ holiday whoop-de-dos you wish you could get to.
That funny gospel exclaiming bit gets the workout with “Christmas Gifts” via Walter Schumann and Jester Harston exhorting us all jazzy-like to get going with the Christmas shopping.
After their #1 ‘Earth Angel’ (on the R&B charts) The Penguins released “Christmas Prayer.” Their heavenly harmonies connect churchy gospel to doo wop to the blues to that next level of cool.
“A Cool Cool Christmas” frostily delivers more doo wop by The Sabers. But this time they call it rock ‘n’ roll. Get some! The backup wailing and saxophone craziness makes one lose control, it does.
Some Cleveland schoolmates wanted to be as good as The Moonglows and The 5 Keys. They called themselves The 5 Stars and played dives and clubs until a couple recordings came out in 1955. (Dave Clark by then had redubbed them The Hepsters.) “Rocking’ and Rollin’ with Santa Claus” is one of their hits, and it’s a keeper.
