The Best of the 50s

[davieG]

 

Ok before most people's time on here, yes even me but there were some great songs/performers from this decade.

 

One of my favourites was Eddie Cochran who wrote most of his own stuff and died young in a car crash in England.

 

 

 

 

 

....and ironically recorded just before his death with Buddy Holly playing on it.

 

[Smudge]

Somethin Else, one of my favorites! 

 

 

Edited 20 February 2017 by Smudge

[davieG]

 

 

 

[urban.spaceman]

I used to work at Millets in town as a supervisor - the store was haemorrhaging money left right and centre thanks to regular shoplifting (to the point where you're on a first name basis with your regulars) and poor management within the store and from head office.

Their answer to this problem was not to fix any of those things but to pay less on their music licence by getting rid of the dreadful modern pop music and replacing it with really awful cover versions of the dreadful modern pop music by people who couldn't sing. 

As you can imagine this did not help my mental health: 9 hours a day, 40+ hours a week being forced to listen such offensive dross, I even used to get regular complaints from customers! Even today if one of those songs comes on the radio I have to switch off immediately.

 

Cut to about a year later; I'd moved to the Blacks in town and point blank refused to ever go back. Until they asked me to manage the store while it closed - they were moving the Blacks to a new site (High St opposite the Shires where it is now) and the Millets down the road into the Blacks. So I took the job - 3 weeks in hell for better than normal hell. 

 

The first thing I did was rip the cassette out of the player and set fire to it, then disabled the entire PA system so they couldn't fix it. Then I got one of our crappy little portable speakers from the accessories section and attached it to my iPod. Knowing that copyright expires after 50 years the only music I could play on it without potentially getting into trouble was anything before 1960.

 

So I ended up with an epic and truly brilliant playlist chocked full of the likes of Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Sam Cooke, The Crickets, Dean Martin, Sinatra, Nina Simone, Doris Day, Johnny Cash, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Big Mama Thompson, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Woody Guthrie, Kingston Trio, Jackie Wilson - such a great mix of music that really kept me going during a quite unpleasant experience working in a job I hated in a shop I hated for a company I hated and working with the general public, who I hated (if you've ever worked in retail, you'll understand).

 

In 8 years of working in retail this was the only time I'd ever had complements from customers over the choice of shop music - and I got many of them, from all demographics.

 

Particular favourites from this time were:

Literally one of the best songs of all time.

[Webbo]

For all us Leicester fans.

 

[Bellend Sebastian]

Hell yes

[Webbo]

 

[TiffToff88]

Love a bit of 50's music even though it's well before my time (Its before even my dads time). Some real classics, like these:

 

 

[purpleronnie]

Impossible not to get up and dance to this one:-

 

 

 

 

 

 

[pSinatra]

 

 

 

[Collymore]

On 20/02/2017 at 21:38, urban.spaceman said:

I used to work at Millets in town as a supervisor - the store was haemorrhaging money left right and centre thanks to regular shoplifting (to the point where you're on a first name basis with your regulars) and poor management within the store and from head office.

Their answer to this problem was not to fix any of those things but to pay less on their music licence by getting rid of the dreadful modern pop music and replacing it with really awful cover versions of the dreadful modern pop music by people who couldn't sing. 

As you can imagine this did not help my mental health: 9 hours a day, 40+ hours a week being forced to listen such offensive dross, I even used to get regular complaints from customers! Even today if one of those songs comes on the radio I have to switch off immediately.

 

Cut to about a year later; I'd moved to the Blacks in town and point blank refused to ever go back. Until they asked me to manage the store while it closed - they were moving the Blacks to a new site (High St opposite the Shires where it is now) and the Millets down the road into the Blacks. So I took the job - 3 weeks in hell for better than normal hell. 

 

The first thing I did was rip the cassette out of the player and set fire to it, then disabled the entire PA system so they couldn't fix it. Then I got one of our crappy little portable speakers from the accessories section and attached it to my iPod. Knowing that copyright expires after 50 years the only music I could play on it without potentially getting into trouble was anything before 1960.

 

So I ended up with an epic and truly brilliant playlist chocked full of the likes of Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Sam Cooke, The Crickets, Dean Martin, Sinatra, Nina Simone, Doris Day, Johnny Cash, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Big Mama Thompson, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Woody Guthrie, Kingston Trio, Jackie Wilson - such a great mix of music that really kept me going during a quite unpleasant experience working in a job I hated in a shop I hated for a company I hated and working with the general public, who I hated (if you've ever worked in retail, you'll understand).

 

In 8 years of working in retail this was the only time I'd ever had complements from customers over the choice of shop music - and I got many of them, from all demographics.

 

Particular favourites from this time were:

Literally one of the best songs of all time.

Remember the original actually came out 3 years earlier ....

 

 

[davieG]

Chuck Berry: Seven of the king of rock 'n' roll's best songs

By Mark SavageBBC Music reporter

19 March 2017

 

From the sectionEntertainment & Arts

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Image copyrightAFP/GETTY IMAGES

Image captionWhat are his best tracks?

"There's only one true king of rock 'n' roll," said Stevie Wonder. "His name is Chuck Berry."

The St Louis bluesman, who has died aged 90, basically invented rock.

Sure, there were other contributors: Bill Haley's northern band rock 'n'roll; Pat Boone and his New Orleans dance blues; and Berry's label mate at Chess Records, Bo Diddley.

But no-one else shaped the instrumental voice and lyrical attitude of rock like Chuck. His recordings were lean, modern and thrilling. In the words of pop critic Bob Stanley, "they sounded like the tail fins on Cadillacs".

He was the first to admit he drew inspiration from days of old. "There is really nothing new under the sun," he said in the mid-1980s tribute film Hail, Hail Rock 'n' Roll - citing the likes of T-Bone Walker and Charlie Christian as his forebears.

Even the famous "Chuck Berry guitar riff", which opened hits like Maybellene and Johnny B. Goode, was lifted - by his own admission - from a Louis Jordan record.

What he did with those influences, though, was something else. He gave country the bite of the blues, writing defiant odes to cars and girls at a time when rock lyrics were all Tutti Frutti and A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop.

As Brian Wilson said, he wrote "all of the great songs and came up with all the rock and roll beats".

"He laid down the law," added Eric Clapton.

Here are seven of his most influential songs.

MAYBELLENE (1955)

Chuck's first single sounded like nothing that had ever come before - and gave him a top five hit in the US a full year before Elvis made his debut.

It was based on Ida Red, a 1938 hit for Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys - but was nowhere near as polite.

Chuck adds a thunderous rhythm section and a scuzzed up guitar, while his lyrics lived out a teenagers' fast-car fantasy (even though he was in his mid-20s when he wrote it).

"As I was motorvatin' over the hill, I saw Maybellene in a Coupe-de-ville / Cadillac rollin' on the open road / Tryin' to outrun my V-8 Ford."

Disc jockeys Alan Freed and Russ Fratto were "encouraged" to play the song - by being credited as co-writers - and a career was born.

Listen on Spotify or Apple Music

ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN (1956)

"I wanted to play the blues," Chuck once told Rolling Stone. "But I wasn't blue enough. We always had food on the table."

So he channelled his other frustrations into music. Roll Over Beethoven, widely believed to be a manifesto for rock and roll music, was in fact an affectionate dig at his sister, Lucy, who spent so much time at the family piano he couldn't get a look in.

Tributes paid to legendary Chuck Berry

Still, the swagger and the message - that Beethoven and Tchaikovsky had been rendered redundant by the sheer power of Chuck and his cherry-red Gibson - resonated with musicians all over the world.

The song has subsequently been covered by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, ELO and even Iron Maiden.

Listen on Spotify or Apple Music

Media captionChuck Berry: The man who invented rock and roll

SCHOOL DAY (1957)

Most rock lyrics deal in generalities but Chuck had an obsessive eye for detail, in a way that spoke directly to his teenage audience. School Day is a perfect example - pinning down that awful, caged feeling of children waiting for the school bell to ring.

Berry was in his thirties by the time it was released but the memories still seem fresh.

"Back in the classroom, open your books," he sings. "Gee, but the teacher don't know how mean she looks."

Listen on Spotify or Apple Music

BROWN EYED HANDSOME MAN (1956)

While most of his songs are carefree, cartwheeling teenage librettos, Brown Eyed Handsome Man takes a more political tone.

"Arrested on charges of unemployment / He was sittin' in the witness stand / The judge's wife called up the district attorney / She said, 'Free that brown-eyed man'."

Obituary: Chuck Berry

Berry was inspired to write the song while he was touring through heavily black and Latino areas of California at the start of his career.

"What I didn't see, at least in the areas I was booked in, was too many blue eyes," he wrote in his 1987 autobiography.

"The auditoriums were predominantly filled with Hispanics and 'us'. But then I did see some unbelievable harmony among the mix, which got the idea of the song started."

Listen on Spotify or Apple Music

YOU NEVER CAN TELL (1964)

Chuck's most danceable song, You Never Can Tell becomes slightly more sinister when you discover it was written after the musician's arrest for transporting a 14-year-old girl across a state boundary without her parents' consent.

"It was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well," he sings over Jamie Johnson's rollicking piano riff. "You could see that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle.

"And now the young monsieur and madame have rung the chapel bell / 'C'est la vie,' say the old folks. It goes to show you never can tell."

Image copyrightDUALTONE RECORDS

Image captionBerry's final album and his first for decades, titled Chuck, is meant to be released this year

Chuck Berry: His colourful life in pictures

The song mounts a spirited protest, but Chuck was sentenced to three years in prison and by the time he was released in 1963, after 20 months, rock was being overtaken by the British R&B boom.

Listen on Spotify or Apple Music

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE (1959)

Featuring some of Chuck's best and most tender lyrics - he worked on it for more than a month - Memphis, Tennessee was inspired by the Muddy Waters' classic Long Distance Operator.

In the lyric, the star is pleading with a telephone operator to help him find a girl called Marie - explaining they have been "pulled apart" by her mother.

It is not until the final verse that you discover the girl is his six-year-old daughter, whose mother fled home, taking Marie with her.

In a devastating aside, he tells the operator: "Last time I saw Marie she's waving me good-bye / With hurry home drops on her cheek that trickled from her eye."

Listen on Spotify or Apple Music

JOHNNY B. GOODE (1958)

Powered by the most memorable guitar intro in rock, Johnny B. Goode is a semi-autobiographical tale of a down-at-heels guitar player who ends up with his name in lights.

The writing of the song illustrates Chuck's ruthless commercial instinct: "The original words [were], of course, 'that little coloured boy could play'," he told Rolling Stone in 1972. "I changed it to 'country boy' - or else it wouldn't get on the radio."

Chuck's genius as an arranger is also on display on this song, one of the first ever singles to utilise overdubs - with Chuck playing his solo over the top of the original studio recording.

A stone cold classic, it has proved to be supremely adaptable - with cover versions by Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimi Hendrix, Buck Owens, Peter Tosh and the Grateful Dead.

As long as rock exists, someone, somewhere will be playing a version of this song. Just ask Marty McFly.

Listen on Spotify or Apple Music

[Webbo]

 

[Webbo]

 

[davieG]

Loved this and was still popular in the 60s when there were still plenty of Bubble Cars around.

 

Lyrics

While riding in my Cadillac, what, to my surprise,
A little Nash Rambler was following me, about one-third my size.
The guy must have wanted it to pass me up
As he kept on tooting his horn. Beep! Beep!
I'll show him that a Cadillac is not a car to scorn.

Refrain:
Beep, beep. (Beep, beep.)
Beep, beep. (Beep, beep.)
His horn went, beep, beep, beep. (Beep! Beep!).

I pushed my foot down to the floor to give the guy the shake,
But the little Nash Rambler stayed right behind; he still had on his brake.
He must have thought his car had more guts
As he kept on tooting his horn. Beep! Beep!
I'll show him that a Cadillac is not a car to scorn.

Beep, beep. (Beep, beep.)
Beep, beep. (Beep, beep.)
His horn went, beep, beep, beep. (Beep! Beep!).

My car went into passing gear and we took off with dust.
And soon we were doin' ninety, must have left him in the dust.
When I peeked in the mirror of my car,
I couldn't believe my eyes.
The little Nash Rambler was right behind, you'd think that guy could fly.

Beep, beep. (Beep, beep.)
Beep, beep. (Beep, beep.)
His horn went, beep, beep, beep. (Beep! Beep!).

Now we're doing a hundred and ten, it certainly was a race.
For a Rambler to pass a Caddy would be a big disgrace.
For the guy who wanted to pass me,
He kept on tooting his horn. Beep! Beep!
I'll show him that a Cadillac is not a car to scorn.

Beep, beep. (Beep, beep.)
Beep, beep. (Beep, beep.)
His horn went, beep, beep, beep. (Beep! Beep!).

Now we're doing a hundred and twenty, as fast as I could go.
The Rambler pulled alongside of me as if I were going slow.
The fellow rolled down his window and yelled for me to hear,
Hey, buddy, how can I get this car out of second gear?

Songwriters: Carl Cicchetti / Donald Claps

Beep Beep lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

[Webbo]

Nancy Whisky lived in Leicestershire for many years.

[Smudge]

On 20/02/2017 at 16:38, urban.spaceman said:

I used to work at Millets in town as a supervisor - the store was haemorrhaging money left right and centre thanks to regular shoplifting (to the point where you're on a first name basis with your regulars) and poor management within the store and from head office.

Their answer to this problem was not to fix any of those things but to pay less on their music licence by getting rid of the dreadful modern pop music and replacing it with really awful cover versions of the dreadful modern pop music by people who couldn't sing. 

As you can imagine this did not help my mental health: 9 hours a day, 40+ hours a week being forced to listen such offensive dross, I even used to get regular complaints from customers! Even today if one of those songs comes on the radio I have to switch off immediately.

 

Cut to about a year later; I'd moved to the Blacks in town and point blank refused to ever go back. Until they asked me to manage the store while it closed - they were moving the Blacks to a new site (High St opposite the Shires where it is now) and the Millets down the road into the Blacks. So I took the job - 3 weeks in hell for better than normal hell. 

 

The first thing I did was rip the cassette out of the player and set fire to it, then disabled the entire PA system so they couldn't fix it. Then I got one of our crappy little portable speakers from the accessories section and attached it to my iPod. Knowing that copyright expires after 50 years the only music I could play on it without potentially getting into trouble was anything before 1960.

 

So I ended up with an epic and truly brilliant playlist chocked full of the likes of Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Sam Cooke, The Crickets, Dean Martin, Sinatra, Nina Simone, Doris Day, Johnny Cash, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Big Mama Thompson, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Woody Guthrie, Kingston Trio, Jackie Wilson - such a great mix of music that really kept me going during a quite unpleasant experience working in a job I hated in a shop I hated for a company I hated and working with the general public, who I hated (if you've ever worked in retail, you'll understand).

 

In 8 years of working in retail this was the only time I'd ever had complements from customers over the choice of shop music - and I got many of them, from all demographics.

 

Particular favourites from this time were:

Literally one of the best songs of all time.

Great story. Woolworths would do the same and sell only covers. 

When I was at at school I worked at Brees Records at the top of Church Gate on Saturdays and holidays, between 1960 and 1962. Tiny shop and was heaving at Xmas time.

[RumbleFox]

This breaks my heart by the way.

 

 

[Webbo]

 

[Trav Le Bleu]

From Songs For Swingin' Lovers, the very first UK album chart no. 1.

 

Before Ole Blue Eyes became an overblown, bombastic, power screamer. My Way and New York, New York are two of the worst songs ever.

 

And yet, Songs For Swinging Lovers would most certainly be one of my desert island disc, if you were allowed albums.

[pSinatra]

 

 

[Webbo]

On 04/07/2017 at 01:44, pSinatra said:

 

 

That top one's from an advert isn't it?

[pSinatra]

 

Groove Armada did a cover called 'At the River'.  That's the one used in the M&S advert.

[Webbo]

 

[MrsJohnMurphy]

 

And this whole album is just a treat....