SHG: Gale Storm: "I Hear You Knocking"

Gale Storm: “I Hear You Knocking” Entered the chart on: 10/22/1955 Peaked on: 12/24/1955 Weeks at #2: 3 weeks Songs at #1: “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford and “Memories Are Made of This” by Dean Martin

Not gonna lie, I went back and listened to “A Blossom Fell” again after doing “Moments to Remember.” To cleanse the aural palate, you see. I knew what was coming...

Also went and listened to the original blues version by Smiley Lewis, which did not chart. For context, you see. I won’t make the same mistake I did with “Ko Ko Mo.” I was previously familiar only with Dave Edmunds’ version, like most people my age. His version has a different feel than Smiley’s (based around Edmunds’ guitar instead of the eighth-note piano chords and skronking sax that was popular on 50s R&B recordings) but he is faithful to the spirit of the original tune.

Something tells me I’m not going to get that from this version. So let’s get this over with, shall we?



[shudders]

Right, thus far in this review series, I have noticed three categories of these “whitewashed” covers:

1. Treat it like a silly novelty song (the Perry Como strategy)
2. Make a half-hearted attempt at copying the original version (the Freda Lipschitz approach)
3. Remove anything that was good about the original song and replace it with things that make you want to individually slap everyone involved with this travesty silly (Pat Boone’s general plan of action)

I’ll let you figure out which category this falls into by providing you with these three tidbits of information:

1. It was produced by Billy Vaughn (responsible for all those Pat Boone atrocities)
2. It was released on Dot Records (home to, you guessed it, Pat Boone)
3. It was sung by TV’s My Little Margie*.

I’m actually a bit shocked that something that was nominally made by “professionals” sounds so slip-shod. I’m immediately taken by the sloppy piano playing right out of the gate. Obviously, nobody involved had anything resembling respect for the original artist’s work. That and/or they knew they were backing a TV star play-acting at being a singer, someone who knew nothing about phrasing or intonation, so they didn’t feel the need to put, you know, effort into their performances.

Seriously, I know this woman was a popular star at the time, but who thought it was a good idea to stick her in front of an orchestra and put a microphone somewhere within range of her thin, nasal voice? It took all my force of will not to lunge for the “STOP” button, so unpleasant a vocalist is she to listen to. People actually bought this record? WHY?

Oh, and I see she has a version of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” among her discography! No, not even going there! Even my Mom, a former member of Pat Boone’s fan club, owned the Frankie Lymon original, thank you very much.

So...that was 1955. Started off silly, ended tragically, but hey, at least it produced one masterpiece.

I think I’ll listen to “A Blossom Fell” a third time. Then I’ll drill a hole in my head and try to remove the part that remembers what Gale Storm’s singing voice sounds like.

Rating: 0

*For those too young to remember, My Little Margie is a 50s sitcom which has been so discredited over the years, not even the most desperate-for-content “nostalgia” networks will touch it with a ten-foot pole.

SHG: The Four Lads: "Moments to Remember"

The Four Lads: “Moments to Remember”
Entered the chart on: 9/3/1955
Peaked on: 11/12/1955
Weeks at #2: 6 weeks
Songs at #1: “Autumn Leaves” by Roger Williams and “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford.

So, after the breath-taking masterpiece that is “A Blossom Fell,” any follow-up couldn’t help but be a disappointment. Bracing myself for a letdown here.

What is up with all the imported Can-Con back in the 50s? The Crew-Cuts, the Diamonds and now the Four Lads. Did US record companies just want to import talent from a country where the performers were guaranteed to be white? Or is that just me being my usual cynical self?

If you know the Four Lads for anything these days, it’s for their 1953 novelty hit “Istanbul (Not Constantinople),” later covered-up by trendy indie rockers They Might Be Giants. Looking at their discography, it seems as though a lot of their early hits were novelty tunes, since we also have “Two Ladies in de Shade of de Banana Tree” (cringe) and “Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellen Bogen by the Sea” (huh?).

Trivia about “Moments to Remember,” it was originally offered to Perry Como, but he turned it down. Bodes well, doesn’t it? So lets examine the case of the song that wasn’t good enough for the singer of “Ko Ko Mo (I Love You So)”:



One of those lads sounds awfully ladylike. Yes, I know, it’s guest singer Lois Winters. Get off my back!

Eh, this is the kind of sentimentality that hasn’t aged well for me. The lads’ squeaky-clean harmonies aren’t helping any. The spoken-word bit by guest narrator Pat Kirby (who thought this was a good idea? I’m beginning to see why Perry turned this down.) in the middle eight is all kinds of cheesy, though its suggestion of drive-in sex was kind of daring for a tune of this ilk, from this era. I guess they were kind of going for a rousing sing-along feel with this, considering they elected to keep the arrangement simple (is that a ukulele I hear?).

This isn’t doing it for me, I’m afraid. This is the kind of music the rock & rollers were rebelling against. And frankly, I can understand why.

Rating: 2

SHG: Nat "King" Cole: "A Blossom Fell"

Nat “King” Cole: “A Blossom Fell”
Entered the chart on: 5/7/1955
Peaked on: 6/18/1955
Weeks at #2: 1 week
Song at #1: “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White” by Pérez Prado & His Orchestra

What a relief it is not to be writing “Sincerely” in the #1 spot!

What a relief to have an artist who’s not whitewashing a black person’s hit, too! Mind you, Nat was one of those “black singers that it’s acceptable for white folks to like.” But don’t make that mean he’s worth your scorn. I’m familiar with some of his songs (though not this one), and he’s the real deal.



Wow! This is in a different world from everything I’ve heard so far! We’re barely a minute in, and just listening to his delivery of these lyrics almost has me in tears! He’s that good! There’s a nice, tasty trombone solo in the middle eight (Nelson Riddle conducted the orchestra for this baby, and it’s obvious he’s an old pro, too). But this is all about Nat’s voice, which is smooth as silk, gliding over the notes with ease, and oozing sincerity from every pore.

This one goes onto the “listen again” list.

I’m getting misty-eyed again!

Rating: 5

SHG: Joni James: "How Important Can It Be?"

Joni James: “How Important Can It Be?” Entered the chart on: 2/19/1955 Peaked on: 3/26/1955 Weeks at #2: 1 week Song at #1: “Sincerely” by the McGuire Sisters



It must have come as a breath of fresh air to the old guard to have a traditional female-sung ballad returning to the charts. That said, there’s a reason you remember, say, Doris Day or Connie Francis (to name two future artists I’ll be covering soon) and not Joni.

Joni is Italian-American, like Connie, and I guess you could say she’s her precursor. Definitely an old school singer of the “sing the notes on the right pitch but don’t get too excited” variety. I really can’t say much more about this than “it’s nice.” It’s professional and bland. Forgettable. I just listened to it and I already can’t remember how it goes. It sounds like a whole bunch of other songs just like this.

This is another artist I have a bit of a history with, as my grandparents owned a later single by her, “I Still Get a Thrill,” which was not a hit. I have a vague memory of the melody hook of that one but like this, it’s forgettable.

The Ray Charles Singers, who were on that Perry Como song, sang on this as well.

Rating: 2

SHG: Johnny Maddox: "The Crazy Otto"

Johnny Maddox & the Rhythm Masters: “The Crazy Otto”
Entered the chart on: 2/5/1955
Peaked on: 3/19/1955
Weeks at #2: 1
Song at #1: “Sincerely” by the McGuire Sisters

“Sincerely” looks unstoppable. To date, this is the third song stalled by the McGuire Sisters’ long stay at #1. For all that, I had to go out of my way to refresh my memory of it. I’d never have heard it at all had I not seen Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, in which the song is a plot point.



I like to put songs I review into some kind of context, but this is just baffling. On the face of it, we have Maddox banging on a woefully out-of-tune upright piano backed by his combo, playing a medley of old saloon-type tunes popularized by Fritz “Crazy Otto” Schulz-Reichel. Why? Had Crazy Otto died recently? No, he was still very much alive and churning out popular albums (he had a #1 album on the charts when this was released).

As near as I can guess, they were just doing what the “whitewashers” were doing, capitalizing on someone else’s success by cashing in with a quickie sound-alike release.

I don’t know, if you’re not allergic to off-key piano playing, this is not bad. Kind of fun in a nostalgic kind of way. We’re looking through two layers of nostalgia with this, as they were already evoking another time and place with this recording. Sounds like something that would be played in an old Straw Hat Pizza, or the like.

I kind of want to put it on at one of those internet jukeboxes at a latter-day pizza place, just to see what peoples’ reactions would be.

Rating: 3

SHG: Georgia Gibbs: "Tweedle Dee"

Georgia Gibbs: “Tweedle Dee”
Entered the charts on: 1/29/1955
Peaked on: 5/12/1955
Weeks at #2: 1
Song at #1: “Sincerely” by the McGuire Sisters

So, let’s talk about “whitewashing.”

I know, we’ve already been here with Perry Como’s “rock & roll song.” But I didn’t expect to come back to this well again so soon. So, since this song strikes a personal chord with me, I thought I’d talk about my personal experience with this phenomenon.

You see, as a kid, I liked that early rock & roll stuff. You know, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, that kind of thing. So, when my mother came home from her folks’ house with an armload of records she bought during her youth, I was thrilled to see “Tutti Frutti” among the discs. I was so excited to see the song title, I didn’t even take the time to closely examine the label before sticking it on the record player.

My reaction was something along the lines of: “Hey, this isn’t Little Richard! This sucks! Who is this loser and why is he ruining my day?”

Yeah, turns out Mom had the Pat Boone version and not the original. [makes retching noises]

“Tweedle Dee” was one of the first early rock & roll songs by a female singer I was familiar with. Speaking of the original by LaVern Baker here, of course. I can’t remember the record I heard it on, one of those “early records of the rock & roll era” records that advertised on TV, the title of which I have forgotten. Supposedly, Ms. Baker wasn’t too fond of rock & roll and only flirted with the genre to earn money. If she had her way, she’d stick to jazz. That said, she tackles the tune with aplomb, her raunchy contralto suiting the song very well.

In retrospect, it’s an extremely silly song, which appealed to me as a kid. It’s easy to see why this was popular among young people of the day.

I was quite disappointed in reading the Whitburn book for the first time, noticing that the original only rose as high as #14, trumped by a cover version by somebody named Georgia Gibbs, whose version rose all the way to #2.

Her Nibs, Miss Gibbs (as she was referred to at the time) seems to have been a victim of a kind of whitewashing herself. Her real name was Freda Lipschitz. I’m pretty sure some record company suit told her that was “too Jewish” and asked her to change it to something more palatable to Middle America.



Eh, this isn’t working for me. She’s trying for the brassy feel of the original, as much as she dares to (or her producers will allow) but it all just winds up sounding like a children’s song in her hands. She’s given no help from her lame male backing singers or the twinkly Glenn Osser orchestration. I was all ready to pile all the blame on this song’s failure on her, but I can’t really. She’s the only good thing about it. I kind of want to hear her other output now (but not her follow-up to this, her version of “The Wallflower” originally by Etta James and the Peaches. That went all the way to #1, and is a complete massacre of the original).

I’d like to conclude this review with this anecdote I found on a RateYourMusic review:

Georgia Gibbs scored the bigger hit with her version of "Tweedle Dee", for which Baker unsuccessfully attempted to sue her. When LaVern was flying to Australia, she took out flight insurance at the airport and sent it to Gibbs with a note: "You need this more than I do because if anything happens to me, you're out of business."

And you young kids thought Nicki Minaj invented this kind of thing?

Rating: 2

SHG: Billy Vaughn: "Melody of Love"

Billy Vaughn & His Orchestra: “Melody of Love”
Entered chart on: 12/11/1954
Peaked on: 3/19/1955
Weeks at #2: 1

Here we go! An artist I have a history with! After a visit to her parents, Mom came home with a box of their records, including the La Paloma LP and the follow-up to this: “The Shifting, Whispering Sands.”

I wish I was reviewing that instead; an epic six minutes in which stentorian narrator Ken Nordine describes skulls bleaching in the desert sun. Vaughn’s syrupy choir-fueled orchestrations somehow make the whole thing that much creepier. On account of Nordine’s unsettling “what to do in case of emergency” narration, you could easily interpret this as subtext for a post-nuclear end-of-world scenario, not literally about the Southwestern desert.

This was played on the radio? In 1955?

I understand La Paloma is a lot more typical of Vaughn’s style, white-bread renditions of traditional Latin folk and dance tunes featuring his distinctive close-formation alto saxophones. The title song from the album was a huge hit in Europe and extremely influential on the German Schlager scene, reason enough to dislike Vaughn. Apparently the arrangement to ABBA’s “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do” (one of their corniest and lamest early hits, in my opinion) was inspired by “La Paloma.”

Vaughn was, of course, the musical director of Dot Records, and responsible for the production and orchestration of its roster of artists, including all those cringeworthy Pat Boone records, more reason to dislike him. He was also responsible for the bizarre and inexplicable recording career of veteran actor Walter Brennan. If you ask me, “Old Rivers” is several measures creepier than “The Shifting, Whispering Sands,” and it isn’t even trying to be.

However, I will venture to keep an open mind while listening to “Melody of Love”...



This is a slow waltz. Really slow. Like really slow. Like “wading through syrup” slow. I don’t know if my ears are deceiving me, but it sounds like there’s a banjo playing the rhythm in the background. It could just be audio artifacts in the recording, it’s probably a piano. All those dreamy strings are drowning it out. That pinched-embouchure saxophone does cut through, so good call on that from an arrangement standpoint.

I’m guessing this is the sort of thing that Gramps used to slow-dance to. Fine, if that’s what you want, but I can think of better. There were a bunch of vocal covers (including one by Frank Sinatra, who we’ll discuss in a future installment) of this but it was Billy’s instrumental (his first single, fact fans) that charted highest.

But yeah, probably not going to listen to this again. I’ll go for “The Shifting, Whispering Sands (Parts 1 & 2)” if I need another Billy Vaughn fix.

Rating: 1

SHG: Perry Como: "Ko Ko Mo (I Love You So)"

Perry Como: “Ko Ko Mo (I Love You So)”
Entered chart on: 2/5/1955
Peaked on: 2/19/1955
Weeks at #2: 3

I remember thumbing through my father’s junior high school yearbook, and they mentioned the class’ favorite singers. The #1 female singer was Patti Page (don’t worry, we’ll get to her) and the top male vocalist was Perry Como. It was a different time. By the time I was conscious, Eugene Levy was parodying Perry Como as Mr. Relaxation, performing a lobotomized rendition of “I Will Survive” while lying flat on the stage, barely able to stay awake.

Mean? Sure. Deserved? Eh, I don’t know. I’m not really au fait with the works of Mr. Como. Like I said, it was a different time. When I was conscious, Three Dog Night and Olivia Newton John were at the top of the charts. I’m not saying it was necessarily better...



Well, this is a lot more swingin’ than I expected! Swingin’ saxophones (one of which takes a solo in the middle eight) and BONGOS! Oh, the bongos! I was not expecting that! There’s also some crazy backing vocals on this. Well, the male vocals aren’t so crazy, but the female vocals... I swear one of them does this Yma Sumac grunt at one point! Those girls are enjoying themselves way too much!

I can’t help but notice that the Ray Charles Singers are responsible for the irrepressible backing vocal performance on this, which along with those fantastic bongos, make the tune. Yes, I know it’s not that Ray Charles (we’ll be covering him later, please be patient) but I thought it was worth mentioning.

This is, of course, our first instance of “whitewashing.” The original version of this song was performed by its composers, Gene and Eunice. For whatever reason, cover versions of it soon flooded the market, with Perry’s version topping the charts. RCA billed it as his “rock & roll” song, quite laughable with the aid of 20/20 hindsight but I’m sure that wasn’t the perception at the time. Realistically, they took a boilerplate R&B song and turned it into something like a mutant version of big-band swing. I’ve read reviews comparing this version to Spike Jones, and I can definitely hear that.

Compare this to the king of whitewashing, Dot Records’ poster-boy Pat Boone. It may not be rock, but Perry can at least loosen up and give a sprightly performance for the length of a two-and-a-half minute tune before going back to plying his trade of dreary, somber ballads. Pat could never remove the stick from his butt long enough to deliver a credible performance of an uptempo song.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to! I get that we’re all supposed to hate all that white-bread pre-rock stuff, but this is actually really lively and fun, Perry’s getting into the spirit of it, the backing vocals are off the charts and oh, have I mentioned how I love those bongos?

Rating: 3