Australian Plastic

He'll Have To Go - JIM REEVES1960 HONOURABLE MENTIONEnd of Year Position: 8

2005-12-08T17:53:00.000+11:00

I think I've always had a problem with this song. Firstly, I simply don't like the so-called "Nashville" sound. This isn't country music, there's nothing anything like country music in this song. Under Chet Atkins' watch, all the distincitvely "country" factors have been stripped away and replaced with things like xylophones (althought I suspect they may be vibraphones....). That's not to say Atkins was no good, in fact I really enjoy what he did with Jerry Reed in the late '60s.

Secondly, I don't care how sweet and smooth the music is, the song is about a bloke trying to talk a girl into shagging him. He's at the pub, he's had a few, and he's getting a bit toey. As a result, he's trying his best to sweet talk the girl over the phone. I've seen this happen in person plenty of times in person, and it's really quite pathetic and desperate.

As influential as this was in really bringing the "Nashville Sound" to the mainstream, I'm having a lot of trouble enjoying it.

North To Alaska - JOHNNY HORTON1960 HONOURABLE MENTIONEnd of Year Position: 4

2005-11-16T17:43:00.000+11:00

This was the last single released by Johnny Horton while he was still alive. In November 1960, he was killed in a car accident, the other car being driven by a drunk driver. Funnily enough, Horton was convinced that this was exactly how he'd die; In a car accident involving a drunk driver. C'est la vie.

Anyway, on to the song. This is another one I've heard about eleventy billion times, so I'm intimately familiar with it and probably slightly biased in its favour. The song was from the film of the same name (John Wayne in Alaska? Okay....), and as such, the lyrics tell of the events in the film.

The one thing I've always liked about Johnny Horton is the slight edginess in his voice, and his tendency to execute a quick, sharp vocal slide up at the end of lines. In the first verse of this song, he does it on the end of "Seattle", "too" and "Gold", and it just gives his delivery that little bit more. I also like the way the snare drum emphasises the beat in an understated way.

This song certainly isn't a masterpiece, but it's far from being crap.

Save The Last Dance For Me - THE DRIFTERS26/11/60 - 10/12/60

2005-11-12T10:30:00.000+11:00

This song has always made me feel sad. Not quite as sad as Kenny Rogers' Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town, which is, incidentally, one of the most bloody miserable songs I've ever heard, but still sad. It's not necessarily a bad thing.

A couple are going out to dance, and our singer has to beg his date not to go home with anyone else. He's happy to let her strut her stuff and dance around with anyone she likes all night while he presumably stands around and watches, so long as she goes home with him.

I can't be the only one who thinks that's a little sad. Poor guy.

Ben. E King, who would later have an stupidly enormous hit with Stand By Me, carries the lead well, with good backup from the rest of the group, and the understated musical background is perfect for the song. Another well conceived and executed song by Pomus & Shuman.

It's Now or Never - ELVIS PRESLEY8/10/60 - 19/11/60

2005-11-12T10:19:00.000+11:00

The transition from an indie label to a major is always one of the most difficult things for a performer to pull off well. Will they retain the same excitement and innovation that excited all the people who hunted down their obscure releases and attended shows at out-of-the-way venues, or will they be subject to the biscuit-cutter treatment of so many before them?

I'd be happy to suggest that Nirvana made a fairly good transition. Sure, they did lighten up a little and acquire some more record polish, but tell me that you didn't either

jump around the room like a totally mad idiot or

get chills all over

when you first heard Smells Like Teen Spirit. I think it'd be fair to suggest that they maintained their artistic integrity throughout their recording career.

Then you have the total opposite of this. His name, sadly, is Elvis. While he put out some absolute crackers in the first years of his RCA contract, such as Don't Be Cruel and All Shook up, it didn't take him very long to start churning out turgid crap to keep the label satisfied. It's great from a Pop perspective, but in terms of artistic integrity, It's Now or Never scores a big fat zero.

I just can't get into this. The Elvis I know and love has the atmospheric, echoey guitar of Mystery Train, the upbeat excitement of Good Rockin' Tonight or Baby Let's Play House. This has enough syrup to keep me sick for days. Having said that, the quality of Elvis' voice is the only thing I can really appreciate about this song. It's matured, and he's a genuinely good singer now.

Yes Sir, That's My Baby - COL JOYE tied with RICKY NELSON24/9/60 - 1/10/60

2005-11-12T10:15:00.000+11:00

This is the first time a US hit has tied with a locally recorded competitor. However, I can't help but wonder whether it was Joye's version that was the more popular, and Nelson riding on his bandwagon, as many US based sites don't list this as one of Nelson's singles of note.

Col Joye had been cruising for a while, and this song was another chance to kick back into top gear. It's a fairly standard white-boy "teen idol" tune with a little more pep than say, Tab Hunter, and it came too soon to be influenced by Bryan Hyland, as it can't mention a girl without throwing marriage into the mix.

Although it made number one, this is far from both Joye or Nelson's best. Joye's best was now behind him, and although it wouldn't be his last number one, it would take him some fourteen years to regain the top spot.

Walk Don't Run - THE VENTURES3/9/60 - 17/9/60

2005-11-12T10:09:00.000+11:00

Another instrumental, this one's based on a descending chord figure in Bb minor with a guitar lead. However, unlike this year's other instrumental number one, it's not really that catchy. Sure, the lead guitar line is something new for the Australian charts, but it's not "stick in your head" catchy. Well, not my head anyway.

There's no doubting that songs like this were the genesis of the "surf" instrumentals that were to arrive in the near future. I've rated it based on that.

Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini - BRYAN HYLAND13/8/60

2005-10-19T18:24:00.000+10:00

I don't think I've ever heard this song all the way through before, I've just sort of been aware of it. As it turns out, I'm not missing much. It mostly focusses on the modesty of the girl wearing said bikini, and her reluctance to let people see her in it.

Having said that, however, it is the first number one to mention bathing suits, and women's underwear in general. So I guess it's pretty innovative in that way. Four years ago, you could hardly mention a woman in a song without proposing marriage within three lines, now they're wearing tiny little undies.

Just a Closer Walk With Thee - JIMMIE RODGERS30/7/60 - 6/8/60

2005-10-10T17:56:00.000+10:00

And from a lively tune about dancing, we go to Jimmie Rodgers singing a hymn. There have been attempts to make it a bit more up-to-date and interesting, but compared to African-American gospel singing, this is as plain and predictable as they come. I honestly think that I preferred Bimbombey.

Then again, it shows that the non-denominational Christian record market was a fairly substantial one. And I don't have anything against the tune, being a Christian myself. But this is...bland, and not particularly awe-inspiring.

Clap Your Hands - THE BEAU-MARKS23/7/60, 20/8/60 - 27/8/60

2005-10-03T12:59:00.000+10:00

Compared to everything else that dominated the charts in the middle of 1960, this is pretty damn lively. With plenty of handclaps in the background, we get fairly heavy beat emphasis, which would certainly be a great encouragement to get people up dancing.

The only real criticism I have of it is that the group really slow down through the song, losing quite a bit of speed, and I'm not sure that it's intentional as it sometimes is. Although, taking into consideration that the group financed this recording for an independent label in Canada themselves, lower production values and a limited budget probably contributed to the fact that they didn't try another take.

Overall, it's pretty good. A one hit wonder with two goes at the top spot. I've rated them as such.

Everybody's Somebody's Fool - CONNIE FRANCIS16/7/60

2005-10-03T12:49:00.000+10:00

This was Connie Francis' first Australian chart-topper, but I don't think that it was anywhere near her best. It's a fairly clichéd pop tune about going back to the guy who makes her cry all the time, making her the fool.

While the tune is pretty catchy, the song doesn't really grab me most of the way through. However, the last verse isn't so bad. In this reviewer's opinion, she's breaking the fourth wall in a sense, and telling the poor crying girl who bought the record that everything will be okay while things will just go on being crap for herself. It wasn't very common, and it's a real saving grace for a song that I was ready to write off as being pretty pointless.

What A Mouth (What A North and South) - TOMMY STEELE2/7/60 - 9/7/60

2005-09-29T18:29:00.000+10:00

Listening to this, I don't think that it wouldn't be drawing a very long bow to suggest that Steele's only Australian number one was significantly influenced by Lonnie Donegan's My Old Man's a Dustman. Steele, ever the opportunist, also recorded What a Mouth in front of a live audience.

In an amazingly irritating cockney voice, he sings about a boy with a big mouth, with even more double meanings than Donegan. The song was written by early 1900's music hall star Harry Champion, who was probably best known for writing songs about food. From a modern perspective, there are some lines that are downright filthy, and they probably wouldn't be accepted in a song today without a few raised eyebrows.

After My Old Man's A Dustman, this seems somewhat amateurish. It's not in the slightest bit clever, as Dustman kind of was, and Steele's voice grates on my nerves bigtime.

Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport - ROLF HARRIS11/6/60 - 25/6/60

2005-09-29T18:12:00.000+10:00

Having grown up in Australia, I've heard this song more times than I can possibly count. As early as Primary school, possibly earlier, I'd sing along with it. I guess the lyrics were fairly kid-safe (except for the line about "letting abos go loose", which was excised from future recordings), and it's a concept that even a child can laugh at - to tie down a Kangaroo would be a fair accomplishment indeed.

Influenced by Harry Belafonte's Calypso album a few years earlier, Harris' lyrics and melody

are a picture of catchy simplicity. And his instrumental innovation, the Wobbleboard (which was just a sheet of masonite) gave an interesting, and certainly previously unheard of percussive beat. Even though Harris was mostly writing the song for Australian expats in London, where he was most famous, the song took off in Australia, the UK, and in the US three years later. The song, and Harris, are still well known today, and this longevity is something of a sign of its value.

My Old Man's a Dustman - LONNIE DONEGAN AND HIS GROUP21/5/60 - 4/6/60

2005-09-29T17:59:00.000+10:00

Let's get something straight: I really like Lonnie Donegan. Rock Island Line is a ripper of a song, Gambling Man is great, and Cumberland Gap is an incredibly exciting tune not matched until the punk era. Compared to all of them, My Old Man's A Dustman is amazingly disappointing.

Amazing bias aside, it's really not that bad a tune. It's steeped in the British music hall tradition. Aprropriately, it has been culled from a live performance. This works in the song's favour - the musicians are playing to an audience, and the audience laughs at the end of every verse, providing a guide for the listeners at home.

But...well, the mighty had certainly fallen. Every joke in the song relies on double meanings to be funny, and there's only so much Carry On style humour one can take. And for one more used to the blistering pace of Cumberland Gap , this is really very boring.

Little Boy Lost - JOHNNY ASHCROFT16/4/60 - 14/5/60

2005-09-21T17:42:00.000+10:00

I think this is probably one of the earliest songs released in Australia that was such an accurate telling of true events. Pretty much every word of the song is true; Steven Walls, a four year old boy went missing around Guyra in northern New South Wales on February 5, 1960. He had over 5,000 people and 7 aircraft looking for him, which even now, nearly 50 years on, remains as Australia's biggest land and air search. It turned out that he was doubling back on the search party as he was scared of the strangers that were looking for him, and when he was finally found, he was indeed asking "Where's my daddy?".

Interestingly, in an interview broadcast on ABC radio about a month ago on Walls' 50th Birthday, Ashcroft revealed that he requested that the song be removed from radio playlists when Graeme Thorne was kidnapped and murdered in June, and the sales subsequently crashed. Still, he'd managed a Gold record that was given to Walls, and earned himself New Zealand's first Gold disc.

I don't think there's any question of Ashcroft's intentions in writing this song, this was a big event in Australia, and I really think that he was simply documenting it. It just happened to capture the emotion of the community, and the collective joy present when that such a potentially tragic set of circumstances had such a happy ending. With all due respect, it doesn't really indicate that much of a pop sensibility, and I'm sure Ashcroft wasn't aiming for a number one. Regardless, he got it. And the pop that touches hearts is some of the best.

What In The World's Come Over You? - JACK SCOTT2/4/60 - 9/4/60

2005-09-21T17:40:00.000+10:00

This was another song on one of my Dad's driving tapes, so I'm fairly familiar with it, and I quite like it. The song doesn't muck around, we start with the hook line, Scott's "What in the world's come over you?", and the song fairly well flows. The melody of the hook is quite memorable, due to the accidental notes that just deviate a little from what you're expecting. Lyrically, it's a fairly standard breakup song, nothing out of the ordinary.

This is also an interesting little milestone for the USA. Scott was born Giovanni Sacfone, and I'm not really aware of another young (24) Italian-American sing music so identifiable as US Country before this. He does a fairly good job of it.

Handy Man - JIMMY JONES26/3/60

2005-09-21T17:37:00.000+10:00

Before hearing this, I'd only ever heard Jones' later hit Good Timin'. I was totally unaware that Handy Man was his original - I'd heard Del Shannon and James Taylor give it a whirl, but I wasn't aware of this version.

The song was co-written by Jones and Otis Blackwell, who wrote a bucketload of well known songs - All Shook Up and Don't Be Cruel for Elvis, Great Balls Of Fire for Jerry Lee Lewis, and Peggy Lee's Fever (although this was written under the "whiter" sounding pseudonym of John Davenport).

Although this is more of a "genuine article" than Taylor's version, I can't really get into it. It's probably Jones' constant desire to jump up into his yelping falsetto that gives me the irrits. And considering the fact that the main hook of the song is in that falsetto, I'm not really drawn in at all. That's not to say it's bad, it's just not my cup of tea.

What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For? - EMILE FORD & THE CHECKMATES12/3/60 - 19/3/60

2005-09-21T17:32:00.000+10:00

At first listen, I really thought that the singer would be a very white American, probably wearing a cowboy hat, as the style of this tune is really quite American country - not really bluesy enough to be rock and roll. The vocalist also sounds quite "pale" on first listen.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw this page. It turns out that Ford migrated from the Bahamas to England, and what he really wanted to do was be a sound engineer.

For a British record, this is amazingly American sounding, especially in the production. The style of the backing singers, the prominent (and nicely overloaded) snare drum, and the sexual bravado of Ford ("I'll get you alone tonight, and baby you'll find you're messing with dynamite") just scream "American" to me.

After a few listens, the song gets more appealing, but I can't say it's anything really special. So goes another one-hit wonder.

.

Running Bear - JOHNNY PRESTON27/2/60 - 5/3/60

2005-09-15T21:21:00.000+10:00

A quick Google Search confirms that I'm certainly not the first person on Earth to draw a comparison between Johnny Preston's 1960 hit and Romeo and Juliet. I know it's a moderately tenuous link to make, but it's definitely there - two young lovers that can't be together because their families/tribes are in conflict and in the end, they both end up dead.

Looking at it, this is the first "death song" to top the charts in Australia. Penned by J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, and recorded prior to his own untimely death, it tells the tragic story of *ahem* Running Bear, a "young Indian brave" and the girl he loves, one Little White Dove. They're on opposite sides of a wide raging river that they can't swim, and their tribes fight with each other, so "their love can never be". In the end, they decide to jump in the river and each swim halfway. Of course, they end up drowning, but "now they'll always be together". And forgive me, but I'm getting a little choked up just typing that. And I'm only halfway through my first glass of Red for the evening.

Preston's delivery is actually refreshingly, well, frank. He doesn't really overdramatise, or sing melodramatically. He just tells the story as it is, which really makes the song sound more natural. The musical style is quite like that The Big Bopper - sparse percussion, short vocal phrases, prominent bass and dirty saxophones. And with Richardson singing backing vocals on the track, it's no real surprise. I'm something of a romantic myself, and as such I'm bit of a sucker for this sort of "tragic death" song. I'm scared of what I'll write when it comes time to review Bobby Golodsboro's Honey.

She's My Baby - JOHNNY O'KEEFE30/1/60 - 6/2/60

2005-09-15T21:18:00.000+10:00

This was JO'K's first actual number one. Released not long after Shout, it's not soaked in the same empty-garage-style reverb, which probably has something to do with the fact that it was actually recorded with more polished production techniques in Los Angeles for Liberty Records, being released in Australia on legendary promoter Lee Gordon's label.

While it's very easy to place this tune as belonging in the late 50's or early 60's, it doesn't suffer from having the same clichéd sound as many of the tunes from the era, and that's probably something to do with the band and singers playing behind him. It's more late-40's than early 60's, and I'm sure I hear a Xylophone or a Vibrophone in the mix there, although it's so vocal and beat focussed that I can't be sure which it is. But it's playing in the new style, and it's different enough to the rest of what was out there at the time to be really quite interesting. I'm quite a fan of this, and I can see why it got to the top.

Boom Boom Baby - BILLY "CRASH" CRADDOCK9/1/60 - 23/1/60, 13/2/60 - 20/2/60

2005-09-15T21:08:00.000+10:00

Billy "Crash" Craddock was an interesting figure. An American whose first love was Country music, his label decided he was handsome enough to promote as a rock-and-roll teen idol. The label was probably somewhat intrigued, not to mention perturbed when his only hits came in Australia. This tune only scraped the bottom of the US Top 100, and that was on the strength of the slow B-side.

Craddock was another US-based performer who toured Australia regularly, building up something of a following here. Maybe Columbia records were trying to make some money off him, who knows?

But anyway, the song's really pretty textbook in style - he's got a girl, they go dancing, the song's full of double meanings (but not really in the Carry-On way), there's a saxophone solo...I've heard about a hundred songs that are fairly indiscernable from this.

Shout - JOHNNY O'KEEFE WITH THE DEEJAYS AND THE DELTONES1959 HONOURABLE MENTIONEnd Of Year Position: 14

2005-09-11T21:43:00.000+10:00

By the time Johnny O'Keefe released his version of the Isley Brothers song, he was already quite the success in Australia. He'd had a hit with the song that gave him his nickname, Wild One (which would go on to be recorded by such artists as Iggy Pop and Buddy Holly), but his star was still in ascent.

Released in the same year as the Isley Brothers version, it's rougher around the edges in all facets. For some unknown reason this recording is absolutely soaked in reverb, but every instrument is clearly heard, and the lyrics are easily discernable, even though there's really only one word you need to hear.

This is a great song - it's full of the semmingly limitless energy that gave O'Keefe his popularity in Australia. And this is a tune that really has bridged generation gaps - I used to work at a nightclub in suburban Melbourne, and at about 4:30 one morning the (normally clueless) DJ decided to drop this in between two modern R&B tunes. The crowd of 18 - 20somethings absolutely loved it, and he got his biggest cheer of the night. So go figure.

When England's Lulu released her version of the song in 1964, O'Keefe replied with an updated re-recording with a different band, abandoning much of the reverb for a more direct style. By then, much of the O'Keefe magic was gone and had nowhere near the success nor the impact of the 1959 version.

Finally, this song was almost four and a half minutes long. Although it was split into "Part One and Two" on the record (Part 1 finishing at 2:14 - "Now wait a minute"), it was often played all the way through. In an era of tunes that were around Two and a Half minutes long, this was quite an achievement, for which O'Keefe and band deserve congratulations (the only number one of 1959 to exceed three minutes was the Kingston Trio's Tom Dooley, clocking in at 3:05).

This really is a great tune. It's exciting, fresh and raw, different enough from the original to get a reputation of its own, and has well and truly bridged generation gaps. It gets a rating that a number one hasn't managed yet.

Joey's Song - BILL HALEY AND HIS COMETS12/12/59 - 2/1/60

2005-09-11T21:36:00.000+10:00

In truth, I have absolutely no idea why the label of this record tells us that this song is an "Instrumental Fox Trot". The era of this being the selling point of a record was, well, long gone. Then again, the same was written on Rock Around The Clock (minus the "Instrumental" bit, of course), so maybe Decca just didn't know how to describe this "new" music without calling it "Rock and Roll". Oh no, we couldn't do that.

After further investigation, it turns out that Decca thought that the only possible dance that could be done to this new music was a fox trot. It's quite possible that they could be accused of not moving with the times....

But onto the song. As I've said before, instrumentals have to be pretty catchy to make the top of the charts. And really, this last hurrah for Haley's Comets is no exception. It's based around guitar and saxophone being given the same 16-bar phrase - first guitar, then sax, then the song modulates up and they play the same phrase in harmony. The sax then gets to improvise on the original theme, and that's the tune.

This is another one of the tunes I'd never heard before commencing this project, but I still give it a spin fairly often. Although it's pretty laid back, it's a damn catchy tune, and I completely understand why it sat atop the charts for so long, even in the middle of an Australian summer. Then again, most songs that make number one in December hang around until January.

Oh Yeah, Uh Huh - COL JOYE AND THE JOY BOYS7/11/05 - 5/12/05

2005-09-10T20:57:00.000+10:00

This was Col Joye's third number one hit in six months, so he was obviously doing something right. It doesn't nearly have the rock of Rockin' Rollin' Clementine, it's more like Bye Bye Baby, and has percussion reportedly provided by a typewriter. Oddly enough, it was a cover of the b-side of a minor single for US Duo Mickey and Sylvia, who were best known for Love is Strange. (Thanks to poparchives.com.au for that one!)

The song's certainly nothing brilliant, but it's still quite decent and listenable pop with an attractive guitar line. This probably explains why it was the B-side to a minor single in the USA. The thing is, when you're on the kind of roll that Joye was on, all you need is standard pop, and you'll go a long way. Col and the Joy Boys had three number ones in a year (actually six months) in 1959, a record that would only be equalled by Elvis, and broken by the Beatles in 1964. That's not bad at all.

I'll Never Fall In Love Again - JOHNNIE RAY3/10/59 - 31/10/59

2005-09-10T20:48:00.000+10:00

Now where on earth did this come from? By October 1959, Johnnie Ray and his ilk were fading stars. The big, orchestra based pop sounds of artists like Perry Como and such were giving way to rock and roll, making this something of an anomaly.

I'm having trouble understanding how this was so popular. If it was released ten, or even five years before it was, I could understand it being huge. But in 1959, as rock and roll was starting to take over? I can only attribute it to Ray's big following in Australia, built from his frequent touring.

Incidentally, while this was atop the Australian charts, Bobby Darin's version of Mack The Knife made it to the top in the USA and the UK. Well, we beat them to it, with Louis Armstrong taking it to the top in Australia in early 1956.

(Rockin' Rollin') Clementine - COL JOYE & JOY BOYS29/8/59 - 26/9/59

2005-09-08T18:42:00.000+10:00

After Col Joye's first hit, it didn't take him very long to land a second - or a third, for that matter.

Rockin' Rollin' Clementine is basically a re-write of the old American folk tune Clementine, substituting the lyrics in which Clementine drowns and the song's protagonist shrugs and shacks up with Clem's little sister for lines like "In a cavern, crazy cavern, excavating for a mine, lived a daddy of all daddies, and a chick named Clementine". I can't count how many times Clementine "drives her jeep down to the juke joint" (say that five times fast) , but it obviously keeps her out of the trouble bathing ducks got her into.

Musically, this is one of the more interesting and progressive pop songs to come out of Australia in 1959. There's certainly no ambiguity about the genre of this, it's definitely rock and roll. There's a significant Buddy Holly influence on this version - rhythmically, it's quite like his Rave On, but it's swung. I'm not sure how much of this came from the band, as opposed to the version's "author", A&R man Ken Taylor, but it's good, and for a completely local Australian artist it's innovative and exciting.

The Battle of New Orleans - JOHNNY HORTON25/7/59 - 22/8/59

2005-09-07T18:24:00.000+10:00

Before we get started, I must admit to something. The Best Of Johnny Horton was one of my father's favourite driving tapes. I went on a lot of long drives with my father. This song was on the tape. Ergo, I have heard this song many, many times. I'm pretty sure I can sing it off the top of my head, unaccompanied. The last time I heard it was less than a week ago, when, because of New Orleans' prominence in the news, Red Symons decided to play it on his breakfast radio program at about 5:45 AM. So I may be slightly biased in its favour.

Written by Arkansas school principal Jimmy Driftwood as a way to get children interested in history, and how the southerners kicked British arse (mostly due to terrible planning by the Brits, but never mind...), Horton's recording was quite a success. It spent 6 weeks at the top in the USA, and 5 weeks in the same position in Australia. Unsurprisingly, it didn't make the top spot in the UK, although Horton did record a version told from the British perspective ("they whipped us" rather than "we whipped them").

Musically, this is very, very American country in style. There's banjos, guitars, double-basses and snare drums, and come to think of it, it's quite similar to The Yellow Rose of Texas minus the wind instruments, which is unsurprising considering the melody is lifted from an old bluegrass tune. But never underestimate the popularity of a song bashing the British in Australia. Being our colonisers and therefore eternal rivals, we're always willing to hear someone singing about them being whipped. So that's probably where a lot of the appeal of the song comes from. Aside from that, it's a catchy tune.

Sadly, this would be Horton's one and only number one hit in Australia. He died just over a year after this song was on the top, killed in a car accident by a drunk driver, just as he had predicted.

Personality - LLOYD PRICE27/6/59 - 18/7/59

2005-09-07T18:20:00.000+10:00

For a country that discriminated against darker skinned people in horrible ways, such as not counting its own indigenous people in official population statistics, hopelessly outnumbered as they were*, and still are, Australia was curiously never reluctant to send an African-American artist to the top spot. They showed this again and again, this time with Lloyd Price's swinging, soulful Personality.

I've always liked this song - I remember buying a jukebox reissue 7" of it (backed with Stagger Lee - what a disc!) when I was quite young. Price's smooth voice and occupancy of the space just behind the beat makes for great listening, along with the fantastic horns, moving bass line and laid back drums - even the ripping fills manage to sound laid back. Songs like this really make singers like Elvis sound albinic and overdone, and I really, really enjoy them.

*However, it's worth noting that when the people were asked to vote on the passage allowing this policy being deleted from the Australian consitution in a referendum in 1967, over 90% voted for its abolition.

Bye Bye Baby - COL JOYE & THE JOY BOYS30/5/59 - 26/6/59

2005-09-05T13:37:00.000+10:00

Bye Bye Baby

And so begins Col Joye's string of number one hits in Australia. Often erroneously referred to as Australia's first homegrown number one, Joye hit the top spot with his recording of songwriter Frank McNulty's Bye Bye Baby. Joye had been playing guitar and singing in his brother Kevin's* jazz band since 1957, when they decided to change their style to the newly emerging rock and roll.

Not that this song is that much of a rocker, but it's certainly not easily definable as any other style, like Easy Listening. And it's also got no connection to the version later made most popular by the Bay City Rollers. Bass, some tuned percussion, some backing vocals and some softly strummed guitars serve as accompaniment to Joye's soft vocal about missing his girl when they're not together. Musically, the song goes through a (now) standard 16-bar verse progression that adds sevenths and shifts to minor chords in the third group of four bars (I I7 IV iv), in much the same fashion as Pat Boone's Bernadine.

By modern standards, it's not really that special. But to Australian record buyers of the late 50's, it was an attractive, homegrown boy with a song that was musically ahead of most of what was on the charts at the time. And that was a recipe for success.

*Better known in Australia as concert promoter Kevin Jacobsen

A Fool Such as I / I Need Your Love Tonight - ELVIS PRESLEY16/5/59 - 23/5/59

2005-09-04T20:34:00.000+10:00

Well, who would've thought it'd take this long for Elvis to get to the top spot. The problem is, the songs are fairly disappointing. Both recorded on the same day, and released during Elvis' stint in the US Army, these songs are a far cry from the Elvis at Sun of 1954, or even Elvis' early songs at RCA like Don't Be Cruel, All Shook Up or Heartbreak Hotel.

Having said that, they're both significantly more interesting than other "hits" of the year, like Bimbombey for example.

I'm trying to think of a way to describe these songs objectively, it's not that they're really bad or anything...but I think that after hearing these songs, no-one could remain under the misapprehension that Elvis was black, because they're very white songs. The introductory riff of A Fool Such As I is far more country than blues, and I Need Your Love Tonight is highly reminiscent of Danny & The Juniors' At The Hop, but without the interesting bluesy chords & progresssion. A bit of a disappointment with Elvis' first excursion to the top spot.

Both sides:

Venus - FRANKIE AVALON2/5/59 - 9/5/59

2005-09-04T20:24:00.000+10:00

Let's see...Frankie Avalon was 20 years old, moderately good looking, and had a half-decent singing voice. What do you think happened? Of course, he sung a song about a non-specific pretty girl and rocketed to the top of the charts.

This is a perfectly rigid application of the "male pop star" formula that made people like Tab Hunter big stars (except Avalon didn't have the gay rumours doing the rounds), and I can't really respect the song because of it. Anyhow, it's a fairly non-descript song.

Petite Fleur - CHRIS BARBER'S JAZZ BAND25/4/59

2005-09-03T11:00:00.000+10:00

After losing Lonnie Donegan to a solo career, Chris Barber's Jazz Band needed some new blood. I think it's fairly safe to say that they found it in clarinet player Monty Sunshine. His intriguing reading of the old Sidney Bechet tune, Petite Fleur was just right, spending a week at number one in Australia. Curiously, it didn't reach the top spot in the UK, where Barber's group hailed from.

I've always had a thing for clarinet work - Artie Shaw's Begin the Beguine, for example, always goes down well here, as does the great work of players like Johnny Dodds and Bechet himself - so I'm really appreciating this. Not only that, but the melody is simple enough that I retain parts of it, but complex enough that I want to go back and listen to the bits that I've forgotten again.

And in random trivia, Sidney Bechet died three weeks after this hit number one in Australia. Spooky.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes - THE PLATTERS21/2/59 - 18/4/59

2005-09-03T10:56:00.000+10:00

This was the Platters third and final trip to the top of the Australian charts. Originally penned by Jerome Kern for the Broadway musical "Roberta", his widow was concerned that Tony Willams' Platters would turn her husband's song into "Rock and Roll". She had no need to worry.

In fact, Williams' commanding vocal performance has all the drama appropriate for a song written for musical theatre. He goes from soft, sensitive singing to full-tilt, emotion filled power at the drop of a hat throughout the song. It's really attention-grabbing and effective, and deservedly, it spent nine weeks at the top. In this reviewer's opinion, however, it can get a bit tiring after a few listens.

Bimbombey - JIMMIE RODGERS14/2/59

2005-08-28T09:36:00.000+10:00

As I dropped a best of Jimmie Rodgers record that I'd bought from an op-shop onto my turntable and advanced the arm to Bimbombey, I thought I had no idea what was coming.

But it turned out that it was another song that I absorbed via Magic 693 and 2CH over time without really knowing it. The lyrics are reminiscent of the Twelve Days of Christmas - they're constantly building and repeating themselves. First Jimmie's on the way to Bimbombey, then there's a hill on the way there, then there's a house on said hill, and it finally turns out that there's a girl in the house on the hill on the way to Bimbombey. Then there's an upwards modulation, and a store in Bimbombey, and a ring in the store in Bimbombey, and Jimmie's going to buy the ring in the store for the girl in the house on the hill on the way to Bimbombey. Finally, there's another upwards modulation, and another verse in which Jimmie's going to settle down with the girl in the house etc..

As such, the lyrics are overly wordy and quite annoying to me, but I know people who like that sort of thing. I'd personally rather listening to a record by the other Jimmie Rodgers.

Tom Dooley - THE KINGSTON TRIO6/12/58 - 14/2/59

2005-08-28T09:31:00.000+10:00

And here comes that folk revival I mentioned in He's got the whole world in his hands. I knew this song before starting this project, but the Kingston Trio's version was new to me. As far as I was concerned, it was a Reg Lindsay song. So this was something a little different for me.

The close harmonies of the trio are nice, and I quite like the song, even though it's quite morbid. I especially like the section at 1:33 involving the two different vocal lines being sung together. However, I don't like the spoken introduction - the song is really quite self explanatory, and having it explained seems almost condescending.

But I guess the Australian people didn't really see it that way - they sent it to number one for most of the Summer of 1958-9, keeping it at the top spot for ten weeks. At the time, The Kingston Trio took the "longest stay at the top spot" record from Johnnie Ray and Paul Anka. They wouldn't have it taken away from them until 1965 - and it wasn't the Beatles that took it from them, either.

Just Married - MARTY ROBBINS1958 HONOURABLE MENTIONEnd of Year Position: 3

2005-08-27T09:39:00.000+10:00

As I've mentioned in previous reviews, I've got something of a problem with upbeat, cheery songs that are supposed to be sad. Marty Robbins seemed to deal in them in this part of his career, with tunes like Singing The Blues and A White Sport Coat.

This episode of the laments of Marty Robbins sees him at the wedding of the woman he loves - but in typical pop fashion, our hero is sitting among the guests, and another man is leading the love of his life down the aisle.

The guitar-based arrangement carries the song quite nicely, and while the topic of the lyrics isn't unfamiliar, this song nicely illustrates the shift that was taking place in the pop music world at the time. The lavish, orchestral arrangements that backed singers like Perry Como and Tony Bennett were starting to give way to the guitar-based backings of Robbins and the like. It would only be five years before the guitar completely took over as instrument of choice for pop bands.

Young and Warm and Wonderful - TONY BENNETT1958 HONOURABLE MENTIONEnd of year position: 2

2005-08-27T09:13:00.000+10:00

When I started this site up, I thought the concept of Honourable Mentions would be great - it'd be a way of reviewing songs that didn't quite make the top spot, but were still quite popular on release. And while not making it to the top spot, Young and Warm and Wonderful was the second highest selling single of 1958. You'd think it'd be pretty good, right? Wrong.

We here at Australian Plastic (well, I) regret to inform readers that Tony Bennett's incredibly formulaic and syrupy stroll through a love song filled with more clichés than a football player's post-match interview is probably one of the most boring songs we've ever heard. The only thing that gets me to the end of the song is the fact that I'm somewhat obligated to review it. Bennett's voice is insipid at best, and the only thing that takes my interest is that the first two notes of the vocal line (young.....warm.....) are the same as "near.....far....." from Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On.

It's not that there's necessarily anything wrong with cliché-driven love songs - the massive generalisations requried for such cliches give the song broad appeal, and of course, great popularity. A good instrumental arrangement was also incredibly useful in boosting popularity, Dean Martin's Memories are Made Of This with its intimate guitars, double bass and backing vocals being a great example. But Young and Warm and Wonderful was identical to most of the love songs of the time. I'm curious to know what it was about it made it rise to the top, as I'm having a lot of trouble locating it.

It's All In The Game - TOMMY EDWARDS29/11/58

2005-08-17T18:52:00.000+10:00

I was trying to figure out where I knew this song from, and I just got it the other day. Some years ago, Gatorade made a commercial featuring sporting bloopers - that poor bloke totally stuffing up a gymnastic vault and going face first into the horse, the blade of Rod Marsh's bat going flying into the air, and the like.

The version they used was slow, and bass focussed. And the music was far more appropriate to the words than Edwards' unconvincing, formulaic slow procession from the beginning of the song to to the inglorious end. If I was listening to a vinyl copy, I probably would've picked up the arm halfway through and moved it straight to the last chorus of the disc, not missing anything of any real importance. Not a bad song, but it could've been done so much better. As such, Edwards' stay at the top was as short as they come.

Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volare) - DOMENICO MODUGNO25/10/1958 - 22/11/1958

2005-08-17T18:27:00.000+10:00

Here's one of the more odd visits to number one. Firstly, the song is sung completely in Italian. I honestly have no idea whether or not the single included an English version or not. I know that English versions were produced by other artists, but I seem inclined to think that the Italian version was the one that was successful in Australia. After all, it got to number one with no tie mentioned.

Why? Well for starters, the song was the first Eurovision Song Contest entry to make it to Number One in Australia. That's one honour ABBA can't claim. (Coincidentally, the inaugural Eurovision Song Contest was held in 1956.) Secondly, the Italian version qas something of a hit in the USA. Finally, since the end of World War II, Australia, like America, has had quite a sizeable Italian community. So they probably knew what Domenico Modugno was on about.

Although I don't understand a word being sung, the chorus sticks in my head quite effectively, and I'm having some trouble getting it out. And I have to give it points for getting to number one in an English speaking country when it's sung in Italian (of course, if I discover that there was an English version recorded by Modungo, I'll come back and knock off half a star).

Bird Dog - THE EVERLY BROTHERS4/10/1958 - 18/10/1958

2005-08-17T18:19:00.000+10:00

This was the first time the close harmonies of the Everly Brothers reached the top spot in Australia. It's not a bad song, but it's well below the high standard Don and Phil had set with tunes like All I Have To Do Is Dream, Bye Bye Love and Wake Up Little Susie. They sound like they're going through the motions, and while going through said motions is often enough to make a successful tune for an established artist, it's pretty uninteresting when looking at it from a historical perspective.

Patricia - PEREZ PRADO27/9/1958

2005-08-17T18:14:00.000+10:00

The moment I heard this instrumental, I immediately recognised the main melodic theme -

as a song Homer sings to himself in an early episode of The Simpsons. I can't name the exact episode, but I'm pretty sure it's from the first season (you know, the one that looks really dodgy). The thing is, I've hummed this to myself millions of times, only knowing the short section Homer sings. That's a fair achievement for a tune, to be absorbed second hand the way I absorbed Patricia.

Then again, it shows that I've completely missed part of 60's culture by not knowing that it was used in La Dolce Vita.

The thing about instrumentals is that they've got to be really catchy tunes to be successful, as they've got no lyrics to sell them on. This one is pretty catchy - the theme goes through a few varations before the end of the two minute tune, and gets stuck firmly in my head after about thirty seconds. I'm going to be singing it for days.

When - KALIN TWINS13/9/58 - 20/9/58

2005-08-14T12:41:00.000+10:00

Here's where the musical influence of Paul Anka's Diana starts to come in. The instrumentation and general production is very similar, but the idea of using a male and a female voice in close harmony was new to the Australian charts.

The song's very boy-girl-ish, and the fact that it's being sung by a boy-girl duo means that it's being sung from both perspectives at once - immediately doubling your potential audience. And that's a clever little pop trick. But the song itself is nothing really that special.

Saddle Boy c/w A Pub With No Beer - SLIM DUSTY6/9/58

2005-08-14T12:34:00.000+10:00

How often is it that the B-side of a song completely eclipses the popularity of the A-side? Not very often, really. If the B-side of a single gets reasonably popular, we refer to the single as a "Double A sided single". But when the B-side gets so big that everyone except devotees of the genre or artist completely forgets about the A-side, there's nothing you can really do except refer to the intial B-side as the A-side and ignore the initial A-Side.

I point this out as most people don't really know a Slim Dusty song called Saddle Boy. It's not on any best of albums, and I'm sure if you asked a random person how it went, they'd have no idea. But ask them about the song's B-side, which has been included on every Slim Dusty compliation since 1958, and odds are that they'd know it.

The B-side I'm referring to is, of course, A Pub With No Beer. And it was indeed the B-side, have a look at the label scans. Although there's no explicit designation of A or B on the labels, the matrix number of Saddle Boy (RZ 327) is one number earlier than A Pub With No Beer (RZ 328). This was as close to explicit designation as Regal Zonophone got.

Incidentally, specific designation of the didn't come in until the early 1970s for most labels, although independent W&G had been designating the A-side at least as early as Cathy Carr's Ivory Tower. Some labels, such as RCA Victor, didn't designate sides until the late 1980s, and even then, they didn't put a big "A" on the disc the way some other labels did.

Saddle Boy/Pub With No Beer achieved a few feats - it was the first Australian number one performed by an Australian, and the first gold record awarded to an Australian artist. It's also the only gold 78 RPM disc awarded to an Australian. In a boost to our national identity, it was sung with an unashamed Australian accent. However, it was still definitely considered to be a "country" song, not really representative of the mainstream.

As for the songs, it's hard to class A Pub With No Beer as anything but a novelty tune. But the idea of a pub having no beer in Australia is, well, unthinkable, and absurdly funny. (In reality, it's really really not funny at all. I've worked in a nightclub that was out of beer. Sure, it was their last night of operation, and they were deliberately running down stock, but it still wasn't fun explaining to pissed idiots that there was no beer, and were they interested in a Bourbon and Coke for the price of a beer?).

Saddle Boy is far more representitive of Dusty's style, which covered all aspects of country life - it tells the sad tale of a young saddle boy killed while riding home in a storm, and is actually quite touching. And for the record (no pun intended), both songs sound better to my ears coming off the 78 RPM disc than a clean transfer from tape to CD. The graininess of the material used for the disc, and the lack of reverb (lost in the surface noise, perhaps?) introduces and emphasises extra harmonic frequencies and gives Dusty's voice a slightly harder, more direct edge that I really like.

It was Dusty's first real chart success, and it would take him over thirty years to get to the top of the charts again. It's kind of sad that both times he hit the top spot, it took a novelty tune to get him there. His songs had a lot more depth than his successes imply. If the disc got to the top on the strength of Saddle Boy, I'd call this an important moment in Australian pop music - a song reflecting on a very sad aspect of rural life hitting the top spot would be quite an achievement. But it didn't, it was on the strength of a novelty tune. Nevertheless, it meant a lot to the Australian music industry - it was no longer shameful to be Australian, it wasn't essential to emulate America to be successful - even though it took a few years for something else this "Australian" to work its way to the top.

Saddle Boy:
Pub With No Beer:

Purple People Eater - SHEB WOOLEY26/7/58 - 30/8/58

2005-08-12T19:06:00.000+10:00

I guess you could say this was the first novelty song of the charts. And of course I knew this song, having sung it in primary school choir. I'm sure it was a bit of fun then - sped up vocals for the apparently "gruff" purple eater was something of an innovation at the time (although as I type this, Akon's "Lonely", featuring, you guessed it, sped up vocals is top of the charts. I guess everything comes around again). It also references some of the popular tunes of the time, which always goes down well and has a fairly lively sped up saxophone solo to finish it off.

But right now, it makes my head hurt and my eyes roll, and I'm torn between judging it on the standards of the time or judging it on more modern standards. It also makes me consider the merits of a song that later became better known as a "kids song". I mean, it's obviously got universal appeal, which is great for a pop song, but as far as "serious music" goes, it's not such a good thing.

I think I'm going to have to go halfway between the two rankings I want to give it.

Twilight Time - THE PLATTERS14/6/58, 28/6/58 - 19/7/58

2005-08-12T19:02:00.000+10:00

A better effort from the Platters - Tony Williams is eager and waiting for Twighlight Time, as that's when he'll get to see his love. Williams isn't quite so overly dramatic as he was in The Great Pretender, or as he will be in Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, and he comes across as sounding quite a lot more sincere. And while the lyrics are quite romantic and loving, they don't sound like the Pat Boone-esque audible equivalent of whipped cream, and as such, are much more attractive to these ears.

He's Got The Whole World In His Hands - LAURIE LONDON24/5/58 - 7/6/58, 21/6/58

2005-08-12T18:53:00.000+10:00

Listening to a song like this really makes me understand why there was a folk revival in the 60's in the UK - and immediately makes me want to establish whether or not The Seekers ever covered it. Because the instrumental arrangement (strongly strummed guitars, stand-up bass, some drums) sounds just like the arrangements they produced, and Laurie London herself sounds a bit like Judith Durham, both in her vocal timbre and her pronounciation. And The Seekers did do a few spiritual tunes in their time.

The music of this one is simple - it's a three chord tune revolving around C, F and G. There's a fairly heavy accent on the backbeat, which probably made it a bit more attractive to younger ears. We get three refrains and three verses, and it's all over in less than two and a half minutes. And I'm not overly surprised that a quite spiritual tune made it to the top in the late 50s - the "battle" between older style music and the more modern rock and roll was still being fought in the charts, and this half-way point of sorts had a great opportunity to be successful in both markets. And it was.

Another Australian chart first came with this song: this was the first song to "pull a phoenix", so to speak, and return to the top of the charts after being deposed. This isn't unique of course, but it was then deposed a second time, by the same song that deposed it the first time. This didn't happen again until 1983, but then happened again in 1987, and in 1989 it went crazy, with Madonna's Like A Prayer hitting number one four times in two months.

Catch A Falling Star - PERRY COMO29/3/58 - 17/5/58

2005-08-12T18:48:00.000+10:00

And another hit for Perry Como - although it has the distinction of being previously known to me, mostly because at my last job, management would pipe Magic 693 through the hotel while us staff were having a drink and relaxing after working all night at a nightclub. So it's fairly hard for me to get excited about this one.

And there's really nothing exciting about it anyway, it's standard Perry Como fare that starts in the more orchestral key of B flat and modulates up to C, but without such a modulation, song really wouldn't be complete. Lyrically, we get lines like "Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, never let it fade away...save it for a rainy day". For me, the most interesting part of the tune for me is the round-style singing of the backing vocals at 1:21 and 1:58.

Como had well and truly derived a winning formula by now - he'd had three number one hits in less than eighteen months, and two of them, this song and Round and Round were long stayers at the top of the charts, at eight weeks each. But his run of hits was now over, and he would not taste chart success again for about fifteen years.

April Love - PAT BOONE15/2/58 - 22/3/58

2005-08-12T18:41:00.000+10:00

Having a quick follow up to a successful hit can go either way for a performer. It can produce even greater success, or can detract from both the original hit and the follow up. I'm sorry to say that April Love falls into the latter group.

It's full of the same slow, smooth singing that made Love Letters in The Sand easy to listen to, but has none of the interesting accidental notes. So it's smooth and quite boring. It's also got an odd middle section in which the percussive instruments drop out and the timing changes, which is just plain confusing as far as I'm concerned. And confusion is no good for pop music. Especially when you combine it with boredom.

Diana - PAUL ANKA21/12/57 - 8/2/58

2005-08-07T01:17:00.000+10:00

Now this is a bit of an exception in a few regards. Although at first listen it's a basic boy-loves-girl song, it wrote the template that most late 50's - early 60's songs in the same vein would follow. I think it's pretty safe to say that Del Shannon and Bobby Vee had Paul Anka's debut in their record collections.

So what was so special about Diana? Well for starters, it's a completely original song written by Anka in a time where most B-G tunes had been written by professional songwriters. Secondly, Anka was only sixteen years old when he reached the top of the charts with the tune written about his babysitter, Diana Ayoub. And people were surprised when Avril Lavigne hit the top of the charts singing about boys? Why? People had been doing it for about 45 years.

Finally, as I've said above, the instrumentation, instrumental rhythms, vocal delivery and production in general influenced a great number of other artists. And if you can do that, you must have something going for you.

Also, this continues the Australian tradition of the Christmas/New Year number one quite neatly.

Around The World - BING CROSBY / VICTOR YOUNG ORCHESTRA26/10/57 - 14/12/57

2005-08-07T01:16:00.000+10:00

In which Bing Crosby makes his one and only official visit to the top of the Australian charts. But this is slow and turgid. His voice, while smooth, is full of cloying sentimentality and is just too rich. Perhaps the recording engineer could have eased up on the bottom end in his voice, it's cluttering up the mix.

If it wasn't the theme from a movie which was around at the time, I don't think it would have got anywhere near the top of the charts.

On the B-Side, Victor Young's orchestra furnish us with an instrumental version of the same tune, which was presumably used in the movie as well. Frankly, I find it slightly more listenable than the vocal version, as there's no one part of the frequency range that gets overbearing part like there is in the A-side. But it's still nothing that special. It's an orchestral theme from a 50's movie. Another standard issue.

Bing Crosby:
Victor Young Orchestra:

Love Letters In The Sand - PAT BOONE21/9/57 - 19/10/57

2005-08-07T00:57:00.000+10:00

The name "Pat Boone" always provokes one particular reaction in me: I think of his repulsive bleaching of brilliant rock & roll tracks like Tutti Frutti and the like. As such, I generally get wary whenver I hear his voice.

But for somehow, Love Letters works for me. It's a slow one, and for reasons that are completely inscrutable, it's in the key of B-flat. For obvious reasons, we've gotten less accustomed to hearing pop songs in orchestral keys like B-flat, and as a result, Boone's 6/8 flavoured lament over lost love actually sounds somewhat refreshing to these ears. The melody is also full of accidental notes, almost to the point where he may as well have thrown out the key signature. But in a good way.

What I believe is the real selling point of this song is the up-tempo, happy in love flipside that I was immediately familiar with, Bernadine. Somehow I'd got to know the lovey b-side while having absolutely no memory of the title tune. Actually, the fact that on the vinyl copy I reviewed, Bernadine was significantly more worn than Love Letters probably had something to do with my exposure to the track, especially considering that the aforementioned disc (the 45 in the scan on the left) was "borrowed" from my Dad's record collection. So on the same disc, purchasers got their happy love song (in which, incidentally, Pat Boone's "Oh, Oh, OH Bernadine" sounds as close to orgasmic as 50's standards would probably allow - if you don't believe me, acquire a copy for yourself), and their sad breakup song. A total bargain of a disc, if that's what you're into, with two catchy tunes to suit two vastly different moods.

Wonderful, Wonderful - JOHNNY MATHIS19/9/57

2005-08-07T00:48:00.000+10:00

Johnny Mathis' only trip to the top of the charts is belongs in the 50's-light strings-and-mallet-percussion-with-lyrics-about-being-in-love category. I find it really difficult to assess this song on its own individual merits, because all the songs in the aforementioned category are pretty much indistinguishable from each other.

The verse melody is quite pretty and appealing, but Mathis was just joining the dots on a picture far simpler than the sort of puzzle that graced a Neil Diamond album cover about ten years later.

A White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation) - MARTY ROBBINS17/8/57 - 7/9/57

2005-08-03T22:09:00.000+10:00

When I was growing up, my Dad was a bit of a fan of Marty Robbins. Dad only had a couple of Robbins' records, and it was his 1959 album, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs that I took to the most. The most well known track from that record was the four and a half minute (then) epic El Paso.

Even though it was Robbins' only Australian number one, A White Sport Coat was curiously absent from Dad's double-LP best of Marty Robbins record, so when I think of Marty Robbins, I don't really think of this song.

Perhaps the success of the likes of Tab Hunter had a bit of a bearing on this tune, as Marty works his way through this tune about the fact that the girl he was going to take to the prom has ditched him for another man, and he's feeling pretty blue about it - "all alone in romance", as he puts it. Fortunately, the guitar driven tune isn't as trite as Tab Hunter, so I can take a liking to it without having to take a little bit of self-loathing on board.

At least it didn't end up as badly for all involved as They're Hanging Me Tonight from Gunfighter Ballads, in which Marty's girl leaves him for another man, so he shoots the both of them and ends up being hung for their murder. That's probably for the best.

Round and Round - PERRY COMO22/6/57 - 10/8/57

2005-08-01T15:39:00.000+10:00

Even though Jim Lowe could get rockabilly to the top of the charts, Perry Como refused to be knocked down. His style was still appreciated by those who could afford to buy enough copies of a record to send it to number one.

His smooth voice just slides through this thoroughly predictable tune. It's not inherently bad, and there's nothing in it that makes me grimace, but that's really because there's nothing of any real substance in it. Even the modulation at the end didn't make me raise an interested eyebrow. And the lyrics were pretty standard too - in summary, love goes round, round, round, like a ring that's round, round, round that you put on her finger and your love goes round, round, round. This disc spins round, round, round a bit too long for my liking.

The Green Door - JIM LOWE8/6/57 - 15/6/57

2005-07-31T09:17:00.000+10:00

Hmm, this isn't bad. If we ignore the "ticking clock" gimmick in the song, we've got

a) An accented backbeat
b) A 12-bar blues pattern
c) A piano playing lots of triplet rhythms.
d) Stnad-up bass

It's a fairly well polished rockabilly tune, and Jim Lowe does a good job of singing it. The lyrics are really neither here nor there (which isn't necessarily a bad thing; If they're meaningless then they're not bad), with our protagonist wanting to know what the hell's going on behind the aforementioned Green Door, because it sounds like it could be fun. Well, the song's fun enough for me, it's got me nodding along to the backbeats. I'm quite happy to stay on this side of the Green Door and listen Jim Lowe sing about it.

Marianne - TERRY GILKYSON'S EASY RIDERS tied with BURL IVES11/5/57 - 1/6/57

2005-07-31T09:10:00.000+10:00

Due to the slightly odd manner of data collation for the Australian singles charts, we have one of the first oddities - a tie for number one between two different versions of the same song. The two versions are by Terry Gilkyson's Easy Riders (who were the authors of and backing band on Dean Martin's Memories Are Made Of This) and Burl Ives. The song was adapted from a folksong by the Easy Riders, and Burl Ives gave the Easyriders' version his own treatment. Not surprisingly, they're quite different.

The Easyriders version is an upbeat number, around 210 BPM, while Ives' rendition is around 170 - not exactly slow by most standards, but the treatment of the beat makes it sound about half the speed. The slower tempo doesn't make Ives sound laid back, it sounds lethargic and tired.

Due to the Easyriders' good use of percussion - conga drums playing quaver rhythms - and close harmonies of frontman Rich Dehr and Terry Gilkyson, their version is toetapping and catchy. While perfect for some tunes, Burl Ives' broad, emotive voice is all wrong in this song, and I can't help thinking that the only reason it got anywhere near the top of the charts and tied with the Easyriders was due to the fact that the Australian charts counted sales of a song and ignored the performer, as this wasn't the only tie recorded in Australian chart history.

Easyriders:

Burl Ives:

Young Love - TAB HUNTER27/4/57 - 4/5/57

2005-07-30T20:17:00.000+10:00

The fact that I could immediately recognise the opening chord progression of this tune - C, Am, F, G - as being identical to the Hoagy Carmichael penned Jazz standard Heart and Soul made me recoil somewhat, and want to put on the aural equivalent of those latex examination gloves to handle the next two and a half minutes of music.

This is simply the sort of pretty boy teen idol music produced for young girls to buy in droves. B-movie star Hunter fit that profile perfectly, his official website has loads of pictures of him staring into the distance with no shirt on. That's interesting, considering that the article on him on Wikipedia reports he was gay, but that this fact was covered up by his film studio for obvious reasons.

I really want to trash this song, but I can't. Why, you ask? Well, the verse melody

has worked its way into my head, and it's got me singing it to myself at work. And to do that to someone who was immediately biased against the song is a fair achievement. So...erm....It's no worse than any other boy-girl teen idol song, I guess.

Cindy! Oh, Cindy - EDDIE FISHER20/4/57

2005-07-30T20:08:00.000+10:00

Wow. After Johnny Ray and Guy Mitchell, I thought vocalists like Eddie Fisher were finished. Apparently not. This is just a standard "I've decided to go away and I'm going to miss you but if you don't write to me you're dropped" song. In this case our protagonist decides to join the Navy and see the world, but he sings "Cindy! Oh, Cindy, Cindy don't let me down, Write me a letter soon and I'll be homeward bound". So even though he's nicked off, it's her job to keep communication lines open. Doesn't add up for me. If I were Cindy, I'd tell Eddie to stay overseas and find himself a new girl.

The music is as formulaic as it comes - I'd never heard it before and I was singing the melody by the second line of the song. This tine is full of the sort of cobwebs that rock and roll was meant to blow out, but Fisher and Perry Como somehow managed to cling to the corners.

Singing The Blues - GUY MITCHELL9/3/57 - 13/4/57

2005-07-29T17:49:00.000+10:00

This was another tune that had a lot of competing versions - Marty Robbins' original, Guy Mitchell's fairly straight reading, and Tommy Steele's overdone effort that shared the top spot with Mitchell in the UK. Listening to all of them, I'd personally give Robbins' version the thumbs up, as it's got more emotion than Mitchell's jaunty, boppy effort. Its only real drawback is that it's a bit too "Country" for a pop success - for starters, there's a slide guitar solo halfway through the song, and Robbins' vocal is a quite bit looser. But it's this looseness and more emotional delivery that I like about Robbins.

I'm fairly indifferent to the song itself, it's fairly standard 50's pop. But I just can't be impressed by Guy Mitchell's version. The whooping "Well!" into the last chorus at 2:08 diminishes and credibility Mitchell's reading had - the emotional weight of the lyrics isn't reflected in his voice at all.

Hey There - ROSEMARY CLOONEY9/2/57 - 2/3/57

2005-07-28T16:35:00.000+10:00

There's an awful lot of firsts to get through in this period of history, and as I listen to Rosemary Clooney, I'm glad to get another one out of the way. This was the first time a show tune worked its way to the top spot in Australia, and to the delight of some people, it certainly wouldn't be the last.

(Actually, having said that, Louis Armstrong's Theme From the Threepenny Opera (Mack the Knife) was probably first. But the word "show tune" conjures up a certain mental picture, and Louis isn't really in it.

Hey There! is from The Pajama Game. Of all the songs to pick out of the ether to sing, this was a good choice for Rosemary Clooney, as The Pajama Game had been a runaway success: it ran on Broadway from 13th May, 1954 to 24th November, 1956 (encompassing 1063 performances!), and a film version starring Doris Day was just about to be released. Having said that, Hey There hit the top spot in the USA in September 1954 and stayed there for seven weeks - over two years before it got to the top in Australia! Guess we were the ones behind the times in this case.

Lyrically, the song is one of those songs that's meant to be uplifting but comes out sounding like one of the most self-pitying dirges around because the music is slow and full of minor chords. I can just hear this being played in an upbeat way by a rock group and being really uplifting, but all I can see in response to Clooney's version is a teenage/twentysomething girl playing the record over and over and blubbering her way through the whole bloody thing, or even worse, having the sort of response that would fit Skeeter Davis' End Of The World a bit more comfortably.

That's not to say I dislike it. But emotionally fragile young women dressed in 50's style clothing should probably avoid it.

Just Walking In The Rain - JOHNNIE RAY8/12/56 - 2/2/57

2005-07-27T17:07:00.000+10:00

I've always been moderately suspicious of sad songs that utilise a major key to get their message across. Why not use a minor key? You get sadness without having to utter a word that way. But then again, not many songs in minor keys make it to the top spot - I guess people just don't warm to them.

The sparse whistle gets the song off to a lonely start, and compared to other Johnnie Ray songs, the backing on Just Walking In The Rain is pretty conservative. Having said that, we probably could've done without the solo for the backing singers, and they could've been a bit further back in the mix - they're sort of the antithesis of the lonliness Ray's getting at. I doubt he had a group of mates walking about two meteres behind him in the rain.

Still, there's something about the song - perhaps it's Ray's acquiescent and vocal delivery for most of the tune - that makes me feel sympathy for him. And the fact that the song's not exploiting a minor key to pull at the heartstrings makes me respect it a little more, even though I talked them up - although for maximum effect, we do finish on a C#m (iv) - G#(I).

Just Walking In The Rain spent 9 weeks on top of the Australian charts, and also kicked off the tradition of the christmas/new year number one in this country.

Hot Diggity - PERRY COMO3/11/56 - 1/12/56

2005-07-26T11:25:00.000+10:00

"Hot diggity dog ziggity boom what you do to me, it's so new to me, what you do to me, Hot diggity dog ziggity boom what you do to me, when you're holding me tight."

And so begins another song in 3/4. I'm rapidly losing my patience for 3/4 songs; so far in 1956 there's only been four of them, but for some reason they seem overly concentrated. Anyway, this is standard Perry-Como-backed-with-Orchestra-and-singers fare, and I'm guessing that the hook of the song was the wordy rhyming chorus. Lyrically it's a bit like Dean Martin's Memories are Made of This, but it doesn't have the cool swing. In fact, there's very little that can be done with a 3/4 time signature to make it seem cool and flowing, because 3/4 is inherently uneven and sort of stilted.

Still, it's not a complete loss - I've no real inclination to turn it off through the song, but Como's "Hot Dog!" that comes three seconds from the end of the tune leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and loses the song half a star

Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera) - DORIS DAY15/9/56 - 27/10/56

2005-07-25T12:27:00.000+10:00

Another song in 3/4 time, but this at least has little snatches of 7/4 to confuse the waltzers. It follows so many little pop music formulae - dropping the band out for the final verse and bringing it triumphantly back for the chorus, etc. Now I don't know what it is that makes me find Cathy Carr contrived and find this song upbeat and uplifting. In fact, I probably shouldn't enjoy it as much as I do - an ex-girlfriend of mine with whom I had what you'd call a "messy" breakup used to sing it almost every time she "felt like singing" (which was relatively frequently), so I always associate it with her. Still, I enjoy the song. And it's not a nostalgic thing, I don't remember Doris Day's smooth tones being a part of my childhood.

But the song is smooth, and phenomenally optimistic, in a sort of "don't worry about the future, it'll sort itself out (and it'll probably involve rainbows and roses and cute little puppies and kittens)" way, and for some reason I'm drawn to its sense of blind optimism which is surprisingly rare in today's pop music. Perhaps it's that when I compare Que Sera Sera to Rock and Roll Waltz and Ivory Tower, Day's smooth, clear and confident yet effortless vocal blows out the cobwebs of the above songs. Que Sera Sera also doesn't seem like it's pretending to be anything it's not.

As a side note, after initially rejecting Que Sera, Sera, Day performed the song in the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much, and took home the award for Best Song at the 1956 Academy Awards, not to mention seven weeks on top of the Australian charts. Perhaps by then she'd been convinced of its value.

Ivory Tower - CATHY CARR8/9/56

2005-07-24T13:21:00.000+10:00

A song that makes me cringe less than three seconds into it is really off to a bad start. And the vocal chorus introduction of Ivory Tower has that distinction. We move in into the body of the song, and it really isn't much better. It's a pleading love song in 3/4 time (what was it with 1956 and 3/4 time?) with lyrics like "Don't lock yourself in an Ivory Tower, don't keep us so far apart"; "It's cold, so cold in your Ivory Tower and wam, so warm in my heart" and a chorus of "I love you, I love you, are you too far above me to hear?" (with massive emphasis on the "L" sound in "love") backed mostly by piano, upright bass and drums. The song is quite repetitive, and even though it's only 2:33 long, I feel like I've heard the song twice by the time I've got to the end. This makes me think that it's quite short on material, and lacking somewhat.

At the time of recording, Carr was 20 years old. I'm guessing that a lot of young women probably would have identified with her position, in love with a man who was, for whatever reason, out of their reach. Interestingly, the song was originally released by Otis Williams & The Charms, but Carr has turned the song around from being about a high-class woman to a high-class man. Funnily though, I don't think the song would've come off so badly performed from a male perspective. I don't know why - perhaps it's because I'm a man, and I've been infatuated with women out of my reach as well. But Carr's reading of the tune just seems, well, syrupy, contrived and desperate to my ears. The B-side, Please, Please Believe Me is no better, really - it's a paranoid "please believe that I'll stay faithful to you and stay with you - not that there's anything going wrong, but don't leave me!" sort of song.

An interesting point - this was the first indie single to hit number one in Australia. Released in America through Fraternity, it was licensed by Melbourne's W&G records and in an otherwise major label dominated year, was an important landmark.

I think it also belongs in the "period-piece" category, as listening to the 78 RPM disc, with all its inherent audio limitations - crackle, and limited dynamic range and frequency response - does more to endear me to the song than listening to a clean transfer of the master tape on a CD.

Portuguese Washerwomen - JOE "FINGERS" CARR25/8/56 - 1/9/56

2005-07-24T12:55:00.000+10:00

I wasn't really expecting much as I switched to the 78 RPM headshell and dropped this 230 gram slab of shellac on my turntable. It had been terribly difficult to track down (which significantly lowered my expectations, because if it's so hard to find it can't be that good, right?), and that only served to increase the part of my mind that thought "this had better be worth it". In the end, I found a near mint copy of the 78 sitting in a dusty corner of a small op-shop not 5 kilometres from my house. If only I had looked there first.

The quiet ragtime-cum-honky-tonk piano introduction that opened the song kept my intrigue long enough to get to the heavily syncopated "kick-in" of the tune, where the full instrumentation of Banjo and Drums came in. Yes, I know what you're thinking, and it's exactly what I thought. "Banjo and Drums, hang on a minute...", but the basic piano line (a simplified version is shown below) grabbed me and pulled me right in.

There are some vocal sounds, but no lyrics as such, so the tune is classed as an instrumental. Stylisticly, it's an retro (for the time) Rag. The deceptively simple off-beat piano line with supporting left-hand chords are incredibly catchy (to my ears anyway), but this is the sort of song that polarises audiences - it would have any listener either marvelling at the tune's inherent attractiveness, or screaming at someone to turn the bloody thing off straight away. Me? Well, if you hear someone's mobile playing this tune, then they're probably me.

The tune undergoes a couple of upward modulations before ending two minutes and eight seconds after it started - it's over before it's had time to get boring. (In contrast, the B-side, Lucky Pierre only clocks in at 1:56 but I stopped it before I reached the end, as I felt I'd heard it all more than once around the 1:20 mark) It's...far better than I expected it to be. I played it to three friends who'd never heard it before; two of them thought it was quite catchy (and I caught one of them humming it about a week later with absolutely no recollection of where they heard it) while the other didn't even make it to the twenty second mark.

The other thing I really like about this song is the Piano sound - unlike the records of his contemporaries like Winifred Atwell and Crazy Otto, the instrument hasn't been detuned and the high-midrange of the piano hasn't been cranked to give that horrible sort of old-west Saloon bar honky-tonk sound. Carr's piano actually sounds like a piano, which, at the time, was rare for a piece like this. Probably had something to do with the fact that Carr (real name Lou Busch) was one of the few serious players at the time to wave the flag for Ragtime - remember, this was about twenty years before The Sting repopularised the Rags of Scott Joplin.

I was torn between giving this three or four stars, and didn't want to give it 3 1/2. Well, I like it. And I'm the judge. So I've decided.

Moonglow & Love Theme from the Motion Picture "Picnic"MORRIS STOLOFF conducting THE COLUMBIA PICTURES ORCHESTRA18/8/56

2005-07-23T11:50:00.000+10:00

The first time I listened to this, I was frankly mystified as to how the instumental medley of songs from the movie Picnic made it to number one. Sure, there's nothing particularly wrong with it - it's definitely what we'd now call "easy listening", with its moderately interesting piano, steady brushed snare drum and strings, and given the right climate (which it had), it could probably be a success. But the disc made it to the top spot, and that's some achievment.

After a bit more reading, it turns out that Picnic was quite a popular movie, and Moonglow was featured in a dancing scene between the male and female leads of the film, and then everything falls into place. It's the first (and certainly not the last) example of horizontal integration in this list; The movie helps to sell the record and vice versa. Had the record not been tied to the movie, I really don't think it would've taken out the top spot - but if it was a crap song tied to a successful movie then it probably wouldn't have made number one either. So I think I'm going to have to rate it just under average.

The Poor People of Paris - LES BAXTER with HIS ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS11/8/56

2005-07-23T11:38:00.000+10:00

I'm not quite sure what to make of this one. The first instrumental to take out the top spot, it was a rendition of a song that had been popularised with lyrics by the likes of Edith Piaf, Bing Crosby and Dean Martin.

There were two competing instrumental versions of this song around in 1956. Baxter's version spent four weeks at the top in the USA (before being bumped off by Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel, while a piano version by Winifred Atwell held the number one spot in the UK for three weeks. Having been warned, I proceeded with caution to the Winifred Atwell disc and put it on, only to stop it straight away. So I must say that compared to Atwell's version, Baxter's has its strong points (for example, there's no out-of-tune piano in Baxter's version.)

I can see how the tune is quite catchy without a singer, but as an instrumental it really seems like it's missing something. So I'm slightly less endeared to it, but that's kind of cancelled out after hearing Winifred Atwell's version.

The Great Pretender - THE PLATTERS21/7/56 - 4/8/56

2005-07-22T10:42:00.000+10:00

I've always thought this was an interesting tune, having heard it quite a lot coming from "Classic Hits" radio stations and my Dad's old "rock and roll" cassettes as a young one. The theme of the lyrics always kind of intrigued me as well - being quite young, I didn't really get it. "The great pretender?" "Just laughing and gay like the clowns"? Eh?

However, it sort of popped up later on when I was going through my "melodramatic teenager" phase, and I gave it some pretty high rotation after my first girlfriend decided we should "take a break". The major key is an interesting choice, but the rich voice of Tony Williams carries the emotion of the song well. Although the melody isn't overly catchy, there's no real "hook" to speak of, and the piano and drums keeping time are playing a strict 6/8 rhythm, Williams' vocal and the upright bass move off the beat to swing the song just enough to keep it a half-notch above "interesting" - there's certainly nothing wrong with the song, but it's nothing spectacular either. I guess the major appeal of this tune was the theme of the lyrics to people who were feeling rather like Tony Williams.

Rock and Roll Waltz - KAY STARR16/6/56 - 14/7/56

2005-07-21T13:01:00.000+10:00

Let's get one thing clear before I start this review - I really don't like the sort of song that's written by music industry "professionals" using the language of the "hip young things" whose sole purpose is to sell piles of records and make even bigger piles of money. It annoys me even more when people are suckered into buying them and they stay at the top of the charts for weeks on end. That said, here's my take on Rock and Roll Waltz

The song's in an awkward 3/4 time, it's sung by a woman whose vocal style could be compared unfavourably to Patti Page, and the writers have copied most of the song out of a rhyming dictionary. It also uses an orchestra to convey a "Rock and Roll Waltz", and I really don't see how that's a good idea - unless this record was pitched at mums and dads who wanted to think they were kind of cool and edgy by buying a record with the words "Rock and Roll" in the title. Sorry guys, but Mitch Miller was cooler than you.

A Theme From The Threepenny Opera (Mack The Knife) - LOUIS ARMSTRONG19/5/56 - 9/6/56

2005-07-20T09:03:00.000+10:00

And then over to Louis. This is one of the very few times that Australia was way out in front of a trend before the rest of the world. A Theme From The Threepenny Opera, as it was labelled (see left), didn't make the top spot in the USA or the UK until Bobby Darin's 1959 stilted big-band style cover, labelled as "definitive" by Frank Sinatra. I'm sorry to say, Frank, that we saw things a little differently in Australia.

Armstrong's handling of Opera was typical of that golden era for Armstrong - practically effortless and sitting just perfectly off the beat. The lyrics don't even start until we're 50 seconds into the song. And there's something about a performance that can have people snapping their fingers and thoroughly enjoying a song about a "shark" of a man with a penchant for serial killing. I wouldn't be at all surprised if conservative groups of the time protested about the song - and I wouldn't be surprised if conservative groups of today did exactly the same thing. Just try getting a song that mentions six murders to number one. Go on, I dare you. It'd be damn near impossible, but Louis just rasps his way to four weeks atop the Australian charts.

Memories are Made of This - DEAN MARTIN7/4/56 - 12/5/56

2005-07-19T10:05:00.000+10:00

When this song hit the top of the Australian charts, Martin was a already genuine star. He'd just finished his comic pairing with Jerry Lewis, and already had hits with bigger arrangements like "That's Amore" and "Sway" under his belt . For this song, he'd scaled his accompaniment back, just using the acoustic guitars, double bass, and soft supporting vocals of Terry Gilkyson's Easy Riders (Gilkyson's trio would make the #1 spot in Australia in their own right in 1957).

While the lyrics are overly white bread ("One girl, one boy, some grief, some joy, memories are made of this"..."Then add the wedding bells, one house where lovers dwell, three little kids for the flavour" etc.), the subtle backing gets in my head and neutralises the bitter saccharin taste that normally comes with this territory, and I'm drumming on the wrist-rest in front of my keyboard and singing along with the backing vocals to a song that was previously unknown to my ears. It's a sweet, catchy love song for the average middle class couple of the time.

PS: I'm still singing it to myself the next day.

He - AL HIBBLER31/3/56

2005-07-18T07:55:00.000+10:00

From a bleak picture of a workman's life we suddenly jerk to Al Hibbler, a blind African American singing in front of the sort of slow, syrupy orchestral arrangement and backing choir you'd expect to hear in a Bing Crosby tune.

"He" is quite obviously a song about the christian God - it starts out almost devotional, the sort of song you'd hear children singing at Sunday School ("He can turn the tides and calm the angry sea, He lights every star that makes our darkness bright etc.), but by the time we get to the second vers, the "He" seems to havee become some sort of Walt Disney-esque kind wizard cum fairy godfather ("He can grant a wish, or make a dream come true, He can paint the clouds and turn the grey to blue") which is quite irritating - if the song was either cheesy or devotional, it'd work well in spite of the already clichéd-sounding melody, but the mixture doesn't work. Probably had something to do with the song only staying at #1 for a single week.

Sixteen Tons - "TENNESSEE" ERNIE FORD18/2/56 - 24/3/56

2005-07-01T20:07:00.000+10:00

After getting off to a shaky start with Civil War nostalgia, the Australian chart machine moved smoothly into gear with "Tennessee" Ernie Ford's near-anthem for the real working class of the late '50s.

From the opening wind hook, the song is characterised by its sparse nature. The two players don't find depth in harmony, they play their minor-major line (a short rest for the song's protagonist, then back to work perhaps?) an octave apart, until the final playing ends in a delicate B minor chord (representing death? Who knows, Merle Travis perhaps...). The only instrument of any real depth in the song is Ford's commanding voice. The instrumental backing serves almost exclusively to keep time (and possibly to keep Ford on key, although he does a pretty good job in the very short a capella section at the end), the only exceptions being the muted trumpet and wind stabs. However, it finds incredible depth in the space between everything and the dynamics of Ford's vocal set against the bass and drums of Jack Fascinato's orchestra.

The real beauty of this song, though, is its appeal. If you put finger-clicks in your song, people will click along, just like people will sing along to "ba ba ba"s (more on that later) - it requires very little brain power, it's almost unconcious, and most importantly, anyone can do it without the need for a good singing voice or musical sensibility. It's also got such strong appeal not just to any manual labourer (of which there were more enough to push this record to #1 alone), but to anyone who thinks they work hard - a metaphorical Sixteen Tonnes, if you will - and that's a lot of people to buy your record.

The Yellow Rose of Texas - MITCH MILLER with HIS ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS07/01/1956 - 11/2/1956

2005-02-04T14:17:00.000+11:00

Although all the number one hits of Australia were from the USA in 1956, this first number one record in Australia was a distinctly American tune. First published in 1858, the original lyrics (containing references to "darkies" and such – the original lyrics are written from the perspective of a black man about a mulatto girl) had been substantially revised by the time this recording was made. It is highly unlikely that this was due to a politically correct conscience, it is far more likely that it was done simply to increase the popularity of the song amongst whites. It has been cited as a tune common among Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War, so the lyrical revisions probably came very soon after publication.

Mysteriously, the Australian release of this disc was on Philips Records when it had been released by Columbia Records (CBS) in the USA - in fact, Mitch Miller was the head of A&R for CBS at the time. CBS had their own Australian affiliate, Coronet Records, who were releasing discs for them, so the issue of this disc on Philips was quite odd. This recording sees Miller backed by a Military-esque band and a massed choir. The style wasn't typical of other hits of the time, and it really doesn't do anything for me. The song starts in A-flat, takes the unusual step of modulating only one semitone up to A, and finally rises to B-flat for the final refrain.

The melody of the song is quite catchy, and when played with close harmony on a violin, it's appealing. But played by a military band and choir, the only thing that resonates is the fact that this really is a period piece that can't be labeled a pop classic, and is largely irrelevant to Australia.

Questions and Answers

2005-02-04T13:07:00.000+11:00

What's the go with this site?

I plan to review and rate every Single or EP that made it to the top position on the Australian Charts since their inception in 1956. In addition, I'll allocate some "Honourable Mentions" - songs that sold well but didn't quite make the top spot from 1958 onwards, including songs that were the top sellers in their year without getting to number one.

Did that happen very often?

No. It happened in 1961, 1964, 1984 and that's it.

So why bother?

Because I'm an obsessive completist.

How are you going to rate things?

Using stars with predefined definitions:

: Perfect. Utter pop perfection.
: Very Good. A great pop song, still highly recommended to anyone.
: Average. Standard pop fare. Still probably quite good in it's genre, still able to be appreciated some years down the track.
: Not Very Good. Perhaps you kind of had to be there at the time. Possibly jumping on the bandwagon of a trend.
: Poor. What were they thinking?!?.

I'm also going to use half stars for things that deserve a slightly higher or lower ranking than the predefined definition.

How often are you going to do this?

I'm going to try really hard to do it daily. It surely can't take too long to think up some words on a song. Right?

Really?

I have a menial job. There's lots of time to think.

So why do this anyway? Aren't other sites doing it?

Yes, but only other site I know of doing something like this is Popular. It's covering the UK charts, but the Australian charts have always had a unique flavour of their own. For example, Louis Armstrong's "Mack The Knife" was number one in Australia for 4 weeks in 1956, and is still the definitive version of the song here. It took Bobby Darin's 1959 cover for the song to reach the top spot in the USA and UK.

There's also a pile of Australian songs unique to Australia that won't get a review anywhere else. So I'm trying to take care of that area too.

Okay then. So who the hell are you anyway? Why are you writing this?

I'm in my 20's, and live in Melbourne, Australia. I've got a Bachelor of Music degree, which loosely translated means I'm used to writing well researched pieces on various music crap and I can play a bit too. It's not just a brain exercise for me, it's an exploration of the music that has made Australia tick in the 49 years that we've been keeping track of it.

Speaking of which, where are you getting your information from? I've never seen Australian chart data published before.

The Oz Net Music Chart. It's full of statistics and well worth a look. It's not official as such, but it's the best we've got.

How can I contact you to abuse you/compliment you/offer you money to continue this writing for a commercial publication?

At australianplastic@gmail.com. Knock yourself out.

Hall of Shame

2005-01-27T17:19:00.000+11:00

One and a Half Stars:
Venus - FRANKIE AVALON
Bimbombey - JIMMIE RODGERS
Young and Warm and Wonderful - TONY BENNETT
It's All In The Game - TOMMY EDWARDS
Marianne - BURL IVES
Around The World - BING CROSBY
He - AL HIBBLER

One Star:
Cindy! Oh, Cindy - EDDIE FISHER

Half a Star:
Rock and Roll Waltz - KAY STARR

Hall of Fame

2005-01-25T12:47:00.000+11:00

Five Stars:

(nil)

Four and a Half Stars:
Shout - JOHNNY O'KEEFE with THE DEEJAYS and THE DELTONES

Four Stars:
Personality - LLOYD PRICE
Diana - PAUL ANKA
A Theme From The Threepenny Opera (Mack The Knife) - LOUIS ARMSTRONG
Portuguese Washerwomen - JOE "FINGERS" CARR
Sixteen Tons - "TENNESSEE" ERNIE FORD